WHERE am I to sleep, Jacqui wondered. Dinner was over but she had declared that she was too tired to take in any more news. Emily quickly assured her that there was no shortage of sleeping space, and took her on a tour of the house. There was the kitchen, two bathrooms, a spacious living room, a study, and four bedrooms. One was occupied by Emily and Nathan, another by the two girls, a third by Adam, and the fourth was spare. They returned to the kitchen and Jacqui was about to make her way to the spare room when she noticed Adam standing in a corner, looking rather shy and lost in thought. He had hardly spoken since they had arrived at the house. Of course! How were things to stand between them?

She caught Adam’s eye and nodded. He understood and made his way quietly and uncertainly to his own bedroom, Jacqui following. She closed the door and they sat down on the bed.

“I’m not the young Romeo I was when you last saw me,” Adam began, hesitantly. “I’m an old man, now—in my seventies. And you’re the same lovely young woman in your thirties. You haven’t changed one iota. Perhaps we’re not meant to be together any more. And there’s no shortage of young men here in want of a wife—especially over in O’Higgins. But the choice is yours…”

“Oh, Adam, darling,” burst out Jacqui. “How could you imagine that I’d want anyone else, while you’re still here with me! Don’t you know that I’ve loved you all along? All the time, after we were separated, I was thinking of you and no-one else. All the time I was stranded on that god-forsaken planet, it was you foremost in my mind—even though I knew no better than that you were lost to me for ever. Oh all right: I thought of Nathan some of the time: whether he was all right, whether he’d got over his terrible accident; how I longed to pick him up and cuddle him! And I thought of Paul, whom I knew I’d lost—but I’d lost him long before, really. But you most of the time. No, Adam, your age doesn’t bother me at all. You’re still the wonderful Adam I was so lucky to meet up with, when things were so difficult for me. Aged forty-five or seventy-five, you’re still my Adam and I’m still your Eve.”

“Are we to share a bed then, Jacqui, my love?”

“Oh dear! This is getting complicated. Please understand, Adam. I don’t think I’m quite ready for that—not yet. But it will happen—I promise you! Just give me time. I’ll sleep in the spare room for now. Don’t worry.”

“I quite understand. I can wait—plenty of time. The doctor told me, I’m pretty fit for my age: if I look after myself, I might even see my ninetieth birthday. So no rush, my dear! Whether I can ‘perform’ as I did before, though, that’s another question…”

“You saw me naked, very briefly, back on the beach,” Jacqui reminded him. “Did that—errm—do anything for you? Get you—interested? Of course I didn’t know it was you, back then, so I had to quickly cover up.”

“I think it did—just a little. But we’ll have to wait and see.”

*

Jacqui was home! But home to a world strangely and unsettlingly transformed. She had leap-frogged over the years of terror during which Earth’s population had dwindled to the tiny surviving remnant of today. How all those billions had perished, she could only guess at. Perhaps it was as well—she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the details. Adam, Nathan and Emily, who in any case as ‘Hibernistas’ (as those who had gone into the Hibernat were known) knew little more than she did, were reluctant to talk about what they did know.

At least she found herself in a stable and prosperous community. She was busy acclimatising herself to this strangely-depleted Earth and putting her extraordinary adventures behind her. Although she had started to recount the whole of her extraordinary adventures on the Sous’ planet, to Adam alone, after a while he had advised her to keep the story to herself. Under the dramatic changes it had suffered, Earth was still a deeply-troubled planet, and the rest of humanity were perhaps not ready to hear such a sensational and unbelievable tale.

Jacqui had borrowed one of Emily’s spare overalls to wear for the time being. It seemed that everyone was now attired in this drab apparel. Emily explained that ideas of fashion and smart dressing had given way to simple practicality in this diminished world. But she did have a skirt and blouse somewhere, that Jacqui could borrow if she liked. In the end, once she had earned some money, Jacqui went out and bought her own overalls, in a light green colour that she thought suited her well and was better than nothing. She also provided herself with some underwear and other necessities. It felt strange to be wearing a bra and pants again after all that time!

Christmas was a great success. Jacqui had borrowed some money off Adam so she could buy some presents. She gave Nathan a book about the Burgess Shale fossils, explaining that she had actually met one of the creatures described therein, ‘in the flesh’, so to speak. For Emily she bought a necklace of sea-shells which she thought just about matched the colour of her overalls. The children each received a book of teen fiction (‘for you to read when you’re a bit older’, she’d explained to Helen). As for Adam, she had a dilemma: but after a lot of searching around Grahamsport and O’Higgins, she finally discovered a small shop run by a Spanish-speaking man of African descent. At his suggestion, she bought a brightly-patterned shirt of African design. Something to wear over, or instead of, those drab overalls! Adam was very touched when he opened his gift. He explained that the design was more Ghana than Zimbabwe, but a splendid present all the same.

The others had pooled together to supply her with the very cosmetics and perfumes which she had missed for so long…

Adam, adorned in a red coat and hood and sporting a white cotton-wool beard (his own beard was a bit too thin, he decided) made a perfect Father Christmas, and the festivities went with a great swing. No turkey on the dinner-table, but the huge vegetable pie which Emily and Nathan had collaborated on (with a little help from Jacqui) was pronounced a resounding success.

Jacqui had learnt to find her way around the twin settlements of Grahamsport and Puerto O’Higgins. She found the latter by far the more interesting, and she was thankful for her knowledge of Spanish that was growing in fluency as she practised it with the inhabitants. After such a long time without a single human for company, she was eager to fraternise with ordinary people, strangers too, and so she ventured into one of the many bars to be found along the main palm-tree-lined avenue of the town. She was even tempted to forego her abstinence from alcohol for a moment, and sample the locally-produced wine, which she declared was excellent. After entering into conversation with a few people, she fell in with a middle-aged couple named Carlos and Juanita, and met with them on several occasions—on one occasion being invited to their flat. Carlos explained that he was Bolivian in origin, having been born in 2095 in the city of El Alto, which being at over 4,000 metres altitude had for a while escaped the worst ravages of global warming. But in the end, with increasing public disorder, street crime and food shortages, he had to make his escape in the early 2120s. By then travel to SanMartinland (or Tierra San Martín as he named it) was perilous: he and several others had endured a death-defying trek across the Andes and the Coastal Range to Arica, then down the Chilean coast by way of the Atacama desert, as far as Antofagasta, where they had finally managed to commandeer a ship to take them to Tierra San Martín. Then they had to run the gauntlet of the SanMartinland defences, who were trying to prevent further immigration. Their ship had been fired on, and several of his fellow-refugees had been killed—but by a miracle Carlos had escaped and managed to swim to the peninsula.

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Jacqui thought of the plight of the asylum-seekers trying to get into Britain, back in her own time. This was many times worse!

Juanita, on the other hand, told her she had been born in Puerto O’Higgins itself in 2102, of Argentinian parents. Carlos had met her here and they had got married. They had two married sons who were jointly running a farm up in the foothills of the mountains—‘una hacienda arriba en las Sierras’, as she put it—managing a flock of sheep, goats, and alpaca. They were doing their bit, helping to keep the community supplied with dairy products and wool.

Carlos, sensing Jacqui’s lack of knowledge of Earth’s recent history, asked, was she a Hibernista? (He used the same word, but pronounced it the Spanish way of course). Jacqui replied, “Sí”. She wasn’t going to tell them about her space voyage—no way!—even if it hadn’t been for Adam’s sound advice about keeping quiet. Carlos and Juanita didn’t seem perturbed at her revelation: they said they knew two or three others who’d gone through the same process: refugees from the chaotic 2060s and 70s. When Jacqui asked what was chaotic about that period, Carlos began to describe the terror: the civil wars and insurrections, the widespread famine and disease, the millions dying of heat stress and flooding, the wildfires, the untrammelled crime and terrorism that had claimed countless more lives, the tin-pot dictatorships that had sprung up and been quickly overthrown with more violence, the deployment of nuclear weapons that had made many parts of the planet uninhabitable even without the effects of Climate Change…

Jacqui could find no words as she listened to these horrors. Worse, far worse, than she had expected—than anyone could have expected, back in the 2020s—despite the warnings from the scientists. She thought of the friends she’d made and left behind: Helen, of course, Imogen, even Thelma… She hoped that the older friends, at least, would have gone to their rest in peace, years before the worst night­mares befell the planet. But Thelma! A young woman raising a family… Tears welled in her eyes.

After a while Carlos stopped speaking of these things, seeing that he was only upsetting Jacqui. Instead he spoke about the advances in society and industry that were being made in the peaceful communities dotted around Tierra San Martín—a model which he hoped was being copied amongst other surviving pockets of civilisation around the world…

Some days later, having somewhat composed herself, Jacqui set about seeking a job, and had little difficulty finding herself one. There were two newspapers circulating the towns, one in English and one in Spanish—but both produced by the same publishing house. Jacqui, with her journalistic experience, and the advantage of being bilingual, soon secured herself a position as deputy editor. She was enjoying her work and beginning to feel really ‘at home’ at last.

*

It was three weeks before Jacqui felt ready to venture into Adam’s bedroom. She thought for a long time about other liaisons involving a big age gap, that she’d heard of. The case of Charlie Chaplin, who had married a woman thirty-six years his junior, and fathered a child at seventy-three, came to mind—but Chaplin was a notorious phil­anderer and as different in character from Adam as it was possible to be. Adam had declared that he had not looked at a woman all the time he was waiting for Jacqui’s return—and Jacqui believed him.

Whatever the pitfalls in such a relationship, Jacqui was firm in her mind: she wanted Adam, no question. She slipped into his bedroom unannounced, late one evening, and closed the door behind her as quietly as she could—but not quietly enough so as not to awaken him. Of course it was still daylight. He sat up in bed and gazed at her intently as she lifted her nightdress and slipped it over her head.

But it was a disappointment. Adam could not ‘perform’ as he had done as a younger man. After a while they slipped apart and lay side-by-side, their bodies touching. “I’m so sorry,” murmured Adam, as Jacqui drew his hand onto her breasts. “I’m just too old, that’s it…” “Of course you’re not too old,” retorted Jacqui. “It’s just nerves. Give it time. Don’t worry, I’ll be ready when you’re ready.”

It took about two weeks of Jacqui’s patient ministering, before finally they succeeded in making love. Jacqui was ecstatic. Adam lay back, gasping, trying to catch his breath, his heart pounding. Jacqui had a moment of anxious alarm wondering if he was in for a heart attack. But after about half a minute he was breathing normally again, smiling, and whispering: “I’m all right, my dearest. You were right all along. It was just nerves…”

And it certainly was ‘all right’, thought Jacqui: their success had come at what she thought was exactly the right time of the month. Could it possibly be that…?

She had her answer a few weeks later. She returned home from work a little later than usual, her face radiant.

“You did it, Adam, darling! At the first attempt! I’ve just come from the doctor’s. Yes, I’m going to have a baby.”

“A baby!” exclaimed Adam, wide-eyed. “But how can it be possible, my dear? I’m seventy-five years old. Surely that’s far too old to be a dad!”

“Didn’t you tell me that the doctor cleared you to live until you’re ninety. Yes of course you can be a dad! You’ll quite likely see Junior live until at least his or her teens. So get used to the idea!”

Nathan and Emily, and the children, were delighted when they heard the news—although Nathan said it felt strange to him at his age, to have a baby brother or sister—and the girls were even more perplexed when they learnt they were going to have an uncle or auntie who was only a baby. But they would get used to it.

Later, when they were in bed, Adam and Jacqui discussed things.

“We’ll have to buy our own house, of course, when we’ve got enough money,” murmured Jacqui. “We’ll be too much of a crowd for Nathan and the family. But not too far from them! And: what sort of skin will Junior have, I wonder. More of you, or more of me?”

“I’d gladly settle for half-and-half,” replied Adam. “Mixed-race children can be so charming. Didn’t I ever tell you, my first wife was white?”

“No you didn’t,” replied Jacqui. “You never really spoke about her. But perhaps I should have realised—you did show me photos of your two children.”

“Our break-up was—difficult,” muttered Adam. Yes, I know, yours was too. I won’t say any more. She tried to stop me seeing our daughters—and when she finally relented, we were at first a bit estranged: my daughters and myself. I got really depressed about that—until I met you.”

“It’s a shame I never got to meet your daughters. I would have loved to—even if there was that friction.”

“Yes—after we got together, everything happened so fast! I still can’t believe we’re here, now, and back together. After it all fell apart—that day, in Nottingham.” He drew Jacqui towards him and they kissed long and passionately.

“If Junior’s a boy,” said Jacqui, after some further thought, patting her stomach, “I’d like to call him ‘Gavin’. I owe so much to Grandad—to his memory.”

“Of course,” replied Adam. “But if it’s a girl, can we call her ‘Thelma’? How do you feel about that? She was so kind to us when—you know when—and after. But she didn’t come into the Hibernat, so she’s long gone.”

Jacqui thought for a moment. “Yes—I like that. ‘Thelma’ it is—if she’s a girl. I think I’ve completely forgiven Thelma now for—for what happened. Paul was weak-willed and they both fell into the trap. That was all. Yes, I do like ‘Thelma’.”

They talked of other things. “I shan’t live to see Earth re-built, not as it was when we were young,” remarked Adam. “Nor will you, probably. Nor will Nathan and Emily. But things are happening. Humanity has learnt its harsh lesson. Maybe our child—”

“Our children,” broke in Jacqui.

“All right, our children,” continued Adam, somewhat doubtfully, “or our children’s children, may live to see a better Earth to live on. Humanity have all but destroyed the Earth over the past few cent­uries. Maybe they have learnt not to repeat their mistakes. People will just have to wait and see what lies ahead…”

THE END