Faith Fox

by Jane Gardam

  He did not mention Jocasta and he didn’t specify exactly what it was about Alice Banks that he missed. He had found to his guilty shame that it wasn’t really all that much. He thought of her angry, rusty presence over the spluttering pans and then imagined Pammie in her bright clothes and manner, talkative in shiny Surrey lipstick, catering with ease for any batch of needy souls that might present itself. Carrying little Faith about against her tweedy shoulder.

  But Pammie had needed time. Her house had to be in order, her Christmas telephoning complete. No Christmas cards to send this year—the widow’s privilege—but many friends who’d offered to have her for Christmas had to be placated and told she was going away, and where, and to whom. The dog had to be dumped on the long-suffering gardener, water and central heating switched off, burglar alarms pepped up and the halogen lights to the drive and the recording of a pack of Rottweilers made ready for anyone who approached the wrought-iron gates—except, of course, the postman, who knew you have to slink round the side along the wall like any self-respecting thief would do. ‘Also,’ said Pammie, ‘how very ridiculous if Giles and Thomasina are going up there that we shouldn’t all travel together.’

  ‘Alas,’ said Giles, ‘Pammie—I’m afraid we’ve undertaken Madeleine.’

  ‘Madeleine? Madeleine Seton-Fairley. Never! And not Puffy? Left behind? And what does Thomasina think of that, I wonder?’

  ‘Puffy’s being looked after by some woman, a Miss Banks. She’s already arrived.’

  ‘So that’s where the frightful little woman went. Poor Jack. He’s been very badly let down.’

  ‘Rather a crisis going on up there, I gather. One thing and another,’ said Giles. ‘And very good of you to sort it out, if I may say so, Pammie. Queer sort of Christmas break for you.’

  ‘It’s probably for much longer than Christmas,’ she said, looking at her nails. ‘Jack may want me there with him for some time.’

  ‘In which case,’ said Thomasina, ‘you’ll have a mass of stuff to take and we’ll need more than one car. And, after all, we’ll need our own car, to come home again.’

  ‘Oh—back on the train,’ said Pammie. ‘Much faster. I’ll drive you to a station from The Priors. Actually, I’d like your company on the way. If you would. It might be just a bit embarrassing for me, arriving alone.’ She looked coy and Thomasina looked sickened. Thomasina also looked and sounded tired.

  ‘There will be Madeleine to transport, too,’ Giles warned Pammie. ‘She’s immovable.’

  ‘Oh, there’ll be plenty of room. I’m only taking tweeds and woollies and boots and a present or two. Is she large? I forget.’

  ‘No,’ said Giles.

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomasina. ‘Big-boned.’

  The main difficulty that the journey presented was getting everyone together at the same place at the same time.

  Madeleine had elected to stay all the time in London since the arrival of The Missus in Kent. She said she travelled light and had her mink with her for the cold to come and Puffy sounded to be perfectly splendid, not thinking of Christmas at all. She had a wonderful woman for Puffy. Did Giles know? Had she told him? She was growing hazier about Puffy and told Thomasina on the telephone how she had always loved him so, rather as if Puffy had already left the stage. She told Pammie that she had phoned him from the Academic Ladies one night and there had been no reply, so she had had to ring the police, who were used to her and very kind and calming and had discovered Puffy’s phone had been taken off the hook. ‘Probably gambling,’ she said. ‘People don’t altogether know, Pammie, what I have had to bear.’

  Then there was the general. He had had to go back to his house to see to things: excuse himself from all the drinks parties, and tell the Chaplain he couldn’t take the bag round at the midnight service, and leave a present for the milkman, and countermand the two turkey steaks that he had been thinking of taking over to Thomasina on Christmas Day.

  Pammie and Thomasina planned to travel from their Surrey dwellings together, side by side in Pammie’s car, and pick up Madeleine and Giles in central London.

  Madeleine took charge. Not stirring from one of the chintz chairs of the Academic Ladies, she arranged for the party to gather outside it and at two toots on the horn from Pammie after breakfast on the twenty-second she and Giles would step out of the door and into the car and off. Giles would of course be staying the night before with her at the Club.

  ‘But I have my own club,’ said the general.

  ‘Mine is much more convenient.’

  (‘I do not believe in Madeleine,’ said Thomasina to Pammie. ‘I think Giles has invented her to hurt me.’ ‘Then get rid of him,’ said Pammie. ‘Drop him. Drop her. Let them both melt like morning dew.’ But Thomasina didn’t reply.)

  ‘I am not sure,’ said Giles, ‘that it is possible for me to stay at a woman’s club, Maddie. I’m neither an academic nor a lady.’

  Madeleine said, ‘My dear, I’m not at all sure that I am,’ and that the place was full of old generals staying with their ex-girlfriends.

  This alarmed him more than anything. ‘Look here, Maddie. I suppose you do realise that Thomasina and I are, well, pretty close and so on?’

  But she only smiled.

  He was relieved to find that he was allotted a bedroom that was decidedly single. A very nice room, virginal clean and collegiate, but a section of it had been annexed as bathroom for the room next door. An academic lady could be heard singing there in her shower. When he tiptoed with his sponge bag along the corridor in the morning he found another one making herself tea. She had ranked metal bars across her head and was reading Sonnets from the Portuguese. It was a world he had not met.

  Madeleine had drifted mysteriously away the evening before and he’d rather wondered if it had been round the corner to the Dorchester, but there she was in the Academic Ladies foyer at a quarter to eight, waiting for the car, watching from the window. She was wearing Wellingtons. Her fur coat was over a chair; her skin luminous with money and French creams. She was surrounded by luggage, enough for a cruise to Bombay.

  ‘Edward!’

  ‘Giles.’

  ‘Giles! Did you sleep? Did the bells wake you?’

  ‘Bells? No. There was a bit of singing.’

  ‘Oh, I do love London at Christmas. Bells. Singing. Fortnum & Mason pâté. You can often see the Queen there, you know. I’ve seen Charles buying his cheese at Paxton’s. I do rather wonder why we’re leaving it all.’

  So did Giles. But then he thought how helpless and romantic and reminiscent Madeleine looked: every now and then a flicker, not exactly a smile, reminded him of what she had been. Well, still was. Somewhere. Very pretty woman. Diana Cooper type. Bloody unkind really, this crumbly wrinkly stuff they all go on about. Not on.

  He sat beside her. ‘I’d much rather be staying in London, if you want to know, Maddie. Some coffee?’

  ‘You shouldn’t tangle with widows,’ she said. ‘There’s great safety in a husband about, even if it’s silly old Bertie.’

  ‘Puffy.’

  ‘Ah yes, Puffy.’

  ‘Coffee only in the breakfast room,’ the Desk said to Giles. ‘And I don’t believe you’re a member here.’

  Madeleine said, ‘Do you know, it may be nice after all to be leaving London.’

  He said, ‘Now—Madeleine, I want you to think very hard indeed and tell me why it is you are coming with us to Yorkshire.’

  ‘Oh, loneliness,’ she said, ‘curiosity. Trying to keep ahead of my wits, or lack of them. Being with you again, Giles.’

  ‘And Puffy?’

  ‘Oh darling, shut up, Puffy’s gone. Marvellous man, but he’s gone. I always wanted to marry you. You were an awful fool.’

  Outside, Pammie could be seen marching round her small Peugeot and kicking its tyres thoughtfully, considering the hours ahead. Thomasina, in the f
ront passenger seat, did not get out or turn her head. Giles went out, opened her door and kissed her cheek in a conjugal way and then began to arrange luggage in the boot. As well as the cases, Madeleine was transporting some large bowls of spring bulbs, bought at Harrods, that were to go in last. Giles himself was taking a gun.

  ‘A gun, Giles?’ asked Thomasina.

  ‘Might get a bit,’ he said, ‘according to Maddie.’

  ‘A gun at The Priors?’ said Pammie. ‘I’m afraid you’re out of luck. It’s a very religious place.’

  ‘I know The Priors,’ said Thomasina. ‘You probably didn’t notice that it’s a farm. Naturally there are guns. They have sheep.’

  Madeleine stood on the pavement. ‘Oh, Giles won’t have to shoot sheep, Thoms,’ she said. ‘We’re staying with old, old friends of mine nearby with quantities of birds to shoot. Tony Faylesafe. Darling man.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Pammie.

  ‘No, you’re not, of course, you’re going to be cook to the parson. I hope he’s paying you. They try and get away with that sort of thing, you know, parsons. Always did. I hope he isn’t Catholic; they’re the worst with willing women. But then I’m hopeless at religion. It all seems so unlikely. Tony Faylesafe’s very nice. I simply rang him. “Faylesafe,” I said, “I’m bringing a couple of friends with me to stay with you over Christmas,” and he was absolutely thrilled.’

  ‘Well, I hope so.’

  ‘No doubt about it, Giles. I told him you couldn’t possibly stay at that ghastly hotel where they put the lights out over the cheese—yes, you told me about it, however else could I know? Do you think my memory’s gone?—and I said, “We aren’t religious enough for this funny fellow,’ and he said, “Well, all right, come if you like, Maddie, but tell them I’m not a great one for Christmas.”’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Perhaps he’s a Buddhist,’ said Pammie. ‘We have some at The Priors.’

  ‘I don’t think so, darling. I think he’s a misanthropist.’

  The silence deepened. Thomasina, who had been thinking that Thoms was the name only Giles had ever called her, and that he must also have told Madeleine about the fiasco of the moorland hotel, said slowly, ‘I shan’t be staying with the Faylesafes, Madeleine.’

  They were on the move now, driving down South Audley Street, the flower shops, patisseries and jewellers all awakening for a lavish day. Early in the morning the Christmas trees were lit. The huge plane tree rooted in asphalt outside the Hilton Hotel was slung with its thousand electric bulbs like moonstone drops. Hyde Park was a green haze touched with frost.

  ‘I think I’d better warn everybody,’ said the general, ‘that I have to be back quite soon. Committee meetings. Thirty-first at the latest.’

  Thomasina had sunk to silence beside Pammie. Aromatic Madeleine reclined beside Giles in the back. Giles’s long old legs were jacknifed almost under his chin. The gun lay at their feet.

  He thought, This is a blasted awful situation, and remembered last Christmas drowsing and boozing in a chair in Wiltshire with an old cousin; and the one before with Hilda, at the golf club. No women allowed in the bar there even on Christmas Day, but she’d never minded. Glad of a gas with the other girls.

  Girls, he thought. Good girl, Hilda. Whiskers on the chin but reliable. Herself always. Full of fight. Off round the links with the dog in those terrible trousers after lunch. Cooked Christmas dinner in the evening. No fuss. No haute cuisine nonsense. Turkey and sprouts—all warmed up but very nice. Couple of old friends round for Bridge afterwards. Never got tired, Hilda. Always had my old blue smoking jacket cleaned for Christmas. Good pals. Boxing Day: walked the plantations round the garrison, feet in the sand under the Wellingtonias. Wonderful trees. Planted after Waterloo to commemorate the Iron Duke.

  Pammie was rounding the bottom of Park Lane with Apsley House afloat on its island. Tables all laid up exactly as they were for the Waterloo Ball, thought Giles. The Great Reception. Battalions of crystal, cartloads of porcelain, half a ton of silver. Ivory placement cards. Cream of Europe.

  Who the hell knows a thing about Waterloo now? he wondered, watching a covey of Arab ladies with slits for their eyes rolling over a pedestrian crossing by Marble Arch. Never even heard of it.

  Glancing down Oxford Street he saw the huge, unlighted metal banners—Donald Ducks, Father Christmases—waiting for the dark, like the shredded flags in churches that commemorate old triumphs. The laden car plunged northward into the Edgware Road.

  40

  Braithwaite,’ said the Head, ‘I suppose your parents do know, do they, that the school broke up over a week ago and that you are here only for extra coaching? Out of choice?’

  Philip looked amazed. ‘I thought it had been arranged.’

  ‘I suggested it to you. You said you would enquire. You came back in here, to my office, and said that it was on.’

  ‘Yes. I like it here now.’

  ‘You’ve been doing very well. Philip, I did just wonder. Friday is Christmas Eve. Are there any arrangements to collect you?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll ring.’

  ‘We’ve tried. The line is out of order at The Priors. You don’t want to miss Christmas at home, do you? Do you? Now where are you going?’

  ‘Oh, just out. Along—’

  ‘You’re going to wash your hands, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I might.’

  ‘Philip, could you talk about it? Do you know why you’re always washing your hands?’

  ‘They’re always dirty.’

  ‘That used not to bother you.’

  ‘No.’ He looked innocent. ‘No, actually it didn’t. Emma was saying that.’

  ‘Does my wife allow you to call her Emma?’

  ‘Yes. She’s not exactly mad about it, but she lets me.’

  ‘I see. She says, Braithwaite, that you’ve been having nightmares. She’s had to wake you up a couple of times. We wonder if you really do want to stay here? Or, can you tell me, is there some trouble at home?’

  ‘I’m not exactly mad about telling private stuff.’

  ‘Very well. But it seems such a shame when you’re beginning to get on so well otherwise. Do you want to stay on next term? Boarding?’

  ‘Yeah, well—’

  ‘Don’t say “yeah, well.” Will you answer my question. Is it the new sister? Have you had enough of her?’

  ‘You can’t get near her. She’s always with Jack’s Tibetans. But they’re going.’

  ‘So who will look after her then? Will your mother be in charge? Is that it, Braithwaite? Are you miserable about the baby—jealous? It’s very normal if you are.’

  ‘I don’t know who’s going to have her,’ Philip said at last. ‘There’s nobody really. There’s a woman coming but she’s only a cook. Miss Banks left.’

  ‘I heard something about that.’

  ‘She doesn’t write to any of us. We don’t know why she went. Jack’s hopeless.’

  ‘Ah. Hopeless. Your father.’

  ‘He’s not my father. I don’t know who my father is and I’m not mad about finding out. And Jocasta’s not her mother. Faith’s mother’s dead. Jocasta has nothing to do with Faith. Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

  ‘Do you ask?’

  ‘No. I don’t go in for questions like that. My grandparents are great. I could really live with my grandparents and so could Faith, but they’re so old and they live in a foul place on the estuary.’

  ‘I know Toots and Dolly. Toots taught me. He must be getting on a bit now.’

  ‘He’s got more sense than Jack,’ said Philip, and then shut up.

  ‘Go off and have tea now. I’ll join you all in a minute. Emma and I will drive you home for Christmas if no one turns up to fetch you, but I’ll go across myself tomorrow and remind them.’

  ‘Jocasta
’ll wake up all of a sudden and remember, I expect,’ said Philip, ‘but thanks.’

  Making a Lego city on the floor with the Head’s children after tea, he thought, I wouldn’t mind Jocasta forgetting, but it’s supposed to be Faith’s christening. I bet they’ve forgotten that, too. The children crawled on him and he shook them off and they began a cheerful fight with him until he eased himself out and lay on the sofa. The family dog was on the sofa, and it rested its head on his stomach. A child tried to wheedle him back to the floor.

  ‘It’s cold ham for supper,’ Emma called. ‘Phil—yours with the little ones or later with us?’

  ‘Later, please.’

  ‘Well, well. Something new. You’re growing up.’

  ‘I’d better—’

  ‘Where are you off to now?’

  ‘Just washing my—’

  ‘Phil,’ she said, and stopped him. She led him into the kitchen. She took his hands and opened them up and kissed each palm. ‘Clean and fresh as a newborn baby’s. What’s up, Phil?’ She put his hair out of his eyes, but he flung away.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Oh well, just Jack.’

  ‘But Jack is the kindest man in the history of the world.’

  ‘He may be,’ said Philip, ‘but he gets taken in. He doesn’t understand people. Jocasta does, when she thinks, and I do, but Jack’s silly. It’s the sort of people he thinks he can help. He takes in rubbish.’

  ‘They’re Indian, aren’t they? Artists? They sound so interesting.’

  ‘Those ones are going. It’s the next lot. He wants some down-and-outs to look after; they’re off the caravan site on the salt marsh. Except he can’t look after a louse.’

  ‘Well, that’s quite a good-hearted wish, isn’t it?’

  ‘He can’t distinguish good people from bad. He’s all set on a sod coming—’

  ‘Thank you. Not sod, please.’