Greybeard

“I don’t want any of that stuff,” Towin said. “Nobody’s praying for my offspring. We don’t owe your God a brass farthing, Charley boy. If he’s so blessed powerful, then he was the one that did all this damage in the first place. I reckon old Norsgrey was right — we don’t know how long ago it all happened. Don’t tell me it was only eleven years we was at Sparcot! It seemed like centuries to me. Perhaps we’re all a thousand years old, and -“

“Becky, may I put my hand on your stomach?” Martha asked. “Let’s all have a feel, Beck,” Pitt said, grinning, his interest momentarily roused. “You keep your hands to yourself,” Becky told him. But she allowed Martha to feel beneath her voluminous clothes, looking into space as the other woman gently kneaded the flesh of her stomach. “Your stomach is certainly swollen,” Martha said. “Ah ha! Told you!” Towin cried. “Four years gone, she is — mean, four months. That’s why we didn’t want to leave that house where the sheep were. It would have made us a nice little home, only Clever Dick here would shove off down his beloved river!”

He bared his stubbly wolf visage in a grin towards Greybeard. “We will go to Swifford fair tomorrow, and see what we can fix up for you both,” Greybeard said. “There should be a doctor there who will examine Becky and give her advice. Meanwhile, let’s follow the ginger chap’s example and settle down for some sleep.”

“You mind that old reindeer don’t eat Isaac during the night,” Becky told Charley. “I could tell you a thing or two about them animals, I could. They’re crafty beasts, reindeer.”

“It wouldn’t eat a fox,” Charley said. “We had one ate our cat now, didn’t we, Tow? Tow used to trade in reindeer, whenever it was they first came over to this country — Greybeard’ll know, no doubt.”

“Let’s see, the war ended in 2005, when the government was overthrown,” Greybeard said. “The Coalition was set up the year after, and I believe they were the people who first imported reindeer into Britain.” The memory came back like a blurred newspaper photo. The Swedes had discovered that, alone among the large ruminants, the reindeer could still breed normally and produce living fawns. It was claimed that these animals had acquired a degree of immunity against radiation because the lichen they ate contained a high degree of fall-out contamination. In the 1960’s, before Greybeard was born, the contamination in their bones was of the order of 100 to 200 strontium units — between six and twelve times above the safety limit for humans.

Since reindeer made efficient transport animals as well as providing good meat and milk, there was a great demand for them throughout Europe. In Canada, the caribou became equally popular. Herds of Swedish and Lapp stock were imported into Britain at various times.

“It must have been about ‘06,” Towin confirmed. “ ‘Cos it was then my brother Evan died. Went just like that he did, as he was supping his beer.”

”About this reindeer,” Becky said. “We made a bit of cash out of it. We had to have a licence for the beast — Daffid, we called it. Used to hire it out for work at so much a day.

“We had a shed out the back of our little shop. Daffid was kept in there. Very cosy it was, with hay and all. Also we had our old cat, Billy. Billy was real old and very intelligent. Not a better cat anywhere, but of course we wasn’t supposed to keep it. They got strict after the war, if you remember, and Billy was supposed to go for food. As if we’d give Billy up!

“Sometimes that Coalition would send police round and they’d come right in — not knock nor nothing, you know. Then they’d search the house. It’s ungodly times we’ve lived through, friends!

“Anyhow, this night, Tow here comes running in — been down the boozer, he had — and he says the police are coming round to make a search.”

“So they were!” Towin said, showing signs of an old discomfiture. “So he says,” Becky repeated. “So we has to hide poor old Billy or we’d all be in the cart. So I run with her out into the shed where old Daffid’s lying down just like this ugly beast here, and tucks Billy under the straw for safety.

“Then I goes back into our parlour. But no police come, and Tow goes off fast asleep, and I nod off too, and at midnight I know the old fool has been imagining things.”

“They passed us by!” Towin cried. “So out I went into the shed, and there’s Daffid standing there chewing, and no sign of Billy. I get Towin and we both have a search, but no Billy. Then we see his tail hanging out bloody old Daffid’s mouth.”

“Another time, he ate one of my gloves,” Towin said. As Greybeard settled to sleep by a solitary lantern, the last thing he saw was the gloomy countenance of

Norsgrey’s reindeer. These animals had been hunted by Paleolithic man; they had only to wait a short while now and all the hunters would be gone.