Last Friends (Old Filth Trilogy) (4 page)

‘You don’t have to tell me this—.’

‘As she came in to the party she saw Veneering across the room. Hell-raising, blond-yellow hair falling over his face, already half drunk (and with a case starting against Eddie next morning) and I saw him get hold of a pillar. White and gold. Fluted. His face became very still and serious. Yes. I saw the beginning of it. The disgraceful love affair.’

‘We have five minutes to get to the station. You may catch it but you know, you’re very welcome—.’

‘No I am not.’

* * *

In the train he stood inside the doors on the high step and looked down on Susan. ‘No. I am not welcome. But thank you for the lift. Edward and Betty never invited me to stay either. At that lunch at Dulcie’s I had to walk in from Salisbury. Seven miles.’

‘Oh, Fiscal-Smith,’ she said, ‘until yesterday you were one of the last friends. Her last and best.’

‘I wonder if she remembers,’ he said. ‘That I was Edward’s best man?’

The doors clashed together, clapping their hands a couple of times. There were some fizzing and knocking sounds and then a long sigh. Then the train clattered off, and Susan stood staring at its disappearing rump, wondering why the ridiculous man cared so much about these people who were dead and hadn’t liked him anyway. He’d said in the car that Veneering was the best of them. That Veneering
could
have invited him down here. That he’d known him from boyhood.

‘But couldn’t you have invited them to
you
anyway? To stay with you up in the North?’

‘Not possible,’ he had said. ‘Anyway, I am the only one who knows Veneering’s secrets.’

‘Did you never have a wife, Fiscal-Smith?’

‘Certainly not,’ he had said.

God, thought Susan, these old fruits are boring.

Anna, the young wife of the poet from the house that had been Veneering’s, had been at the village shop that morning at the same time as Chloe, buying bread and milk for breakfast, and she had heard the words ‘pageant’ and ‘church’.

She was interested in the church, and the unlikely Saint Ague, and had been allowed to do something about the vestry. She loved robes and the clergy. She came from a vicarage family and wasn’t usual. She was the reason why the brass plates in memory of Betty Feathers shone so bright. What a homely name! Some old villager! Then someone else corrected her and told her about wonderful dead Betty, very distinguished woman, and she thought, Oh Lord, another old dear. And it was Anna now, the family woman who put the Cope in clean sacking and starched the choir boys’ surplices so that they looked like preening swans. Sadly there were only three choir boys now and seldom visible. Or audible.

Soon, the old guard predicted this woman (Anna) would be in Charge of Altar Frontals, then Communion Silver and Candle-sticks (already rumoured to be in her attic). Not, of course, Flowers. Only Betty Feathers had dared take Flowers unasked. Betty Feathers had not had much to do with churches except in Hong Kong but she was unbeatable on flowers. During her mature years at St. Ague with her perfect husband Sir Edward (Filth) Feathers, vicars of the parish had been grateful for such a conventional and pleasant woman and nothing churchy about her. You would never guess she might take over. And here most exceptionally, for most of St. Ague was fashionably atheist now, was another. This Anna. ‘Labourers,’ said the village elders, ‘do still seem to keep the vineyard going even late in the day. And for no pay.’ Anna had been a god-send at the last harvest festival and for the first time in years there had been more than tins of baked beans round the lectern.

There had been a bit of a fuss about Anna surrounding the Easter pulpit with bramble bushes. Not only had she taken them up by the roots (she put them back down her drive-way, where they thrived) but they had damaged several small children who had come with chocolate eggs and rabbits.

Mothers—one or two—enquired if she was interested in the
cleaning
rota and she said, ‘I don’t want to push in but if you like we’ve got a power hose and we could cover the Saxon frieze of The Wounds of St. Ague in bubble-wrap.’ ‘Or Elastoplast,’ said her husband, the poet, the family man.

In the end they let Anna fix up only the vestry. Just for the present.

‘I do not care for “fixing up”,’ said one of the ex-flower committee, now confined, like her twin sister, to a wheel chair. They lived with a Carer up the lane and went to church on separate weeks, as the Carer could take only one at a time.

The Vicar tearing past to the next of his string of churches each Sunday, gave thanks for Anna (whoever she was), prayed for new hassocks and fungicides and matches.

‘It will take a hundred grand to deal with the vestry. Half a million to save the church,’ said Anna. ‘We’ll have a go with the power hose.’

St. Ague’s became Anna’s secret passion, her plan for life to supersede (or kill) Chloe. Her heart had gone cold with dread when Chloe, that morning, had said the word ‘pageant’.

* * *

‘Oh yes,’ Chloe had said. ‘Scarlet and gold. Robes. Pushing out through that little narrow door. Very queer. Something double-headed. Like black magic. We’re wondering if it was art? Your husband seemed to be in charge, Anna. Is he a film director?’

‘In
charge
!’ she cried. ‘I left him in bed.’

‘Well he was in running shorts. And he was either on his mobile or directing, like in a play. His arms going up and down.’

Anna said that she had better get home, but instead launched off her car with the breakfast in it towards Privilege House which seemed to be empty except for Herman who was standing in the kitchen eating fish-fingers on his own. He was staring out at the now heavily falling rain. ‘Can I come round to you, Anna? To play? I mean music. We’re going back to America tomorrow.’

‘Where’s your grandmother?’

Anna turned to ice when she saw the gold and crimson vestments gleaming around the Aga, a mitre contracting on one hot plate, and Dulcie’s yesterday’s funeral hat on the other.

‘They put her back in bed I think.’

‘And you didn’t even go up to
see
,’ said Anna. ‘You are rubbish, Herman.’

* * *

Dulcie was sitting up in bed, her hair fallen into extraordinary Napoleonic cork-screws, her eyes immense, and downing a double Famous Grouse. ‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘He didn’t say goodbye.’ She wept.

‘Who?’ Anna took her in her arms and rocked her.

‘No need for that,’ said Dulcie. ‘Fiscal-Smith of course. I’ve known him over 60 years. My oldest living friend. I can’t believe it. I am
mortified
.’

‘But Dulcie, you didn’t want him. You didn’t invite him. He drives you mad. And to be truthful you deserve better. Dulcie?’

‘Yes. Well, no. You see, he’s never been
known
to leave anywhere early unless, of course, he’s been kicked out. I’m afraid that
does
happen. He was never exactly one of us. Not important to us. We didn’t know much about him. Though I believe that somehow Veneering did. Somewhere long ago, I was never close to him, he was so boring. But you see, this morning I was locked in the church with him. We had to wrap ourselves up together in the golden Cope.’

‘Oh, Dulcie! He’ll get over it. He’s used to being ignored.’

‘Oh, the vestments!’

‘Dulcie, I’ll see to them. Now get up, I’ll find you some clothes and you can come over to us. I’ve sent Herman over already. I’ll make the kids cook the lunch. Where’s your daughter?’

‘Susan’s driving him to the station.’ Dulcie began to cry. ‘He’s so ashamed. He was always frightened of being shamed. It is the Yorkshire accent. And—he never said goodbye.’

‘Come on. Get this jersey on.’

‘He won’t come back. He’s a terrible bore. I don’t like him, but Willy said he was a very good lawyer. Incorruptible.’

‘Like Veneering then?’

‘No,’ she said, her mind at last at work. ‘No. Not like Veneering. Simpler than Veneering. But he’s the last link. The last friend.’

‘Coat,’ said Anna, ‘Gloves. Head-scarf, it’s still raining. Put your feet in these boots.’

As Anna’s car, Dulcie in the head-scarf beside her, hardly up to her shoulder, passed Old Filth’s house in the dell Anna looked down at its front door and saw a window slightly open. The five-barred gate was padlocked but something very queer and large had appeared behind it wrapped in a tarpaulin. There came a sudden insolent puff of smoke from Old Filth’s medieval chimney.

Better say nothing, thought Anna. Enough for one day. And it’s only nine in the morning.

Susan, clamp-jawed, had not looked towards Old Filth’s house as she took Fiscal-Smith to the station, nor did she alone, on the way back. She was taken up with thoughts about her mother, who was obviously going down-hill fast.

Not fit to be left alone. These new people are a god-send, but you can’t expect—. And Herman and I go back to America tomorrow. I wonder when I ought to tell her that I’m not married anymore? Herman hasn’t told her. Well I
can’t
tell her. It would be all over the village.

And as to what she’s done
now
! Not so much this senile episode in the church. It’s what she’s done to poor little Fiscal-Smith. She’s bloody hurt him. She
can
hurt. She does. She used to hurt poor old Dad but she doesn’t remember. He had to find new books to read all the time and work for the Thomas Hardy Society, which got him only as far as Dorchester. He asked me to look after her but she’s so silly. He knew she was silly. I don’t think he ever spotted that she’s also rather
nasty
. Got me off from Hong Kong soon as I was out of the pram to a boarding school in England—her old school of course. I hated Hong Kong. I hate all that last lot who came home, with their permed hair, thinking they’re like the Last Debutantes curtseying in the court of heaven. Hate, hate, hate—.

‘My mother,’ she told the passing trees along the lanes towards St. Ague, ‘let everyone call me Sulky Sue from the beginning. I guess she was the one who invented it. She’s hard, my mother. She’s not altogether the fool she makes herself out to be: the fool who is very sweet. She’s neither foolish nor sweet, really. She’s manipulative, cunning and works at seeming thick as a brick. And
nasty
.’

Through tears, on Privilege Hill Susan braked as a woman passed in front of the car. It was the tall old woman who was at the do in London yesterday. In pink. Silk. Long coat. She’s still in it! It’s Isobel. She’s got Betty Feathers’ pink umbrella. Lovely-looking person. Wish she was my mother.

At least there’s plenty of money. She’s not a burden to me. But we must think about death-duties one day soon. She won’t like it, but we must.

And Fiscal-Smith. Ancient little Fiscal-Smith. Ma’s really hurt him this time. Deep—twisted in the knife. Whatever has she said to him? Oh God—I wish I had a mother I could love. I wonder if she’s beginning to like him, or something.

I must go and see these new people to say goodbye.

Florrie Benson—that’s to say she was Florrie Benson before she married the man from Odessa in Herringfleet, Teesside, England ten years back in 1927 and became Florrie Venetski or Venski or some such name—Florrie Benson walked every day of the school term with her son to see him on to the school train. The son was ten, the place the cold east coast, the time 7.30 in the morning and the year 1937.

The boy, Terence, did not walk beside her. He never had, from being five. He disappeared ahead of her the minute they were over the front doorstep.

It was not that he was in any way ashamed at being seen with his mother. He never had been. It was just that life was an urgent affair of haste and action and nothing in it should be missed.

He was a big, blond, good-looking, lanky, athletic sort of child, in top-gear from the start, his mother plodding behind him. By the time she had caught up with him on the station platform he had disappeared into the raucous mob of local children, his flash of white blond hair running among them like a light.

Florrie never even turned her head to look for him. Never had. She arranged herself against the low rails by the ticket-office her kind, big hands hanging down over it, her smiling brown eyes gazing at the cluster of girls—always girls—who rushed to her like chickens expecting grain. All she seemed to do was smile. What the girls talked to her about goodness knows, but they never stopped until the train came.

Florrie was not particularly clean, or, rather, her clothes were rusty and gave her skin a dark tint. Sometimes the school-girls, daughters of steel-workers and not very clean either, stroked her arms and hands and offered her sweets which sometimes she accepted.

Florrie didn’t fit in. Her essence seemed to be far away somewhere, way beyond her stocky figure. She suggested another life, a secret civilisation. She looked a solitary. For her ever to have shouted out towards the boy, Terence, to remind him of something would have been almost an insult to both, but an invisible string seemed to pass between them.

Terence—Terry—the spark running in the wheat—never looked at his mother as he ran in the crowd, never waved goodbye when the train came in. When the children had been subsumed into it and it had steamed away on its six-mile journey along the coast Florrie would heave herself off the railings, nod towards the ticket-office (‘Now then, Florrie? ’Ow are yer?’) and make for home. Her daily ritual was as much a part of local life—quite unexplained—as the train itself, its steam and flames, the fireman shovelling in the coal with the face and muscles of Vulcan. She never seemed to watch him but he was not unaware of her. He sweated in the red glow and wiped his face with a rag.