Greybeard

6. London

To her surprise, Martha found her limbs tremble with delight in the freedom of being once more upon the river. She sat in the dinghy clutching her knees, and smiled and smiled to see Greybeard smiling. His decision to move on was not so spontaneous as he represented it. Their boat was well provisioned and fitted with a better sail than previously. With deep pleasure, Martha found that Charley Samuels was coming along too; he had aged noticeably during their time in Oxford; his cheeks were shrunken and as pale as straw; Isaac the fox had died a couple of months before, but Charley was as much a dependable man as ever. They did not see Jeff Pitt to say good-bye to; he had vanished into the watery mazes of the lake a week before, and nobody had seen him since; whether he had died there, or gone off to seek new trapping grounds, remained a mystery.

For Greybeard, to have river water flowing beneath his keel again was a liberation. He whistled as they sailed downstream, passing close to the spot where, back in Croucher’s day, Martha and he had shared a flat and bickered and worried and been taken to Cowley barracks. His mood was entirely different now, so much that he had difficulty in remembering the person he then was. Much nearer to his heart — ah, and clearer in the memory! — was the little boy he had been, delighting in trips on the sunny Thames, in those months of 1982 when he was recovering from the effects of radiation illness.

As they sailed south, the new freedom took him back to that old freedom of childhood.

But it was only memory that represented that time as freedom. The child he had been was less free than the sunburnt man with bald head and grey beard who sat by his wife in his boat. The child was a prisoner, a prisoner of his weakness and lack of knowledge, of his parents’ whims, of the monstrous fate unleashed so recently on the world that the world had yet to grasp its full power. The child was a pawn.

Moreover, the child had a long road of sorrow, perplexity, and struggle before him. Why then could the man look back down the perspective of forty-nine years and regard that little boy boxed in by events with an emotion more like envy than compassion?

As the car stopped, Jock Bear, the teddy bear in tartan pyjamas, rolled off the rear window ledge and on to the car seat. Algy picked him up and put him back.

“Jock must be sick too, Mummy. He’s rolling about like anything back here.”

“Perhaps he’ll feel better when we’ve looked at the house,” Patricia Timberlane said. She raised what was left of her eyebrows at her friend Venice, who was sitting in the front with her. “I know I shall,” she said.

She climbed out and opened the rear door, helping her son to the ground. He was tall for a boy of seven, but the sickness had left him thin and lifeless. His cheeks were sallow, his skin rough. With nursing him and being ill herself, she felt as bad as he looked. But she smiled encouragingly, and said, “I suppose Jock wouldn’t like to look round the new house?”

“I just told you, Mum, he’s sick. Gosh, when you’re sick, you don’t want to do a thing except die, like the way Frank did. So if it’s all the same to you, he’ll hang around in the car.”

“As you wish.” It still hurt to be reminded of the death of her older boy Frank after many months of the sickness.

Venice came to her rescue.

“Wouldn’t you like to play outside, Algy, while Mummy and I look over the house? There’s an exciting-looking garden here. Only don’t fall in the Thames, or you’ll get awfully wet.”

Mayburn was a quiet house, set on the river not too far from the suburb of London where the Timberlanes lived. It had stood empty for six weeks, and the estate agent who gave Patricia the keys assured her that now was the time to buy, since the bottom had fallen out of the property market. This was her second visit to the property; on the first occasion, she had come with her husband, but this time she wanted someone slightly more receptive to see it. Arthur was all very well, but he had these money troubles.

The attraction of the house was that it was small, yet had a fairly long strip of ground behind, which led down to the river and a little landing stage. The place would suit them both; Arthur was a keen gardener, she loved the river. It had been so lovely, earlier in the summer, when both she and Algy were feeling a little better, to bundle up in warm clothes and sail on one of the pleasure steamers from Westminster Pier, up or down the river, watching the city slide past. On the river, the feebleness of convalescence had taken on almost a spiritual quality.

She unlocked the front door and moved in, with Venice behind her. Algy trotted off round the back of the house.

“Of course, it looks a bit ghastly at present,” Patricia said, as they walked through the echoing rooms. “The last owners were nuts on white paint — so colourless! But when it’s redecorated, it’ll be a different proposition. I thought we might knock this wall down — nobody wants a breakfast-room nowadays — and then there would be this lovely view down to the river. Oh, I can’t tell you how glad I’ll be to get out of Twickenham. It’s a bit of London that gets worse every year.”

“Arthur still seems to like it,” Venice said, observing her friend closely as Patricia peered out of a window.

“Arthur’s… well, I know that we’re closer to the factory than we should be here. Oh, of course times are difficult, Venice, and this beastly radiation sickness has left everyone a little depressed, but why doesn’t Arthur buck up a bit? It may sound awful, but he bores me so much nowadays. He’s got this new young partner now, Keith Barratt, to cheer him up…”

“Oh, I know you’re sweet on Keith,” Venice said, smiling.

Patricia turned to her friend. She had been beautiful before her illness and before Frank died; now that her vivacity had fled, it was noticeable that most of her beauty had resided in that quality.

“Does it show? I’ve never said a thing to a soul. Venny, you’ve been married longer than me. Are you still in love with Edgar?”

“I’m not the demonstrative type that you are. Yes, I love Edgar. I love him for many things. He’s a nice man — kind, intelligent, doesn’t snore. I also love him because he goes away a lot, and that eases the relationship. Which reminds me, he’ll be back from his medical conference in Australia this evening. We mustn’t be too long here. I must get back and do something for dinner.”

“You do change the subject, don’t you?”

Through the kitchen window, they had a glimpse of Algy running in long grass, on a pursuit no one else would ever know about. He ran behind a lilac tree and studied the fence which divided this garden from the next. The strangeness of the place excited him; he had spent too long in the familiar enclosure of his bedroom. The fence was broken at one point, but he made no attempt to get into the next garden, though he thought to himself how enjoyable it would be if all the fences fell down in every garden and you could go where you liked. He ran a stick experimentally along the fence, liked the result, and did it again. A small girl of about his own age appeared on the other side of the gap.

“You’ll knock it down better by pushing it,” she said.

“I don’t want to knock it down.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“You see, my Daddy’s going to buy this house.”

“What a mouldy shame! Then I sha’n’t be able to creep into the garden and play any more. I bet your mouldy old father will mend the fence.”

Leaping to his father’s defence, Algy said, “He won’t, because he can’t mend fences. He’s not a handyman at all. He’s completely useless.” Catching a clearer glimpse of her through the bushes, he said, “Gosh, you’re bald, what’s your name?”

“My name is Martha Jennifer Broughton, and my hair will all grow on again by the time I’m a big girl.”

He edged closer to the fence, dropping the stick to stare at her. She wore a jumper and a pleated skirt, both red, and her face was open and friendly; but the dome of her head was utterly naked.

“Gosh, you aren’t half bald!”

“Doctor MacMichael says my hair will grow again, and my dad says he’s the best doctor in the world.”

Algy was put on his mettle by small girls who claimed to be authorities on medical matters.

“I know that. We have Doctor MacMichael too. He had to come to see me every day because I’ve been at

Death’s Door.”

The girl came closer to her side of the fence.

“Did you actually see Death’s Door?”

“Jolly nearly. It was very boring on the whole. It uses up your resources.”

“Did Dr. MacMichael say that?”

“Yes. Often. That’s what happened to my brother Frank. His resources got used up. He went right through

Death’s Door.” They laughed together. In a mood for confidences, Martha said, “Aren’t Doctor MacMichael’s hands cold?”

“I didn’t mind. After all, I’m seven.”

“That’s funny, I’m seven too!”

“Lots of people are seven. I ought to tell you my name’s Algernon Timberlane, only you can call me Algy, and my father owns a factory where they make toys. Shall we have to play together when I come to live here? My brother Frank who got buried says girls are stupid.”

“What’s stupid about me? I can run so fast that nobody catches me.”

“Huh, I bet! I bet I could catch you!”

“I tell you what, then — I’ll come in your garden, ’cause it’s a good one; it hasn’t got flowers and things like ours has, and we’ll play Catch.”

She climbed through the broken fence, lifting her skirts daintily, and stood in his garden looking at him. He liked her face. He could smell the sweet smell of the afternoon; he saw the pattern of sunlight and shadow fall across her head, and was moved.

“I’m not supposed to run fast,” he said, “because I’ve been ill.”

“I thought you looked pretty awful. You ought to have some cream on your cheeks like I do. Let’s play hide-and-seek then. You’ve got a smashing old summer-house to hide in.”

She took his hand.

“Yes, let’s play hide-and-seek,” he said. “You can show me the summer-house, if you like.”

Patricia had finished measuring the windows for curtains, and Venice was smoking a cigarette and waiting to go.

“Here comes your devoted hubby,” she announced, catching sight of a car turning in at the drive.

“He promised he’d be here half an hour ago. Arthur’s always late these days. I want his advice on this primitive brute of a cooker. Is Keith driving him?”

“Your luck’s in, my girl: yes, he is. You go and let them in and I’ll slip out and collect Algernon. We really ought to be off.”

Venice let herself out of the back door and called Algy’s name. Her own children were older than the Timberlanes’, and had escaped most of the effects of the sickness; Gerald, in fact, had suffered no more than a seeming cold, which was all the external evidence of the sickness most adults showed.

Algy did not answer her call. As she walked over the unkept lawn, a little girl in a red outfit ran before her and disappeared behind a lilac tree. Half in fun, Venice ran after her; the girl wriggled through a gap in the fence and stood there gazing challengingly at Venice.

“I sha’n’t hurt you,” Venice said. She suppressed an exclamation at the sight of the child’s bald head. It was not the first she had met. “Have you been playing with Algy? Where is he? I can’t see him.”

“That’s because he drowned in the river,” the girl said, clasping her hands behind her back. “If you won’t be cross, I’ll come back and show you.”

She was trembling violently. Venice held out a hand to her.

“Come through quickly and show me what you’re talking about.”

The girl was back through the gap in an instant. Shyly, she took Venice’s hand, looking up to judge her reaction to the move.

“My nails weren’t affected, only my head,” she said, and led the way down to a landing stage that jutted into the river along the end of the garden. Here her courage failed her, and she broke into a storm of tears. For a while she could not speak, until from the barricade of Venice’s arms she pointed a finger at the dark stream.

“That’s just where Algy drowned. If you look, you can see his face looking up at you under the water.”

In alarm, Venice held the child tightly and peered down through the willow tree into the stream. Clinging round a root, half submerged and moving gently against the current, was something that did vaguely resemble a human face. It was a sheet of newspaper.

Patiently, she cajoled Martha into looking and seeing her mistake for herself. Even then, the girl continued to cry, for the shape of the paper was sinister.

“Now you run along home to tea,” Venice said. “Algy can’t be far away. I will find him — perhaps he ran round to the front garden and went indoors — and perhaps in a little while you will be able to play with him again. Would you like that?”

The girl looked into her face with immense swimming eyes, nodded, and dashed away towards the hole in the fence. As Venice straightened up and began to walk back towards the house, Patricia Timberlane came out of the back door with two men. One of the men was her husband, Arthur, a man who at forty-odd gave all the appearance of having forgotten his more youthful years. Venice, who liked him — but she was far less choosy than Patricia with her likes and dislikes, and tended to be friendly to anyone who seemed friendly to her — had to admit that Arthur cut a glum figure; he was a man saddled with troubles who had never decided to meet them either stoically or with a sense of defiance.

Patricia held her husband’s arm, but it was towards the other man that she most frequently glanced. Keith Barratt, Arthur Timberlane’s co-director, was a personable man with a too shallow jaw and tawny hair brushed back untidily. Keith was only five years younger than Arthur, but his manner — particularly his manner with Pat, Venice thought cattily — was more youthful, and he dressed more like a man about town.

As Venice went towards them, answering their greetings, she saw a glance like a bird of sweet ill-omen fly between Patricia and Keith. She saw in it — heavily, for there was pain enough — that trouble was nearer than she had thought.

“Venice likes the house, Arthur,” Patricia said.

“I’m afraid of damp with the river so close,” Arthur said to Venice. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and stared down towards the river as if expecting to see it rise and engulf them. It seemed to be with reluctance that he swung his eyes round to look at her as he asked, “Is Edgar getting back early tonight? Good. Why don’t you both come round for a drink with us? I’d like to hear what he makes of the situation in Australia. Things look very black, very black indeed.”

“Art, you old pessimist!” Keith said. He spoke in a tone of laughing reproach that pronounced his partner’s name Ah-ha-hart. “Come off it! A lovely afternoon like this and you talk like that. Wait till you get that MR report and see if things aren’t just as bad for everyone. Come Christmas, trade will improve.” In explanation, he said to Venice, “We’ve had Moxan, the market research people, in, to find out what exactly has hit our trade; their report should be with us tomorrow.” He pulled a funny face and slit his throat with a knife-edged forefinger.

“The report should have been in today,” Arthur said. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, looking about at surroundings and sky as he spoke, as if tired of talk. “There’s a touch of autumn in the afternoons already. Where’s Algy, Pat? Let’s be getting home.”

“I want you to have a look at the boiler before we go, darling,” Patricia said.

“We’ll talk about the boiler later. Where’s Algy? The boy’s never about when you want him.”

“He’s hiding somewhere,” Venice said. “He’s been playing games with the little girl from next door. Why don’t you two look for him? I really ought to be getting along, or I’ll never be ready for Edgar. Keith, be a darling and give me a lift home, will you? It’s not much off your route.”

“But enchanted,” Keith said, and made an effort to look as though he meant it. They said their farewells and went round to the front drive. Keith’s car had brought him and Arthur over from the factory, as Patricia had the Timberlane car. When Venice settled in beside him, Keith drove away in silence; though far from being a sensitive man, he lost some of his assurance with her, knowing that she did not greatly approve of him.

Between Arthur and Patricia a silence also fell, which he covered by saying, “Well, let’s look for the child, if we must. Perhaps he’s down in the summer-house. Why didn’t you keep an eye on him?”

Ignoring this opening for a quarrel — of all her tricks, that one annoyed him most — Patricia said, as they turned towards the bottom of the garden, “The last owners let this place become a wilderness. There’s more work here than you will be able to tackle alone; we shall have to have a gardener. We must have this row of bushes out and perhaps just leave that peony where it is.”

“We haven’t bought the place yet,” Arthur said morosely. His reluctance to disappoint her made him speak more grudgingly than he intended. She did not seem to be able to understand that their business slipped nearer disaster every day.

What Arthur most resented was that this trouble, into which his firm slipped more deeply even as he spoke, should come as a barrier between Pat and him. He had seen clearly, a while ago, that they failed to make a very united couple; at first he had almost welcomed the financial crisis, hoping it would bring them more closely together, for Patricia had listened sympathetically enough to his woes before they married. Instead, there seemed something deliberate in her lack of understanding.

Of course, the miserable business with the boys had upset her. But after all, she knew Sofftoys and its workings. She had been a secretary in the firm before Arthur married her, a little irresponsible slip of a thing with a good figure and twinkling eyes. Even now, he could recall his surprise when she agreed to marry him. He told himself he was not like most men: he did not forget the good or the bad things in his past life.

It was the good things that sharpened his present miseries.

Plodding through the grass, he shook his head and repeated, “We haven’t bought the place yet.”

They reached the summer-house, and he pushed the door open. The summer-house was a tiny semi-rustic affair with an ornamental barge-board hanging low enough to catch a tall man’s head, and one window set in its riverside wall. It contained two folded garden chairs leaning across one corner, a rotted awning of some kind, and an empty oil drum. Arthur glanced round it in distaste, closed the door again, and leant against it, looking at Patricia.

Yes, for him she was attractive still, even after her illness and the death of Frank and eleven years of marriage to him. He felt an awful complex thing rise in his breast, and wanted to tell her all in one breath that she was too good for him, that he was doing his best, that she ought to see that ever since those bloody bombs were let off the world was going to hell in a bucket, and that he knew she was a bit sweet on Keith and was glad for her sake if it made her happy provided she didn’t just leave him.

“I hope Algy hasn’t fallen in the river and drowned,” she said, dropping her eyes before his gaze. “But perhaps he’s gone back to the house. Let’s go back and see.”

“Pat, never mind about the boy. Look, I’m sorry about all this — I mean about life and things being difficult lately. I love you very much, darling. I know I’m a bit of a duffer, but the times we live in—”

She had heard him use that phrase “I know I’m a bit of a duffer” in apology before, as if apology was the same as reform. She lost track of what he was saying under a memory of the Christmas before last, when she had induced him to give a party for some of their friends and business acquaintances. It had not been a success. Arthur had sensed it was not succeeding, and — to her dismay — had produced a pack of cards and said to a knot of his junior employees and their wives, with a host’s hollow geniality, “Look, I can see the party’s not going too well — perhaps you’d like to see a few card tricks.”

Standing there in the cool afternoon, she blushed dull red again at her embarrassment and his. There were no shames like social shames, suffered before people who would always try to smile. He was pathetic to think that naming the truth altered it in any way.

“Are you listening, Pat?” Arthur said. He still leant against the door, as if trying to keep something trapped inside. “You don’t seem to listen to me these days. You know I love you. What I’m trying to say is this — we can’t buy Mayburn, not at present. Business is too bad. It would be unwise. I saw my bank manager today, and he said it wouldn’t be wise. You know we have an overdraft already. He said times were going to be worse before they were better. Very much worse.”

“But it was all arranged! You promised!”

“The bank manager explained—”

“Damn the bank manager, and damn you! What did you do, show him a new card trick? You promised me when Frank died that we—”

“Patty, dear, I know I promised, but I just can’t. We’re not children. Don’t you understand, we haven’t got the money?”

“What about one of your life insurances—” she began, then checked herself. He had moved towards her and then stopped, afraid he would be repulsed if he came nearer. His suit looked shabby and needed pressing. The set of his face was unfamiliar to her. Her anger left her. “Are you telling me we’re bankrupt?”

He wetted his lips.

“It’s not as bad as that, of course. You know we have Moxan looking into matters. But last month’s figures are very poor indeed.”

At this she looked angry.

“Well, are things bad or aren’t they, Arthur? Why not come out with it and tell me the truth? You treat me like a child.”

He looked painfully at her, his face puffy, wondering which of half a dozen things would be best to say to her. That he loved her for her streak of childishness? That although he wanted her to share his troubles, he did not want her hurt? That he needed her understanding? That it made him miserable to quarrel in this ugly strange garden?

As always, he had a sense of missing in what he said the complexity he felt.

“I’m just saying, Pat, last month’s figures are very bad — very bad indeed.”

“Do you mean nobody is buying Sofftoys any more?”

“That’s about it, yes.”

“Not even Jock Bear?”

“No, my dear, not even little Jock Bear.”

She took his arm, and they walked together towards the empty house without speaking.

When they found Algy was not in the house, other troubles were temporarily forgotten as they began to worry about the boy. They called continuously through the bare and echoing rooms. No answer came back.

Patricia ran out from the house, still calling, running through the bushes, down towards the river, full of a fright she dared not name. She was level with the summer-house when a voice called, “Mummy!” As she swerved towards it, Algy was standing there in the gloom with the door half open; like a small projectile, he came flying to her, weeping.

Clutching him tightly, she asked him why he had remained in hiding when they had looked for him before.

He had no way of explaining, though he blurted out something about a girl and a game of hide-and-seek.

It had been a game; when his father opened the summerhouse door and looked in, it remained a desperate game. He wanted his father to find him and embrace him. He did not know why he crouched behind the garden chairs, half-fearing discovery.

Stiff with pins and needles, he remained where he was when the door closed again. He had overheard the conversation between his parents, a secret conversation more terrible for being mainly incomprehensible. It told him that there existed a tremendous threatening world with which no one — not even his father — could come to terms; and that they lived not among solid and certain things but in a crumbling pastry world. Guilty and afraid, he hid from his knowledge behind the chairs, anxious to be found, scared of the finding.

“It was naughty and cruel of you, Algy, do you hear? You knew I would be worried with the river so near. And you are not to play with strangers — I told you before, they sometimes have sicknesses about which you know nothing. You heard us calling you — why didn’t you come out immediately?”

He answered only with sobs.

“You frightened Mummy very much, and you are a naughty boy. Why don’t you say something? You’re never going to play here again, do you understand? Never!”

“I shall see Martha Broughton again, sha’n’t I?”

“No. We’re not going to live here, Algy. Daddy’s not going to buy the house, and you’re coming home and going straight to bed. Do you understand?”

“It was a game, Mummy!”

“It was a very nasty game.”

Only when they were in the car and driving back to Twickenham did Algy cheer up and lean over from the back seat to stroke his father’s head.

“Daddy, when we get home, would you do some of those card tricks to cheer us up with?” he asked.

“You’re going to bed as soon as you get home,” Arthur Timberlane said, unmoved.

While Patricia was upstairs, seeing that Algy got into bed as soon as possible, Arthur walked moodily about before the television. The colour reception was bad this evening, giving the three gentlemen sitting round a BBC table the genial hues of apoplectics. They were all, one of them with considerable pipemanship, being euphoric about world conditions.

Their bland voices only infuriated Arthur. He had no faith in the present government, though it had replaced, less than a year ago, the previous pro-bomb government. He had no faith in the people who supported the government. The shuffle only demonstrated people’s fatuous belief in a political cure for a human condition, Arthur thought.

Throughout the nineteen sixties and seventies, a period representing most of his adult life, Arthur had prided himself on remaining unscared by the dangers of nuclear warfare. “If it comes to the point — well, too bad, but worrying isn’t going to stop it coming”: that had been his commonsense man-in-the-street approach to the whole thing. Politicians, after all, were paid to worry about such matters; he was better occupied fighting his way up Sofftoys Ltd., which he joined in the sixties as a junior traveller.

The bomb tests were on and off in turn, as the Communist countries and the Western ones played their incomprehensible game of ideology; nobody kept count of the detonations, and one grew bored with the occasional scares about increasing radiation in the northern hemisphere and overdoses of strontium in the bones of Lapp reindeer or the teeth of St. Louis schoolchildren.

With a sort of rudimentary space travel developing in the sixties and seventies, and Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Jupiter being examined, it had seemed only natural that the two leading powers should announce that they were conducting a series of 46 controlled” nuclear detonations in space. The American “rainbow bomb” in the early sixties proved to be the first of many. People — even scientists — grumbled, but the grumbles went unheeded. And most people felt it must be safer to activate the bombs beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

Well, it had not been safer. Man had acted in ignorance before; this time the ignorance exacted a high price. The van Allen belts, those girdles of radiation encircling the Earth, and in some parts much wider than the diameter of the Earth, were thrown into a state of violent activity by the nuclear blasts, all of which were in the multimegaton range. The belts had pulsated, contracting and then opening again, and then again contracting to a lesser degree. Visually, the effect of this perturbation was small, apart from some spectacular displays of aurora borealis and australis down into even equatorial latitudes. Vitally, the disturbance was much greater. The biosphere received two thorough if brief duckings in hard radiation.

Long-term results of this ducking could not as yet, barely a year later, be predicted. But the immediate results were evident. Although most of the world’s human population went down with something like a dose of influenza and vomiting, most of them recovered. Children suffered most severely, many of them depending on how much they had been exposed — losing their hair or their nails, or dying, as Frank Timberlane died. Most of the women pregnant at the time of the disturbance had borne miscarriages. Animals, and in particular those mammals most exposed to an open sky, had suffered similarly. Reports from the dwindling game reserves of Africa suggested that the larger wild animals had been severely hit. Only the musk ox of Greenland and the hardy reindeer of Scandinavia’s north (where earlier generations of the creature had presumably reached some sort of immunity to cosmic and other fast-travelling particles) seemed to be almost entirely unaffected. A high percentage, some authorities put the figure at 85 per cent, of domestic dogs and cats had been stricken; they developed mange or cancer, and had to be put down.

All of which pointed to a moral that they should have learnt long before, Arthur thought: never trust a bunch of lousy politicians to do your thinking for you. Obviously they should have had sense enough to explode their ruddy bombs on the moon.

As he bent down and switched the wall TV set off, letting the three bland men whirl away into darkness, Patricia came down into the room. She carried a shirt and a pair of pants due for a dip in the washing-machine.

“Algy’s miserable. I’ve got him into bed but he wants you to go up and see him,” she said.

“I’m not going up to see him. I’ve had enough of him for today.”

“He wants you, Arthur. He loves you.”

“I’m angry with him still, hiding from me like that. No, I’m not particularly angry. But you’ve been at him, haven’t you, upsetting him and telling him we wouldn’t be going to live at Mayburn?”

“Someone had to tell him sometime, Arthur. I didn’t think you’d have the courage to.”

“Oh, don’t let’s bicker like this, Patty, darling. You know I’m upset still about poor little Frank dying.”

“First it’s the firm, then it’s Frank! Really, Arthur, you must think I don’t fret about the same things, but someone has to keep the house and things going.”

“Don’t let’s quarrel. Everything’s miserable enough as it is.”

“I’m not quarrelling, I’m telling you.”

He looked forlornly at her, pursed up his face, and shook his head, uncertain whether to be pathetic or defiant, and achieving an ineffectual mixture of the two. “I only wanted a bit of comfort, else I wouldn’t have spoken.”

“Pity you did, then,” she said sharply. “I can’t bear you when you make that foolish face at me, Arthur, I really can’t.” She walked over to the wall and switched the big screen on again. “Why don’t you go up and say good night to Algy? He wants a bit of comfort too.”

“I’m going out. I’m sick of everything.”

He marched into the hall and struggled into his heavy blue serge overcoat. She turned her eyes away from the pathos of his struggle, thinking that anything she said would only provoke an argument. As he opened the front door, she called, “Don’t forget that Edgar and Venice will be round in about half an hour.”

“I’ll see you later,” he said. She had no reason not to believe him.

Lying on the desk, sprawling over a chaotic bed of papers, brochures, and files, was a teddy bear. It was a special teddy bear. It wore a black eyeshade and a wee tartan kilt and sporran. It carried bagpipes under one arm. It was a Jock Bear, the best-selling line of Sofftoys — in the days when Sofftoys sold.

Ignoring the malevolence of its one-eyed gaze, Arthur Timberlane swept the bear on to the floor and picked a bunch of letters from his desk. He sat in the deserted factory reading them, huddled in his little office on the ground floor, while outside the lorries rumbled along the Staines road towards central London. He did not remove his overcoat.

All the letters told the same story. The one that hit hardest came from his most valued representative, old Percy Pargetter, who had travelled for the firm since the late forties and worked on sales commission alone before Arthur changed that. Percy was a good representative. He was coming to see Arthur in the morning; meanwhile, he made the situation clear. Nobody was buying his toys; the retailers and the wholesale trade had cut purchases to absolute zero because their outlets were clogged; the customer was not interested in Sofftoys any more. Even his oldest friends in the trade now winced when they saw Percy’s face at the door. Percy thought some dreaded rival must somehow have scooped the market in baby toys.

“But who, who?” Arthur asked himself in anguish. From the trade and financial papers, he knew that conditions in the toy trade were bad generally. That was all he knew. Finance and industry fluctuated between boom and slump, but there was no thing new in that, except that the fluctuations had become more violent in the last six months. He spread the letters back on his desk, shaking his head over them.

He had done all that could be done, at least until Moxan came up with their wretched report. Working with Keith, he had cut production to a minimum, had postponed until nearer Christmas the puppet film series that would advertise Jock Bear on ICV, had cancelled deliveries, had squeezed creditors, had cut overtime, had killed the contract with Straboplastics, had shelved their plans for the Merry Mermaid Rattle. And had dropped the idea of moving house…

He went to a metal file and turned up the last letter from Moxan, checking the name of Gaylord K. Cottage — not, he thought sourly, that it was a name one would normally forget; Cottage was the bright young man who was in charge of Moxan’s investigation into the reasons for Sofftoys’ slump. Arthur looked at his watch. No, it was not late. He might still catch Cottage at his desk.

The phone rang at Moxan’s end for some while. Arthur sat listening to it and to the traffic beyond his office. Finally a grumpy voice came on to the line and asked what Arthur wanted. The vision cleared and a shabby round face peered out at Arthur. It was the night porter; at Arthur’s insistence, he agreed to ring Cottage’s extension number and switch the call through.

Cottage came on the line almost at once. He sat at a desk in an empty room with his jacket off. A hank of hair swung over his brow, his tie sagged under one ear. Arthur hardly took in his appearance beyond realizing that he looked less debonair than on his visits to Sofftoys. When he spoke, to Arthur’s relief, he sounded less the unsympathetic and chromium-plated young man than he had done at their last meeting.

“Your report’s up in Process, Mr. Timberlane,” he said. “The slight delay was beyond our control. I am full of apologies that we didn’t get it to you earlier, but you see — oh God, the thing’s a bloody bust! Look, Mr. Timberlane, I must talk to someone about this. You’d better listen before complete government censorship clamps down.”

He stared keenly at Arthur. Either the colour on the line was bad or he was very pale.

Inside his blue serge coat, Arthur felt small and cold.

“I’m listening, but I don’t know what you mean about censorship, Mr. Cottage. Of course I feel very sympathetic about your personal troubles, but—”

“Oh, this isn’t just personal, friend, not by a long chalk. Look, let me light a cigarette…” He reached for a packet on his desk, lit up and inhaled, then said, “Look, your firm’s bust, flat, finished! You can’t have it plainer than that, can you? Your fellow director — Keith Barrett, was it? — was all wrong when he said he thought you’d been scooped by another toy firm. We’ve done our research, and you’re all in the same boat, every firm from the biggest to the smallest. The figures prove it. The fact is, nobody’s buying kiddy toys.”

“But these summer season slumps come and—”

Cottage waved a hand in front of him, sneering as he did so.

“Take it from me, this is no seasonal slump, Mr. Timberlane, nothing approaching it. This is something much bigger. I’ve spoken to some of the other chaps here. It isn’t only the toy industry. Know Johnchem, the firm that specializes in a whole range of infant products from prepared strained foods to skin powders? They’re customers of ours. Their figures are worse than yours, and they’ve got ten times your overheads! Radiant, the pram and baby carriage people — they’re in the same boat.”

Arthur shook his head as if doubting the truth of what he heard. Cottage leant forward until his nose blurred out of focus.

“You know what it means,” he said, pressing his cigarette down into an ashtray, billowing smoke from his lungs into the screen. “It means one thing — ever since that accident with the van Allen belts a year ago last May, there haven’t been any kids born at all. You can’t sell because you’ve got no consumers.”

“I don’t believe it! I can’t believe it!”

Cottage was fumbling stupidly in his pocket and playing with his cigarette lighter.

“Nobody will believe it until they get it officially, but we’ve checked with the General Register Office at Somerset House, and with the General Registry up in Edinburgh. They haven’t given a thing away — but from what they didn’t say, our figures help us to draw the correct conclusions. Our overseas connections all report the same thing. Everywhere it’s the same thing — no kids!”

He spoke almost gloatingly, leaning forward with his eyes slitted against the lights of the visiphone.

Arthur switched off the vision. He could not bear to look at Cottage or to let Cottage see him. He held his head in his hands, dimly aware of how cold he was, of how he trembled.

“It’s a general bust,” he said. “The end of the world.”

He felt the coarseness of his cheeks.

“Not quite as bad as that,” Cottage said from the blank screen. “But I’ll bet you a fiver that we’ll not see normal trading conditions again till 1987.”

“Five years! It’s as bad as the end of the world. How can I keep afloat for five years? I’ve got a family. Oh, what can I do? Jesus Christ…” He switched off as Cottage began to launch into another dose of bad news, and sat staring at the litter on the desk without seeing it. “It’s the end of the bloody lousy world. Oh Christ… Bloody failure, bloody…”

He felt in his pocket for cigarettes, found only a pack of cards, and sat staring hopelessly at it. Something rose in his throat like a physical blockage; a salt tingle made him screw up his eyes. Dropping the cards on to the floor beside Jock Bear, he made his way out of the factory and round to his car, without bothering to drop the latch of the door behind him. He was crying.

A convoy of military vehicles rumbled along the Staines road. He threw the car into gear and grasped the steering wheel as it bounded forward towards the road.

Patricia had hardly poured Venice and Edgar their first drink when the front-door bell sounded. She went through to find Keith Barratt smiling on the doorstep. He bowed gallantly to her.

“I was driving by the factory and saw Arthur’s car parked in the yard, so I thought you might like a bit of company, Pat,” he said. “This bit of company, to be exact.”

“Venny and Edgar Harley are here, Keith,” she said, using a loud voice so that what she said could be heard in the livingroom. “Do come in and join us.”

Keith winced, spread his hands in resignation, and said in exaggeratedly refined tones, “Oh, but absolutely delighted, Mrs. Timberlane.”

When he had been provided with a drink, he raised it and said to the company, “Well, here’s to happier days! The three of you look a bit gloomy, I must say. Have a bad trip, Edgar?”

“There is some reason for gloom, I should say,” Edgar Harley said. He was a tubby man, the sort of man on whom tubbiness sits well. “I’ve been telling Venny and Pat about what I turned up in Australia. I was in Sydney dining next to Bishop Aitken the night before last, and he was complaining about a violent wave of irreligion sweeping Australia. He claimed that the churches had only christened a matter of seven children seven! — during the last eighteen months, in the whole of Australia.”

“I can’t say that makes me feel too desperately suicidal,” Keith said, smiling, settling himself on the sofa next to Patricia.

“The bishop had it wrong,” Venice said. “At this conference Edgar went to, they told him the real reason for the lack of christenings. You’d better tell Keith, Ed, since it affects him and there will be an official announcement anyway at the weekend.”

With a solemn face, Edgar said, “The bishop had no babies to christen simply because there are no babies. The contraction of the van Allen belts brought every human being in contact with hard radiation.”

“We knew that, but most of us have survived,” Keith said. “How do you mean this affects me personally?”

“Governments have kept very quiet, Keith, while they try to sort out just what damage this — er, accident has caused. It’s a tricky subject for several reasons, the chief one being that the effects of exposure to different types of radioactive emissions are not clearly understood, and that in this case, the exposure is still going on.”

“I don’t understand that, Ed,” Venice said. “You mean the van Allen belts are still expanding and contracting?”

“No, they appear to be stable again. But they made the whole world radioactive to some extent. There are different sorts of radiation, some of which entered our bodies at the time. Other sorts, long-lived radio-isotopes of strontium and cesium, for example, are still in the atmosphere, and soak into our bodies through the skin, or when we eat or drink or breathe. We cannot avoid them, and unluckily the body takes these particles in and builds them into our vital parts, where they may cause great damage to the cells. Some of this damage may not yet be apparent.”

“We ought to all be living in shelters in that case,” Keith said angrily. “Edgar, you put me off this drink. If this is true, why doesn’t the government do something, instead of just keeping quiet?”

“You mean why doesn’t the United Nations do something,” Patricia said. “This is a world-wide thing.”

“It is too late for anyone to do anything,” Edgar said. “It was always too late, once the bombs were launched. The whole world cannot go underground, taking its food and water with it.”

“So what you’re saying is that we’re not going to have just this temporary dearth of kids around, but we’re going to have lots of cases of cancer and leukaemia, I suppose?”

“That, yes, and possibly also a shortening of individual lives. It’s too early to tell. Unfortunately we know much less about the subject than we have pretended to know. It is a very complex one.”

Keith smoothed his unruly hair and looked ruefully at the women.

“Your husband has come back with a cheery bag of news,” he said. “I’m glad old Arthur isn’t here to listen in — he’s depressed enough as it is. I can see us having to give Jock Bear the push and turn to making crucifixes and coffins instead, eh, Pat?”

Edgar had pushed his drink aside and sat on the edge of his arm-chair, his eyes and stomach both rather prominent, as if he was winding himself up to say more. He looked about the comfortable commonplace room, with its Italian cushions and Danish lamps, and said, “The effects of radiation must always strike us as freakish, particularly in the present case, when we have been subjected to a wide spectrum of radiations of comparatively mild dosage. It is our misfortune that mammals have proved most susceptible to them, and of mammals, man.

“Obviously it won’t mean anything to you if I go into it too deeply, but I’ll just say that just as the destructive force of radioactive material may concentrate on one kind or phylum of life, so its full fury may focus on a single organ — because, as I said, bodies have efficient mechanisms for capturing some of these materials. The human body captures radioactive iodine and uses it as natural iodine in the thyroid gland. A sufficient dosage will thus destroy the thyroid gland. Only in the present case, it is the gonads which are destroyed.”

“Sex rearing its ugly head,” Keith exclaimed.

“Perhaps for the last time, Keith,” Edgar said quietly. “The gonad, as you seem to know, is an organ that produces sexcells. The still-births, miscarriages, and monstrosities born since May last year show that the human gonads have collectively sustained serious damage from the radiation to which we have been and are still subjected.”

Venice stood up and began walking about the room.

“I feel as if I were going mad, Edgar. Are you sure of your facts? I mean this conference… You mean to say that no more babies will be born anywhere?”

“We can’t say yet. And the situation could improve in some unforeseen way next year, I suppose. The figures are hardly likely to be one hundred per cent. Unfortunately, of the seven Australian children mentioned by Bishop Aitken, six have died since christening.”

“This is terrible!” Venice stood in the middle of the room, clasping her forehead. “What seems so crazy to me is to think that half a dozen rotten bombs could do anything so — so catastrophic. It isn’t as if they let them off on Earth! How can these damned van Allen layers be so unstable?”

“A Russian Professor Zilinkoff suggested at the conference that the belts may indeed be unstable and easily activated by slight radioactive overloads from either the sun or the Earth. He suggested that the same contractions that have hit us now also took place at the end of the Cretaceous Era; it’s a bit fanciful, but it would explain the sudden extinction of the ancient orders of land, sea, and air dinosaurs. They died off because their gonads were rendered ineffective, as ours are now.”

“How long before we recover? I mean, we will recover?” Venice said.

“I hate to think I’m like a dinosaur,” Patricia said, conscious of Keith’s gaze upon her.

“There’s one ray of comfort,” Keith said brightly, holding up a finger of promise to them. “If this sterility stunt is going on all over the world, it won’t half be a relief to countries like China and India. For years they’ve been groaning about their population multiplying like rabbits! Now they’ll have a chance to thin the ranks a bit. Five years — or let’s be generous and say ten years — without any more kids born, and I reckon that a lot of the world’s troubles can be sorted out before the next lot start coming!”

Patricia sprawled on the sofa beside him, clutching his lapel.

“Oh, Keith darling,” she sobbed, “you’re such a comfort always!”

They were so engrossed in talk that they did not hear Doctor MacMichael’s knock at the front door. He hesitated there a moment, hearing their voices within and reluctant to enter. Keith Barratt had left the door slightly ajar. He pushed it open and stepped dubiously into the hall.

On the stairs, half hidden in the darkness, a small figure in pyjamas confronted him.

“Hello, Toad, what are you doing there?” the doctor asked affectionately. As he went over to Algy, the boy retreated a step or two and held up a warning finger.

“Ssh, don’t make a noise, doctor! They’re talking very seriously in there. I don’t know what it’s about but I should think it’s about me. I did something awful today.”

“You’d better get up to bed, Algernon. Come on, upstairs with you! I’ll come too.” He clutched the child’s hand and they went up the rest of the stairs together. “Where’s young Jock Bear? Is he creeping round the house without a dressing-gown too?”

“He’s already in bed, for all the good he is. I thought you were Daddy. That’s why I crept downstairs. I was going to say I was sorry to him for what I did wrong.”

MacMichael stared at the toes of his shoes. “I’m sure he’d forgive you, Toad, whatever it was — and I don’t suppose it was anything too terrible you did.”

“Daddy and I think it was pretty terrible. That’s why it’s important for me to see him. Do you know where he is?”

The old doctor did not reply for a moment, as he stood by the boy’s bed watching him climb between the sheets with the bear in tartan pyjamas. Then he said, “Algernon, you are getting a big lad. So you mustn’t mind too much if you don’t see your father for — well, for a little while. There will be other men about, and we will help you if we can.”

“All right — but I must see him again soon, because he’s going to teach me to do the Four Ace trick. I’ll teach you when I’ve learnt, if you like.”

Algy snuggled himself down between the sheets until there was little more than a tuft of hair, a nose, and a pair of eyes showing. He looked hard at the doctor, standing there anxious and familiar in an old mac.

“You know I’m your friend, Algernon, don’t you?”

“You must be, I suppose, because I heard Mummy tell Aunt Venny that you saved my life. I almost ran out of resources, didn’t I? But would you like to do something real important for me?”

“Tell me what it is, and I’ll try.”

“Would you think I was mad if I whispered?”

Doctor MacMichael went close to the bed and bent his head over the pillow.

“Shoot, pal,” he said.

“You know that bald girl, Martha Broughton? We were going to live next to her till I mucked things up. Do you think you could make Daddy have her round here so that I could play with her? She can run faster than anyone you ever met!”

“I promise I’ll do that, Algy. I promise.”

“She’s awfully bald — I mean really bald, but I like her. Perhaps girls are better without hair.”

Gently, the doctor said, “I’ll see she comes round here before the end of the week, because I like her very much too.”

“Gosh, you’re a pretty good doctor. I’ll show you I’m grateful — I won’t bust any more of your thermometers.”

Doctor MacMichael smoothed the hair of the boy’s head and left the room. He waited at the top of the stairs to master his emotions, straightened his tie, and then went down to tell the others about the car crash.