by Gardam, Jane
‘Not at all. We’re all said to be unrecognisable. It’s just that there’s no one much left to recognise us. Staying long? I’m here with Darlington.’
‘I used to live near there.’
‘No, no. Chap. Darlington. Always been here. He wants to be a barrister’s clerk. Viscount or something. He’ll be delighted—.’
‘Hasn’t he left it a bit late? I’ve been retired about twenty years.’
‘Eccentric chap. Lives in the past.’
‘Are you still dancing? I mean reeling, Bobbie?’
‘O, God, yes. Never without the pipes. Mother’s gone I’m afraid.’
‘Well yes. Are you in the same house?’
‘Where you came that night? Kensington. Splendid evening—or was it the Trossachs?’
‘Actually I never quite got there.’
‘Remember you doing the reels—. But you inherited those marvellous Chambers! People pay to visit them now. Listed. Apparently once belonged to John Donne.’
‘John Donne? The poet?’
‘Wasn’t he the King of Austria?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Yes, “John Donne of Austria is marching to the War”. Dear old G. K. Chesterton. He was a Catholic.’
‘I think that was Don John.’
‘Yes? I’m very badly educated. Very sexy man John Donne. Sexy poetry.’
‘He was Dean of St. Paul’s.’
‘Extraordinary. To think you inherited a royal dwelling. Sold it I suppose? Get rich quick. What d’you think of this hostelry? Bit like after the war. What a funny new-old world we’ve lived through.’
‘Well,’ said Veneering, ‘it’s large and cold. I came here for Christmas cheer. A break from Dorset winter.’
‘Alone? Oh, most unwise. We must get together. There’s a Caledonian Club I’m sure, and I have the pipes. Ah—and here’s the man. Here’s the man!’
Unchanged since Betty and Edward Feathers’ honeymoon, a shambling person shuffled towards them demanding porridge. ‘Hullo?’ he said. ‘Know you, don’t I? Golf? Are you on your own?’
‘It’s Veneering,’ said the Scot.
‘Oh.’
‘Veneering. The retired judge. Friend, no, contemporary, of The Great Filth. Come here for a Christmas break.’
‘Ye gods! Very few of us left. Splendid. Anything special you want to see? Some wonderful ancient tombs, and so on. And the skeletons of pygmy elephants. No?’
‘Well I would rather like to see the cliffs again. There was a fresh-water spring.’
‘Place we used to go to for picnics. Very British place. Take you there now if you want. You’ll be able to see to the horizon and down to the depths. Heaven and hell, ha-ha. You coming with us, Grampian?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Ready then, Veneering? Porridge good here isn’t it? Actually Veneering, I have something to ask you.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve always had a hankering to be a Barrister’s clerk. Don’t know why. I can organise, and I like the Ambiance.’
(He must be eighty!)
‘You may have heard of me. Always around.’
‘What was—is—your profession?’
‘Never had one. It wasn’t a thing all the expats wanted after the war you know. Bit knocked about. Prison-camps and so on.’
‘You were in one of the camps?’
‘Not actually. A good many friends. Pretty upsetting—. I ought to write my memoirs. Trouble is I haven’t many of them. Getting on a bit! “Riff-raff of Europe” they used to call the English in Malta after the war, but actually I think we were harmless. Just rather poor—. Not unhappy.’
‘And you must know everybody?’ said Veneering.
‘I know the villagers of my village. And a good many ghosts. Could be worse.’
The exile from Darlington laughed heartily, not knowing what else to do. Stopped his ancient Rover on a hair-pin bend at the top of a steep slope and began to lead Veneering across a rough terrain of scrub.
‘A bit slippery,’ said Veneering. He looked about him. There was nothing but underbrush. Up above there was a circle of unfinished housing, ugly and raw, little stone gardens, scarcely a tree. Standing by itself, at the very edge of the cliffs was a small rose-pink palace with stone-work of white lace. ‘Eighteenth-century,’ said the would-be clerk. ‘For Sale. Dirt cheap. I could arrange something if you were tempted. Here we are. Stretch yourself out on your belly and you might see the silver stream. Runs under-ground most of the way. Then it falls towards the sea. Noise like choir-boys singing.’
‘Mind you I haven’t lain out flat on my belly for a long time. No-one to appreciate it—ha-ha. Not sure I’d know what to do now with a woman even if she was all laid out like lamb and salad as we used to say. We’re all impotent here you know. Don’t know what’s become of us all. If you ask me what we need is another good war.’
Veneering moved further off. The stones beneath his unsuitable shoes became sharper. Twice he stumbled into what might be a fissure in the cliff but saw and heard no running water. He decided to crawl about and dropped slowly and painfully to his knees. He put his ear to the rock.
‘You’re a game old bird,’ said his companion. ‘You know, the last time I was here was over half a century ago. Picnics up here were special. Planned months ahead. Time of “the sixpenny settlers”. More money than ever before. Each other’s houses, or sailing. Lots to drink. Fornicating. We came up here once though for a sort of honeymoon party. That arrogant old bugger Eddie Feathers (Old Filth they call him now, and I wouldn’t disagree) had his bride Betty with him. Should have seen his face when I asked him to arrange a clerkship for me.
‘As for her! Never forgot her. I was sitting cross-legged with my wine glass and she was standing right beside me, and she dropped on her knees and looked down the crack. She was like a kid. And she splayed herself out and I patted her bottom and she was up like a kangaroo, and she hit me! Yes, hit me. Don’t think he saw.—On their honeymoon it was. She said, “I’m going to get out of this. I’m going down the cliff to the sea” and she went off and him after her. Old Filth. Mind you, she was the one who I’d have thought not exactly pure as a lily. Some very nasty stories about her going off with men into the New Territories in Hong Kong. Even though she looked like a school girl. Oh, yes. She stepped on me! Small of my back, and made off down the cliff, him after her. Expect he knew she wasn’t all she might have been, even on the honeymoon. Hey, what’s the matter? Stop that. What have I done?’
Veneering’s pale fist had clenched and cracked into the monster’s jaw. Both men fell sideways and began to shout and yell.
Away over at the rose-pink palace some Germans were being shown round by an estate agent. They called out. One of the Germans looked through his enormous binoculars and said ‘It seems to be two old men fighting. It looks like a fight to the death.’
Across the seaside tundra there came a snapping sound and the thin old man with streaks in what had once been golden hair was lying still, one leg apparently missing. It had invaded the terrifying opening in the cliff from which the fresh water poured into the ocean.
‘Locally it is called the water of life,’ said the estate agent, but when they reached the two combatants this did not seem apt. Veneering’s ankle was broken, his foot hung limp and he had passed out. He came round only briefly when mobile phones had summoned help and he was being carried off on a stretcher towards the hospital. Before he died, after a thrombosis had set in, he told the would-be barrister’s clerk that he wasn’t having one word said, ever, against Elizabeth.
* * *
When Old Filth heard the news he said, ‘Silly old fool. Off on a jaunt like that at his age. I’d not have gone with him even if he’d asked me.’
Then Filth sat out the long day and the evening in Donhead St. Ague, liste
ning to the rain, not looking up behind him at Veneering’s darkened house, not bothering with whisky or the television news or the supper left out for him in the kitchen. He sat on and on in the mid-winter dark.
When a post-card from Veneering arrived—written his first evening in the tomb-like hotel—Filth read how happy he was now with no desire to come home.
‘So he did get to heaven, then,’ said Old Filth to his wife’s photograph on the mantelpiece and Betty’s young face smiled back at him from another world.
CHAPTER 21
In Donhead St. Ague half-a-century on the family man and poet, hard at work clearing Veneering’s attic, his wife Anna cooking and laundering for her burgeoning bed-and-breakfast business, their children at school, their cat with activity of its own. A raw cold day and nothing in the village stirring. The family man appeared in the doorway of the ironing-place holding a battered photograph.
It is of a lipsticky young woman with bouffant hair. The photograph has been stuck long ago on cardboard and its margins covered with kisses.
‘Veneering again,’ he says. ‘I wonder which this one was? I’d guess it isn’t Betty Feathers.’ She takes it and turns it over. She reads, ‘From Daisy Flagg with love and gratitude.’
‘Isn’t she lovely?’ says Henry, the family man (and poet). ‘Like a juicy fruit.’
‘But she’s not his floozy,’ says Anna. ‘My head on the block, she’s not. I wonder what he did for her. That’s a fine fur coat. I’d guess a secretary of some sort. Adoration in the eyes. I’ll take it round to Dulcie. I expect she’ll know.’
But they forgot, and the photograph was put aside on a window-sill and then upon a pile of books and then tossed in the rubbish collection. A week later Anna yells at Henry to take the rubbish to the gate before he leaves for a Poetry Festival next day and he sees the photograph again and stands in contemplation. He says, ‘Anna—all this stuff in the attic and there’s not a sign of Betty Feathers anywhere. Not a letter. Not a post-card.’
‘Men are like that,’ she says. ‘I don’t expect her husband kept anything of hers either. It’s women who press flowers in books. Keep letters.’
‘Do you? Will you?’
‘No. Because I’ve got you.’
‘Don’t be so sure. I might run off with Dulcie.’
* * *
Then he left the photograph on the kitchen table and went off to the tip. When he came back he said, ‘We haven’t actually seen Dulcie lately. Go and show her this while I’m away.’
‘Isn’t she on a cruise?’
‘Oh, we’d have heard. Janice would have told us.’
‘Janice is on holiday. Two—no three—weeks. D’you know, I don’t think we’ve seen Dulcie since that day the cat went mad. I’d better go round. She’ll be on her own. The dismal daughter is back in America with the eccentric yoof.’
‘Go tomorrow after I’ve left. The sole of my shoe’s hanging off. You’re better at sticking it back on. And I’ve not finished my lecture.’
‘Sorry,’ said Anna, ‘There’s glue somewhere in a box. I’m going to Dulcie now.’
* * *
And she knocked and rang, although both the kitchen door and the front door of Privilege House stood open. She walked in, stood in the quiet hall and called, ‘Dulcie.’
Deep silence. Her neck prickled. The house felt cold, unoccupied. In the kitchen, a slowly-dripping tap. Everywhere empty of life.
In Dulcie’s bedroom her bed was un-made and the floor strewn with old clothes, probably sorted for a charity. Looking again Anna saw the crumpled expensive wool suit and the black funeral hat. There were some tiny antique corsets. White cotton stockings like Victorian fashion plates. However old is she? Are these menstrual rags? Virginia Woolf used menstrual rags. She only died in 1941. Dulcie must have been planning a fire like the cremations on the ghats of the Ganges.
And she is gone.
Then through the open door at the end of the landing she saw Dulcie’s child-like back, very upright at a writing-desk that faced the fields and empty sky. She appeared to be writing letters. Thick yellow paper around her feet was crumpled into balls.
‘Dulcie! Good heavens!’
She waited for the little figure to keel over sideways from the current of air disturbed by her voice; to slide to the floor. Dead for weeks.
‘Yes?’
‘Dulcie! You’re freezing up here. What are you doing? We thought you’d gone on a cruise.’
Dulcie shivered and tore up another letter but kept it tight in her fist, staring ahead.
‘You are—Dulcie, you are not still writing to Fiscal-Smith!’
‘Trying to. He hasn’t answered any of them the past weeks. He doesn’t seem to be on the phone or have this e-mail thing. Neither do I. Nearly a month and no thank-you letter. It’s unheard of. And this great pink chair has come for him. Wrapped in tarpaulin. It’s not that I want to see him, it’s just so out-of-character. When a friend of sixty years begins to act out-of-character you begin to wonder if you might never . . . There’s nobody up there—it’s called Lone Hall—to contact. I don’t think it’s anywhere near a police-station . . . ’
‘Oh, I’m sure we can find it.’
‘Anna, I was very cruel to him. I let him know that we had always thought him mean and grasping. All his life he’s been longing for company and nobody has wanted him because he’s, well, so awful, really. So disgracefully conceited. Clever of course. Efficient. But withdrawn and obscure. But—oh Anna!—he’s always been there. He has no charm and he knows it. Can’t connect. Can’t hear people thinking. Can’t help being what he is. He knows that nobody ever liked him. Haven’t I a duty to him, Anna?’
‘Certainly not!’
‘But I do. He’s broken the pattern. The cracks will spread. They’ll spread across all our crumbling lives, the few of us who are left.’
‘Oh, come on, Dulcie.’
‘He’s disappeared, Anna. It isn’t senility, Anna, and it isn’t spite or resentment because we’ve laughed at him all these years. It’s simple, determined rejection of us, of the very, very few last friends. Where is he, Anna?’
‘Come home with me. We’ll find out. Get your things—not the ones on the floor—and stay the night. I’m not leaving you here alone. You’ve got no tights on. No shoes. Your feet are navy blue.’
‘Oh, but I don’t do that sort of thing. Stay with people, if it’s not in the diary.’
‘You’re coming.’
* * *
‘Hi, Dulcie,’ said Henry holding cellotape and a shoe. ‘All well?’
‘It’s not,’ said Anna, and gave a resume.
‘Well, O.K. then,’ he said, ‘I’m off up North tomorrow, Dulcie. I’m lecturing on the Cavalier Poets at Teesside University tomorrow night. It’s about ten miles from Yarm. I’ll fix up the famous Judges’ Hotel, Execution Court, or whatever, for you to stay the night. I’m staying with the Dean at Acklam and a few Cavaliers, but you’ll be well-looked after at the Judges’ by all accounts. Then, next morning, before I bring you home, we’ll visit the Mandarin’s marble hall on the blasted heath and thunder on his door. Then we’ll come home. That very evening. I’ll—Anna will—ring the hotel now.’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t possibly! I don’t travel any more you know. I haven’t had my hair done. And—Anna—I’m afraid I have to get up in the night now you know. I’d never find my way back to my room in an hotel.’
‘They have things called “en suite” now, Dulcie.’
‘Oh, but I try not to eat them.’
‘RIGHT,’ shouted Henry returning to his pizza and Pesto at the supper table, children munching and doing homework unperturbed, ‘All fixed. Hotel’s got a room. Sounds rather an odd one but apparently The Great Old Filth once slept there. Probably Judge Jeffries, too. It’s en suite and much in demand. I said I’d take you up to t
he Fiscalry first and then see you in and make sure you’ll get a good dinner and then I’ll pick you up the following morning and bring you home. All right?’
Anna said, ‘I’ll go up to Privilege House now and get anything you’re going to need. Pills? Shoes? No. Be quiet. You’re going.’
‘But, it’s hundreds of miles and . . . ’
‘Hong Kong’s a few thouands . . . ’
‘Oh, but I know Hong Kong. And actually, Anna, I’m afraid I’m not very reliable on the motorway.’
‘You won’t be driving.’
‘No my dear, I mean the facilities. I would have to stop at least twice.’
‘Me, too,’ said Henry. ‘Always did. Don’t boast. We’ll be on the road by eight o’ clock. Could you manage that?’
‘I wake at four,’ said Dulcie, proudly.
‘And you go upstairs and finish that lecture now,’ said Anna.
‘And there are other things,’ said Dulcie. ‘I have to check on Filth’s house.’
‘There’ve been lights on,’ said Anna. ‘Someone’s taking care of it.’
* * *
Isobel heard the hired car arrive at the garden gate above. She put on her long silk coat, noticed that it was raining, noticed Filth’s old mac hanging on the back of the kitchen door. But no, she’d take nothing. She had everything she wanted (the house she would leave to the boy—Dulcie’s grandson) for Filth had given her everything, not only his worldly possessions, but his living spirit.
She pressed her face briefly against the old waterproof mac on the door and left the house.
On quick feet, without a stick, she climbed up the slope of the garden to the waiting taxi.
* * *
By eight-fifteen the poet’s car was heading North, Dulcie crouched like a marmoset in the back, defying whip-lash, her eyes pools of fear. By the motorway, however, she had settled and started the Telegraph crossword. After a stop at a service-station, cross country towards Nottingham she began to take notice. By lunch-time, when they stopped at a country house hotel Henry had known from literary Festivals before, she had a light in her eyes and was talking about the landscape of D. H. Lawrence and the Mitford sisters and Chatsworth. Soon she appeared to have blood in her veins again and was chatting up the austere black waiter over the cheese, telling him of arbitrations in Africa where he had never been.