by Gardam, Jane
‘It must have been a very—vivid—time,’ said Dulcie. ‘I was in Shanghai about then. It was really my country. I don’t know why we were all so mad on this one we’d never seen.’
‘I’d not think Shanghai would have been all water-lilies and flowers-behind-the-ear neither. But, like wherever you go, there’s great compensations. Great people.’
‘Oh—yes.’
‘Like Mr. Parable in Herringfleet. Now he was mad. He was what’s called a religious maniac but he was one of the nicest men you could hope to meet. I wonder where his money went?’
‘And then,’ she said, ‘there was that Mr. Smith. He had a son, too. Tight-up little chap. Never very taking. Father took no note of him but they say he did well, mebbe better than Terry. But yet, with little Fred, nobody ever seemed to take to him.’
‘Yes. I see. It’s another world to me you know. You make me feel very narrow Mrs.—’
‘Miss,’ she said. ‘Thank God.’
There was a silence, Dulcie thinking of all the countries she had lived in where nobody now cared for her one jot, Bessie thinking of the children of this grey place who had shone here once. ‘Did you say our Terry’s gone?’ she asked and Dulcie said again she had been to his memorial service. ‘We don’t go in for that round here,’ said Bessie, ‘whoever you are. It’s York Minster if you’re someone, but otherwise it’s Mr. Davison at Herringfleet church digging a hole. And we don’t go for these basket-work caskets neither. Remind you of the old laundry down Cargo Fleet. I suppose little Fred’s gone too.’
* * *
‘Thank you,’ Dulcie said to the milk-drinking Michael on the way back from the sea to the Cleveland Hills.
‘Pretty great, in’t she?’
‘What a memory.’
‘Aye, but Dulcie—what a terrible life.’
‘Michael, I don’t think so. Oh good! Look,’ for here was the Donhead car in the forecourt of the hotel. ‘Oh thank God! She’s back from the hospital. Now we can go home.’
CHAPTER 22
But the next morning they were both still at the hotel. Henry was being kept in hospital for another day and arrangements had to be made for an ambulance.
‘We’ll drive in convoy,’ said Anna, ‘you and I in the car. It’ll be rather slow. But more restful than the journey up. Today, I’ll go to the hospital and see the surgeon and arrange about physio. But what will you do?’
‘I’ll go to Lone Hall again.’
‘But you said it was grim.’
‘Yes. But I can’t stop thinking about him all alone in it.’
‘I hope you’re not thinking of joining him in it?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous Anna. I shouldn’t tell you this, but I can’t really afford Privilege House anymore and it’s in very good condition. This one needs a million pounds spending on it. Dear Anna—it’s idle curiosity that’s all. Could they get me a lift up there and back d’you think? The hotel?’
They could. She did. The ghillie was on his way up there now. He was meeting a possible buyer.
‘But would he let me in?’ she said. ‘I want to go round it alone.’
‘Dulcie?’
‘I tell you, Fiscal-Smith’s not there. He’s gone to Hong Kong.’
‘Look—it has nothing to do with you where Fiscal-Smith lives. He’s only there because he can’t shake off his childhood. That’s why he’s such a bore, Dulcie. You deserve better. Or just memories of Willy. Fiscal-Smith clings to his miserable past like a limpet to a rock.’
‘I don’t think anyone has ever loved him,’ she said.
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘Anna, you are being unpleasant. Fiscal-Smith is pathetic because he doesn’t know how to love. But there’s a For Sale notice up and this time—he never tells you anything—something must have happened. I believe, Anna, that he’s a virgin.’
‘I hope you’re not thinking of doing something about that.’
‘That will do, Anna. We don’t talk like that. And I’d be glad if you tell nobody that I’m short of money.’
‘Oh—ah! Well, well—Fiscal-Smith’s worth millions, just like the other two. Now I understand.’
‘I hope we are not about to quarrel, Anna.’
* * *
The ghillie dropped her off and she was allowed to go alone into the gaunt, wind-blown house on the moor. ‘I’m glad you trust me,’ she said as he handed her a key the size of a rolling pin. ‘I can tell a good woman,’ he said. ‘Ye’ll not pilfer. And it suits me because I have to wait outside for the estate agents. They’re bringing in a possible buyer. Some lunatic. I’ll look him over. Off ye go now and mind ye take care on the boards.’
‘Is it clean?’ she said.
‘Och, aye, it’s clean.’
Inside Fiscal-Smith’s Lone Hall, the smell of wood fires and heather. No carpets, no curtains and very little furniture. A kitchen range like a James Watt steam engine, rusted and ice-cold, a midget micro-wave beside it, an electric toaster, almost antique. Taps high above a yellow stone sink, and an empty larder. An empty bread-crock, a calendar of years ago marked with crosses indicating absences abroad. All colourless, clean, scrubbed. Eighteenth-centry windows, light flowing in from moor and sky.
Where did he sleep? Where did he eat? Where did he read—whatever did he do here? Room after room: empty. Not a painting, not a clock, not a photograph.
On her way out she opened a door on the ground floor behind a shabby baize curtain. The room within was cold—another tall window, unshuttered, the walls covered with shelves and upon them row upon row of boxes all neatly labelled. There was a man’s bike with a flowing leather saddle and a round silver bell. It stood upside down. A very old basket was strapped to the handlebars. On a hook nearby hung a dingy white riding-mackintosh with brass eyelet holes under the arms. It hung stiff as wood. There was a black, tinny filing-cabinet labelled ‘Examination Papers’. There was no sign anywhere of a woman’s presence, or touch.
There was a complete set of the English Law Reports in leather, worth several thousands of pounds—Dulcie knew this because she had recently had to sell Willy’s. There was an iron bed, like the campaign bed of the Duke of Wellington. Beside the bed, a missal, its pages loose with wear. Then she saw, on the wall behind her, a photograph of familiar faces: Willy waving. Herself in a rose-scattered hat—my! Wasn’t I gorgeous! Those tiresome missionaries in Iran. Eddie Feathers, magnificent in full-bottomed wig, Veneering cracking up with laughter, holding golf-clubs, hair flying. Drunk. Row after row of them and no girl-friends, no children, no-one who could have been Fred’s invisible, ailing mother. In the dead centre of the collage was a wedding group outside St. James’s church, Hong Kong. Eddie Feathers, so young and almost ridiculously good-looking in his old-fashioned morning suit and bridegroom’s camellia; the bride Elizabeth—darling Betty—in frothy lace, with a face looking out like a baby at its christening.
And there, beside her, astonishingly in a tee-shirt and what must have been the first pair of jeans in the Colony, was Fiscal-Smith the super-careful conformist, never wrongly-dressed. Asked to be best-man at the last minute, his face was shining like the Holy Ghost. The best day of his life.
No sign of Veneering in this photograph. No sign at all. Nor of Isobel Ingoldby, the femme fatale.
Willy was there. Oh, look at us, look at us! Still damp from our cocoons!
* * *
But it was the huge floor of the room in Lone Hall that held Dulcie now. It was slung from end to end with swathes of tiny metal ‘Hornby’ rolling-stock: points, buffers, level-crossings, signals, water-pumps, platforms, sheds, long seats, lacy wooden canopies, slot-machines; luggage trolleys like floats with unbending metal handles long as cart-shafts. Portmanteaux, trunks, Gladstone bags, sacks red and grey and all set up for midgets. And calm, good midgets stood in dark-blue uniforms blowing pin-head whistles
, punching pin-holes in tiny tickets. Branch-lines swung far and wide, under the Duke of Wellington’s bed, and were criss-crossed by bridges, paralleled by streams where tiny men in floppy hats sat fishing. And the station platforms, up and down the room, were decorated with tiny tubs of geraniums. Time had stopped.
In the green-painted fields around lived happy sheep and lambs and cardboard figures carrying ladders over their shoulders and pots of paint. They went smiling to their daily bread. And the engines! And the goods-wagons! And the carriages up-holstered in blue and red and green velvets. And the happy pin-sized families untouched by care, all loving each other.
There was someone else in the house. The ghillie was at the door. He was furious. ‘This room is not on view. You are here without permission,’ and he locked the door behind her as she scurried out.
Another car, a Mercedes, was on the drive now, with the estate agent kow-towing and she heard someone say ‘Very sad. Hong Kong business-man. Made his pile. No, no—a local. Not in residence at present but lived here for years. Matter of fact we’ve just heard he has recently died—back in Hong Kong.’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Dulcie as she passed.
‘So sorry about your wasted journey,’ called the man with the shooting-stick. ‘I’ve bought it already. Fixtures and fittings. Splendid shooting lodge. I’d better not tell you how cheap it was.’
And he stood aside, laughing, and watched her climb into the ghillie’s car.
* * *
The next day she was driving south with Anna to The Donheads, the ambulance somewhere behind them, cautiously bouncing and now and then sounding its siren.
‘They wanted to keep him in longer, Dulcie, oh, I wish they had! He’s going to be hell downstairs at home. Physios coming in three times a day—on the good old NHS of course—and, pray God, they’re pretty. Oh—and he’ll be surrounded by the yellow staircase! Oh help me Dulcie.’
‘I suppose—did you hear anything about the lecture?’
‘Brilliant, of course. The wilder the preliminaries the better he always seems to be.’
‘It’s not like that in law-suits.’
In time:
‘Dulcie? You’re very quiet. You did want to come back home I hope?’
‘Yes. I did. I do. All is settled now.’
‘I’m so sorry. We messed it all up for you. It was meant to be a treat. We’re so dis-organised.’
‘Anna, stop. You have taken the leathery old scales from my eyes and I love you both.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I’ve rather gone in for romantic secrets in other people’s lives. “Romantic” is not quite right. It’s a dirty word now, meaning sexy and silly. But, for me, it has always meant imaginative and beautiful and private. By the way, did I tell you that poor Fiscal-Smith is dead?’
The car swerved and swung in an arc from the fast lane to the central to the slow and stopped with a screech of brakes on the verge. Traffic swore at them.
‘Dulcie! What—?’
‘Yes. Fiscal-Smith is dead. I heard up at the house. A rather awful man has bought it. He shouted it at me.’
‘Oh, Dulcie! It can’t be true. He was perfectly all right at Old Filth’s party—I mean memorial service. Who the hell are these morbid northern lunatics? I’ll e-mail Hong Kong. Where’s he staying? The Peninsula, of course,’
‘Not if he was paying the bill himself. No, Anna. It would have been the Y.M.C.A. He liked it there. Maybe I should go out there. At once.’
‘You do not stir, Dulcie. Not till we have the facts.’
‘I think I may. I think you’ve given me the urge to travel again, Anna. Oh, I do hope that at least some of my letters got there in time. I’m afraid I was very outspoken though. I apologised rather pathetically—I don’t really know why. I said too much. But actually—I don’t think one can say too much at my time of life, do you? Or ever. About love.’
‘I’m sorry, Dulcie. I just don’t believe he’s dead,’ and they drove on for many miles.
‘Life,’ said Dulcie, south of Birmingham, ‘is really ridiculous. Why were we thought worth creating if we are such bloody fools? What’s happiness? I wish I could talk to Susan like this.’
‘Well, you can’t. The idea that mothers and daughters can say everything to each other is a myth. But I know she loves you. In her way.’
‘That makes me feel better. But, Anna—why does it have to be “in her way”?’
* * *
They turned off at last into the unlikely lane off the A30 towards the Donheads and Dulcie felt herself pointing out to dear, dead Betty Feathers the tree in the hedge that looked like a huge hen on a nest. And the funny man—look he is still there!—who wanders about with a scythe. (‘He won’t go into Care you know. I can’t say I blame him. I’m going to stick on as long as I can at Privilege House, even if I have to sell the spoons.’)
‘Here we are Dulcie. I’m going to stop here and wait for the ambulance. It’s not far behind. Here it comes. Marvellous!’
‘And I’m getting out here,’ said Dulcie, ‘if you’ll get my pull-along out of the back. Yes—yes I mean it. You must go with Henry. I’ll walk to my front gate—you can see it from here, look. Don’t go on until I turn and wave.’
‘I’ll ring up in half an hour,’ said Anna. ‘And I’ll watch you in. We’ll bring you some supper. Soon. Now don’t forget, turn and wave at the gate.’
Dulcie trailed her case on wheels to the wrought-iron gate, which she was surprised to see open, and turned and waved.
Then she turned back towards the courtyard where Fiscal-Smith was standing surrounded by an enormous amount of luggage.
CHAPTER 23
It was Easter Day. St. Ague’s bells were clanking out and the steep church-path was at its most slippery and dangerous. Filth’s magnificent legacy was still being discussed. And discussed. What first? Heating, roof, floor, walls, glass, pews, path? In the meantime, in spring, the clumps of primroses would go on growing like bridesmaids’ bouquets in the nooks and crannies of the old railway-sleeper steps. Dulcie and Fred were proceeding cautiously towards the Easter Eucharist and on every side around them tulips, and daffodils and pansies graced the graves for Easter, in pots and jars and florists’ wreathes.
‘It’s like a fruit-salad,’ said Fiscal-Smith, ‘I don’t care for it. Never did. Pagan.’
‘Oh, “live and let—”,’ said Dulcie. ‘But no. That’s not very apt.’
‘I want these railway-sleepers out,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘They’re black and full of slugs. We can get good money for the Church for them. Install proper steps! There’s a church I’ve heard of in south Dorset where they’ve put in a lift and an escalator. I’ll have to get on with it.’
‘You’re a Roman Catholic, Fiscal-Smith. St. Ague’s is nothing to do with you.’
‘Wait til I’m on the parish council,’ he said. ‘Dulcie! Stand clear. Here’s that Chloe.’
‘On, on,’ he said. ‘End in sight. Doors wide open. Or we could construct a sort of poly-tunnel.’
A gold haze hung inside the church door. Lilies. Tall candles, a glinting Cope. ‘Don’t fuss—they can’t start without us,’ he said and Dulcie said ‘What rubbish.’
They had to pause again. Up in the porch they could see the gleam of one of the twins’ walking-frames and the Carer skulking round the back of a tomb-stone having a quick drag on a gauloise.
‘The gravestones are a disgrace too,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘Tipping about. I can see to that. The most useful thing I’ve learned in my long career at the construction-industry Bar is the importance of a reliable builder.’
‘I like them tipping about,’ she said.
‘I knew a man killed by a gravestone tipping about,’ said Fiscal-Smith.
‘I expect it was trying to tell him something. Just listen to Old Filth’s rooks! They’re
back again.’
‘Were they ever away?’ he said.
‘Fred—the organ! It’s roaring. The Procession’s gathering up for “The fight is o’er, the Battle done”—. Come on. Wonderful! Hurry!’
‘Reminds me of old Eddie’s wedding day in Hong Kong,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you remember, Dulcie, but he chose me to be his best man.’
‘Were there no girls in your life, Fred?’
Arm in arm, they tottered.
‘Just you, Dulcie. Otherwise I’m afraid it was only trains.’
Singing mingled with the flooding thunder of the organ. ‘Calm, my dear,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘Calm.’
And so they made their way towards the Resurrection.
* * *
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jane Gardam is the only writer to have been twice awarded the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel of the Year (for The Queen of the Tambourine and The Hollow Land). She also holds a Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime’s contribution to the enjoyment of literature.
She has published four volumes of acclaimed stories: Black Faces, White Faces (David Higham Prize and the Royal Society for Literature’s Winifred Holtby Prize); The Pangs of Love (Katherine Mansfield Prize); Going into a Dark House (Silver Pen Award from PEN); and most recently, Missing the Midnight.
Her novels include The Man in the Wooden Hat, God on the Rocks (shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Faith Fox, The Flight of the Maidens and Old Filth, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.