by Jane Gardam
‘Fish and chips?’ said the man. ‘There’s a good chippie down Nelson Street.’
‘OK. I can pay,’ said Philip. I got quite a bit of that off the floor.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said the man. ‘My invitation. Come on now, and then I’ll walk you to the grandparents.’
It was a caff, not just a take-away, and the tables were a cheerful red. The sauce bottles were warm brown with gunge round the tops and the salt cellars were made to look like tomatoes. There were ceramic vases with imitation pink chrysanthemums in them and good loud music. The crackle and swish of the hot fat rose and fell excitingly as the chef, who was unclothed from the waist up and had a towel round his neck like a boxer, swirled about in the vats with a long ladle. A huge plate of golden fish and chips was slapped down in front of Philip.
‘Aren’t you having some?’
‘I have already dined,’ said the man.
Philip thought that ‘dined’ was the sort of thing Jack might say. Or dear old Holly. Must be OK.
‘Eat up,’ said the man, leaning easily back. ‘Then I can take you home or they’ll be worrying. Where do the grandparents live?’
Philip was airing fish on the end of his fork. ‘It’s too hot. I can’t eat it any faster.’
The man stared intently.
‘They live—oh, quite near.’ He couldn’t for the life of him remember.
‘How near?’ The man was leaning forward now. ‘Take your time,’ he said, watching Philip. ‘Your glasses are getting steamed up. You ought to take them off. I’ll look after them for you if you like.’ He seemed to be trying to find a pocket. Philip removed his glasses but put them in his own pocket, where they rattled against the photograph frame. It seemed to have got broken, he thought, either in the amusement palace or in the sea. As he took his hand away from the shambles within, still airing fish on his fork with the other one, he felt it taken in a vice-like grip under the table and directed towards the shiny stuff of the man’s trousers. There it was pressed against something hard and slippery and hot.
Philip dropped his fork, picked up the plate of fish and chips one-handed and slapped it unerringly and equally hard in the man’s face. The man’s scream was still going on as Philip reached the street outside.
He fled down the back street beside the fish shop and on to the high street where there were plenty of people about. He tore through the pedestrian precinct full of well-lit shops all selling refrigerators. As he approached a police station he thought he’d maybe better slow down; then, as the street became shabbier and darker, he began to run again. He felt wet on his leg and thought he would be sick, but coming to a halt under a street light he found that it was only blood. The clinking in his pocket must be broken glass, either the frame or the specs. He tried to drag some of the tangle out and found a smashed frame and a severed leg of the specs and a cracked lens. He thought, Now I’ve done it, I can’t see. I haven’t a clue where I’m at, as they say, and fancied he heard the man’s padding feet behind him.
He began to race on, turning about here and there, on and on over the cobbles of the old side streets, and at the end of one of them saw a stretch of the doleful dark promenade again. He turned and turned again, and ran on. When he found himself this time on the top of a slope leading to the sea he felt very tired.
If I could bloody well read, he thought. If I could see the street signs. You’d think I’d remember the address. I’d remember if I heard it or could read it. I’d better go in a pub or something and ask. Braithwaite’s not all that common a name. He found, however, that he was frightened of this idea. ‘I’m not exactly mad about asking,’ he said, aloud.
Two people came stepping in a dignified way out of a building on a corner of the seafront beside him. They had such a look of respectability that Philip, remembering the man, melted in shadow, but one of them, the woman, called out sharply, ‘Hello? Hello there?’
He kept quiet, but, miraculously, she then said, ‘Philip? I know who that is—it’s Philip. Philip Braithwaite, whatever are you doing out by yourself at this time of night? It’s nearly nine o’clock. Does Granny know?’
‘Not actually,’ said Philip.
‘I knew you the minute I saw you,’ she said. ‘I said to Mr. Middleditch, “It’s Dolly’s Philip.” I knew you even without your glasses, you don’t fool me. Where are your glasses? Good gracious, you’re bleeding. And you’re wet. Wet through.’
The Middleditches marched him between them through the streets.
‘Just leaving the Chamber of Commerce Ladies Night,’ shouted Mrs. Middleditch through Dolly’s letter box. ‘Mercifully. Now open the door, Dolly. We’ve found Philip and he’s pouring with blood.’
16
Dolly was answering the telephone in the passage as Mrs. Middleditch began her assault through the letter box. From the room near the front door where Toots lay, there rose his howls and roars. ‘That bloody woman again. Middle of the night. Bring out your dead! Christ, can’t she leave us in peace.’
‘Just a minute, Jack,’ said Dolly on the phone, ‘there’s someone at the door. Who is it?’
‘Could you let us in, Dolly? Now?’
‘Yes, I’ll just find the key. I’m on the telephone. Yes. Hello, Jack? Yes, Philip’s here.’
‘I forgot to ring earlier. Just checking.’
‘Yes, they’ve brought him. When shall we be seeing you?’
‘Tomorrow. I’ll be down in the morning to fetch Philip back.’
‘And you’ll bring—?’
‘Tell you tomorrow. Something about a gummy eye.’
Dolly unlocked the front door, saying, ‘Just Jack to see you’d arrived safely, dear. He’d never said you were coming. Oh dear, oh dear.’
‘We’ll say nothing tonight,’ said Mrs. Middleditch. ‘It’s too late tonight. No need for the police, though who knows? If it hadn’t been the Chamber of Commerce and I had not been coming out at that particular—Oh, good heavens!’
Toots had put up the volume of his bedside radio so that the news boomed out as it might have been across Las Vegas.
Philip slid past his grandmother and out of sight.
‘I’ll have to go. Mrs. Middleditch. Is Mr. Middleditch . . . ? I’d like to give you both a cup of tea but Toots isn’t too well. Thank you so very much.’
‘I’ll be back first thing in the morning. There are some questions. See to the bleeding.’
They departed.
‘Bleeding? Oh Lord—whatever –?’ Dolly went into Toots’s room and tried to make herself heard above the latest stockmarket prices, which were reverberating off the walls. Toots lay as in rigor mortis and Philip stood by the fireplace picking bits of glass out of his pocket.
‘Philip, dear, oh dear. How late! They shouldn’t do it. Those awful boys dropping you off this time of night. Whatever’s Jack thinking of? No idea . . . ’
‘And nor has your mother,’ said Toots from his catafalque. ‘Nor the whole damn lot of them. Down on that bike in the dark. Had you a helmet? No. Eleven years old. Have you done your homework? No. What’s the matter with this country? Tell me. What?’
‘No discipline,’ said Philip.
‘No discipline. And skate-boarding.’
‘Skate-boarding’s over years ago, Toots.’
‘Whatever it is now, then. Drugs. Filth. They’re selling the stuff open now to anyone, all ages, twenty pounds a time.’
‘Fifteen,’ said Philip.
‘What?’
‘Don’t be so silly, Toots. Philip doesn’t know anything about drugs. He’s at a private school and he knows we all love him.’
‘What’s that blood?’ asked Toots, eyes still apparently shut, nose raised to the ceiling.
‘It’s a photo frame. It broke in my pocket. I’ve sort of twisted my glasses, too. I guess I can’t see till they’re mended. J
ust as well I can’t read or I’d be getting held back.’
Dolly came to him with TCP and hot water in a pudding basin and some bandages from a Red Cross box they’d kept since the war.
‘Funny thing to keep in a pocket,’ said Toots, ‘a picture frame.’
‘It’s just a present.’
‘Lot of shoplifting going on at the moment,’ said Toots.
‘Toots! Will you be quiet! Don’t listen to him, Philip. He’s a silly old man. He wasn’t like this once, you know. He was different when I first married him.’
‘I didn’t nick it, Toots. I bought it for Faith to put Holly in. Have you got one of Holly?’
‘Beg your pardon,’ said Toots. ‘Apologies. But you smell of fish and chips. That could be something of a private matter.’
‘Whatever has fish and chips to do with shoplifting? I tell you, Philip, your grandad’s not quite right in the head.’
‘It could have a bearing,’ said Toots. ‘Telling the truth. There’s no fish-and-chip shop between here and Ellerby Priors. And no picture-frame shops, either.’
‘I bought the frame in Whitby at dinner time. And I got a blasting for it at school. There was going to be some sort of welcome ceremony for her—for my sister—they said. Something in church. I thought there’d be presents. Jack was giving her a pound he’d found.’
‘A welcome? Well, bless me, they never said one word to us. You’d think we’d be invited. D’you know, we’ve never seen her, Philip. Not even a photograph.’
‘Oh well, it all fell through in the end. First yes, then no. I just got this idea there might be. They’d said something about me carrying her up and then Jack would take her and show her round the church, but it didn’t come off.’
‘No bloody discipline. Where did you get the money?’
‘For the frame? Oh, I had some. I’ve been making a bit lately.’
‘Now, Philip.’ She had bathed the leg, taken away the water, returned with tea and chocolate cake and a hot-water bottle and sat him in an armchair. ‘Now, do just be careful what you say. You don’t have to pretend with us.’
‘No, it’s true. I have made a bit. On an investment. Just simple stuff. I invested a pound. Made about fifty. I’m lucky. I lost a bit of it again, well, most of it, but I’ve a good scheme. It’s concentration. Toots, I could tell you how: you just will something very hard, really try.’
‘Like you do with your reading.’ Toots opened an eye and Philip looked into it. They both laughed. Only Toots could refer to the peculiar nature of Philip’s dyslexia. Only Toots could say that not one boy in his day, in all his teaching years, had ever had it except for the obvious loonies. ‘Maybe I’m a loonie,’ Philip usually said. ‘You make a good case for yourself,’ usually said Toots; ‘d’you want to play chess?’
‘D’you want to play chess?’ he said now.
‘No, not tonight,’ said Dolly. ‘At this time of night Toots is meant to be asleep. You’re not playing chess. Philip’s had a big day.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Philip. ‘This and that happened. Faith coming and that.’
‘Now then,’ said Dolly, knees apart. She picked up a sock of Toots’s she had been darning. ‘Now then, tell us all about her.’
‘Truth, mind,’ said Toots. Philip glowered at him.
‘She’s pretty beautiful,’ he said, finishing a third piece of cake. ‘Very beautiful. She has thick black curls and dark-green eyes. Lovely ears. And she smiles all the time. Her hands cling on to you. When she yawns she’s got a pink tongue. Her nose is very pretty, like a lion cub’s, soft and flat, and she smells of roses.’
‘Roses,’ said Dolly. ‘I wish they’d called her Rose. Is Andrew very fond of her? However can he bear to leave her?’
‘Yes, he seems very keen on her. He’s mad about her, I suppose. I expect he’s settled a lot of money on her.’
‘And is she going to be happy up there, d’you think?’
‘Well, she’s awfully fond of me.’
‘She is?’
‘Yes. Actually, I took her out. She was brought to meet me from school. Jocasta and Andrew brought her.’
‘Yes,’ said Dolly. ‘I thought they would bring her. That was nice.’
‘And on the way home she cried and Jocasta couldn’t cope and Andrew just said, “Pick her up, Philip,” so I did and she stopped crying at once. She just looked me straight in the face and smiled at me. She’s got lovely teeth.’
‘Teeth?’ said Dolly. ‘But she’s not three months yet.’
‘She’s advanced,’ said Philip. ‘They say she’ll be walking any day. She looks as if she could talk if she set her mind to it. Actually, Andrew said when we got back and I carried her in for tea, he said, “You can see that baby idolises Philip. She has both arms round his neck.”’
‘Philip . . . ’ Dolly was grave. But Toots said, ‘That’ll do, Dolly. Let him be.’
Soon Philip said he might as well go to bed and wandered off to the room they now called his. Dolly went off in her slippers to get him another hot-water bottle and creaked up the steep stairs with it. He lay in his clothes, fast asleep on top of the covers, and Dolly took off his shoes and lifted his legs up and covered them and tucked the hot-water bottle wrapped in an old petticoat of her own well down near his feet. She managed to drag off his zip jacket without waking him, wondering a little about the coins that kept dropping out of it. She noticed that his face was filthy and longed to get a flannel. ‘I’m getting hopeless,’ she said. ‘I see nothing these days.’
‘Tomorrow will do,’ she said, and sat on the bed beside him for a time, looking at the sharp little face, the red mark of his specs on the bridge of his nose. Still not much more than the face of a baby himself. What a queer idea he had had about the face of a baby! His clothes seemed very damp and there was a breath of salt water about him. And Toots was right. There was a very definite smell of fish and chips.
17
Pammie woke next morning in her bedroom of chintz and bits of dressing-table silver to the familiar sight of dear old Hugo standing at the window in his schoolboy dressing gown. She was sitting bolt upright in bed staring at him and wondered why. It must have happened before she noticed him and so could not be simple surprise. There flooded in then the dream of—how long?—a second ago, the terrible dream. A dream of the baby, Faith Fox.
‘Good Lord, Hugo, you frightened me. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Beautiful morning. Glad you’re awake. It’s seven o’clock.’
‘Seven? Well, I don’t know— Is she crying? The nurse is there. Oh!’
‘Grass needs a last cut. I’ll tell Sears. Sopping wet. Heavy dew. The baby’s gone, Pammie. Back to her own folk. You’re not awake.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Hugo—awful dream. About the baby. I can’t remember it.’
‘You’re done in,’ he said. ‘I’ll get some tea.’
She waited in the sunny room, listening to the comforting sound of cars going down Coombe Hill towards London, Hugo letting Thomasina’s dog out on the lawn, the postman’s voice admiring the pompon dahlias. It was warm and still. Home, she thought. I am home too. Yesterday. What a day! That baby.
‘Will you be able to make it?’ Hugo put the tray of tea down on a table, trembled some into a rosy china cup and tottered across to the bed with it.
‘Make what? Lovely tea, Hugo. Make what?’
‘The wedding.’
‘Wedding?’
‘The Seton-Fairley wedding. Farnham.’
‘My God, no! Not today. It can’t be. How can I? I’ve nothing ready, have I? Oh yes, it’s back from the cleaners. Oh, not today. I can’t. It’s halfway back to where I was.’
‘Hardly say that, dear. Under an hour. Car’s coming for us at eleven; then we can have a bite somewhere.’
‘Oh, I can’t go. Out of the
question. We’ll write later and say it was a bug. I’ve sent the present—that’s all that matters. We hardly planned this.’
‘I’ve had my tails cleaned,’ said Hugo, making a noise drinking his tea. ‘I like old Seton-Fairley. Must be ninety. Shan’t see him again.’
‘That’s morbid. Oh, great heaven, Farnham. Is the water hot?’
In the bath she thought again of Faith Fox, tried to see her face, her strong, stout little body. She had hardly held her. On the journey, giving her the bottle of milk as the nurse had shown her, she had been delighted with herself, delighted with the waving arm that sought and patted her face. The child so good, so quiet. The nurse had said, ‘A paragon.’ Well, one almost wondered . . . But no. One could see from her eyes there was nothing funny about her. Nothing retarded or queer there. Dear little soul. Just through and through good.
Let’s leave it at that, she thought, finding new tights, getting down to her nails among the silver scent bottles. ‘Dear little soul. You know I had her for nearly two months just after she was born? No trouble.’ She was attending Faith Fox’s wedding now, Faith Fox the image of Holly but quieter, more perceptive, gentler. Here came Pammie, twenty years on, chatting and edging along towards the reception line-up, towards the white, white lilies of little Faith’s bridal bouquet, bridegroom tall, impeccable, his face a haze, but Faith a star, bending down to Pammie. ‘Pammie,’ she cries. ‘Oh, darling Pammie. She saved my life, you know, when I was born. Just about brought me up.’ There stands Thomasina with her smile. Nobody near her.
Old. We’ll all be so old by then. Thomasina’s boyfriend will be dead and gone and so will Hugo. Wonder what the rest of us will look like. Much the same, I suppose. We’ve all beaten the flab now. We’ve all kept our dogs to walk, and our golf. We do our exercises. I don’t see myself changing or getting ill. I’ll wear the blue thing today. Not my favourite, but I’ve overdone the yellow lately. I’d have liked yellow somehow for October but the only decent hat is—
The phone rang during breakfast and she thought. Thomasina. Very thick with the Seton-Fairleys—oh!