The Man in the Wooden Hat (18 page)

Elisabeth: Then he is probably glad to die.

They lie awake for a long time. The hanging will be at eight o’clock. Elisabeth has set the bedside clock half an hour fast and seen that Lily Woo has done the same to the grandfather striking clock downstairs. They lie awake together.

Filth: Capital punishment must go.

Elisabeth: They’ll take years.

Filth: They’ll have their own Judiciary by then. Someone spat at the car today when I left Court. They are changing. Lily Woo took five minutes to answer the bell tonight.

Elisabeth: No, only two. But I know what you mean. Respect is fading. Well, I don’t know if it was ever there. In the jewellers’, the girls hardly bother to lift their heads when I go in. They just go on threading the jade. They used to get me the best stones. They still get them for Nellie Wee.

Filth: Oh, well. She’s famous.

Elisabeth: Well, I’m quite famous. I do my best. I try to be like Amy used to be. I
have
got the OBE. And half my girlfriends are Chinese.

Filth: I used to say that when you were sifting through the jade in the market your eyes changed to slits and you became an Oriental.

Elisabeth: Slits, with English eyelashes. Filth, we do need to live out here, don’t we? We’re lifetime expats. Aren’t we?

Filth (
after a long, long pause
): I don’t know.

They took a holiday in a tin bus and bowled along on the Chinese mainland through Canton. For miles the road was lined with rusty factories all dropping to bits. “These were sold to us by the Russians,” said their guide. “We were conned.” In the shadows of the rusted chimneys lay wide stretches of murky water sometimes with lotuses. White ducks floated among the lotuses on the foul olive-green water. The road was terrible, full of gritty holes, narrow and mean. Tall factories trailed hundred-foot stripes of mould down their sides, like dark green seaweed. All the small windows were boarded up.

The bus stopped for photographs and most people got out and stood in a row looking down on men scratching the surface of fields. The cameras clicked. The men were so thin you could see their bones under their belted cotton blouses. Their hats were the immemorial lampshades, colourless and beautiful. “Make sure you get the hats in,” shouted the photographers. The fieldworkers continued to drag their sticks along the soil and never once looked up.

“Do they dream of Hong Kong?” said Elisabeth.

“We don’t know what they dream of.”

The bus lurched on and the guide beseeched them to look to the right, at the distant and very modern restaurant where they would be stopping for lunch. “On no account look
left
. Do not
look left
.”

Everybody looked left to where a ragged column of men in white robes and pointed hats jogged along the side of a field. Several of them carried a bundle tied to a pallet on long poles.

“It’s a funeral,” said Betty. “To see a funeral means bad luck.”

“That’s a Chinese funeral,” shouted another tourist on the bus. “Or it’s the Ku Klux Klan.”

The driver rattled on down the winding road and up the track to the restaurant. Someone shouted, “Isn’t it bad luck to see a Chinese funeral?”

“I saw no funeral,” said the guide. “What funeral?”

A very old English couple held hands, without looking at each other. “We were born here,” they said. “We’ve been away a long time.” “I was born in Tiensin,” said Betty. “I grew up in Shanghai.” They looked at her and nodded acknowledgement. “We are displaced people,” said the old woman and Filth said, “I suppose you didn’t know Judge Willy?” “What, old Pastry? Of course we did,” and they all smiled. “When Pastry Willy was born, you know, there was only one godown in Hong Kong.”

The bus reached a town where they all got off and went into a big store where the tourists began to run about excitedly, buying ceramic vases and teapots and enormous electric table lamps with Chinese scenes running round them, half the price of Hong Kong and a tenth of the price of Harrods. Filth asked Betty if they wanted a new table lamp. “No,” she said, “not these,” and was astonished to find that an image had appeared among the chinoiserie of a heavy brass oil lamp with a globe and chimney, and a thick white cotton wick. As she looked, the misty globe cleared and a flat blue flame appeared along the wick. It bounced up violet, then yellow, becoming steady and clear. A wisp of blue rising from the chimney. Betty stretched towards it and her hand passed through nothing.

“What are you doing?” asked Filth.

“I don’t know. Having a vision or something. Some sort of memory thing. It must be because of those old expats finding their own country. Let’s go back to the bus. There’s absolutely nothing for us here.”

Back in Hong Kong she said, “Filth—have we made up our minds? Will we be retiring here?”

He said, “I don’t intend to retire at all. I’ve masses still to do.”

“You’ll soon be over seventy.”

“I’m a better judge the older I get.”

“You all say that.”

“I’ll get the hint if they want me to retire.”

“So you’re just going to sit in judgement in a dying colony for the rest of your life?”

“If you must know, I’ve been asked to take a break and write up the Pollution Laws. It will be internationally important.”

“They have actually approached you, then?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, well, congratulations. When would I have been told? You know what they’ll say?”

“Yes. ‘Filth on Filth.’ I’m not stupid.”

“Sometimes I think there’s a wit at work in the Lord Chancellor’s Office, unlikely as they look to be. They choose you for your dotty names. Like ‘Wright on Walls.’”

He nearly said, “Next will be ‘Veneering on Shams,’” but didn’t.

“I feel quite honoured, as a matter of fact,” he said. “And another thing, I’ve been chosen to rewrite
Hudson
.”

“Who on earth is Hudson?”

“We’ve been married for a thousand years and you don’t know
Hudson
!”

“Only his Bay.”

“How very amusing. Ho-ho.
Hudson on Building Contracts
. I dare say I’ll get a knighthood.”

“How thrilling. But couldn’t you do this anywhere?”

“Well, London would be easiest. Or Oxford. The Law Library. Cambridge, maybe, but I’m not from that quarter. But, well, bit of a harsh old-age after here. No servants. No decent weather. Holidays in the Lake District. Cold. Raining. All these groups of singing boys strumming out rubbishy songs. And the food!!”

“Yes,” she said. “The food. But there’s opera as well as the Beatles, and there’s the London theatre and concerts.”

“Everyone talks about going to the theatre and concerts but how many of us actually go? And London’s not England any more. We’d be just another old couple.”

“We could look around. It’s twenty years since we went anywhere in England except London. We could go and look up Dulcie and Pastry Willy. Willy must be getting on a bit now. In Dorset.”

That same night, at the end of the Long Vacation and the trip to Canton and three months since the execution, Betty heard Filth yelling in his sleep and ran into his room. He woke, moaning, saying that they were going to hang him. After the handover in ’97 they would take him and hang him.

The following morning neither of them mentioned the night and he was driven smoothly in to Court as usual, but Elisabeth began to make plans for England and wrote one of her sketchy letters to Willy in the Donheads of Dorset.

Dear Dulcie and dear Willy,

We are coming back to see England again for a while and we would so much like to see you in particular. Time has not passed. We so often think of you. Christmas cards are not enough.

Could you write and say if you will be about around Christmas? Could we spend a night or so with you, or could you find us somewhere? We won’t stay long because we’ll be exploring. We don’t quite know what to do with our future.

With best love, as ever

Betty (once Macintosh of Shanghai)

PS How are your children? Have you grandchildren?

T
wo profiles, one imposed against the other, like images of royalty upon a medallion struck for a new reign: Edward Feathers and his wife Elisabeth, motoring into the sunset on the A33 through Wiltshire on a frosty winter’s afternoon.

They were looking for Pastry Willy and Dulcie, and wondering if there would be anything to say after so long.

“Didn’t they have some children?” Betty said. “A girl. She must be quite ancient now.”

“No. Born very late. Still young. Susan.”

“Oh, lawks yes,” said Elisabeth. “Sullen Susan.”

“Sullen Sue,” said Filth. “I’m glad we have no sullen daughter.”

She said nothing. They were passing Stonehenge.

“We turn off quite soon. Just past Stonehenge. There’s Stonehenge.”

He drove on, not turning his head. She made the sign of the Cross. Still not turning his head, Filth said, “What on earth are you doing?”

“Well, it’s the usual thing to make the sign of the Cross passing Stonehenge. There are thousands of accidents. It’s the magnetism of the stones.”

He said, after a time, “I sometimes wonder where you hear these things.”

“It’s common knowledge.”

“There are accidents because drivers all say “There’s Stonehenge—look!” and turn their heads. I have a certain amount of sense.”

“Well, then, quick! Turn left. Here’s the road to Chilmark. You nearly skidded! It’s much narrower. And winding. Oh, look at that tree. It’s enormous. It’s just like a hen!”

“A hen?”

“Like a huge hen nodding on a nest. Up at the top of a tree—we’ve gone under it now.”

“A hen in a
tree
?”

“Yes. And I’ve seen it before.”

“Very unlikely. We’ve not been here before.”

“I came down here alone once. After that operation. It was somewhere here. Somewhere.”

“No, that was much further west. I know. I came and found you. It was near Somerset. It was way beyond Bath. Near the theatre and those Dickensian people you liked then.”

“I suppose so,” she said. “We couldn’t find them either. We never saw them again. Did we?”

“Well, didn’t they die?”

“I suppose—I can’t remember if we heard or not. I did write. I sent them a replacement of something I broke. I can’t remember . . .”

A very old man appeared out of the hedge and crossed the road in front of them. He was carrying an axe.

“Elisabeth—what is it now?”

“I don’t know. I just have the feeling I’ve been here before. A shuddering.”

“When people say that,” said Edward, “nobody ever knows what to reply, like when they tell you their dreams. Here’s a notice saying ‘The Donheads,’ whatever they are. St. Ague is the one we’re after. ‘
Ague
’—what a name! Here’s the hill marked on the map she sent. It could be quite soon now. What a maze.”

“I think it’s to the left. No, we’ve passed it. It was that double driveway, wasn’t it, dividing left and right? Down and up.”

“No,” he said. “We have to pass a church first. It says on the map. Here’s a church. Here’s Privilege Lane. Oh, yes indeed! Very nice! Trust old Willy! Wrought-iron gates!—oh,” and “Hello Willy! What a marvellous place!”

(Mutual exclamations of joy and Willy at once takes Elisabeth up and away from the house to the top of the garden and Edward takes the luggage while Dulcie goes to make one of her soufflés.)

“What a view, what a view, Willy! What a white and golden view! And Uncle Willy, we’ll
never
call you Pastry any more. You’re brown as a nut. It must be Thomas Hardy.”

“Thomas Hardy was always going up to London to the theatre but I never leave the Donheads,” and he began to totter back to the house, Elisabeth pretending that she needed his arm when they both knew that he was needing hers. He said, “We have a surprise for you. Two surprises. One is Fiscal-Smith.”

“Oh, Willy, no! How
could
you?”

“Motoring through looking for a cheap bed and breakfast, he says. Then, miraculously, remembering us.”

“But have you room for us all? You said Eddie and I could stay with you tonight.”

“Yes. Of course. Vast great place, this, in spite of the thatch and the button windows. Someone else is staying, too. Our second surprise: Susan. From Massachusetts. She says she’s not seen you since she was at school.”

“No. She hasn’t. Is she alone?”

“Don’t ask. Husband trouble in Boston. She’s walked out on him and the child. She doesn’t say much. We just let her thump around the countryside on a local horse. We’re used to it. Always doing it.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Willy.”

“Aha—there’s Fiscal-Smith at the front door! The wedding party is complete.”

The table in the palatial cottage was laid for a pre-war, middle-class English afternoon tea. There were dozens of postage-stamp sandwiches, brown and white bread and butter (transparent), home-made jams and seed cake. Dulcie sat behind a silver teapot.

Susan, however, was crouched in a corner on a rocking chair near the fire and her baleful eyes surveyed them. She had a mug of tea in one hand and was barefoot. As Betty and Filth came into the room her mouth was wide open ready to receive the slice of cake that was approaching it via her other hand.

“Susan,” cried Elisabeth, as was required.

“Oh, hullo.”

Filth nodded curtly. He was surprised to find her familiar, and a shadow from his schooldays passed before his eyes. Another girl at someone’s house during the war. Isobel Ingoldby. Tall Isobel, with her loping golden beauty, and her dark moods. He had thought that women were less disagreeable now. He watched this one bleakly. Oh, thank God for Betty.

Everyone sat down.

Later came dinner and Susan ate from a private menu. Again, for Filth, the great wave of memory and—well, actually—desire.