Old Filth (16 page)

 

When they went back to Oliver's mother the following morning Vanessa was surprised to find how disappointed she was that the old chap was no longer there. The hammock, which had stood out all night in the dew, now hung empty and Claire, still in her dressing-gown, was standing looking at it.

“Yes,” she said. “He's gone. I couldn't keep him, although it's Sunday and he'll have a terrible journey. He asked me to say goodbye to you. Now I do hope” (untruthfully) “that you'll stay for lunch?”

“Yes, we've brought it,” said Oliver, smiling about. “Supermarket.”

“We'll have to stay, anyway,” said Vanessa, “until Oliver's taken the hammock down. And what about that umbrella business in the garage? I said it was too big when he bought it. Shall we get it changed for you?”

Claire blinked. “How very kind of you. As a matter of fact the church could do with it. For fêtes.”

(Oh, Ma—oh, Ma! Don't push her.) Oliver started to fling things out of bags and into the microwave. (Keep it cool. Keep off the Vicar!)

“I met your Vicar yesterday,” said Vanessa.

“I'm afraid he's all over the place,” said Claire.

They eyed each other.

 

“Oh, and by the way,” said Claire, when they began to go. “Would you take this parcel with you? I think it's only recipe books. Eddie wanted me to have them. His wife's. She never used them. I don't want them. They were meant for someone else. Betty was a dreadful cook, so they won't be thrilling, but they'd be her mother's. Quite historic. Old Raj puddings from Shanghai. Tapioca.”

“Ma, I'll put them in the bin.”

“No,” said Vanessa, “I'd like them. Thanks.”

 

And back again in Wandsworth where it was dark and the velvet curtains shrouded the windows with Interior Designer bobbles—I'm not sure I like Victorian stuff any more, thought Oliver—rain had begun to fall. “I think we're getting stuck in the nineties,” he called through to the kitchen where Vanessa was scuffling about. “You know, we could get a manor house in Yorkshire for this. Commute from York. What's happening?”

“The recipe books,” she called back. “But it's not recipe books, it's a box. It has gold clasps on it, and a drawer in it and—oh, good God.”

Out of the box showered jewels. Gold chains, brooches, earrings. They glimmered on the kitchen table.

“Look!” she said. “Look at the jade! Look at these blue things. Look—look at this!” Out of a plush bag fell a magnificent rope of pearls. “Oliver! These aren't recipe books. Here's a note.”

 

Dear Claire [it said], I've given the recipe books to Babs. Betty wanted you to have the trinkets. They'll need cleaning and restringing and so on. Some of them she hadn't worn for years. But they're very much the real thing. The pearls were given to me long ago. Eddie.

 

“But I can't have these. I can't possibly keep them. There's thousands of pounds here. Thousands! Look—Aspreys 1940! Look at this jade ring—it's like an egg! Oliver!”

“I'll ring mother.”

 

“She's delighted,” he came back saying, “and you're to keep them.”

“Did she say singular or plural ‘you'?”

“Shall I ask her?”

“Not yet. Let me think. No—I don't have to think. I won't have them. They'll think that's why I married you.”

“Come on,” he said. “It's not going to be in the papers. Nobody's to know we've got them but me.”

“I never wear jewellery.” She stroked the gold adoringly, the jade ring.

“You could change.”

“I
never
change. Was that old Eddie out in the East a lot, Ollie? Oh—Ollie!” She had seen the signature on the note and the letter-heading, for frugal Filth was still using up his old Chambers writing paper. “It says here,
Sir Edward Feathers
.”

“Yes. That's him. Cousin Ed. Ridiculous name.”

“But Oliver, Edward Feathers is Old Filth.”

“I hope not.”

“Oliver,
Old Filth
is a legend. At the Bar. I thought he'd died years ago. He was a
wonderful
advocate. He had a stammer.”

“A stammer? Yes, well, Eddie does sometimes make odd noises.”

“Oliver—it was
Old Filth
. Of Hong Kong. And he became a wonderful judge,” and she began to moan.

“What's so dreadful?”

“I told him all about the Bar. And how easy it was to pass the Bar exams. And I asked him if he'd always practised in Dorset. Oh, Oliver!”

“Vannie, I have never seen you so discomposed.”

“I want to die.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes, of course. But, oh,
Oliver
!”

 

Filth was invited to the wedding six months later but could not remember Vanessa and could not think whom he knew in Bournemouth. The groom's name rang no bell. Some relative? Was he Claire's? But he refused the invitation. Claire, true to form (and because she had not been told of Betty's funeral), did not get in touch. She attended the wedding, the Vicar driving her. He did not officiate but enjoyed the fun and talked about sin to Vanessa's mother. Babs turned up with her hair short and blood-red. She and the Vicar got on famously and danced the night away.

And Claire waved the pair off to Thailand, hoping the baby wouldn't be born there, though they can do wonders with premature babies now.

Vanessa gave Claire the rope of pearls she'd worn to the altar to look after until she returned.

Claire took care of her heart to be sure of seeing the grandchild.

She wrote to tell Filth of the birth three months later. Edward, they were calling him. Edward George.

Thus is the world peopled.

 

T
he smoking-room of the Inner Temple, almost deserted. It is much re-furbished: easy chairs stand about. Portraits of distinguished former Benchers on the walls, the one of Mr. Attlee gaunt and glazed—seeming to be wringing his hands. One wing chair has its back to the rest and Mr. Attlee seems to be looking down at it. Filth is in the chair half-asleep. Post-prandial. No one can see him. Enter the Queen's Remembrancer and the Purveyor of Seals and Ordinances.

 

The Queen's Remembrancer: He must have gone.

The Purveyor of Seals and Ordinances: To get his hair cut?

QR: Possibly. Very great surprise to see him again.

PS&O: Looks well. Amazing physique still. Nothing ever been wrong with him.

QR: Nothing ever did go wrong for him.

PS&O: Nothing much ever happened to him. Except success.

QR: There's talk of a rather mysterious War, you know. Didn't fight.

PS&O: A conchie?

QR: Good God, no. Some crack-up. He had a stammer.

PS&O: Pretty brave to go on to the Bar then.

QR: Remarkable. He joined a good regiment. It's in
Who's Who
. The Gloucesters. He had something to do with the Royal family.

PS&O: 
Had
he indeed!

QR:  And there was something else. Someone gave him a push upstairs somewhere. Or out East. There's always      something a bit dicey about that circuit. A lot of people you can't really know socially but you have to pretend to.

PS&O: Betty was very O.K. though. Don't you think? Don't you think? There was of course Veneering. Veneering and Betty. Aha!

QR: What do the likes of us know, creeping round the Woolsack at Home and round the Inns of Court?

PS&O: “What should they know of England

     Who only England know.”

QR: Kipling. You know Kipling had a start like Filth? Torn from his family at five. Raj Orphan.

PS&O: Kipling didn't do too badly either.

QR: Kipling had a crack-up.

PS&O: Did he stammer?

QR: He went blind. Half blind at seven. Hated the Empire, you know. Psychological blindness.

PS&O: Are you having coffee?

QR: No. I just came in looking for Filth. Just missed him.

PS&O: Did we imagine him?

QR: I expect he was having his last look round.

 

Exeunt. Room apparently empty.

 

Filth rises from the chair and takes a long last look at Mr. Attlee.

 

Filth: Have I the courage to write my Memoirs?

Attlee: Churchill had. But on the whole, better not. Keep your secrets.

 

I
n that train of 1941, after the Oxford interview, Eddie had pushed the
Times
back into the hands of the man opposite, left the compartment and walked down the corridor where he stood holding tight the brass rail along the middle of the window. The train stopped very often, filled up. The corridor became crammed with people mostly silently enduring, shoulder to shoulder. Even so it was cold. Water from somewhere trickled about his feet. Troops started to climb in—maybe around Birmingham. These troops were morose and quiet. Still and silent. Everyone squashed up tighter. It grew dark. Only the blue pin-lights on all the death-mask faces.

And Eddie stood on.

At some point he left the train and waited for another one that would take him to the nearest station to High House, and there he jumped down upon an empty, late-night platform. After an unknown space of time he found that he was travelling in a newspaper-van that must have stopped to give him a lift. It dropped him outside the gates of the avenue which were closed and guarded by two sentries with rifles. He walked off down the lane, then doubled back through a hedge, then across in the darkness to the graceful iron railings of what he felt to be his home.

The house stood there with lightless, blindless windows and the dark glass flashed black. The place was empty. But there were army vehicles everywhere in the drive and a complex of army huts where the land began to drop away above the chimneys of the old carpet factory. Eddie walked round the resting, deserted house and met nobody. He began to try the familiar door handles: the side door from the passage into the garden with its dimpled brass knob; the door to the stables; the kitchens. All were locked. He grew bolder and stood beneath a bedroom window and called, “Mrs. Ingoldby? Is anyone there? It's Eddie.” He rattled the door of the bothy where the gardener had lived. Nothing. No dog barked. In the garage, there was no old car, the car in which you had to put up an umbrella in the back seat when it rained. The Colonel's vegetables stood scant and scruffy, Brussels sprouts like Passchendaele. The beehives had disappeared.

 

He set off on foot back to the railway station; slept the rest of the night on a bench along the wall of the waiting room with its empty grate; reached his aunts' warm house by the following lunchtime.

There was no car outside it and so “Les Girls,” as they liked to be known, were not at home, but Eddie had his key and planted his bag and his icy feet on the rug in the hall. He stood.

He heard Alice, the midget maid, creeping up from the kitchen. She gave a chirp of surprise, touching her fingers to her lips, and Eddie remembered he'd slept in his clothes, wet through since Oxford, and was unshaven. He found—with the old terror—that he couldn't speak.

“Mr. Eddie. Come, come, come,” she said and led him down to her kitchen and gave him tea and porridge which he could not eat. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” she said. “Have you failed your exams?” She had been sitting beneath her calendar of the King and Queen and the photograph of Mr. Churchill in his siren-suit, making more paper spills for the upstairs fireplace. Vegetables were prepared on the draining-board, the kitchen clean, alive and shining. “Oh dear, oh dear. I expect you have heard the news.”

“Yes. I read it in the paper.”

She seemed puzzled, and he remembered that nobody in this house cared a fig about the Ingoldbys.

“I'm meaning their news, Mr. Eddie. Miss Hilda's and Miss Muriel's. I don't know what's to become of us all now. Or this house. Or you and me, Mr. Eddie. Mind, I'd seen it coming. There's been talk for years. They think I'm deaf. They never told me a thing, never warned me. I've been here nearly twenty years. It was little to expect.”

“They've never sacked you, Alice?”

“In a sense, yes, Mr. Eddie.”

 

The slam of the front door above. The clash of the vestibule glass. The shriek of Hilda spotting the bag in the hail. “He's back. See? Now for it—Eddie? Where are you?”

“Yes. I'm back.” His head rose up from Alice's cellar rabbit- hole, and he saw that the eyes of the girls were particularly wild. He thought: They must have won a cup. “Have you been on the course?” Then he saw they were wearing Air Force blue with several stripes. Not golf.

“We have some news for you,” said Muriel. “Better get it over and tell you right off. We're getting married.”

For a dizzy moment Eddie thought they were marrying each other.

“You'll easily guess who,” said Hilda, and mentioned two names from among the red faces at the golf club.

“Married!”

He thought: Whatever for? Old women. Over forty. And this great house full of their stuff. And Alice.

“Go and wash, Eddie dear. Then come and have some champagne. It's been on the cards for years but of course we couldn't split up and leave you until we'd got you off our hands.”

He looked at their untouchable hands.

“But you mean you'll be living apart now?”

“Oh, quite near each other. And near Royal St. Andrews. In Scotland. All four of us.”

“Does my father know?”

“We've written. He's known for several years that we—well, we put off our plans. For you. That's why he's been so generous to us while you've been living here all these years.”

“Living here?”

“Yes. Ever since you were a tiny.”

 

When he came downstairs again Alice was anxiously laying up the dining-table. The silver and glasses shone. When she saw him she scuttled out of sight.

“What about Alice?”

“Oh, she's much too old to move in with either of us. Someone else will probably take her. She's got her Girls' Friendly Society. And she's over seventy and pretty well” (Hilda whispered like a whistle) “
past it
. She
ought
to retire. So it all fits in.”

“
Fits in
?”

“Alice retiring. You going out to Alistair as an evacuee. And this tragedy of the Ingoldbys.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know. I saw it in the
Times
. I'm surprised you did. Or that you even remembered—their name.” (Tears, tears, stop. And, bugger it, my voice is going.)

“Of course we remembered. They used to have you over there. Very kind to help us out. Anyway, someone rang up.”

“Someone? Who? Please,
who
?”

“I'm afraid I didn't ask. It was a girl. Quite a young voice. Yes, Isobel. Isobel Ingoldby. That would be a sister? Rather snooty we thought. La-di-da.”

“Did she leave a number?”

“No, no. Very quick she was. Now dear, no brooding. Let's talk about you. And Singapore.”

“It's Singapore you're going to,” said Hilda. “Alistair'll meet you there. Safest place in the world.”

“Did you pass your exams?” asked Muriel.

“Yes.”

“Jolly good. Something to look forward to after the War. Your tickets are all fixed up and you leave next week.”

“And bottoms up,” said Muriel, with the champagne. “Here's to all of us.”

“And we have a present for you,” said Hilda. “He said you were to have it when you left school. We've kept it for you. It's your father's watch.”