Free The Children of Men by P. D. James

acquaintances look virtually unchanged. Then time accelerates and within a week the metamorphosis takes place. It seemed to me that Jasper had aged ten years in a little over six weeks.
    I followed him into the large sitting-room at the back of the house, with its French windows looking out over the terrace and the garden.Here, as in his study, the walls were completely covered with bookshelves. It was, as always, obsessively tidy, furniture, books, ornaments precisely in place. But I detected, for the first time, the small tell-tale signs of incipient neglect, the smeared windows, a few crumbs on the carpet, a thin layer of dust on the mantelshelf. There was an electric fire in the grate but the room was chilly. Jasper offered me a drink and, although mid-afternoon is not my favourite time for drinking wine, I accepted. I saw that the side-table was more liberally supplied with bottles than on my last visit. Jasper is one of the few people I know who use their best claret as an all-day, all-purpose tipple.
    Hilda was sitting by the fire, a cardigan round her shoulders. She stared ahead, without a welcome or even a look, and made no sign when I greeted her other than a brief nod of the head. The change in her was even more marked than in Jasper. For years, so it seemed to me, she had looked always the same: the angular but upright figure, the well-cut tweed skirt with the three centre box pleats, the high-necked silk shirt and cashmere cardigan, the thick grey hair intricately and smoothly twisted into a high bun. Now the front of the cardigan, half-slipped from her shoulders, was stiff with congealed food, her tights, hanging in loose folds above uncleaned shoes, were grubby and her hair hung in strands about a face set rigidly in lines of rebarbative disapproval. I wondered, as I had on previous visits, what exactly was wrong with her. It could hardly be Alzheimer’s disease, which has been largely controlled since the late 1990s. But there are other kinds of senility which even our obsessive scientific concern with the problems of ageing has still been unable to alleviate. Perhaps she is just old, just tired, just sick to death of me. I suppose, in old age, there is advantage in retreating into a world of one’s own, but not if the place one finds is hell.
    I wondered why I had been asked to call but didn’t like to ask directly. Finally Jasper said: “There’s something I wanted to discuss with you. I’m thinking of moving back into Oxford. It was that last television broadcast by the Warden that decided me. Apparently the eventual plan is for everyone to move into towns so that facilities and services can be concentrated. He said that the people who wished to remain in remote districts were free to do so but that he wouldn’t be able to guarantee supplies of power or petrol for transport. We’re rather isolated here.”
    I said: “What does Hilda think about it?”
    Jasper didn’t even bother to glance at her. “Hilda is hardly in aposition to object. I’m the one who does the caring. If it’s easier for me, it’s what we ought to do. I was thinking that it might suit us both—I mean you and me—if I joined you in St. John Street. You don’t really need that large house. There’s plenty of room at the top for a separate flat. I’d pay for the conversion, of course.”
    The idea appalled me. I hope I concealed my repugnance. I paused as if considering the idea, then said: “I don’t think it would really suit you. You’d very much miss the garden. And the stairs would be difficult for Hilda.”
    There was a silence; then Jasper said: “You’ve heard of the Quietus, I suppose, the mass suicide of the old?”
    “Only what I read briefly in the newspapers, or see on television.”
    I remembered one picture, I think the only one ever shown on television: white-clad elderly being wheeled or helped on to the low barge-like ship, the high, reedy singing voices, the boat slowly pulling away into the