by Gardam, Jane
‘You are fixed up? Already? You’ll find it a very lengthy business on your own. Take years. Ask anyone about the Parable-Apse fiasco for instance. A disgrace. Dragging on. Dickensian.’
‘Well, I have an inheritance looming. Fallen, by the grace of God, into my lucky lap. Meet my secretary Mrs. Flagg—and my—junior clerk—Mr. Tom Apse. I have a good senior clerk already in mind.’
‘I’m afraid Mr.—er—, you have simply no idea! It will take a life-time.’
‘Yes. But I’m young. I have wide connections, you know, especially in the Far East. And thanks for the interview. And thank Augustus. Tell him I shan’t forget him.’
‘I don’t forget anything,’ he added.
‘And now Mrs. Flagg and I are off to find a bed.’
Dizzily on the pavement Daisy Flagg burst into joyous tears. ‘Oh, come on,’ said Terry, spinning her around, ‘Beautiful coat. Is it real?’
‘It’s only coypu,’ she wailed, happily. ‘It’s only a superior kind of rat.’
‘When I come into my Kingdom,’ said Terence Veneering of Parable Chambers, Inns of Court, ‘You shall have sables.’
CHAPTER 19
And so Terry Veneering was established in his own Chambers as if by angelic intervention. And so began the long, slow, interminable legal process of disinterring his Parable inheritance.
He was never one to reflect on the meaning of life. Or the shape of his own life. He knew that from childhood he presented the figure of one certain to succeed, charm, delight and conquer. Not for him the grave, moral pace of the gentlemanly Edward Feathers.
But had he ever considered doing anything as dull as writing an autobiography he would certainly not have chosen as a pivotal point. He would have chosen the day some six months later when he had had to scrape the bottom of the judicial barrel down at the Brighton County Court alongside the beginner, little Fred Fiscal-Smith, and against—needless to say—Edward Feathers: the case of the over-sexed lion-tamer’s apprentice. For this was the day he realised that he had no stomach for Crime, even if it had not been so badly paid.
Stepping out of Victoria station at the end of that dreadful day his heart sunk even further, for in London there was fog. London fogs were getting worse again. During the War coal had been rationed. Now coal was back and so were the fogs that swirled about the East and West End. They nuzzled and licked and enwrapped everyone in yellowish limp fleece. They stained your clothes, your hair, got up your nose and down your ears. Your chest wheezed. When you sneezed, your handkerchief was dark ochre. You muffled your mouth. You coughed and coughed.
It was only when they stepped out of the Brighton Belle on Platform One that the three lawyers realised that, during their day in breezy, wholesome Brighton, the fog in London that had hung about for days had reached Dickensian proportions. It had turned into ‘The Great Fog’. It might last for days. It was also getting dark and there was no transport of any kind to get them home.
Old Filth was all right, he lived just round the corner in his spartan, curtainless apartment where there were two small electric radiators, and Fiscal-Smith suggested that he might stay the night there as well. In case—though he knew he was probably safe—Feathers asked him to stay too, Veneering announced that he would go to The Goring Hotel near Buckingham Palace and not more than two minutes from the station and he set off holding his arms out in front of him, his brief-case between them. He immediately vanished thinking vaguely that somewhere there would be a taxi. Any hotel was way above his means, let alone The Goring. So, as a matter of fact, was a taxi. The brief fee for the lion-tamer’s boy had been seven guineas—the shillings to go to Tom Apse as Clerk—and anyway it hadn’t yet been paid.
London had fallen into the silence of death and all its lights were gone. Abandoned cars stood in the middle of the road. Occasionally a shadow trudged past him emerging from and disappearing into the mist like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. London had lost its voice.
Taking twenty minutes to cross into what he hoped was Grosvenor Street he collided with an elephantine shape standing lightless and empty. It seemed to be a bus. He turned from it, thinking that this was going to be slow, and stepped in front of a car whose lights were smudges. He thought that the nearest Underground station would be the only hope and cannoned into a lone newspaper boy shouting a cracked refrain—Star, News, Standard—to nobody.
‘Goin far, Guv?’
‘Inns of Court.’
‘You’ll not be there by morning.’
‘How are you getting home then?’
‘I’ll doss down the back of the statue.’
‘What, Marshall Foch?’
‘Don’t mind which Marshall. Any Marshall. Marshall and Snelgrove. Cheers, Guv.’
It was three hours later that Veneering reached Fetter Lane. There were a few flares burning here and there and along the Strand in front of the empty shops and restaurants. He went almost hand over hand towards Lincoln’s Inn—what he hoped was Lincoln’s Inn—decided that it couldn’t be, clutched at some masonry beside him and toppled upon the steps of Parable-Apse.
He fell inside. He found a light. He slammed his front door upon the murk. There came a flash of memory of a blue sea—his sunburst of life in the post-war Navy. His—hum, yes, well—his wife and lanky little boy.
In the office the fire was not lit but a sack of coals stood beside the shabby old grate. There was nobody now to tumble the coals down to the cellar via the coal hole in the road and nobody to drag it up to the grate from the cellar if they did. Coal, he thought.
He kept his in the sack, covering it with a blanket on the few occasions when anyone called. But too late—too tired—to light a fire tonight. He found a bottle of whisky in the cupboard and some cream crackers and swigged down the whisky. The greatest joy he had ever known!
He thought of the threat that the government were to ban coal fires in London and he thought of his mother. He informed her and asked what she thought, but received no answer. The fog had entered the house with him. It was wreathed above his head. It smeared the window. How it stank.
‘Mam—I’m packing this in. The Law. I’ve an interview with a paper. Foreign correspondent.’
‘Your collar’s filthy,’ she said.
‘It’s the fog.’
‘Steep it and wash it. You’ve got an iron?’
‘You lived by coal.’
‘I’d no option. You have.’
‘I need sleep.’
‘There’s time to sleep and there’s time to waken.’
Veneering crawled across the floor towards the bedroom stair. ‘I’m drunk, Mam. I want to go to bed.’
‘You’ll do it. Remember your father.’
‘He had you.’
‘Well, you have me, too.’
He was in his bed. He drew a cover over him. He slept. The horrible city sprawled outside in thick unanswering silence. Veneering was ready to leave it for ever. And so, to the horrible, still-yellowish morning.
* * *
The knocking upon the front door had the desperate, dogged quality of a long assault. On it went, on and on.
At last, ‘Message,’ said a youth Veneering had not seen before as he peered blearily round the door.
‘What?’
‘Message for Mr. Veneering. Urgent. Reply essential. Shall I step in?’
‘No,’ said Veneering, taking the note and shutting the door on the boy, feeling about in the dark vestibule, finding the door to his office, groaning and grunting. He read:
‘Mr. Veneering. Appointment this morning, April 30th, ten o’ clock at No. 21, St. Yyes Court, Gray’s Inn. Respectable dress essential. Clear head. Mr. William Willy will see you for interview for possible place in new Chambers at present being established. Anticipating overseas connections. Reply to boy. Signed Augustus.’
‘Nobody could be ca
lled Mr. William Willy,’ said Terry Veneering. ‘On the other hand the Great Augustus—I’ll put my head on the block to it—has never made a joke.’
‘Oh, well then. Shame. After yesterday’s fiasco in the world of the eternal circus, he’s too bloody late, Augustus. I go a hundred miles to defend a poor little gormless insect who tickles ladies’ private parts as they’re sitting enjoying the lions and tigers and he gets three months! Three months for a bit of harmless fun. Clearly I’m not cut out for Crime. First and only time most of them ever got tickled. Most of them never even noticed. Great Grandee Edward Feathers has palpitations of shock-horror. He’s never tickled anybody’s legs. Never will. Gross indecency—etc. Is this what we got our First Class honours for? “Pom, pom, pom” honks Feathers, County Court moron judge nodding in support, all his chins wagging like blancmange. Little lad gets three months in gaol. Fuck the English Bar, I’m off to The New Statesman. Journalism for Veneering. Get the words about the world, not into the fly-spotted Law Reports. Sorry, Augustus, Willy is too late. I’m dressed for a different play. I am about to approach the political rostrum. You—laddikins—take a note back saying I’m busy.’
‘I can’t do that, sir.’
‘And for-why?’
‘Because Augustus has you in mind. You can’t not reply to Augustus, Mr. Veneering.’
‘It is, I know, very early in the morning but could you just try to realise, BOY, that even you are not the slave of this Olympian monster? Whoever he is—you are not in his THRALL. There are many barristers in thrall to their clerks. There are Judges in thrall to their clerks. Some clerks on the other hand have been murdered by—I am my own man, Boy, I make my own choices. Thank Augustus and say I have a previous engagement.’
He shut the outer door and listened to the boy marking time on the stones on the other side of it. After a while the boy rang the bell for a second time
‘YES?’ Veneering immediately flung it open. ‘YES?’
‘I think you better come, sir. Nothing to lose. Much to gain. And Augustus—well, you don’t want ’im for your enemy, now, do you?’
‘Oh, well then. O.K.’ said Veneering, ‘O.K. Say I’ll come. Soon. Better shave. I’ve a very important interview this morning already, at The New Statesman and Nation. Tell Augustus. And tell him that to be summoned before someone called Mr. Willy sounds an unusual command.’
‘Yes, sir. Shall I wait and take you round?’
‘Whatever,’ said Veneering, slamming the door, stamping up his stone spiral stair and surveying himself in his fur-lined waistcoat, pink open-neck shirt, tight black trousers, brown boots, long platinum new-look hair. He stared at the mirror for some minutes.
The boy had disappeared when he eventually emerged into Lincoln’s Inn and its water tanks. Ah well. Got the message. New Statesman first priority. The literary Editor there a woman. Sounded daunting. Not young. Apparently somebody. Chat her up. Who’s afraid? Not I who knew Mrs. Veronica Fondle—and I drowned her. This one had said on the phone that she promised nothing except a sandwich together in Lincoln’s Inn Fields sitting on the grass to talk about his future. ‘You sound so very young, Mr. Veneering. Did you not think of staying at Oxford—life as an academic?’ (She ain’t seen me yet!)
No, Mrs. Beetle-Bags, I did not. I don’t want to interpret the world, I want to put it straight. To spread the globe out flat like pastry on a slab like Ma made. Pick it up, slap it down, turn it over like a Tarte Tatin in Le Trou Normand in Hong Kong. Oh hell, that was wonderful! I don’t want a careful bloody life. Why am I turning to the right? This place in St. Yves Court—St. Yves, the Breton lawyer. And saint. (Might write a book on him?) Augustus’s chambers—
Where there is nothing but a gaping door and windows and a heap of rubble on the pavement with a rope round it and a red lamp you light with a match. And it’s eight years on. 1953—Christ! However did we win the War? No-one will ever know. I’ll tell my grandchildren.
Or will I? Will I reminisce? Will they give a fuck for historic Britain? Little ragged-edged, off-shore island and not my country anyway. Go to Russia soon, let’s hope. Everywhere fighting their neighbours to the death. Death doesn’t bring life—ever.
He saw his house-master at his Roman Catholic school saying, ‘Sharpen up, Veneering. The Resurrection?’ Oh, fuck.
He took his eyes off the heap of rubble and looked up steps to a tall row of early-Victorian houses where doors and window frames gaped empty. In front of each house was a heap of rubble similar to that at his feet: beams and floorboards and shelving and corner-cupboards and lead fire-backs. Nearby there was a little marble chimney-piece. It had a small deep-carved circle at the top of each pillar. Around 1740, he thought. He lusted after it. A man was loading all the rubble into a lorry.
‘Can I have that?’
‘What—that broke fireplace?’
‘Yes, how much?’
‘Take it for free. How you goin’ to get it home?’
‘I will. Leave it aside.’
He stood looking at the silken marble skin under the grime. Smooth as jade. He saw the translucence and perfection of the surface under the dirt of the war. He thought there must always have been people who stared at such things. He imagined his wife’s terrifying family at her birth, fastening the tiny jade rings around her baby wrists. Her shackles. He thought of his mother, pushing tripe about in the black frying pan on the coal fire. Her worn hands. He thought of all that his mother had had no knowledge of. Her tiny world where she, among all her family and friends, had alone pondered and sought helplessly for explanations.
Augustus was standing on the top steps of one of the un-restored houses. At the bottom of the steps near him, a girl’s bike was propped on one pedal, its basket on the handlebars full of flowers. A girl pushed past Augustus and came running down the steps towards the bike. She passed Veneering by like a whip-lash, but he had the impression of happiness, good temper, laughter, excitement. She leapt on the bike, balanced, kicked the pedal and hurtled away out of sight. She was bare-legged, sandaled, in a crazy new-look skirt that did not suit her (legs a bit short—though good). She had not seen him.
Augustus called from above, ‘Please come in, Mr. Veneering. I hope you are in time.’ A dreadful look was cast upon the fur-lined sleeveless jacket.
‘Mr. Willy can see you now. I hope.’
But there seemed to be nobody there.
The room was large but far from ready. The windows were newly glazed but still with builders’ finger-marks. There was no carpet. Bookshelves were not yet filled. There was a big plain desk with little on it except an enormous concoction of cellophane-wrapping with a bunch of spring flowers in the midst, and a book.
A voice said, ‘My god-daughter left them. The girl you were watching getting on to her bicycle.’
The man was small with a pasty face and sitting rather out of the light in an alcove beside a roundabout book-case. He had a sweet smile.
‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.’ Veneering found that he was tugging down the waist-coat. Pushing back his hair.
‘Veneering?’
‘Yes, er—you sent for me.’
Mr. William Willy said, ‘I have been asked to establish a new set of Chambers for specialising in engineering and construction Law. There is to be a great deal of building work—‘sky-scrapers,’ bridges, roads—which we hope will continue to be in the hands of British lawyers. English engineers are still very much the best, except for the Italians, and in Hong Kong and Singapore for instance, there are some huge contracts brewing for what we call “The Far East” and the Americans call “The Orient”, which shows a certain romanticism in them I suppose. I am Shanghai-born, Mr. Veneering. I am not a romantic. I understand you speak Mandarin? And you are a travelling man?’
‘Well, only post-war Navy. Round the China Sea. Showing the flag. Yes, I do speak Mandarin. I find languages easy.’
>
‘So you will travel?’
‘Yes. I have few allegiances.’
‘But you have a wife and small son in Hong Kong, Mr. Veneering.’
After a thoughtful space Veneering said, ‘This isn’t generally known. But yes.’
‘Would you stoop to practice in the Construction Industry? They often call it “Sewers and Drains”. High fees, international experience but you would be doomed to personal obscurity. No honours.’
‘I haven’t really thought . . . ’
‘About whether or not you care about obscurity?’
The pale-faced man walked to the window behind his desk and turned his back on Veneering and looked across London.
‘You haven’t really started thinking yet. You and Feathers.’
‘If you are inviting Feathers,’ said Veneering, ‘then I’m not interested.’
‘And nor, I’d guess, is he. He has connections of his own. You of course could become an academic. Or you would make a very good journalist. Maybe at The New Statesman? I expect you are left wing? But you—I have made enquiries—like big money. And power. The power in the East of your father-in-law’s family?’
‘This is like the night I arrived at Ampleforth and the monks grilled me,’ said Veneering.
‘Ah, yes. That was the night The City of Benares went down. You were very lucky to escape. Have you second-sight, Mr. Veneering? That is always useful. You might be very useful all round.’
‘I don’t talk about it. No—I jumped ship because—I wanted to go home. But I thought nobody had been told about that business.’
Augustus came in and took the god-daughter’s flowers away to put them in water, leaving the book.
‘Your name is not really Veneering, is it?’
‘However do you know that . . . ?’
‘Because I know my Dickens. You can’t use a good name twice. It is a joke. Veneering was a nasty man . . . ’