Faith Fox

by Jane Gardam

  ‘I’m not sure. I thought you had been sent to save me.’

  ‘I thought you were a splendid girl.’

  ‘Yes. You kept saying so. But, you see, I began to love you, Giles.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. I’m afraid I’ve treated you rather badly. Madeleine’s a frightful bore. I can’t get shot of her. Old times’ sake, and Puffy and so on. I can’t abandon her now. We should never have gone to that wedding, Thomasina. Everything was going so well before that.’

  ‘I said not, if you remember.’

  ‘No. I said not. I said you should go to see your—the baby.’

  ‘I’m going up to change for dinner now.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you need to change. Very informal.’

  ‘I think I need to change.’

  After dinner she said, ‘Sleep well, Giles,’ and went up to the four-poster and Pammie. She heard Madeleine’s voice after a time calling, ‘Giles which is the number of my room? Oh my dear, I’m so glad you’re next door. I do miss Puffy in hotels. I think I shall telephone him now. I do every night, you know, though I don’t believe he notices.’

  ‘Oh, Pammie,’ said Thomasina in bed, ‘oh Pammie. What a ghastly business.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Makes me think of my days on the fringes of royalty, this great bed. I used to stay at Blenheim, you know. There’s plenty of pillows to put down the bed between us. It used to be bolsters, but you can’t get bolsters now except in France.’

  ‘Have you ever slept with a bolster down the bed?’ (I’ll bet, Thomasina thought, she was a friend of the housekeeper.)

  ‘Yes. I once slept with a queer. Art student. Sweet boy.’

  ‘I’d not have thought you’d need a bolster if he was a queer.’

  They laughed.

  Thomasina thought how much she liked Pammie. ‘I never thought I’d be sharing a bed with you, Pammie, and Giles along the corridor.’

  ‘You must be a bit fed up, aren’t you? I’ll be no trouble anyway. I don’t suppose he was either, was he? Was he any good?’

  ‘Pammie! Shut up. You sound sixteen.’ (And, she thought, I don’t know you well enough for this.)

  ‘Oh, we’re all sixteen, Thomasina, now and then.’

  ‘You didn’t understand, did you? How I could have done it?’ and she thought, as she had been doing in the car, of the gulf between women with children and those who have none.

  Pammie said nothing.

  ‘You thought I was fickle to Holly, didn’t you? Going off with some old man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Debauched?’

  ‘Well, no. Superficial. I couldn’t have done it. When Hugo died—and, of course, a husband’s death must be worse—I found myself starting to get excited about doing up the house, and I stopped. It wasn’t on. Not appropriate. But I think that meeting Jack has helped me so very much.’

  ‘So what about Jack, then?’ Thomasina thought, Poor Pammie. And maybe, you know, you wouldn’t have had the chance with Giles. Or with anyone, the way you strut about. You can’t call Jack exactly a chance.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Thomasina. Jack’s just a spiritual adviser, and I must say it was nice to be looked at affectionately after years of being thought just a jolly old thing. Death makes us self-indulgent. Mind you, men are worse. Widowers turn to any woman when their wives die. Searching for mother.’

  ‘I can’t remember my mother,’ said Thomasina. ‘Do widows go looking for father? I can’t remember him either. Hardly.’

  ‘That’s probably why you got this thing about Holly. You and Holly.’

  ‘Holly had no thing for me, Pammie, nor anyone—she never knew anything about me. She never analysed. She was uncomplicated. She trusted and it always worked. Until Faith finished her.’

  ‘Well, she’d you to thank for being so happy. You’re the one who lost out. You were smashing. We all thought you were from the start a wonderful mother—so easy and nice. I was bloody jealous. Oh, I’m so glad you’re talking about her at last.’ Stretching her hand across the pillows she took Thomasina’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Is this Giles thing over?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

  ‘Well, thank God for that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You could find a better man. If you want one.’

  ‘There was only one,’ said Thomasina, so low Pammie wondered if she’d imagined it.

  The two women in their face cream, glasses of water beside them on the bedside tables, Pammie’s blood-pressure pills, Thomasina’s rings, both their spectacles folded near, fell side by side asleep.

  Along the corridor the general stretched to answer the bedside phone and got Madeleine in mid-sentence.

  ‘. . . playing his old seventy-eights.’

  ‘What’s this? What? Whatever time is it, Madeleine?’

  ‘Oh, not late. Half past eleven. I’ve just rung Puffy and I’m afraid there’s something wrong.’

  ‘What? Wrong?’

  ‘There’s such a noise going on down there and Henry sounded quite tiddly. I couldn’t speak to Puffy at all. Henry said that he and Miss Banks and Henry’s friend Jerry had been playing poker, but it’s very far past the time when Puffy gets put to bed. In the end I insisted on speaking to Miss Banks and she sounded rather tiddly, too. They’d just been having a snack and some music, she said.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry, Maddie. We’ll ring in the morning.’

  ‘But why wouldn’t they let me speak to Puffy? I don’t know what staff are coming to. Do you think he didn’t want to speak to me?’

  ‘In the morning. Don’t worry.’

  ‘I do worry. They are telling lies, Edward.’

  43

  Andrew was getting Christmas off, maybe, he thought, out of compassion, maybe to reflect his status. After the holiday he was being promoted to a new job, as Registrar, no longer sleeping in the hospital, no longer doing three doctors’ work, no longer on duty twenty-four hours a day. Knowing he’d made it at last—it had been slow: they’d thought him smug, acting above his station, condescending from a height, until Holly died, and then they’d grown sympathetic—knowing he’d made it at last and would be leaving this hospital for another, he felt not revitalised but numb. Stuck in his tracks.

  On the morning of the twenty-third, Andrew was sitting on the edge of the narrow bed of his cubicle with an empty suitcase on the floor, unable to get going, get dressed, do anything. Even think.

  He had bought no Christmas presents. This was the crisis grown vast in his mind. Nothing for Thomasina, nothing for Pammie, nothing for Miss Banks, to all of whom he owed so much. Nothing for the baby—though she was too young for it really to matter. Nothing for Philip, which was bad. Nothing for Jack, nothing for Toots and Dolly. He’d planned to do the lot this morning before setting off. Nip down Piccadilly to a bookshop, get some bestsellers. Ought to get Pammie something big, like a piece of jewellery. Dolly a scarf or something. Liberty’s. Toots his whisky. Jocasta. Here he stopped.

  Jocasta. Something small enough not to cause comment, but large enough, significant enough, for her to know he remembered what had been between them. Couldn’t give her a sweater. He could have given Holly a sweater. Often had. All Holly’s stuff still in the flat. His mind swooped away. Somehow he dressed and trudged out of the residential wing, but now that it was almost for the last time his feet had turned to lead. He was almost too tired to pass through the glass doors to the tired shops. Last shopping day. Oh God, he couldn’t.

  Last year he and Holly had packed off to Thailand, telephoned Toots and Dolly from a phone box under a coconut palm, listened to Dolly talking about Mrs. Middleditch in the draughty passage with the coloured Victorian tiles, the line of coat hooks, the calendar of church services, as they watched some elephants swinging their trunks and people bathing in a dark pool afloat with lotus leaves. Holly in a w
hite bikini, big and broad beside the Thai girls, and gorgeous. Can’t go buying diaries in Hatchards this morning. I cannot.

  A friend stopped him and said come for a drink.

  ‘Presents,’ said Andrew. ‘Off north in a minute. No presents.’

  ‘Forget them. We all know that everyone except you and me has bought their Christmas presents. Forget them. Come to lunch.’

  He was having lunch with his anaesthetist wife, a tall, silent girl with coils of dark hair, who was also exhausted, also on leave for Christmas. They were going home to Oxfordshire right after lunch. ‘Come with us,’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to Yorkshire.’

  ‘Oh, to see the baby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t look right for that journey. Are you driving?’

  ‘Sure. Done it all my life. Home for the hols.’

  ‘Who’s got the baby now?’

  ‘Oh, my brother. And his wife. And Thomasina’s going up and the woman who looked after her when she was born. And my parents are up there. I can’t not turn up. After all, she’s mine.’

  ‘She seems to have plenty of people. Why don’t you ring up and tell them you can’t face it and you’ll come in the New Year? The baby’s too young ever to remember you didn’t turn up. Come back with us.’

  ‘Or just come and stay overnight,’ said the husband. ‘Leave from us early in the morning.’

  ‘These presents . . . ’

  ‘Take them later. They know you’re busy.’

  ‘That’s what they don’t. The only kind of work they think is work up there is slaving in the soil—they’re farmers. Or creating Art.’

  ‘Art?’

  ‘Jack’s wife’s arty.’ He felt huge shame. ‘She’s a wonderfully talented woman. Lives in a bit of another world, too. Professional. Like us.’

  ‘I’d let her get on with it,’ said William. ‘Come on home with us for a goddamned sleep.’

  He woke on the morning of Christmas Eve to William’s wife opening his curtains, shutting his window, bringing him tea across. The room was full of light.

  ‘Snow,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘Nothing like so bad as up north, apparently. Andrew, I don’t think you’re going to make it.’

  ‘I must.’

  ‘Turn on the radio and listen. Don’t hurry up. You’ll have to leave it till tomorrow.’

  ‘Christmas Day?’

  ‘Why not? Leave at six in the morning. You’ll walk in for dinner. They’ll be thrilled.’

  He stood moodily at the sitting-room window. Diamond-bright snow across the lawn. A dog prancing. Inside, a huge log fire; gold baubles hanging from oak beams; hyacinths in bowls. Laughter from the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll ring my parents.’

  ‘Right.’

  Dolly was adamant. ‘Now, you’re not to come. Andrew. Promise me. Freezing fog. Just think if anything should happen, we’d never forgive ourselves. We can’t even get to them up there ourselves, not even on their telephone. Toots says they’ve forgotten to pay the bill but it’s their wires down, Mrs. Middleditch says. It’s the worst for years. We don’t mind, though. We’ll see them later. We’re quite resigned.’

  ‘Have you seen Faith lately?’

  ‘Well, no. Not lately. But we shall. And we’ll see you. Very soon. Have you somewhere to go? Oh good, dear. That sounds just right for you. A jolly time. Now, have a lovely Christmas.’

  ‘Not coming,’ she said to Toots, sitting down heavy on her chair.

  ‘Thought not,’ said he.

  ‘He did sound tired. He’s probably been up all night. He’s with a nice couple near Didcot. Doctors, of course,’ she said proudly.

  ‘Won’t be a lot of fun with a couple. I hope they haven’t a baby.’

  ‘I expect they mean well. Kindness to ask him. I expect it’ll be a jolly party and I don’t think there’ll be anything much going on at The Priors. Holly’s mother will never get there, for a start. She’s far too delicate-looking. And Jack and Jocasta are not exactly . . . well, I shouldn’t say it, especially of my Jack, but they’re not all that light-hearted.’

  Toots said nothing, but lay on, thinking of Didcot.

  ‘We’ve Athene Price coming to dinner tonight,’ said William. ‘OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Andrew, ‘but she scares me stiff. Can’t stand that imperious type.’ (In the kitchen, out of sight, William and wife nudged each other and mouthed, ‘Holly Fox!’) ‘OK, I’ll behave. Will she be by herself?’

  ‘With one or two more.’

  It was a feast. There was a lot of wine. There was a goose. Afterwards various people lay about drowsing by the fire. Affectionately. William’s wife went off to wrap presents. Other people went off home. William took the dog for a last walk in the snow. Athene Price, in her short grey velvet dress and the sexiest legs you ever saw (he thought), said to him, ‘I miss Holly.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. I didn’t realise . . . ?’

  ‘We were at baby-school together.’

  ‘Holly seems to have been at school with everyone. She must have kept getting expelled, she was at so many. Or something.’

  ‘Holly expelled? Andrew, she was perfect. Lovely friend. In a way, dying young like that and everybody thinking you wonderful, it’s not bad.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Andrew, what I must say is how terribly, terribly sorry I am about the baby.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you lost the baby.’

  ‘We didn’t. We didn’t lose the baby, what d’you mean? She’s with her grandparents. She’s fine. Called Faith.’

  Athene Price stared at him. ‘I heard—I did hear. Someone said—oh God, how do things like that get around? Oh, thank goodness. Oh, I’m so sorry. They said you’d lost her. I’ve thought about her so often. I even dreamed about it. The other night. I dreamed about you losing the baby.’ She looked so horrified by what she’d said that he went over to her and put his arms round her, thinking, This is glacial Athene Price.

  He laid his head on her velvet dress. She was not glacial.

  ‘I’m going up to see her crack of dawn tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll send you a lock of her hair.’

  But he did neither.

  Emma and Philip were making up beds. The children were screaming about. Things downstairs on oven hobs were boiling over. The headmaster was hoovering up needles around the Christmas tree. There was music blasting out from somewhere and someone calling from the kitchen. The postman, Jimmie, was sitting to his cup of tea. The dishwasher was broken, as was the tumble-drier, and in a minute Emma would have to start pegging things out on the line, where they would turn into art forms in cardboard in the frost. A dog lay chewing something precious and there were wrapping papers, ribbons and decorations afloat on every floor of the schoolhouse.

  ‘Oh, we’re nearly there,’ said Emma. ‘Who’s flapping? All I’d like to know is how many are coming. I suppose you don’t happen to know, Phil? They’re your lot.’

  ‘Coming here?’

  ‘They were going to my father’s but he said no. Grump, grump. He’s coming here for Christmas Day, though he always says he won’t. Somebody rang him up, someone to do with your people at The Priors, and said she was bringing a party from London for Christmas. He said no. Then she wrote to say they’d all be arriving about four o’clock and how very kind of him and so he roared at us over the phone and we said we’d have them. But he didn’t know how many.’

  ‘Maybe about a hundred,’ said Philip.

  ‘Well, there’s the dormitories.’

  ‘There’s only Andrew of ours lives in London,’ Philip said, ‘and he’ll be staying with us in the gatehouse, like he does. There’s Alice, but she’s disappeared and she’d come back home too if she was coming back at all.’

 
‘Someone called Pammie? No? Someone called Thomasina?’

  ‘Thomasina’s Holly’s mother. Holly’s dead. She’s called Thomasina Fox.’

  ‘Holly Fox’s mother? I was at school with Holly Fox.’

  ‘She’s my sister’s mother.’

  Emma looked thoughtfully at him.

  ‘I think there’s some man, a general,’ she said, ‘and this old woman called Madeleine.’

  ‘Don’t know ’em.’

  ‘Neither does my father, but that means nothing.’

  ‘He sounds like mine. I mean Jack. I haven’t got a father. Jocasta dumped him.’

  ‘Come on, Phil,’ said Emma, ‘we’ve heard all that. You have half a dozen fathers. Jack. Andrew in London. Toots. Nick. Ernie Smike.’

  ‘Nick an’ Ernie would be terrible fathers.’

  ‘You never know. Pass that blanket.’

  ‘Is it a horse blanket?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hope Thomasina isn’t allergic.’

  They laughed.

  I’m going to miss this one, she thought. Funny boy. Where does it come from? Humourless Jocasta, solemn Jack? The Indian father, I guess. He must have been one of the Marx brothers. Thomasina Fox, well, well. Wonder if Pa knows.

  ‘Holly Fox was quite a friend of mine,’ she said. ‘Then she went off with a girl called Stephanie. Girls are like that at school. Everyone was mad about Holly. I thought she was a bit of a bore actually, sometimes. Don’t tell anyone. What’s the baby like?’

  ‘She’s wonderful,’ he said, ‘when I get to see her. She’s over three months now. She’s almost walking.’

  ‘Really! Do you play with her?’

  ‘She’s up in a hammock most of the time. The Tibetans look after her. But I read to her.’

  ‘It must be the blind leading the blind.’

  ‘She’s not blind at all. She had a messy eye once but it’s better. They’re all knitting eyes over there in the sheds, the Tibetans. On sort of panels.’

  ‘Knitting eyes?’

  ‘Yes.’