‘Why not pass a law to make everyone seventy–nine years old?’ Bleak’s grin ran along the telephone wires. ‘I’ve two dozen nephews who sweat icicles when I threaten to live forever. Wake up, Cal. We are a minority, like the dark African and the lost Hittite. We live in a country of the young. All we can do is wait until some of these sadists hit nineteen, then truck them off to war. Their crime? Being full up with orange juice and spring rain. Patience. Someday soon you’ll see them wander by with winter in their hair. Sip your revenge quietly.’

‘Damn! Will you help?’

‘If you mean can you count on my vote on the school board? Will I command Quartermain’s Grand Army of Old Crocks? I’ll leer from the sidelines, with an occasional vote thrown to you mad dogs. Shorten summer vacations, trim Christmas holidays, cancel the Spring Kite Festival – that’s what you plan, yes?’

‘I’m a lunatic, then?!’

‘No, a student–come–lately. I learned at fifty I had joined the army of unwanted men. We are not quite Africans, Quartermain, or heathen Chinese, but our racial stigmata are gray, and our wrists are rusted where once they ran clear. I hate that fellow whose face I see, lost and lonely in my dawn mirror! When I see a fine lady, God! I know outrage. Such spring cartwheel thoughts are not for dead pharaohs. So, with limits, Cal, you can count me in. Good night.’

The two phones clicked.

Quartermain leaned out his window. Below, in the moonlight, he could see the pumpkins, shining with a terrible October light.

Why do I imagine, he wondered, that one is carved to look like me, another one just like Bleak, and the other just like Gray? No, no. It can’t be. Christ, where do I find Braling’s metronome?

‘Out of the way!’ he yelled into the shadows.

Grabbing his crutches, he struggled to his feet, plunged downstairs, tottered onto the porch, and somehow found his way down to the sidewalk and advanced on the flickering line of Halloween gourds.

‘Jesus,’ he whispered. ‘Those are the ugliest damned pumpkins I ever saw. So!’

He brandished a crutch and whacked one of the orange ghouls, then another and another until the lights in the pumpkins winked out.

He reared to chop and slash and whack until the gourds were split open, spilling their seeds, orange flesh flung in all directions.

‘Someone!’ he cried.

His housekeeper, an alarmed expression on her face, burst from the house and raced down the great lawn.

‘Is it too late,’ cried Quartermain, ‘to light the oven?’

‘The oven, Mr Cal?’

‘Light the god–damned oven. Fetch the pie pans. Have you recipes for pumpkin pie?’

‘Yes, Mr Cal.’

‘Then grab these damn pieces. Tomorrow for lunch: Just Desserts!’

Quartermain turned and crutched himself upstairs.

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN