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Authors: P. D. James
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woman’s self-confidence while treating her with meticulous, indeed almost insulting, consideration and courtesy.
He was a caricature of the popular idea of an Oxford don: high forehead, receding hairline, thin, slightly hooked nose, tight-lipped. He walked with his chin jutting forward as if confronting a strong gale, shoulders hunched, his faded gown billowing. One expected to see him pictured, high-collared as a
Vanity Fair
creation, holding one of his own books with slender-tipped, fastidious fingers.
He occasionally confided in me and treated me as if grooming me as his successor. That, of course, was nonsense; he gave me much but some things were not within his gift. But the impression his current favourite had of being in some sense a crown prince has made me wonder subsequently whether this wasn’t his way of confronting age, time, the inevitable blunting of the mind’s keen edge, his personal illusion of immortality.
He had often proclaimed his view of Omega, a reassuring litany of comfort shared by a number of his colleagues, particularly those who had laid down a good supply of wine or had access to their college cellar.
“It doesn’t worry me particularly. I’m not saying I hadn’t a moment of regret when I first knew Hilda was barren; the genes asserting their atavistic imperatives, I suppose. On the whole I’m glad; you can’t mourn for unborn grandchildren when there never was a hope of them. This planet is doomed anyway. Eventually the sun will explode or cool and one small insignificant particle of the universe will disappear with only a tremble. If man is doomed to perish, then universal infertility is as painless a way as any. And there are, after all, personal compensations.For the last sixty years we have sycophantically pandered to the most ignorant, the most criminal and the most selfish section of society. Now, for the rest of our lives, we’re going to be spared the intrusive barbarism of the young, their noise, their pounding, repetitive, computer-produced so-called music, their violence, their egotism disguised as idealism. My God, we might even succeed in getting rid of Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed. I intend that my life shall be comfortable, and, when it no longer is, then I shall wash down my final pill with a bottle of claret.”
His personal plan for survival in comfort until the last natural moment was one thousands of people had adopted in those early years before Xan took power, when the great fear was of a total breakdown of order. Removal from the city—in his case from Clarendon Square—to a small country house or cottage in wooded country with a garden for food production, a nearby stream with water fresh enough to be drunk after boiling, an open fireplace and store of wood, tins of food carefully selected, enough matches to last for years, a medicine chest with drugs and syringes, above all strong doors and locks against the possibility that the less prudent might one day turn envious eyes on their husbandry. But in recent years Jasper has become obsessive. The wood store in the garden has been replaced by a brick-built structure with a metal door activated by remote control. There is a high wall round the garden and the door to the cellar is padlocked.
Usually when I visit, the wrought-iron gates are unlocked in anticipation of my arrival and I can open them and leave the car in the short driveway. This afternoon they were locked and I had to ring. When Jasper came to let me in I was shocked by the difference a month had made in his appearance. He was still upright, his step still firm, but as he came closer I saw that the skin stretched tightly over the strong bones of the face was greyer and there was a fiercer anxiety in the sunken eyes, almost a gleam of paranoia, which I hadn’t noticed before. Ageing is inevitable but it is not consistent. There are plateaux of time stretching over years when the faces of friends and
He was a caricature of the popular idea of an Oxford don: high forehead, receding hairline, thin, slightly hooked nose, tight-lipped. He walked with his chin jutting forward as if confronting a strong gale, shoulders hunched, his faded gown billowing. One expected to see him pictured, high-collared as a
Vanity Fair
creation, holding one of his own books with slender-tipped, fastidious fingers.
He occasionally confided in me and treated me as if grooming me as his successor. That, of course, was nonsense; he gave me much but some things were not within his gift. But the impression his current favourite had of being in some sense a crown prince has made me wonder subsequently whether this wasn’t his way of confronting age, time, the inevitable blunting of the mind’s keen edge, his personal illusion of immortality.
He had often proclaimed his view of Omega, a reassuring litany of comfort shared by a number of his colleagues, particularly those who had laid down a good supply of wine or had access to their college cellar.
“It doesn’t worry me particularly. I’m not saying I hadn’t a moment of regret when I first knew Hilda was barren; the genes asserting their atavistic imperatives, I suppose. On the whole I’m glad; you can’t mourn for unborn grandchildren when there never was a hope of them. This planet is doomed anyway. Eventually the sun will explode or cool and one small insignificant particle of the universe will disappear with only a tremble. If man is doomed to perish, then universal infertility is as painless a way as any. And there are, after all, personal compensations.For the last sixty years we have sycophantically pandered to the most ignorant, the most criminal and the most selfish section of society. Now, for the rest of our lives, we’re going to be spared the intrusive barbarism of the young, their noise, their pounding, repetitive, computer-produced so-called music, their violence, their egotism disguised as idealism. My God, we might even succeed in getting rid of Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed. I intend that my life shall be comfortable, and, when it no longer is, then I shall wash down my final pill with a bottle of claret.”
His personal plan for survival in comfort until the last natural moment was one thousands of people had adopted in those early years before Xan took power, when the great fear was of a total breakdown of order. Removal from the city—in his case from Clarendon Square—to a small country house or cottage in wooded country with a garden for food production, a nearby stream with water fresh enough to be drunk after boiling, an open fireplace and store of wood, tins of food carefully selected, enough matches to last for years, a medicine chest with drugs and syringes, above all strong doors and locks against the possibility that the less prudent might one day turn envious eyes on their husbandry. But in recent years Jasper has become obsessive. The wood store in the garden has been replaced by a brick-built structure with a metal door activated by remote control. There is a high wall round the garden and the door to the cellar is padlocked.
Usually when I visit, the wrought-iron gates are unlocked in anticipation of my arrival and I can open them and leave the car in the short driveway. This afternoon they were locked and I had to ring. When Jasper came to let me in I was shocked by the difference a month had made in his appearance. He was still upright, his step still firm, but as he came closer I saw that the skin stretched tightly over the strong bones of the face was greyer and there was a fiercer anxiety in the sunken eyes, almost a gleam of paranoia, which I hadn’t noticed before. Ageing is inevitable but it is not consistent. There are plateaux of time stretching over years when the faces of friends and
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