The room was the same; the old man was not. He had changed shockingly in the brief time since I had last seen him; then he had been tired and freshly wounded, now he was riven by pain and exhaustion. When I came into his room, he was lying back against the grey pillows with his eyes closed; he was transparently pale, and the bony face had shrunk down to a pinched mask. The faded blanket on the bed seemed like his graveclothes, and the brave word ‘blighty’ a label on a package ready for despatch.
But the man himself was brave, as I knew by now; when he heard the door shut he opened his eyes, and even leaned forward to greet me. Then he began to talk, straight away, without wasting time, as though he realized that time was not there to waste. He talked, also, as if he knew already that I believed.
Mary sat on the bed, holding his hand; I sat in the armchair, as I had done before; we were probably the most attentive audience he had ever had. I don’t think that either of us had any choice. In that wretched room, on that wretched bier, he grew in authority even as he weakened. There were long pauses, but except for a couple of times when I wanted something explained, or a detail added to a phrase I did not understand, I never thought to interrupt.
What he said, I have set down as I remember it.
He said: ‘I have thought for a long time about the people of that world. In fact I’ve thought about it for nearly a quarter of a century. We can deduce a great deal from the refrigerator, and its contents. Here was a whole city of food, perhaps a hundred square miles. It was the sole survivor of world destruction – but what a survivor! After millions of years, it was still in working order; the solar power – or perhaps it was atomic – still functioned perfectly; the vast stores were intact; and it was all controlled by a handful of men. For all we know, they may have been specially bred for the job. But certainly there were very few of them. The process of automation was complete.
‘It shows how amazingly far they had advanced; much farther than the meagre inch of our earliest history – the hot water and the central heating of the Romans, the celestial accuracy of the Chinese or the Druids. These people were infinitely further along the road than that. This was a modern storehouse of modern food. In fact they stored it better than we have learned to do today.’
He considered again; then he said: ‘I hope they managed it better than we do; I hope they had solved our problem of plenty. I hope they gave it away when people were hungry, instead of holding out for a price, or burning what they could not use. But perhaps this was their basic problem too, the one that finally defeated them. Perhaps that was why their world came to an end.
‘I have often wondered what made that man on guard come outside. Did he think someone was trying to steal his food? Or did he perhaps come out to give it away, and the world blew up in his face? If only I could have talked with him! If only we could know what the world was quarrelling about!’
He mused, wandered off at a tangent; he said: ‘No doubt it was something utterly foolish, as it might be today. They had plenty of food; they had learned to harness power and growth; they could feed the world. Or perhaps they could only feed half the world, and the other half of the world had better eggs or caviare – or they were thought to have them … But what appalling waste! They had learned to use the richest source of life, the sea; they had discovered the seabed – the millions of years of sediment, the filtering-down of dead fish, dead animals, dead men, dead weed; the compost heap of time itself.’
Now he went off on a long rambling aside; he said: ‘The idea that we will starve because we will outgrow the earth’s surface, that food only flourishes on land, is childish. What we produce on land is only a tiny spill-over from the true source of life – water. But if we must cling to these old-fashioned ideas, we can already go a long way towards conquering that problem. Sea water, distilled, can make a garden, a granary, out of all our modern deserts: the Sahara, the Kalahari, the centre of Australia, the dry crusts of Texas and Arizona and Arabia. Yet if we truly want to learn from the past, we should study what the people of that world accomplished. They made themselves another garden, on the seabed itself.’
Then he returned to what he called ‘the last quarrel’, on which he must have thought most deeply of all. He said: ‘Perhaps it did not concern food. These people had food in abundance. Perhaps, with all their technical advances, they remained as irrational as we are. Perhaps the fatal spark was pride. Or Helen of Troy. Or some crude insult at the Olympic Games. Or a miserable frontier dispute over ten square miles of swamp. Or the television rights to the moon. Or the colour of a skin.’ For the first time, he laughed. ‘Or the thickness of a skin. Perhaps it was a collision between the armadillo men and some softer race with delicate complexions and supple bodies, who thought themselves the tender elect. Perhaps they were only like us, after all: clever, accomplished, yet fundamentally greedy and suspicious.
‘Perhaps their children were poisoned, as ours are, by adult ambition. Nearly all children are innocent and generous, to start with; they could continue so, but they rarely do. You have only to watch refugee children in a Pestalozzi village–’ (I did not then know what he was talking about, though I do now) ‘–to see this rule of innocence, this natural love. At the beginning, they are all brothers. Then they catch an infection of hate, they breathe the corrupt air of battle, they grow claws, and most of them are lost for ever.’
He was silent for a long time after that; he looked exhausted to the point of death; I was afraid that we would hear little more save his disjointed wandering down the last pathway. But after he had rested, and Mary had brought him warm milk and resettled his pillows, he rallied amazingly. He had much more to say, and I had never been so glad to listen. There were moments when I would have bought his life with my own.
He said: ‘But whatever the quarrel, we have the fact of destruction. Indeed, I believe that we have it on record, in our first and best history book. We cannot tell how much of the Bible is race memory, but I am sure it is an accurate picture of what has gone before. I am sure that our world was unaccountably born with knowledge of that remote past, that catastrophe …’ This was one of the few moments when he was watching my face, instead of staring into the drab middle distance, and he must have found disbelief there, because he said, energetically: ‘No, it is not too far-fetched! Consider the oldest tales of the beginning of the world. They speak of the earth vaporized, and gradually cooling; of swirling mists, invading seas. It is a perfect picture of the aftermath of an atomic explosion. And there are many other references to support the picture of a vast cataclysm.
‘Take one of the simplest, the story of the Ark and the Flood. We read of a tidal wave lapping against high mountains, just not reaching the wretched survivors of some ruined plain. Don’t forget, when the waters receded, those survivors would have to start all over again; however clever they might be, they would have nothing in the whole world to work with but water and a few baulks of timber … And Lot’s wife, turning to look at a city in flames, changed into a pillar of salt – instantly calcified, let us say, by unimaginable heat. Hiroshima also had its pillars of salt. After the fire-storm, there were human shapes fused into the very fabric of concrete buildings.
‘“The earth was without form, and void”,’ said Shepherd. ‘I believe that was literally true. I believe it was shapeless, and empty, because these people had made it so. They learned how to blow themselves up, and then they went ahead and did it. Perhaps it wasn’t even the first time. Perhaps it always happens. Perhaps we always go as far as we can, in discovery, and then we go too far. Perhaps we have had Hiroshima before, many times. And then we made atomic faces at each other. And then we had the hydrogen bomb, and then we quarrelled over Berlin, or Africa, or China, or food, or space. And then we did – whatever we’re going to do next.’
Interrupting for the first time, I said the first thing that came into my mind: ‘God wouldn’t allow it!’
The old man smiled, smoothing the worn blanket with a hand equally worn. ‘Ah, if I could believe that … I must tell you that I have never believed, and I am not going to start now. It would be wrong. However much I want to … IfGod is my kind of man–’ I cannot begin to describe the wistful humility with which he said these strange words, ‘–then He will forgive someone who denies Him to the end, even though that end terrifies him. Of course I am afraid of death, but I will not beg for mercy.
‘For me, it is a matter of reason,’ he said. ‘It is so much more likely that the universe is ruled by chance than that God plans – or allows – our horrible mistakes and failures and accidents; the fire which burns a whole orphanage, the hurricane that destroys a city, the boy of ten who wastes away with leukaemia … Who, with power to prevent, could allow such things? Who could be so senseless and cruel? But if I am wrong, then you are wrong. God would allow us to destroy our world. He would have great patience. And great anger. And infinite belief. He would look down and say: “If they annihilate themselves again, they deserve to. But perhaps this time …”’
At that moment, there was an interruption, of the crudest possible sort. Without a word or a knock, the door sprang open, and Mrs Cross advanced into the room.
She had not improved, nor softened; she was the same sort of person, plagued by anger and suspicion, plaguing us in return. She stood four-square in the middle of the bedroom, looking from Mary to myself, looking last of all at the gaunt figure on the bed. Her voice was harsh as she said: ‘What’s going on around here?’
I got up, and put myself between her and the bed, trying to mask and protect our charge. I said: ‘Nothing’s going on. Mr Shepherd is very ill, that’s all. He mustn’t be disturbed.’
She bent, and peered round us; her eyes dwelt on the old man as if she were pricing his chances of life. Then she said: ‘He’s sick, he should be in hospital. That’s what they’re for. You planning to take him away?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘He owes rent.’
‘It will be paid.’ I came nearer to her, trying to draw her towards the doorway again, out of earshot, anywhere; it was a shameful moment which I must somehow cancel out. ‘But I can’t have him worried now.’
‘You can’t!’ Her voice exploded into sneering insult. ‘Who are you, for God’s sake? Just tell me that! This is my house, and my room. It’s a single room, not a convention hall!’ She was looking at Mary now, with the utmost contempt. ‘You know what I mean, miss! It’s time we straightened a few things up around here!’
Mary did not answer, did not even look in her direction; she also had half risen, and put her body between Mrs Cross and the old man. I edged forward again, and said loudly: ‘That’s enough. Leave us alone.’
‘I’ll decide what’s enough!’ said Mrs Cross, in a fresh fury. ‘This house is private. It’s not a hospital. It’s not a morgue, either!’
I cursed her; I hated her; I could have killed her there and then. To talk thus, in his hearing, as if he were not present, was iniquitous. Her sole purpose was to get him to die somewhere else … I advanced again, until I was touching her, and she had to fall back a pace. I said: ‘He’s staying here. And I’m staying here. And you’re leaving now!’
She must have caught some desperation in my trembling voice, for she gave ground again, until she stood in the doorway. Her eyes darted round the room, as if she were memorizing the evidence for some vicious legal battle to come. She shouted: ‘We’ll see about that!’ and turned, and slammed the door behind her with shattering violence.
I looked immediately at the old man. The noise had shaken him, as it had shaken the whole rickety house; I could hear him gasping with shock. Though long subjected to Mrs Cross, and ready to excuse and forgive her, he was not strong enough to withstand such barbarous thrusts. Iforesaw then that this horrible invasion, topped off by the explosion of the slamming door, would be a mortal blow, that he would now begin to fail. The long shadows in the room seemed to grow deeper and darker, as the scene changed for the one that must follow it.
But he could still joke about such things, in a very small way. Taking up his story once more, in a feeble whisper, he gave Mrs Cross an oblique, gently satirical salute.
‘You may not think so, at this precise moment, but we are not inevitably doomed to hate and destroy one another … Of course we can balance the world on love and faith, any time we choose. We can make it the mirror of paradise, if we want to … Vaguely we do want to. But do we want to enough? Will we choose, in fact, or will we spit it all out in each other’s faces?’
He began to ramble then, moving his head restlessly, speaking of a worldwide yearning for peace which had never been strong enough to overcome envy and suspicion. I had an idea that we had heard his last rational words; he was wasting before our eyes, and the word ‘waste’ was a desolate one. Hungry to stay in touch with him, I began to ask random questions, anything I could think of to encourage him to answer.
‘Why did you never go back?’
‘I tried …’ His voice was intensely weary. ‘But first there was the war … Then I tried for a long time to persuade people to believe my story … I had very little money, and I was getting older … Bone Lake was as near as I could come to it.’
‘Was it you who was in jail in America?’
‘Oh yes.’ A wraith of a smile hung round his bloodless lips. ‘A man should go to jail for his beliefs at least once.’
‘But where is the ice mountain, exactly? Did you make a map of the area?’ He did not answer me, but shook his head as if in doubt, and remained staring into space. He was silent for so long that I prompted him: ‘Surely you remember a thing like that?’
Mary turned to frown at me, and whispered fiercely: ‘Don’t ask questions! You must believe him!’
‘You know that I do. It’s just that I want–’
The old man himself interrupted me. ‘Yes, I made a map. I was trying to recall what happened to it … I lost it during the war, with all else that I owned … My clothes … In a tanker – torpedoed …’
He stopped again, and I urged him on, gently. ‘What about the other things, then?’
‘Other things?’
‘You said that you made up a parcel of food from the refrigerator, and brought it back.’
He nodded feebly. ‘Yes, that was so … There was some meat, but it rotted to nothing as soon as it met the sun … All the other things were lost – it was a very hard journey back – I had to leave so much behind, on the way … I tried, but it was my life … Of all I brought back, only one thing remained … But I have it still.’
I was conscious of an enormous, consuming excitement as I heard his last words; I could feel my very scalp prickling. If he had actual proof … I waited, while Mary wiped his forehead and neck, which were drenched with a sudden feverish sweat. Then I could no longer bear the silence, and asked: ‘What was it? What did you bring back?’
‘Some of the concentrate,’ he answered readily, as if he had divined my overwhelming impatience. ‘I have kept it by me always, but I have never looked at it, nor shown it to anyone until now.’ He raised a trembling hand, and pointed. ‘In the pocket of the rucksack.’
My own hands were shaking so much that, after I reached up to the rucksack, I could scarcely undo the strap which secured the pocket flap. There was a hard square object inside, and I drew it out carefully. It was a box of some kind, wrapped round and round with oiled silk which was frayed and cracked, as if it had lasted many years and been handled many times. I brought the package back to the light, and looked towards the old man. When he nodded, I slipped off a loop of tarred twine, and started to unwind the wrapping.
Some of the layers had stuck to the ones beneath them, and gave way grudgingly. But soon the roll of oiled silk fell to the floor, with a dry rustling sound. What I now held in my hands was an old tobacco tin, flat and hinged; the familiar face of the bearded sailor and the lifebelt were just visible on the scratched lid. I drew a deep breath, steadying my heart, and prised the lid open.
The tin was half full of a fronded green substance, loosely packed in strands; like a kind of long-fibred peat, but pale, the colour of the ocean at dawn. When I bent down to it, a faint – a very faint – whiff of the sea reached me, a faraway echo of childhood beachcombing. Then, even as I stared in fascination, the packed strands began to lose their outline, and to crumble away into ancient nothingness.
I wanted to shout: ‘I saw it! I saw it!’ but already I could not be sure of what I had seen. Had it really been fronded seaweed? Had there really been tiny stems and buds and ferns, and the momentary scent of an ocean unspeakably old? What I was looking at now was a tin box with some loose green odourless dust at the bottom. It might have been anything. It might have been nothing. It might just have needed cleaning.
I said, foolishly: ‘It’s gone,’ and looked towards the old man. His jaw had dropped, matching my own, and on that note of ancient dissolution, he himself began to go.
He had sunk back on the pillow, deathly pale; his breathing grew hoarse. It seemed that he might slip into limbo at any moment, just as the fronded ‘concentrate’ had disappeared before my eyes.
Though close to mourning him already, I wished with all my heart that he could slip away as easily.
But there was to be one more interruption, perhaps the last of his life. A heavy knock on the door made me turn from where I had been standing, the dusty tobacco tin in my hand. I thought it was Mrs Cross back again, and, between grief and wild disappointment, I was well prepared for her. But this time it was Sergeant Labelle.