Old Filth

by Jane Gardam

  “You see, I’m quite independent. No trouble to anyone. Sugar? No, that’s not us, either, Teddy, is it?”

  “Babs, let me take you out somewhere for a meal.”

  She flung her long hair about. “I never go out. I watch and wait. First Flush? Do you remember?”

  For a dreadful moment Filth thought that Babs was referring to the menopause, though that, surely, must be now in the past?

  “First Flush?”

  (Or maybe it was something to do with Bridge? Or the domestic plumbing?)

  “Tea, Teddy. First Flush is tea. From Darjeeling.” (She pronounced it correctly. Datcherling.) “Don’t you remember?” She seemed to be holding up a very tattered packet marked Fortnum and Mason, Piccadilly. “He gave it to me always for years. Every Christmas. In memory of our childhood. You, me, him, Claire, Betty.”

  “But we weren’t in India, Betty and I. I hadn’t met Betty. You and I and Claire were in—Wales.”

  She looked frightened.

  “But he sent me tea from India. They took him back there after . . . Year after year from India he sent me tea.”

  “Who?”

  “Billy Cumberledge.”

  “Babs?”

  “My lover.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Babs. And he died, too?”

  “I’m not sure. I used to see him in Oxford. He was a lovely man. She could never touch his soul, never break him utterly. He and I—no, you and I, Teddy. We got into one bed that night to be near together while Claire went to get help.”

  “I’d forgotten.” (A wave of relief. So that’s what she’d meant in the tea-shop.)

  “Yes, he was my lover. But not my last lover. My present lover you may have seen just now as he went scampering down the steps.”

  “But that was a schoolboy . . .”

  “Yes, but a genius. I don’t do examination work now, except for this one. He is a genius.”

  “Yes. I see.”

  They drank the First Flush which was not noticeably refreshing.

  “This is of course a First Flush of some time ago.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Some time ago.”

  The lights in the street came on and revealed a Broadwood piano by the front window and a piano stool lying on its side. He remembered the terrified boy.

  “Edward,” she said, abandoning the tea to the grate, “oh, Edward, we were so close. I have to tell someone. I am in love again.”

  “Oh—Oh dear—”

  “He is fourteen. You know how old I am. Way over seventy. It makes no difference.”

  Something out in the passage fell with a crash to the floor and there was the sound of running water.

  “It’s that dog,” she said, weeping. “Everyone’s against me. I need God, not a dog.”

  All that Filth, now deeply shaken, could say was, “But you haven’t got a dog.”

  “Haven’t I? Of course I have. I need some protection, don’t I?” (And, sharply, in Betty’s voice.) “Come on now, Filth. Work it out.”

  A cat ran down the hall as Filth stepped out into it, and water was still dripping from a vase of amazingly perfect lupins.

  “Let me help.” Filth stood, unbending.

  “It’s all right. They’re artificial. I always put them in water though, it seems kinder. I arrange them for him. The boy. My boy. I don’t somehow think he’ll be coming back.”

  “He won’t?”

  “No.” She clutched the shawl around her and bent forward as if butting at a storm.

  “You see—I showed my hand.”

  “Your hand?” (Again, he thought hysterically of Bridge.)

  “I showed my hand. I showed my heart. I showed my . . . Oh, Eddie! I fell to my knees. I told my love.”

  Filth was now on the top step. Very fast, he was on the bottom step. “So sorry, Babs. Time to go. Sorry to leave you so . . .”

  “Don’t worry about the flowers,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  She was now on her knees crawling about in the water.

  “So sorry, Babs. Not much help. Terribly sorry. God, I wish Betty . . . I’ll try and think what’s to be done.”

  He could not remember getting back into the car nor the road he took next, but in time found that he was hurtling back in the dark and then into the blinding lights of traffic coming towards Yarm. The Judges’ Hotel was before him, agreeably behind its lawns like a flower in a gravel pit. He drove through its gateway with care for he was beginning to shake, and at its great studded doors he stopped. A cheerful young man, in a livery that would not have disgraced Claridges, but eating a sandwich, bounded forward and opened the driver’s door.

  “Good evening, sir, staying the night? Out you get, leave the key, I’ll park it. Any luggage? Nasty weather!”

  Filth stepped in to a black-and-white marble hall with a grand staircase and portraits of judges in dubious bright oils hanging all the way down it. How very odd to be here. Yes, there was one room left. Yes, there was dinner. Yes, there was a bar.

  Filth removed his coat in the bedroom and regarded the two single beds, both populous with teddy bears. A foot-massager of green plastic lay by the bedside and a globe of goldfish with instructions for feeding them (“Guests are asked to confine themselves to one pinch”—was it hemp?). There were no towels in the bathroom but a great many plastic ducks. The noble height of the room that had in the past seen scores of judicial heads on the pillow seemed another frightening joke. I suppose I don’t know much about hotels now, he thought and had a flashback of the black towels and white telephones and linen sheets of Hong Kong.

  For the first time in many years he did not change his shirt for dinner but stepped quickly back into the hall where the eyes of the old buggers on the staircase, in their wigs and scarlet, gave him a sense of his secure past. Glad I got out of the country though. No Circuits in Hong Kong. No getting stuck in luxury here for weeks on end with the likes of Fiscal-Smith. He wondered where the name had come from. Hadn’t thought of the dear old bore for years.

  Good heavens.

  Fiscal-Smith was still here. He was sitting in the bar in a vast leather armchair and as usual he was without a glass in his hand, waiting for someone to buy him a drink.

  “Evening, Filth,” said Fiscal-Smith. (Ye gods, thought Filth, there’s something funny going on here.) “No idea you’d be here. Thought you’d retire in Hong Kong. How’s Betty?”

  “We retired and came Home years ago,” said Filth, sitting down carefully in a second leather throne.

  “Oh, so did I, so did I,” said Fiscal-Smith. “I retired up here though.”

  “Really.”

  “Got myself a little estate. Nobody wants them now—it’s the fumes. It was very cheap.”

  “I see.”

  “Or they assume there are fumes. Actually I am out on the moors. Shooting rights. Everything.”

  “How is . . . ?” Filth could not remember whether Fiscal-Smith had ever had a wife. It seemed unlikely. “ . . . the Bar up here these days?”

  Fiscal-Smith was looking meaningfully over at the Claridges lad, who was hovering about and responded with a matey wave.

  “Have a drink,” said Filth, giving in, signalling to the boy and ordering whiskeys.

  “Don’t be too long, sir,” said the boy. “Dining-room closes in half an hour.”

  “Yes. Yes. I must have dinner. Long drive today.” He was beginning to feel better though. Warmth, whiskey, familiar jargon. “Are you staying the night here?” he asked Fiscal-Smith.

  “I don’t usually. I go home. Always a chance that someone might turn up from the old days. Very good of you. Thank you. I’d enjoy dinner.”

  They munched. Conversation waned

  “Fancy sort of food nowadays,” said the ancient judge. “Seem to paint the sauces on the plates with a brush.”

  The waitress patted his shoulder and shouted with laughter. “You’re meant to lick ’em up. Shall I keep you some tiramisu?”

  “What on ear
th is that?”

  “No idea,” said Filth, his eyelids drooping.

  “Trifle,” said the waitress. “You’re nothing now, if you haven’t tried tiramisu.”

  “Is this usual?” asked Filth, reviving a little with coffee.

  “What—trifle? Yes, it’s on all the time.”

  “No. I mean the—familiarity. They’re very matey. I never worked the Northern Circuit.”

  “It’s not mateyness.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly respect.” Filth’s mind presented him with Betty ringing for the invisible and silent maids. He suddenly yearned for that sycophantic time in his life, like a boy thinking of his birthday parties. “They’re very insensitive. And I can’t understand the teddy bears. I always detested teddy bears.”

  “What teddy bears?”

  “The beds are covered with them. Is it a local custom?”

  “I’m afraid you are ahead of me, somewhere. But of course, yes, it’s different up here. Very nice people.”

  “But you’re not local, Fiscal-Smith. Is there anybody to talk to? On your estate?”

  Fiscal-Smith took a second huge slice of cheese. “No. Not really. Sit there alone. I like it here though.” (Old Filth’s grown stuffy. Home Counties. How does Betty put up with him?) “They’re rude to your face but they boast about knowing you. House of Lords, and all that. It’s a compliment, but you have to understand it. Good friends at The Judges to an old bachelor.”

  All but one of the lights were now switched off in the dining-room, where they were the only diners left. The waitress looked out from a peephole.

  “Yes, we’ve finished, Dolly. I think I’ll stay the night. Too much wine for driving. ‘Ex-Judge drunk at wheel.’ Wouldn’t do.”

  “Yes. Keep it within closed doors,” said Dolly. “But I don’t think there’s a room ready. The housekeeper’s gone off.”

  “Twin beds in your room, Filth?”

  “Well, I’m afraid . . .

  “Room One?” said the waitress. “Yes. Twin beds.”

  “No,” said Filth in the final and first, utterly immovable decision of the day. “No. Sorry. I—snore.”

  “Oh, then, we’ll find you somewhere, Lord Fiscal-Smith. Come along. The trouble will be bath-towels. I think she hides them.”

  “Shan’t have a bath.” He tottered away on her arm. “Borrow your razor in the morning, Filth.”

  “We can do a razor,” she said. “Did you say he was called Filth?”

  She handed Fiscal-Smith over to the Claridges boy who was drinking a glass of milk in the hall.

  When Filth lay down on one of his beds the room rocked gently round and round. “Pushing myself,” he said. “Heart attack. I dare say. Sir? Good. Hope it’s the finish. And I’m certainly not lending him my razor.”

  Then, it was morning.

  The goldfish were looking at his face on the pillow with inquisitive distaste. On the floor a heap of bears gave the impression of decadence. The bedside clock glared out 9.30 a.m. which filled him with shame, and he reached breakfast just in time.

  “So sorry,” he said.

  “That’s all right, dear. You need your sleep at your age.”

  Far across the bright conservatory, where breakfast was served, bacon and eggs were being carried to Fiscal-Smith whose back was turned firmly away from all comers as he perused the Daily Telegraph. Filth changed his chair so that his back was also turned away from Fiscal-Smith. Outside, across the grey Teesside grass, stood magnificent oaks and, above them, a deep blue autumn sky and a hint of moorland, air and light. The Telegraph was beside Filth’s plate. He must have ordered it. Couldn’t read it. Not yet. Rice-Krispies.

  “Oh dear no, thank you. Nothing cooked.”

  “Oh, come on. Do you good.”

  She brought bacon and eggs.

  Why should I? thought Filth, petulant, and clattered down his knife and fork.

  “I’m disappointed,” said the waitress, bringing coffee.

  He drank it and looked at the oak trees and the light beyond.

  Must get out of this wasteland. Not my sort of place at all. What was Babs doing here? What was I doing, coming to visit her? Rather frightening, what grief can uncover in you.

  Don’t you think so, Betty? Just as well I wasn’t in the middle of a case when you went. But you’d have dealt with it. Got me through.

  Remembering, then, that the cause of the grief was that she could no longer get him through anything, he gulped, shuddered, watched the oaks, as his eyes at last filled up with tears.

  A hand came down on his shoulder but he did not turn. The hand was removed.

  “So very sorry, old chap. So very sorry,” and Fiscal-Smith was gone.

  It was some time later—breakfast still uneaten, Filth’s back the only sign of anyone in the room, silence from the kitchen—that the oaks began to return to their natural steadiness. Filth, his face wet, blew his nose, mopped with his napkin, took up the newspaper, opened it, shook it about. He found himself looking straight into Betty’s face.

  Obituary.

  Good gracious. Betty. No idea there’d be an obituary. And half a column. Second on the page. Good God: Red Cross; Barristers’ Benevolent Association; Bletchley Park. Dominant personality. Wife of—yes, it was Betty, all right. Fiscal-Smith must have been reading it. Good God—Betty! They’ll never give me half a column. I’ve never done anything but work. Great traveller. Ambassadress. Chinese-speaking. Married and the dates. No children of the marriage.

  He sat on. On and on. They cleared the table. They did not hurry him. On and on he sat. They changed the cloth. They said not a word.

  At some point he began properly to weep. He wept silently behind his hands, sitting in this unknown place, uncared about, ignorant, bewildered, past it.

  Much later they brought him, unasked, a tray of tea. When at last he had packed his case and paid his bill at the desk in the marble hall and was standing bleakly on the porch as the boy brought his car, he remembered that he had invited Fiscal-Smith to join him for last night’s dinner, and that this had not been on the bill.

  “Don’t you worry, sir,” said the receptionist. “He’s paid it himself.”

  She said no more, but both understood that this was a first. And that it was touching. It lifted Filth’s desolate heart.

  He drove for an hour before addressing Betty again. “You never know where help’s coming from, do you? Yes. You’re right. I’m ten years older than yesterday and I look it.” (“Fool,” he yelled at a nervous little Volkswagen. “Do you want to be killed, woman?”) No more gadding about for a while.

  “But stop worrying. I’ll get home. I’m a bloody good driver.” The car gave a wobble.

  He thought of the hotel which loomed now much larger in his consciousness than the Babs business (Babs had always been potty) and he understood the goldfish, the bears, the box of Scrabble in the wardrobe, the tape deck and the vast television set in the room. They were an attempt to dispel the sombre judicial atmosphere of the place’s past. The seams of the Judges’ Lodging had exuded crime, wickedness, evil, folly and pain. All had been tossed about in conversation each night over far too much port. Jocose, over-confident judges.

  Well, they have to be. Judges live with shadows behind them.

  There are very good men among them. Mind you, I’d never have put Fiscal-Smith among those, the horrible old hangerand-flogger.

  “Seems we were wrong, Betty,” he said, turning the car unthinkingly Eastward in the direction of the Humber bridge.

  And on it sped for three hours, when he had to stop for petrol and saw signs for Cambridge.

  Cambridge?

  Why Cambridge? He was making for the Midlands and home in the South-West. He must have missed his turning. He seemed to be on the way to London. This road was called the M11 and it was taking its pitiless way between the wide green fields of—where? Huntingdonshire? Rutland?—don’t know anything about any of them. Claire lives somewhere about down here. Hainaul
t. Never been. Must have the address somewhere. Hadn’t intended to come. Hadn’t consciously intended to come. Had quite enough. Saffron Walden? Nice name. Why are you going to see Claire? You haven’t seen her since—well, since Ma Didds.

  Betty knew her. Betty saw her. Why must I? Wasn’t Babs enough?

  He drew out in front of a Hungarian demon. Its hoot died slowly away, as at length it passed him, spitting wrath as he swayed into the slow lane. Mile after mile. Mile after mile. Fear no bigger than a child’s hand squeezed at his ribcage. “If it’s a heart attack, get on with it,” commanded Filth.

  But he drew off the motorway and dawdled into a lane. There were old red-brick walls and silent mansions and a church. A by-passed village, like a by-passed heart. Not a café. Not a shop. He’d perhaps go and sit in the church for a while. Here it stood.

  The church appeared to be very well-kept. He pushed open an inner red-baize door. The church within echoed with insistent silence. There was the smell of incense and very highlyvarnished pews. A strange church. The sense of many centuries with a brash, almost aggressive overlay. You’d be kept on your toes here. Never had much idea of these things, thought Filth. Lists pinned up everywhere. All kinds of services. Meditations. The lamp is lit over the Blessed Sacrament. Vigils. Quiet is requested. An enormous Cross with an agonised Christ. That always upset Filth.

  This terrible silence.

  He sat in the south aisle and closed his eyes and when he opened them saw that winter sunshine had lit up a marble memorial to some great local family. It was immense, a giant wedding cake in black and pink and sepia. Like an old photograph. Like a sad cry.

  Filth got up and peered closer. He touched some of the figures. They were babies. Dozens of babies. Well, cherubs, he supposed, carved among garlands of buds and flowers, nuts, leaves, insects, fat fruits. More marble babies caught at more garlands at the foot of the pyramid, all naked, and male of course. They were weeping. One piped its eye, whatever piping was. Their fat lips pouted with sorrow. They stood, however, on very sturdy legs with creases across the backs of their knees, and their bottoms shone. There was a notice saying that the memorial had three stars and was thought to have been designed by Gibbons.