The Man in the Wooden Hat (24 page)

So that’s fixed him, thought Filth. I’ve won. That night he went slowly up his stairs to bed, pausing a little breathlessly on the landing. “Checkmate,” he said.

But then, later, lying in bed, every button done up on his striped pyjamas, clean handkerchief in his pyjama pocket, he wondered why he did not feel triumphant. There was no relish. No relish.

Well, he thought. That’s the last I’ll hear from him.

Veneering did not return from Malta. He broke one of his arthritic ankles on a stony slope where there was a deep slash in the rock masked by the night-scented stocks that grow wild all over the island and make it such heaven in the spring. A thrombosis followed and then Veneering died.

When the news was broken to Sir Edward Feathers he said, “Ah, well. He was a great age. He hadn’t looked after himself very well. I shall miss the chess.”

About two weeks later, the Maltese postal service being so slow, a picture postcard arrived for Filth at Donhead St. Ague. It said,

We are bathed in glorious sunlight here [Oh, so he got to heaven then, did he?] and I’m having a wonderfully revitalising holiday. A pity that it would have been too much for you. Today I’m going to see the one fresh-water spring on the island (life like an ever-rolling stream, etc.) with a man who says he once met you and you offered him a job as your clerk. Seems very unlikely. But memory tells all of us lies. Looking forward to our next encounter. Kind regards. T.H.V.

Filth did not attend Veneering’s memorial service. He thought it would be theatrical to do so. The Great Rapprochement. Dulcie would tell him all about it. Kate the cleaner was a bit tight-lipped with him, saying that he could have shared a car with someone, but he said, “I have things to see to. I am planning a journey of my own.”

“Well, I hope it’s not a cruise.”

“No, no. Not a cruise. I’m thinking of going back to my birthplace for a last look round. Malaya—they call it Malaysia now, like a headache. I shall be going by air.”

She gasped and shrieked and ran to tell the gardener and Filth saw the pair of them deep in conversation as he plodded on with
Hudson
in his study. He was negotiating about who would continue with
Hudson
when he was dead. Veneering would have been the obvious choice. Ah well.

He was beginning to miss Veneering more than he would admit. When the
For Sale
notice went up again so vulgarly in the lane it gave him a jolt. When lights of the ugly house again appeared through the trees, he was drowsing with his curtains undrawn and he woke with a start of pleasure that turned to pain as he remembered that Veneering would not be there.

“You can have anything you want of mine if I don’t come back,” he had said.

Filth had said, “Oh, nothing, thanks. Maybe the chessmen.”

One afternoon during a St. Martin’s summer, his bony knees under a tartan rug, Filth was snoozing in the garden when he became aware of a movement in one of the fruit trees and a new next-door child dropped out of it eating an apple. The child began to wander nonchalantly over the lawn as if he owned it. Filth had been reading minutes of the latest Bench Table of his Inn. He felt like throwing the child back over the hedge.

“Sorry,” the child said.

“I suppose you’re wanting a ball back.”

“I haven’t got a ball.”

“Well, what’s that in your hand? And I don’t mean my apple.”

“Just some old beads I found in that flower bed.” And he vanished.

They’re so bloody self-confident, thought Filth. My prep-school Headmaster would have settled him. Then: What am I saying? Sir’d have set about teaching him something about apples.

“Keep the beads,” he called. “They’re yours.”

The night before he was to leave for his voyage home to Malaya, Filth felt such a surge of longing for Betty that he had to sit down and close his eyes. The longing had included guilt. Why guilt? Because he was beginning to forget her. Forget his long desire. “Memory and desire,” he said aloud, “I must keep track of them or the game’s up.” Then he thought: Or maybe let them go?

There was a ring at his doorbell and a family stood grimly on his doorstep, father, mother, son and daughter.

“Might we come in? We are from next door,” said the father (a gent, though long-haired). “We need to speak to you on a serious matter.”

“Come in.”

They filed into the hall. “Sebastian,” said the father and the boy held out Betty’s pearl necklace.

“He says you gave it him. We want to know the truth. He says he found it in a flower bed.”

“Yes. I did. He did. Perfectly right.” (The look in the parents’ eyes. Think I’m a paedophile?)

“You see—sir,” said the father. “We believe these pearls to be valuable.”

“Yes. I expect they are. They were my wife’s. Given her by some old boyfriend. She threw them away. Silly woman. She had much better ones from me. Mine have been inherited by some cousin, I think. These—well, I’ll be glad to see the last of them. Her “guilty pearls”, I called them.”

“Well, really—we couldn’t . . .”

“I’m just off on a trip. Look, if you want to repay me could you just keep an eye on the house while I’m away? I have a spare key here. For emergencies.” He handed them the key that knew its way about their house. “I hear that you are what is called ‘Green.’ And aren’t you intellectuals?”

“I’m not,” said the little girl.

“Dad is,” said the boy. “He’s a poet.”

“Good, good—”

“And I’m going to do bed and breakfast,” said the wife. “I hope you don’t mind if I put up a sign on our lane?”

W
hen he stepped off the still-vibrating plane and smelled the East again, the hot airport, the hot jungle, the heavy scents of spices and humans and tropical trees and tropical food, Filth forgot everything else and knew that memory was now unnecessary and all desire fulfilled. Betty at his shoulder, he fell into the everlasting arms. The mystery and darkness and warmth of the womb returned him to the beginning of everything and to the end of all need.

His memorial service, several months later at the other side of the world, was distinguished but rather small. It was so very long since Sir Edward Feathers had been in practice. His years alone with
Hudson
had been solitary and long, and his age was so great that few lawyers could remember him as a person.

Nevertheless quite a good scattering turned up. In the Benchers’ pews the Lord Chief Justice sat, for Feathers had been a great name in his time—when the Lord Chief was probably still at school. The Master of the Temple preached on Feathers’ integrity and advocacy (“in a style no doubt we would now find a little dated!”), his bravery in World War Two, his long, quiet, happy marriage. His charm. He had kept clear of politics, given himself entirely to the importance of the tenets of English Law. We shall not see his like again . . . etc.

“Who’s that creature?” asked one of Amy’s children. Amy’s grandchildren and children made quite a mob in the public pews. “Just below the pulpit. He looks like a pickled walnut.”

Albert Ross had, in fact, been asked by an usher to move from the seats reserved permanently for Masters of the Temple but had taken no notice. Across from him in an equally regal seat in the Middle Temple Benchers’ pews, a legitimate lawyer who looked preserved in aspic was glaring across at him. It was Fiscal-Smith accompanying dear old Dulcie. He had a cheap-day return railway ticket sticking out of his pocket.

In the body of the church, across from Amy’s family but a modest pew or so behind them, sat the family of Sir Edward Feathers’s neighbours, the mother wearing a double string of remarkable pearls. Several pews around had filled up quite nicely with members of the Bar of the Construction Industry, particularly those from the Chambers that Sir Edward and the pickled walnut had founded. There was a clutch of clerks, one of whom had been in his pram when Sir Edward was sitting disconsolate in a draughty corridor without any work one winter’s afternoon.

Then a tall and beautiful and very old woman came in and slid in beside Amy, looking at nobody. She wore a pale silk coat and her face was an enigma.

“Who’s that? She’s like the collarbone of a hare,” said the poet. “I bet it was his mistress.”

They sang the usual hymns, “I vow to thee my country” being the most inappropriate. Filth’s country had never been England.

Outside afterwards, they all gathered to hear the bell toll once for every year of Filth’s life and it seemed as if it would go on for ever. It was autumn and gold dry leaves scratched under their feet.

The dwarf, the pickled walnut, was being helped into his Rolls-Royce. He handed his large felt hat to the Chief Clerk. “I’ve done with it,” he said. “Keep it in the Chambers. It is your foundation stone.”

“Aren’t you coming in to the wake, Mr. Ross?”

“No. Plane to catch. I am en route to Kabul. Goodbye.” Waving a hero’s wave he was spirited away.

“Is it all a pantomime?” asked one of the children and the poet said, “Something of the sort.”

Inside the Parliament Chamber of the Inner Temple Hall the wine was flowing now and the famous hat went from hand to hand. Someone said, “He’s supposed to have kept his playing cards in that hat.”

“Well, there’s a zip across the inside of it.”

So they unzipped it and found the playing cards fastened in a pouch.

“What’s that other thing in there?” asked the next-door boy.

It was a small oilskin packet tied with very old string, and inside it was a watch.