Old Filth (15 page)

A rope hung beside the hammock ending in a baroque blue tassel.

“I could swing you if you like,” Vanessa suggested, wondering at herself. She had refused Filth's offer of the hammock for herself as firmly as she always refused a seat from a man on the Underground. She often offered her own seat on the Underground to an older woman. Sometimes these older women refused, too, not feeling older. Great games are played on the Underground, she thought, the premier sport being that everyone avoids everyone else's eyes. Oh, how happy I am to have enough to think about. Work to do. How pleased I am to have mastered the pleasure—never acknowledged—when scanned, leaned against, breathed upon in the Underground by a man. I've got rid of that.

“Do you mind being stuck up here in the hammock in full view of Saffron Walden, Eddie?”

They had called him Eddie. And sometimes Teddy. They had not properly introduced him. They behaved as if she must know him. “Shall I give you a swing with the rope?”

“You sound like Mr. Pierrepoint,” he said, without opening his eyes. “I don't feel exposed. No, not at all, thank you. No, I don't need to be rocked.”

“Who is Mr. Pierrepoint?”

“I'm glad you can't remember. He was the hangman. His last hanging was of a woman, Ruth Ellis, who shot her unfaithful lover a few weeks after losing his baby and whilst her mind was disturbed.”

“Oh yes, well, of course, I know about that. They buried her in quick-lime at Wormwood Scrubs prison, didn't they?”

“They did. Before you were born, but not long before, I think.”

“I think,” she said, pouring tea through Claire's Edwardian tea-strainer, “we have to forgive history a very great deal.”

“I think,” he said, “that we should forgive history almost nothing.

“I met the government hangman of Hong Kong,” he said soon, a breeze over the dahlias, a breeze over the lake, the hammock gently moving. Hot, hot November. “Had a long talk with him. An Englishman. Not a bad man. Not at all sadistic. Just unimaginative and conformist. Common, ugly English man. A good husband, I believe.”

“Hadn't two wives left Pierrepoint though?”

“Yes. Yes, there was that. I am glad of that.”

“And he resigned after Ruth Ellis didn't he?”

“Yes. That was interesting.”

“You've had a varied practice then, down in Dorset?”

“I told you, young woman, I
retired
to Dorset long ago. Away from the cut and thrust. The heat and dust.”

At heat and dust something flickered in Vanessa's head. A novel? A film? Something to do with lawyers abroad? “Have you Oriental blood?” Filth asked.

“Certainly not, I come from Bournemouth.”

“You remind me of someone with kind hands. You are very beautiful. How old are you?”

“I'm thirty-two.”

“Did you have children? When you were young? You
must
have Oriental blood. Your age is not obvious.”

“Well thanks, I'm sure. You'll be saying ‘younger than she are married mothers made' next.”

“Oh, I'm not interested in your past life.”

“Well, I'm glad of that. You're not like my parents.”

“What about Oliver?”

“Oh, he doesn't think about it. Never has. Marriage, kids. Good God, no!”

“Then he'll leave you,” said Filth, closing his eyes.

“Let him. He'd miss me.”

Filth said nothing.

“It's the way of the world now,” she said. “It must be incomprehensible to your generation.”

“Not entirely.”

“It won't change back, you know. We meet, we part. Life is pretty long nowadays to be satisfied by a single sexual partner.”

“And my lot will soon all be dead?” said Filth.

“Oh, of course I don't mean that—that your generation is without influence. No.
Personally
, I respect your generation. I respect your attachment to duty and the Law, your lifetime dedication. But we live so long now that there's time for three or four professions and partnerships. And we all have aides—” “Yes, you have Aids,” said Filth. “I don't know much of the technicalities of ‘Aids' with small or upper case ‘A.'”

“You see us, though—don't you—as negative?” she said. “Selfish? Everyone under, say, forty?”

“At the moment I feel it about everyone under a century but I dare say this will pass. My wife would have no patience with me.”

“I'm sorry you've lost your wife. Was it long ago? I'd have enjoyed meeting her,” said Vanessa kindly to the imagined Betty: the marmalade-maker, Bridge-player, no doubt churchflower arranger, and the grandchildren in the holidays. “Did you have many children?”

“We had no children.”

Should she say she was sorry? Then she knew she was sorry. Sorry for him. The wife was probably—

“Sorry,” she said.

“It was deliberate. Think carefully before you bring children into the world. Betty and I were what is called ‘Empire orphans.' We were handed over to foster parents at four or five and didn't see our parents for at least four years. We had bad luck. Betty's foster parents didn't like her and mine—my father hadn't taken advice—were chosen because they were cheap. If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child. You need prior knowledge. You can inflict pain through ignorance. I was not loved after the age of four and a half. Think of being a parent like that.”

“Yes. I suppose.”

“A parent like you, for instance, young woman. What child would want a parent like you?”

She was furious. “
I
was loved,” she said. “I'm still loved by my parents, thank you very much. And I love them. We have difficulties, but it's normal family life.”

“Then I made a mistake,” he said, still not looking at her. “Maybe it's your hair. It is so thin. I'm sorry.”

“My hair is a Sassoon cut and it cost one hundred pounds.” She flung about with the cups and tea-tray and made to go off into the house.

“I have my career,” she said. “I know it's what all women say, but it's true. It matters to me and to Oliver and to the economy of the country. I make a lot of money. I can have a child when I'm fifty.”

“See if you do,” he said. “I hope you don't. Children are cruel. They are wreckers of the soul. I hate children. I am a paedophobe. Betty knew we must not have a child because of the child I was myself. I would have damaged a child. I don't mean physically, of course.”

(The old thing's deranged, she thought in the brightness of Claire's kitchen, washing up the lunch and the tea-cups. Whoever is he? Some sort of hypnotist? Thinks he's the Oracle. Why is he attractive? He scares me. And I damn well will have some children. When it suits me.
And
with Oliver. Or someone.)

She wrung out the dishcloth (no washing-up machine) and hung up the tea-towel. God, I'm behaving like a daughter-in-law. Oh Lord, here's Oliver and his Ma and Claire will say, Thank you dear, you shouldn't.

“Thank you dear, you shouldn't,” said Claire thinking how fierce and snappish Vanessa looked. She's like a little black fox, she thought. What has Eddie been saying to her?

“Has it been very dull?” she asked.

“Not at all. I think he's asleep.”

“Now we must think about supper. We have eight beautiful eggs.”

Oliver saw Vanessa's face.

“No, Ma. Thanks a lot but Vanessa and I have booked a table at the George. You've enough on your hands with Eddie and, anyway, I want to put some flowers on Dad's grave on the way. OK? We'll be back after breakfast. I'll bring us all some lunch.”

“Are you sure?” (Relief!)

“It's been quite a day for you.”

“I suppose it has.”

“OK, then. Off, Vanessa. Say goodbye to the Great Man for us, Ma, and don't let him keep you up half the night with sophistry.”

“All he does is sleep,” said Claire. “And I'm glad. It means he feels he knows us well. He just turned up,” she told Vanessa. “After hundreds of years. His wife was a friend from way back. She died less than three weeks ago.”

“Oh,
no
! Not three weeks!”

“Such a shock. She seemed set to live for ever.”

“Oh, Oliver!”

“What?”

“You should have told me. I've been chatting on about— about marriage and how interminable it must seem!”

 

At the churchyard she was still angry. They walked up the path together, Oliver carrying flowers, Vanessa her laptop.

“Makes me look so
gauche
,” she said. “So
insensitive
. You are the strangest family. You tell people
nothing
. No, I'm not helping to put flowers on your father's grave, I never met him.”

“Go on into the church then. There's the famous marble Gibbons.”

“The what? I hate Culture.”

“Three stars in all the guide-books. Known locally as The Four Brass Monkeys.”

“What is it?”

“Memorial to some great family, can't remember who. Nobody can. Sort of marble pyramid of fruits and flowers and cherubs weeping. Mum knew it when she was a child, too.”

“How ghastly. Why monkeys?”

“Gibbons, sweetie. Surname of Grinling. They think he did the drawings for it. Worth seeing. You can't help stroking it. Bite the peaches. Pat the bottoms. It's never been vandalised. It was our job to wash it when we were kids. Get in the cracks. Took hours. Saturday mornings.”

“You had a sensational childhood.”

She pranced into the church through the self-sealing door and Oliver fished about for a green tin vase with a spike that his subconscious remembered would be behind the dead-flower bin near the tap. He pushed the spike into the grass above his father's head, arranged the flowers, stood up and leaned against the headstone and took note of his father's name and the space left for Claire's. He thought how much he'd like to have a talk with his father. On the other hand he knew every word of it.

 

“How d'you think your mother's looking?”

“Very well, Pa. You mustn't worry.”

“Can't say I think she's looking well. I led her a dance, you know.”

“I know.”

“Not coming home till dawn. She was always out looking for me. As far as Stamford. Found me once hiding behind some dustbins. I thought she was the police. Old Contemptibles' Dinner, or something. Not the behaviour for a bank-manager. Marvellous woman.”

“I'll bet she never cross-questioned?”

“No. Never.”

“Mine grumbles. Cross-questions. Very cross questions!”

“What, this new one?”

“Well—we've been together six years. She's not new.”

“Grumbles all the time, does she?”

“Well, criticises mostly. It's her job. Analysis of motives, then development and execution.”

“Sounds like Eddie, dry old stick.”

“Yes. A lawyer. And a ‘new woman.'”

“Ah, your mother couldn't be labelled. Result of that childhood.”

“Ma's pretty much all right,” he said. “You
can
bury your childhood. Not that I want to.”

 

God, but I miss him, he thought, and watched Vanessa marching forward from the church, hopping the graves, laptop tightly clutched.

“There's a boy in there dressed up as a Vicar and he came up and asked if I wanted him to hear my confession. And I swear—I swear—he looked me over to see if I was pregnant.”

 

At the George they went straight in to dinner, Vanessa first twirling off her shirt to reveal a black silk camisole beneath, the size of a handkerchief. Her sloping white shoulders and tiny white neck against the panelling turned heads. Claret. Roast beef carved from the silver dome. Vanessa shone and talked, oblivious. The waiters admired. She nattered on about the Vicar and the marble babies crying and holding shields against their private parts. It hadn't seemed a Christian monument to her, three stars or not.

“Did you say so?”

“Yes, I did. And I told him I had nothing to confess and he said, “My child, then you are in a bad way.” I nearly socked him. What are these people
doing
in the church now, Oliver?”

“He sounds a bit of a throw back to me. You don't see them now in the church at all. It's a rare sighting, a clergyman in a church, out of hours.”

“I think he hides in there all day, and then he pounces. He sees guilt all the time. He's a monster.”

“He's a friend of Ma. She likes him.”

“Oh no! Then that's it.”

“That's what?”

“She'll want him to marry us.”

 

“What did you say?” They were in their grand bedroom after the coffee and the crème brûlée, both of them happy with wine. “Marry us?”

But she was somewhere else now. “Oliver, what room is this? It's the bridal suite. Look at the hangings, and the drapes. It's obscene. And whatever is it costing us?”

“A hundred and fifty pounds—so what? It was all they had left.”

“But we could have gone to a B&B. We're supposed to be going to Thailand.”

“We can afford it.”

“Well, you might have asked me first. Oh, well. Never mind,” and she took off her handkerchief top and cast off the rest of her clothes. She lifted her legs high in the air. “Haven't I wonderful feet?” she said.

(God, Oliver remembered, I forgot to bring any condoms.)

“OK,” she said. “Pass my purse.”

“Why?”

“I'll give you my half of the hundred and fifty pounds.”

“No. Let me do this one,” he said. “I let you in for it. Only young once.”

Remembering the old fossil who'd thought she was past the age of childbearing, she said, “Why are you still in your clothes?”