Faith Fox

by Jane Gardam

  ‘We’ll be off, then.’ Ernie and Nick rose as one man.

  ‘Don’t you want to see Philip?’

  ‘Naah,’ said The Smikes together. ‘Tell ’im: see yer,’ said Nick.

  They melted from the room, down the passage, out at the back door and across the cement yard. They knew their way around this house as they knew their way round a number of houses in various parts of the Tees estuary, and perfectly well in the dark. From Toots and Dolly’s house, though, they had never lifted a thing, and nor would they, ever.

  21

  Suppose yourself a gargoyle or perhaps a bird, or a very small photographer hanging in the basket of a very small balloon up in the vaulted shadows of the roof of the great hall of Farnham Castle on the occasion of the reception for the Seton-Fairley wedding. You will find yourself looking down on a carpet of constantly blowing flowers planted tight from wall to wall. Floating up to you there will be echoing, yapping waves of celebration growing louder and shriller as time goes by. More flowers are constantly cramming themselves through the great doorway of the hall, weaving into the throng like a stream merging into the sea, disappearing at last into the general movement of the tide. There is a serpentine pattern among the flower heads of coloured chiffon and straw and velvet. They press forward towards a border of alternate black and coloured flowers standing in a row on an underplanting of red carpet. The stream of purples and pinks and greens and yellows and black-and-whites and heliotropes sways up to this little line of the knot garden. Each flower head bends towards another along the line and then withdraws as in a dance. The little shrieks and exclamations that arise from the line are more perilous and fragile than elsewhere. The glitter of glass, the popping noises like pistols in the corn here and there about the hall, make the flower heads nod and toss a little faster. The feeling now grows gayer. The flowers grow dense as cloth, a tapestry of tight stitches. The music begins.

  Stay up there in the rafters for comfort, for Farnham Castle is not one of the great castles of the world and seven hundred flower heads is its capacity. More than its capacity. Or, if you must—swoop down. Down you go, down and down, and you are standing close, so close up against the backs and fronts and heads and hats, angling your own head so that the domed fronts of men and the brims and chins of women don’t get in your eye or sweep your drink from your hand.

  And watch out for your feet or they will be trodden to bits by the unseen army of shoes below. Close your eyes against the cigarette lit up beside your left eyeball, tilt your head back against the teeth of mouths laughing. To survive, light a fag yourself, swig down some champagne (it isn’t sparkling wine) and start making little screams and signals of your own to anyone, anywhere. ‘Aren’t you ——?’ ‘I’m ——’ (whoever you are). ‘But I’m sure you are.’ ‘Wherever was it we –?’ ‘Years ago.’ ‘How lovely!’ ‘And how are Deirdre, Angela, Sydonia, Humphrey, dear old Miles?’ ‘Dead—oh, I’m so sorry.’ ‘So sorry, darling.’ And so on.

  There were two considerations at the Seton-Fairley wedding that were of prime importance to both families: one, that the reception should be held in the Castle to show that each side could feel they had rank and, two, that there should be the utter maximum number of guests, three hundred and fifty a side, and all of them closely interwoven to prove level pegging in the social register.

  With seven hundred, it is possible that you will not get anywhere near a soul you know. In the depths of the seething flowery streams it occurred even to Pammie (who knows most of the world) that she and Hugo might attend and leave the reception never having seen a familiar face except for the bridal line-up, assuming they should ever reach the bridal line-up. Hugo hoped at most to get a word up there with old Puffy, though even that depended on whether old Puffy could still stand up. He’d been a bit shaky at his retirement and that was twenty years ago.

  And Hugo himself wasn’t looking too good, thought Pammie. How was she to get him somewhere to sit down? A drink? A canapé? (No food to speak of at this do; who but Christ could feed seven hundred cheek to cheek?)

  ‘Hugo, my love,’ said Pammie, ‘keep round the edges. There’s a thin place here. Stand in it. Don’t move until I get someone to find you a chair,’ and she stood him beside some silent and unintroduced people all wondering what to say to one another, waiting for alcohol, smiling tightly. She turned away and battled out of sight, the crowd closing behind her.

  But Hugo had his stick and leaned on it, and smiled and waited and soon found himself taken up in some undertow and drawn with the silent companions towards the happy couple standing on the red carpet. As he was moved nearer the line he found he couldn’t remember who the hell any of them were at this awful bloody wedding, and to get over the fright of this he concentrated on someone in the line who was delivering a top-speed rundown into the ear of the woman on his right, describing all who approached.

  ‘Very old friend of family, second cousin or so over from Singapore, Daisy’s aunt, old family retainer, Rosie very nice, not sure of the one on the stick, Thomasina Fox coming next but three, old Herbert’s widow, lost her daughter, bit of a mystery about a baby, didn’t expect her . . . ’

  Hugo nodded and mumbled his way along the line, nobody knowing who he was, which rather pleased him, until he came to Puffy in a wheelchair at the end.

  Puffy was looking broad and remote with bloodshot blue eyes and white moustache. He was leaning back, abstracted, like a Viking plotting murder and pillage.

  ‘Great day, Puffy,’ said Hugo.

  ‘Got a drink, Hugo?’

  ‘All in good time.’

  ‘Ha!’

  Hugo passed along, content, and then stood about waiting for Thomasina. As she fell away from the line he put out both his arms, stick or no, in an attempt to embrace her. But she seemed distracted. For a moment she didn’t even seem to recognise him. She looks haunted, he thought. Bags under the eyes. And whatever has she got on her head? Looks like a rag, and it’s coming undone.

  ‘My, Thomasina!’

  She looked at him, the famous smile forgotten, and he thought, By God, she’s in a mess, and he took her lean arm and tried to lead her away. She said nothing when they had to stop in the crush, only glared at him. Hugo remembered something of Pammie’s about not speaking to her. He hadn’t the faintest idea what to do next and the glare began to put him off balance. He prodded his stick into the ancient slabs of the floor, grabbed two drinks from a passing tray, passed one to Thomasina and looked desperately round. There was an old silk shoulder nearby so he grabbed it and turned it towards him. ‘Hello. Hello—Hugo Jefford. You remember me? I wonder if you know my friend Thomasina Fox? Er?’ and Madeleine, turning round, smiled at Thomasina and held out her hand.

  Standing like a quiet queen, Madeleine said, ‘My dear, I think we might escape from here, don’t you? I was thinking of baked beans. I had no lunch but egg sandwiches. We could find a café somewhere?’

  Old Hugo, roaring with bewildered laughter, backed away and disappeared with relief into the mêlée and Thomasina tried to do the same.

  ‘No, no, but I mean it,’ said Madeleine. ‘It is so important. I’ve been trying to keep you in view since the church. To tell you about Giles. So important.’

  She smiled once to left and once to right, touched an arm or two, and took Thomasina’s hand. She then led her graciously away, a passage opening up for them. Somebody bossy, some sort of grandchild, tried to suggest otherwise, but Madeleine ruffled its hair with her free hand and passed on.

  Thomasina, following, looked back to see if Giles’s head was in sight. It usually stood above other heads like a king palm tree, but it was not there. She thought, He’s gone, then. He’s left me. I thought so.

  Madeleine was disappearing into a Rolls-Royce and Thomasina followed. The car swooped off in the direction of the town centre.

  ‘A side street,’ said Madeleine to the chauffeur, ‘w
e want a side street, and a snack bar will do nicely. Though we’re really after baked beans. We’re famished.’

  The chauffeur looked in his mirror and then away and the car slid down various alleys and stopped outside something called The Sulawesi Johnnie. ‘How delightful,’ said Madeleine. ‘Sauce bottles on all the tables. Now away you go back and thank you so much. I hope you haven’t long to wait for whoever’s chauffeur you are, but I expect you will have. I suppose you wouldn’t care to join us? No—well, I’m not surprised at that either, two old bats like us. Come along, Thomasina.’

  22

  Jack was out again with the hoe, his shadow still behind him, the ground still white with dew that looked like snow, and it was all of half an hour after dawn. With every shove of the blade he said, Jocasta. He had stopped praying. Jocasta, Jocasta, said his mind’s voice. For she had come across the cloister and into the kitchen and her purple shawl had fallen round her feet and she had put her arms around him. She reached nowhere near his shoulder and her head was sideways against his heart. She had said nothing but had held him and held him, and he had said, ‘Jocasta, Jocasta.’

  The Missus at the porridge pot had pursed up her mouth and said, after a wonderfully long moment, ‘Well, it’s ready. If you’re coming for it, that is.’ She hadn’t liked looking at them standing together as he had buried his face in Jocasta’s hair and said, ‘Jocasta, Jocasta.’ The Missus hadn’t known where to look. ‘Shameless. And they don’t sleep together. You know that, don’t you? No, they don’t. Him soon as not kipping down anywhere, in the church all night sometimes. Off his rocker, poor old Jack. So funny, Andrew every inch the proper doctor. Never think they were brothers.’ The Missus had been a mill girl in Lancashire. Her life now was Jack. She had accompanied him on the last disastrous venture, of which nobody spoke. She was old, vain, plain, and knew it, but The Priors revolved around her because of her unique talent for creating a feeling of guilt in anybody who crossed her path. ‘I am old and weak and my life is done but I have run a spotless course. See thou doest likewise,’ said every pore and nerve-ending of The Missus. To see Jack and Jocasta standing as one being a few feet from her, Jack breathing deep into Jocasta’s hair—it was unknown. It was indecent. Jocasta was doing it to disgust. Jack was of course oblivious.

  Jocasta released her husband and went away and Jack sat and ate The Missus’s porridge, his face alight with contentment. He smiled at The Missus when she said there’d be no bacon for anyone else if the Tibetans were to have any. The kitchen, the courtyard, the chickens scratching in the tombstones, the throb of music and some shouting from the Tibetan quarters in the early winter sunshine—it was like the first morning of the world. Jack was sure now, unequivocally, that The Priors was the guiding light that God had instructed him to build in a heathen and poisonous world.

  Andrew came in and sat down to wait for his bacon and eggs and Jack saw in him a man of sorrows. No wife would come over to him and wordlessly take him in her arms, trustingly, not caring who saw, not needing even to speak any endearment because they were one, one person. Oh poor Andrew, poor bright Holly. How could he bear being without her? Much less than half the purpose of his life must remain to him. Holly so strong and vivid and indestructible. And not a sign of self-pity in Andrew. Not a flicker.

  ‘Andrew,’ he said, ‘I think we should say a prayer.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Now. A prayer for Holly.’

  ‘I’m off to see if there’s more bacon,’ said The Missus and Andrew said, ‘Sorry, Jack, I’m off to Toots and Dolly.’

  ‘But it’s not eight o’clock in the morning. They’ll hardly be up.’

  ‘I have to drop in at the hospital in Middlesbrough with Faith. Someone ought to see to her eye.’ But he put a hand on Jack’s shoulder as he passed him to pour himself tea.

  ‘I said that about her eye two days ago,’ said The Missus, slapping down burnt bacon on the table before Jack, who looked at it vaguely. ‘Nobody deigns to listen to me.’

  ‘I did. I am,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I was one of a large family,’ said The Missus.

  ‘And I’m a doctor. There’s a test they can do on the eye. Sometimes it’s just a blocked tear duct but sometimes not. She would be kept in overnight and back by Monday.’

  ‘Not round here, she wouldn’t,’ said The Missus. ‘There won’t be a bed for six months and by then the eye will have cleared itself.’

  ‘I’ll get her in,’ said Andrew.

  ‘You won’t. That doesn’t do up here. You’re not in your own place south now. Say you’re a doctor and you’re back of the queue. Not that that’s so dreadful. I never found doctors so wonderful. I helped with me mam. Could do the lot—break the waters, untie the cord round the neck. Minute it gets tricky it’s “Shall I leave it to the nurse?” That was doctors. Not that I’d speak against the profession publicly. I know my place. Oh yes. But I could massage that eye right with my thumb in ten minutes.’

  ‘And damage the nerve and give her a squint for life. No thanks. I’m taking her down there and then I’ll go on and pick up Philip from Toots and Dolly. I’ll take Jocasta with me, OK, Jack? Might take her along the beach a bit. Leave the baby for Toots and Dolly to goggle over for a bit.’

  ‘She’s somewhere near,’ said Jack, ‘she’s just left. Take her by all means. Jocasta gets little enough time away. She needs a change.’

  Eating toast fast, not looking at Jack, Andrew said, ‘Great. We’ll be back by lunchtime, then.’

  So Jack went back into the field, moving slowly, step by step, down the courgettes. He stopped once or twice to reflect. Once, he picked the pale-primrose trumpet of a flower. He ate it slowly to the last stamen and looked up at the sky. His life was together at last. New year, perhaps a child?

  23

  When The Smikes had left and Mrs. Middleditch had also departed, carrying an armful of Toots’s washing up the street and leaving an atmosphere behind her, Dolly began preparations for the visit of her widowed son and grandchild by draping Toots’s best clothes over various pieces of furniture and switching on a second bar of the electric fire to make sure all would be properly aired. Long woollen leggings which he called his knickers and a long-sleeved woollen shirt that would go over the long-sleeved woollen vest he wore in bed and changed on Saturdays were spread across the armchair. Clean socks were put side by side on his bed table and his suit and braces laid across the sideboard with a clothes brush beside them. A new red tie hung round the clock on the mantelpiece. Dolly then came hobbling from the kitchen with beautifully polished black shoes, one of them with a built-up heel. She moved the bed table away from the bed, turned back the bedclothes and brought the walking frame up beside him.

  She watched him heave himself over and out and his pyjama trousers fell down round his ankles as they did every morning. She walked behind him down the passage, holding them up. He said, as he did every morning as he led this procession of two, ‘Give over. Let them drop. I’ll step out of them,’ and she said, ‘There are some standards you don’t let go,’ and why couldn’t he take the time to fasten the cord? And he said, ‘Not worth it just for down the passage.’ It was their morning refrain, their matins.

  In the invalid bathroom built out on the draughty extension to the kitchen where there had once been a maid and a charwoman under Dolly’s eye, she opened the door of the plastic bath as he stepped from the trousers. She helped him out of the pyjama jacket and vest and steadied his shrivelled body on its thin shanks through the little door. She held him as he lowered his thin old bottom onto the bath seat. She ran the water carefully, the cold with the hot, squeezed it warmly over him and soaped all down his back, remembering it when it was young, its muscles like ropes. He’d had hardness and glow to him then. He sat hunched forward now, munching on nothing, staring at nothing, hating the feel of her hands on him. ‘It’s work for a nurse, this,’ he said, the daily int
roit, and she said, ‘Don’t be so silly. You’d do it for me.’

  He knew he wouldn’t. He could never wash an old woman. He knew too that she knew he didn’t dislike every aspect of this bathing and soaping. The once irascible, fierce, invincible Toots had discovered that he liked to accept care, as babies accept.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘they’ll be on their way.’

  She rinsed him with an old sponge they’d long ago brought from Greece. ‘Give me that flannel,’ he said. ‘You’re not doing down there.’

  ‘They may well be,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot to do, so get out. You’ve to shave yet.’ She dried him, helped him into his dressing gown with protecting arms and sat him on a cork stool before a mirror that came out like a fake boxing glove on a metal spring, but he couldn’t see to shave himself.

  ‘Put your glasses on,’ said Dolly.

  ‘I can’t get the enthusiasm,’ he said, ‘when I see the problem. Looks a lot better blurred.’

  ‘Blurred, it looks like an old tramp,’ she said. ‘Like this designer stubble. Like that Nick.’

  ‘Give us the razor here, then. That’s a good point you made.’

  There was the ritual drying of the face, the combing of long-gone hair, the procession back to the bedroom, the slow sacrament of dressing. He heaved himself into the Windsor chair with a table in front of him as she toiled about making the bed, hauling at a heavy cover that was meant to make it look like a divan. She came and went with the night bottle and then hid it in a drawer. She knelt before him to ease on the shining shoes. She tied their laces. ‘I could do with my coffee,’ he said, and she said, ‘Well, you can wait till I’ve dusted and hoovered round.’

  ‘The brasses could do with a rub.’

  ‘They were done yesterday.’

  ‘There’s no fruit in that bowl.’

  ‘I’m opening a window before I’m fussing with fruit. The smell in here’s disgusting. That’s what comes of sleeping where you live all day. We should be out of this house and in care.’