Last Friends (Old Filth Trilogy)

by Gardam, Jane

  ‘What’s a ghillie?’ asked Herman.

  ‘You know, Dulcie, that I never miss a memorial service. I wouldn’t come down for anything else. Well, perhaps for an Investiture—. And you’ll remember, I think, that I was Old Filth’s best man. In Hong Kong. You were there. With Willie.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dulcie—in time—her eyes glazing, remembering with terrible clarity that Veneering of course was not present. Not in the flesh.

  Fiscal-Smith was never exactly one of us, she thought. No-one knows a thing about him now. Jumped up from nowhere. Like Veneering. On the make all his life. In a minute he’s going to ask to come back to Dorset with us for a free bed-and-breakfast. He’ll be asking me to marry him next.

  ‘I’m nearly eighty-three,’ she said, confusing him.

  He took his cheap-day second-class rail ticket from his pocket and read it through. ‘I was just thinking,’ he said, ‘I might come back with you to Dorset? Stay a few nights? Old Times? Talk about Willy? Maybe a week? Or two? Possiblity?’

  In the train he sat down at once in Herman’s reserved seat. ‘That,’ said Herman, ‘is not legal.’

  ‘Justice,’ said Fiscal-Smith, ‘has nothing to do with Law.’

  ‘Well you’ll have to help me to get Mother out,’ said Susan. ‘Tisbury has a big drop.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a big drop now,’ said Fiscal-Smith, ‘or even a small one. Will there be a trolley?’

  * * *

  There was not. The journey was slow. Fiscal-Smith had trouble with the ticket inspector, who was slow to admit that you have a right to a first-class seat with only the return half of a Basic, Fun-day Special to another part of the country. Fiscal-Smith won the case, as he had been known to do before, through relentless wearing down of the defence, who went shakily off through the rattletrap doors. ‘Ridiculous man. Quite untrained,’ said Fiscal-Smith.

  The train stopped at last at Tisbury, waiting in the wings for the down-line train to hurtle by. ‘Excellent management,’ said Fiscal-Smith as they drew up on the platform and the usual Titanic-style evacuation took place from its eccentric height, passengers leaping into the air and hoping to be caught. ‘Very dangerous,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘Very well-known hazard this line. “Every man for himself”,’ and then completely disappeared.

  Dulcie and Susan were rescued by the intellectual family man who came running up the platform to take Dulcie in his arms and lift her down.

  ‘How well you can run,’ she said to him. ‘Your legs are as long as dear Edward’s. An English gentleman could always be identified by his long legs you know, once. Though in old age they all became rather floppy in the shanks.’ Seeing suddenly Old Filth’s rotting remains in the English cemetery in Dacca and nobody to put flowers on them, her pale eyes filled with tears. Everyone gone now, she thought. Nobody left.

  ‘Come on back with us,’ said the family man, ‘It’s a foul night. I’ll drop you at home. We have a car rug,’ but she said, ‘No, we’d better stay together. But you can have Fiscal-Smith,’ she added, which he seemed not to hear. Fiscal-Smith had already found Susan’s old Morris Traveller in the car park and was fussing round it.

  ‘Well, keep our lights in view,’ called the family man, who was at once invisible through the murk and lashing rain.

  As Susan drove carefully along behind, they all fell silent as they passed Old Filth’s empty house, in its hollow. Dulcie didn’t peer down at it, thinking of all his happy years, his steady friendship and noble soul. What Fiscal-Smith was thinking it was hard to say. The car swished through lakes of rain in the road, the deluge and the dark. All looked straight ahead.

  * * *

  They began to speak again only as they reached Privilege House where in minutes lights blazed, central heating and hot water were turned up higher, soup, bread and cheese appeared and the telly was switched on for the News. The smell of fat, navy-blue hyacinths in bowls set heads spinning and the polished blackness of the windows before the curtains were drawn across showed that the wet and starless world had passed into infinite space. Dulcie thought again about the last scene of the last act.

  ‘Why were all the lights on in his house?’ asked Herman.

  ‘Whose house? Filth’s?’ said Susan. ‘They weren’t. ‘It’s been locked up since Christmas. Chains on the gates.’

  ‘Didn’t notice the gates,’ said Herman, ‘but the lights were on all over it. In every room. Shining like always. But there seemed to be more than usual. Every window blazing.’

  ‘I expect it has caught fire,’ said Fiscal-Smith, searching out Dulcie’s drinks cupboard, as old friends are permitted to do.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next morning Dulcie awoke in her comfortable foam-lined bed with a sense of unrest. Her window was open in the English tradition, two inches at the top for the circulation of refreshing night air (how they had dreamed of it in all their years in Hong Kong) long before the European central-heating. In their native English bedrooms Dulcie and Willy had always eschewed central-heating as working-class.

  Outside was country silence except for the clatter of an occasional wooden-looking leaf from the Magnolia Grandiflora hitting the stone terrace. Her watch said 5 A.M. Excellent! She was in time for Prayer for the Day on faithful BBC four, which she still called the Home Service.

  Where was she? Was it today they had to go to London to dear Eddie’s thing? No, no. They’d done that. Flames, she thought, Flames. Ashes to ashes—, and drifted off to sleep again.

  * * *

  Quite soon she woke once more, the flames retreating. She trotted downstairs in slippers and her old dressing-gown of lilac silk, feeling a sort of twitch in a back molar. Oh dear. Time for a check-up. So expensive. Own teeth every one of them. Thanks to Nannie. A full five minutes brushing morning and night. More than the teeth at yesterday’s party—. Oh, the awful rictus grins! And the bridges! You could see them. Queen Elizabeth the first who never smiled. The old Queen Mother who never stopped, and should have done. Early-morning tea.

  Willy had always made the early-morning tea. Not in Hong Kong, of course. There had always been a slender maid with a tray, smiling. They thought, the Chinese and the Americans, that it was disgusting. Called it ‘bed-tea’. Oh Willy! She tried not to think of Willy in case once again she found that she had forgotten what he had looked like. Ah—all well. Here he came on the stairs, his fastidious feet, balancing tea-cups and deeply thinking. ‘Oh, Willy! So many years! I haven’t really forgotten what you looked like. “Pastry Willy”—but you grew quite weather beaten after we came home. It’s just, sometimes lately that you’ve grown hazy. Doesn’t matter. Changes nothing. I wish we could have a good talk Willy, about money. There doesn’t seem to be much of it. I always put the Bank letters in your desk. Very silly of me. I don’t open many of them.’

  He was watching her up by the kitchen ceiling, very kindly, but noncommittally. No need ever to discuss the big things. He knew she was—well—superficial. Hopeless at school. Men love that, Nannie had said. But shrewd, she thought. Oh, yes. I’m shrewd. An unshakable belief in the Church of England and God’s mercy, and Duty and ‘routine’. Early tea. Clocks all over the house (fewer now I’ve sold the carriage clocks) wound up each Sunday evening after Evensong. Jesus had probably never seen a clock. Were there any? She tried to imagine the Son of Man with a wrist watch, all the time putting from her hazy early-morning mind the fact that she couldn’t remember Willy at all. ‘I can’t see your face,’ she called.

  Come on. Hospitality, said his voice from behind the kitchen curtains. Tags and watch-words, she thought. That’s what all the love and passion comes down to. We never really talked.

  And imagine, sex! Extraordinary! I suppose we did it? Susan was a lovely baby.

  She made tea from the loose Darjeeling in the black and gold tin and carried up a pretty tray with sugar basin and milk jug—. What am I doing all this fo
r, Willy? It’s no wonder Susan just thumps down a mug. Our bloody parents. Highest standards. But what of, Willy? Standards of what? Oh! He had vanished again.

  Good. He couldn’t answer her.

  ‘Now then, Fiscal-Smith. Rockingham china for Fiscal-Smith. I bet he lives off pots and shards in Yorkshire. Mugs there, certainly. And I’m still trying to show him the rules.’ She tottered up to the guest room and found it empty.

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Fiscal-Smith,’ she called. (What is his first name? Nobody ever knew.)

  ‘Hullo?’

  (That must be sad for him. Nobody ever asking.)

  ‘Hullo?’

  Silence. The bed in his room was tidily turned back—his pale pink and white winceyette pyjamas folded on the pillow, his dressing-gown and slippers side by side by an upright chair. (So he’d brought his night-things. He’d intended to stay from the start. The old chancer!)

  Except that he was absent.

  She sat down on his bed and thought, he says he comes in honour of Filth and yet all he wants is to be looked after here. That’s all he’s after. Being looked after. You were so different, Willy. And now all I want is someone to deal with those letters (My slippers. Time for new slippers) and peace and quiet. And—absolute silence.

  There was a most unholy crash from below stairs.

  As she shrieked, she remembered that she was not alone. There were others in the house. Left over from yesterday. She couldn’t actually remember the end of yesterday. Any yesterday. The evening before had usually slipped away now by morning. King Lear, poor man—.

  But last night hadn’t there been something rather sensational? Rather terrible? Oh dear, yes. Poor Old Filth’s empty house had burned to the ground. Or something of the sort.

  She looked at her feet. Yes, it was time for new slippers. Then through the window she saw Fiscal-Smith tramping up the hill towards her, from the direction of Filth’s house, still in yesterday’s funeral suit and he was looking jaunty. Eighty plus. And plus. 5.30 A.M. Beginning to rain. He saw her and called out, ‘All well. It’s still there.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Filth’s nice old place. The boy was wrong. No sign of fire. I’ve a feeling that boy is a stirrer. He was a stirrer years ago at that lunch you gave. A little monkey!’

  ‘Do you never forget anything, Fiscal-Smith? What lunch? A life-time of lunches. And with’—for a wobbly second she forgot her grandson’s name. ‘When? Where?’

  ‘Two fat sisters. And a priest. And Veneering, of course. Oh, I forget nothing. Mind never falters. It is rather a burden to me, Dulcie.’

  ‘You are arrogant, Fiscal-Smith.’

  ‘I simply put my case,’ he said.

  He was with her in the kitchen now. She said, ‘Your case is in your bedroom. Do you want help with packing?’—and shocked herself.

  There fell a silence as he stepped out upon the terrace with his cup of tea.

  * * *

  At the same moment, down in Old Filth’s house in the dell, Isobel Ingoldby, wrapped now in his Harrods dressing gown instead of her own pink silk coat, was turning off the lights which she had left burning all night. Foolish, she was saying, I’m the one paying for the electricity now. Until I sell. Why did I light the whole place up through the dark? Some primitive thing about the spirit finding its way home? But he won’t be searching. His spirit is free. It’s back in his birth-place. It maybe never quite left it.

  She boiled a kettle for tea but forgot to make any. She wandered about. Betty’s favourite chair stood packed up in the hall. His present for Fiscal-Smith. Nobody gave Fiscal-Smith presents.

  This house—the house she had inherited—watched her as she went about. So tidy. So austere. So dead. Betty’s photograph on a mantelpiece, fallen over sideways.

  Isobel had slept in his bed last night. Someone had removed the sheets and she had lain on the bare mattress with rugs over her. She thought of the first time she’d seen him in bed. He was about fourteen years old. He was terrified. We both knew then. I was only his school-friend’s older cousin, but we recognised each other. All our lives.

  * * *

  Fiscal-Smith still stood on Dulcie’s terrace half an hour later, still examined the view over the Roman road towards Salisbury, the wintery sun trying to enliven the grey fields through the rain.

  Dulcie came walking past him towards the wrought-iron gates, fully dressed now in tweed skirt and cardigan, remarkably high heels and some sort of casual coat, not warm, from the cupboard under the stairs. She carried a prayer-book. Fiscal-Smith shouted, ‘Where are you going? Filth’s house is perfectly all right.’

  ‘I am going to church.’

  ‘Dulcie, it’s six o’clock in the morning. It is clouding over. It’s beginning to rain. That coat you had in Hong Kong. And it isn’t Sunday.’ He came up close to her.

  ‘I need to say my prayers.’

  ‘It will be locked.’

  ‘I doubt it. The great Chloe is supposed to open it but she usually forgets to shut and lock it the night before.’

  ‘The mad woman who runs about with cakes?’

  ‘Yes. Well-meaning, but the mind’s going. Sometimes she locks in the morning and un-locks at night. We shall have to tell the church-warden soon. Actually I think she may be the church-warden. There’s nothing much going on in the church. Not even anybody sleeping rough. It’s too damp—.’

  He was padding along behind her.

  ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘Unlocked. Unlocked all night.’

  * * *

  Inside, the church scowled at them and blew a blast of damp breath. Hassocks looked ready to sprout moss and there was the hymn-book smell. Notices curled on green baize gone ragged, and the stained-glass windows appeared to bulge inwards from the flanking walls. Two sinister ropes dangled in the belfry tower. It was bitterly cold.

  ‘Stay there,’ Dulcie ordered him, making for a chancel prayer desk up near the organ. ‘I can’t pray with anyone watching.’

  ‘The Muslims can,’ he said, trying to bring the blood back to his knobbed hands. ‘This is a refrigerator, not a church.’

  ‘Muslims,’ she said, ‘can crowd together on mats and swing about and keep their circulation going and you don’t see what the women do but I don’t think they pray with men, in a huddle. Anyway, I need what I know,’ and she vanished, eastwards.

  ‘Five minutes,’ he shouted after her as her high heels tapped out of sight. ‘Utter madness,’ he said to the stained glass windows. ‘Hopeless woman. Hopeless village.’ His voice echoed hopelessly around the rood-screen and its sad saints. Rows of regimental flags hung drooping down the side-aisle like shredding dish cloths, still as sleeping bats. ‘They’re all off their heads here,’ he called out. There was the sound of a heavy key being turned in the lock of the south door, just behind him. The one by which they had entered.

  He sprang towards it, flung himself first through the wire, then the baize door, the south door they had just pushed heavily through. He tugged and shouted.

  But the door was now firmly and determinedly locked from the outside. Chloe, on her bike, had been thinking that it was evening again.

  * * *

  Up in the chancel there was no sign of Dulcie but at length he saw the top of her head and her praying hands. She was like a—what was it called? A little Dutch thing. Little painting on wood. ‘Praying hands,’ he thought. ‘They have them on Christmas cards. Dürer. The Germans were perfectly all right then.’ Her head was bowed (‘She still has thick, curly hair’). ‘Five minutes,’ he called, like a tout, or an invigilator.

  * * *

  Soon he began to hum a tune from his seat in front of the choir-stall and after a minute she opened angry eyes.

  ‘We are locked in,’ he said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said.

  ‘I heard the key t
hrust in and turned. It was Chloe.’

  Dulcie went pattering back down the central aisle, tried the oak door first with one hand, then the other, then both hands together. She regarded the broad and ancient lock. ‘You heard her? Chloe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you shout?’

  ‘I think I did. Now, leave all this to me, Dulcie, I banged and rattled and yelled. I will do it again.’

  ‘Yes. She is getting deaf.’

  They stood in icy shadow and he called again, ‘Hullo?’

  ‘It’s no good shouting, Fiscal-Smith. Nobody in the village is up yet except Chloe.’ But he roared out, ‘Hullo there?’ ‘There may be someone walking a dog?’

  ‘Nobody walks a dog as early as this in winter. We are all old here.’

  ‘I’m tired of this “old”,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘We don’t have it in the north. Won’t Susan be coming by on the horse? And where’s that boy?’

  ‘Sleeping. And Susan won’t be out for at least two hours. She may notice we are missing, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘you don’t carry such a thing as a mobile telephone?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. Do you?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘We could try shouting louder.’

  And so they did for a time—treble and bass—but there was no response.

  ‘Of course, there are the bells,’ said Dulcie. She was shaking now with cold. ‘It might warm us up.’

  Fiscal-Smith released the tufted, woolly bell-ropes from their loops in the tower and handed one to her, icy to the touch. She closed her eyes and dragged at it with childish fists. It did not stir.

  ‘I’ll have a go,’ he said, and after a time, sulkily, on the edge of outrage, the damp and matted bell-pull began to move stiffly up and down: but Fiscal-Smith looked exhausted.