One thing he saw was that the old men seemed somehow in the way in their homes. It was so different from Geoffrey’s own home, where his father had decidedly ruled the roost. Here, where there were women in the old men’s lives, the women held all the power indoors – as they had for the years their men had been out working – and they had no intention of giving any of it away.
This thought was in his mind when he went to tidy up the nostril hairs of Sailor Makepeace, an errand which even Nanny Ogg disliked. Now Mrs Sally Makepeace – too shortsighted to be trusted with a pair of scissors near her husband’s nose, as an earlier attempt had proved – appeared to be a good woman, but Geoffrey had noticed that she treated her husband almost as part of the furniture, and that made Geoffrey sad – sad that a seafaring man who had seen so many interesting things now spent much of his time in the pub because his wife was always washing, cleaning, polishing and, when no alternative was around, dusting. She only just managed to avoid washing, cleaning and dusting her husband if he sat still for long enough.
Gradually it dawned on Geoffrey that the pub was both an entertainment and a refuge for the old boys. He joined them there one day and bought them all a pint, which got their attention. Then he had Mephistopheles do his counting trick. By the second pint the old boys had become quite avuncular and Geoffrey broached a subject which had been on his mind for a few days.
‘So, may I ask what you do, gentlemen?’
As it happened, he got laughter, and Reservoir Slump – a man whose grin, unlike his name, never slipped – said, ‘Bless you, sir, you could call us gentlemen of leisure.’
‘We are as kings,’ said Laughing Boy Sideways.
‘Though without the castles,’ Reservoir Slump added. ‘’Less’n I had one once and lost it somewhere.’
‘And do you like your leisure, gentlemen?’ said Geoffrey.
‘Not really,’ said Smack Tremble. ‘In fact, I hate it. Ever since my Judy died. We never had kids, neither.’ There was a tear in his eye and a break in his voice, which he covered up by taking another swig from his tankard.
‘She had a tortoise though, didn’t she?’ Wrinkled Joe, who had been built to a size big enough to pick up cows, put in.
‘Right enough,’ Smack said. ‘She said she liked it because it walked no faster ’n her. Still got the tortoise, but it ain’t the same. Not much good at conversation. My Judy would rattle on all day about this ’n’ that. The tortoise listens well enough, mind you, which is more’n I could say for Judy sometimes.’ This got a laugh.
‘It’s a petticoat government, when you get old,’ said Stinky Jim Jones.
Geoffrey, now pleased to have got the ball rolling, said, ‘What do you mean by that?’
And then there was a kind of grumble from every man.
‘It’s like this, backhouse boy,’ said Wrinkled Joe. ‘My Betsy tells me what I am to eat and when and where, and if we are together, she fusses around me like an old hen. It’s like being a kid.’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Captain Makepeace. ‘My Sally is wonderful and I knows I would be lost without her but, well, put it like this: I was a man once in charge of many other men, and when the weather was fearsomely bad, I would be up there making sure that we didn’t founder because it was my job and I was the captain.’ He looked around, seeing nods from the others, and then said directly to Geoffrey, ‘And best of all, young man, I was a man. And now? My job is to lift my feet while she sweeps around me. It’s our home and I love her, but somehow I’m always in the way.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Stinky Jim. ‘You know me, I’m still a good carpenter, well known in the Guild, but my Milly frets about me handling all the tools and so on; and I tell you, when she’s got her eyes on me, my hands shake.’
‘Would you like them to stop shaking?’ asked Geoffrey, though he had in fact seen Stinky Jim lift a tankard to his lips with a hand as steady as a rock. ‘Because you gentlemen have given me an idea.’ He paused, hoping they would listen. ‘My maternal uncle came from Uberwald and his name was Heimlich Sheddenhausen – he was the first man known to have a “shed”.’
Stinky Jim said, ‘I’ve got a shed.’
‘No offence, you may think you have,’ said Geoffrey, ‘but what is in it? There are goat sheds and chicken sheds and cow sheds, but these sheds I’m proposing are for men. I reckon what we need around here is sheds for men. A man shed.’
And now he did have their attention. Especially when he hailed the landlord with a ‘Let’s drink to that, gentlemen! Another pint all round, please!’
The ladies in the villages had taken Geoffrey to their hearts, too. It was astonishing. There was something about his willingness to stop and talk, his gentle smile and pleasant manner, that made them immediately warm to him.
‘Mister Geoffrey is so calm, all the time. He never gets in a tizz, oh no, and he speaks wonderful! A real educated man,’ old Betsy Hopper said to Tiffany one day.