Greybeard

“Do you think so? I’m sure I’d be okay on an identification parade, if they’d let me look at their thumbs. I keep wondering — I’ve been wondering all night — whatever happened to the other girl. What happens if you give in to a man like that, I don’t know.”

Suddenly she burst into tears and wrapped her arms about Timberlane’s waist. He helped her to her feet, and they sat side by side on frames in which leaden sentences were set backwards on and upside down. He put his arm round her and wiped her face with his handkerchief. Her painted eyebrows had come off, smeared across her forehead; licking the handkerchief, he cleaned their remains away.

Having her so close, seeing her, helping her restore herself, he broke into a flurry of words. “Listen, Martha, when I was kicking my heels down at the police station last night, I put your question to

Bill Dyson — you know, about why they had gone to the trouble of flying you over here from England. At first he tried to kid me that it was just because he and Jack were sentimentalists. I wouldn’t wear that, so he came out with the truth. He said it was a DOUCH regulation. At the end of this course, they’re going to put me back in England, and if things get as bad as they expect, I shall be on my own, cut off from their support.

“Currently, they’re predicting the rise of authoritarian régimes in Britain and America at the cessation of hostilities. They think international communications will soon be a thing of the past. Survival will be tough, and will grow steadily tougher, as Bill pointed out with some relish. SO DOUCH require me — and the Japanese, German, Israeli and other operators in training — to be married to what they call ‘a native’ — a girl who has been brought up in the local ways, and will therefore have inbred knowledge of local conditions. As Dyson put it, ‘Environmental know-how is a survival factor’.

“There’s a lot more to it, but the essence of it is that they wanted you around so that I would not get too interested in any girl I met here and wreck my bit of the project. If I married an American girl, I would be dropped like a hot potato.”

“We always knew they were thorough.”

“Sure. While old Bill was talking, I saw what the future was going to be like. Have you ever really looked ahead, Martha? I never have. It’s a lack of courage, perhaps, just as I’ve heard mother say her generation never looked ahead when they heard more nuclear bombs were being made and detonated. But these

Americans have looked ahead. They have seen how difficult survival is going to be. They have survival broken down into figures, and the figures for Great Britain show that if present trends continue, in between fifteen and twenty years’ time, only 50 per cent of the population will still be living. Britain’s particularly vulnerable because we are so much less self-supporting than the States. The point is — all my DOUCH training is directed towards setting me with the DOUCH truck in that doubtfully privileged 50 per cent. And in their materialistic way, they’ve grasped something that I’m sure my religious pal, Charley Samuels in Assam, would endorse — that the one possible thing that will make that funereal future tolerable is the right sort of partner.” He broke off. Martha was laughing with a sound like suppressed sobs.

“Algernon Timberlane, you poor lost soul, this is a dickens of a place to propose to a girl!” Nettled, he said, “Am I really so damned funny?”

“Men always have to spell things out to themselves. Don’t worry, it’s something I love. You remind me of father, honey, except that you’re sexy. But I’m not laughing at your conclusions, really I’m not. I came to the same conclusion long ago in my heart.”

“Martha, I love you desperately, I need you desperately. I want to marry you just as soon as possible, and I never want us to be apart again, whatever happens.”

“My sweet, I love you and need you just as much. Why else do you think I came out to America? I’ll never leave you, never fear. “

“I do fear. I fear mightily! When I thought I was alone in this morgue just now, I had a vision of what it will be like to grow old in a world grown old. We can’t stop growing old, but at least let’s do it together and make it tolerable.”

“We will, we will, darling! You’re upset. Let’s get out of here. I think I can walk now, if you give me your arm.”

He held away from her, grinning, with his hands behind his back. “Are you sure you don’t want a good look at my thumbs first , before you commit yourself?”