Faith Fox

by Jane Gardam

  ‘Yes, he is. I know him. He won’t come, though, because when he saw me sitting in Jack’s car he disappeared fast. But Jack just believing he’s OK! Jack’s useless not to see. Anyone could see he was a filthy pervert.’

  ‘You know this, do you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Could you tell me?’

  ‘I could tell you a bit,’ he said, and did.

  ‘Oh, poor Phil,’ she said. ‘You should have told Jocasta. Or anyone.’

  ‘There was no one. They’re either old or mad or foreign or disgusting. All of them. Everyone’s disgusting.’

  He began crying and she held him tight. He cried like a four-year-old, howling and gulping for some time. Her husband came in and Emma shook her head at him and waved him away.

  When Philip was quieter she said, ‘There’s a Pink Panther video. D’you want to watch it after supper? Or I could bring you some supper to bed. You don’t have to sit up with us.’

  ‘It might be my last night here,’ he said. ‘I’d better sit up.’

  ‘We could all eat now. Or d’you want your bath first?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  She scanned his face and thought how children’s faces are never marred for long by tears, but other than their faces, very long. ‘I hear your French is coming on,’ she said. ‘Maybe the school’s going to France next year.’

  ‘I mightn’t be here.’

  ‘You will,’ she said. ‘I promise you will. I’ll not let anyone take you away—see? What’s all this about? Is everyone leaving Ellerby Priors?’

  ‘They don’t know what they’re doing. There’s something wrong with everyone.’

  ‘What about this baby?’

  ‘Nobody’s thinking about her. Nobody at all but me. I’m not mad about growing up, if you want to know.’

  ‘Go and wash your hands,’ she said, forgetting.

  ‘What—now?’ he said. ‘I’m fine. I’ll have supper.’

  41

  Jocasta and Jack stood on the doorstep. Faith was in Jocasta’s arms, her eyes wide, her cheeks red, her face full of alert pleasure, her mouth a rose. There was no reply to knock or ring and the rain fell, with sleet in the wind.

  ‘I’ll look through Toots’s window,’ said Jocasta. Holding Faith against her shoulder, she tiptoed into the frost-painted wallflowers, to see Toots’s bed inside tidily made up with its bedcover pulled smooth. The rug was turned back from the hearth although the electric fire was switched off. There was no sign of bed table, bottles, pills, zimmer frame. The daily paper lay neat and unread on a chair. The Christmas cards on the mantelpiece had been pushed back to make way for a good many white postcards and half pages of white memo paper.

  ‘But they never go out,’ said Jack. ‘Something has happened.’

  They knew that they must call on Mrs. Middleditch and, putting another wrap round Faith, they walked slowly down the terrace and uneasily rang her bell.

  ‘I’m sure I’ve no idea,’ she said, looking over their heads, not asking them in. ‘I’ve heard nothing at all. No, I haven’t seen them this morning. I have my own life to see to. They know where I am if they want me.’

  ‘Of course. We knew you would be the only one who might have—’

  ‘Oh yes. That’s what everyone says in this terrace. I’ve become known as the only one. When Miss Bean died, who found her? So thin you’d have thought I’d never taken her a crust. Sat up in bed at a right angle like she always was, and dead two days. I had to lay her down and she snapped. There was a crack. Like sticks under your feet. Oh yes. And Mr. Ramshaw. And Mrs. Scott, and her daughter never coming near in five years. They say I get left things in wills. I can tell you it’s not my wish. I’d return it all if I could, half of it’s rubbish, and I don’t want your mother’s tallboy, Jack. No. There’s two things only I have to say to you this morning. One is that Toots was ruder to me last night than he’s ever been and only because I mentioned—quite privately while Dolly was out of the room—about him fancying the woman who comes for his toenails. And also, I have to tell you, you’ve chosen a bad morning, my point of view. Why? Because my Bingham’s left home. Just before Christmas. He’s gone with an older woman in her car.’

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry. What a troubled Christmas time for you. First Alice Banks and now—’

  ‘If we could perhaps . . . ?’ said Jocasta.

  ‘What? Oh, step inside. Is that the baby? Well, they will be pleased, I’m sure. She’s big, isn’t she? Getting on now, of course. Dolly’s fondest of tiny babies. New ones. Well, she won’t have the pleasure of that, I’m afraid. I’ll just get some newspaper for you to stand on. Have you rung the police?’

  Emotions were at war in Mrs. Middleditch. The disappearance of Toots and Dolly would have been rich meat for a year had it occurred only yesterday. The departure of Bingham infuriated her quite as much by its timing as by the fact that she had at last lost him. In her heart she had longed for a daughter-in-law for Bingham to bring home, a little fair thing who wouldn’t meet your eyes. She could have been shown the perfection it is possible to achieve in a home and in a mother. Mrs. Middleditch knew, as it happened, all about the absence of Toots and Dolly because she had seen the taxi go by and was furious that she hadn’t been consulted, that they had hired transport of their own accord instead of letting her organise and drive them. She might naturally have had to refuse because of the trauma of Bingham, but she should have been given the opportunity for suffering and service.

  The Lobster Inn, Saltburn, is where she thought they’d have gone. Turkey, stuffing, gravy, trimmings, sprouts, plum pudding, glass of red wine: three pounds twenty-five and daylight robbery. She’d offered them a Christmas dinner with her, knowing this lark to the moors was pie in the sky. That’s where they’d be. Saltburn-by-the-Sea.

  ‘D’you want to ring anybody?’ she asked. ‘Maybe you should contact the Social Services. I did see them going by in a taxi about half-past eight.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘To Saltburn, I’d think.’

  ‘Saltburn at eight-thirty in the morning?’

  ‘I’d not slept the night, what with Mr. Middleditch not at all himself about Bingham. They’re doing these special dinners. I’d think it was because poor Dolly has been very low lately when she thought she wouldn’t be seeing the family, wouldn’t you? They’ve had a long wait for this baby, you know. Well, isn’t she pretty? I’ll tell Dolly all about her. They have these bolshy fits, ordering taxis, you know, or Toots does anyway, poor Dolly. “Little gestures of independence,” the doctor calls them, but I call them ugly rebellion. Ugly rebellion. It’s not as if they’ve many friends left to go out with now, the two of them. If it’s a meal, it has to be together. And wherever else have they to go to except . . . ?’

  An incredulous dawning was taking place in Jocasta and Mrs. Middleditch; rather more slowly in Jack.

  ‘Unless . . . ’

  They eyed each other across the spotless hall.

  ‘We must go back at once,’ said Jocasta. ‘It’s been a very easy drive down and we’ll go straight back again. We must get Faith home. At once. It was a sudden idea. We should have thought of it before. It’s so easy, and she is such a very peaceful baby.’

  ‘We used to take our Bingham everywhere,’ she said. ‘Up and down to Spain and once there was a typhoon.’

  She shut the door on them.

  On the way home, in silence, they passed the moorland hotel and the waitress’s parked car. Toots and Dolly were invisible in the bar, waiting for the taxi repair, which was going on out of sight round the back of the garage. The waitress was frying bacon and eggs and supplying more hot drinks. Toots, who had refused a whisky, was sitting thoughtfully. Half an hour, maybe three-quarters of an hour, home. We’ll miss them. They’ll be on their way back now unless Middleditch is in a good mood and keeps them down there. She didn
’t look to be in a good mood when we passed the house this morning.

  The failure of the mission drew Jack and Jocasta together a little and humbled them. The Priors seemed empty and dead when they returned and there was nobody to tell who would even begin to understand. Jocasta thought belatedly of Philip. She felt that somehow, if Philip had been there, if he’d come down with them to his grandparents, he would have known what to do. He’d have climbed in and they could have waited, made the place warm, got a meal going. Philip might have known where to find a key. Why ever hadn’t they asked Middleditch for a key? Why hadn’t Middleditch offered? She was sure to have one. If she’d been a normal woman she’d have seen them in, and everyone would have waited together for Dolly and Toots’s return, and laughed.

  Laughed. Not much laughter these days.

  As Jocasta thought this Jack said, ‘As time goes on I find I’m thinking such a lot about Holly Fox. You have to wonder sometimes if Faith, everyone, would be different, everything all right, if Faith still had her mother.’ Then, seeing Jocasta’s face, he said, ‘You know what I mean. A real mother. You’ve been a real mother, I know.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I have. Phil runs me. I’m hopeless with children.’

  ‘If he’s so self-reliant, then you are a good mother.’

  ‘I’m not sure he is. But he never notices me, Jack. He never turns to me. He never says goodbye or hello at school. I know I dragged him about the world at the start but I never, never, left him. I’ve never left him for a night except in hospital and our honeymoon and at that funeral. I could have dumped him. It was always going on in these Communities. The children were held in common. Back home I was so clueless it’s a wonder he wasn’t taken into care. But I’d not have dreamed of leaving him. Yet he doesn’t love me. He never touches me. I’m useless, Jack.’

  All he had to say was, ‘Where is Philip now? Oughtn’t he to have broken up?’

  ‘He never said the date.’

  ‘I’d have thought that by the twenty-second of December . . . ?’

  ‘Yes. Oh heavens, yes. He should be home by now. They won’t have been able to telephone us. Jack, I must go over. I’ll go now.’

  She had taken the uncomplaining Faith back to the sheds and was getting back into her car, when a Land-Rover drove under the hospitium gatehouse with Philip’s headmaster in it. Phil didn’t want to come home and they would be very happy to keep him till Christmas Eve. Would Jocasta agree? Phil was no trouble at all. Doing well with his reading; French oral outstanding. And they had to say that he was being an amazing help with the children. And Emma adored him.

  ‘But I think I’d like him home,’ said Jocasta. ‘It’s Christmas time.’

  The schoolmaster pointedly did not look around the chaotic kitchen: the unlit fire, Jack and Jocasta dismally muffled in outdoor clothes, not a sign of festivity. ‘I’d like to talk about Phil sometime,’ he said. ‘It’s about time for another conference. He will, of course, be staying next term? There was some doubt, I seem to remember. He said something about some of you moving south?’

  ‘He said what? We’ve never mentioned it to him.’

  ‘Phil picks up news as he breathes. I’d like to keep him at least another year. Preferably three. To move him now would, to my mind, be a great pity. I’d like him to board.’

  ‘I’m not sure . . . ’ Jocasta walked across the room to the teapot and stroked it, looking out of the window.

  ‘If it’s the fees . . . ’ the Head said.

  ‘It’s not the fees,’ said Jack. ‘We’d manage somehow. He’s our only one.’

  ‘Let me know, then. I’ll be off.’

  He was back in the Land-Rover before Jocasta could think of any message for her son, shaken as she was by Jack.

  ‘Our only one.’

  ‘Our only one.’

  Turning to Jack, she found him gone.

  42

  At Peterborough Madeleine announced that there was only half an hour more.

  She had been engaged upon genealogical exposition, ‘Billy Faylesafe being the nephew not the son of Tony Faylesafe, who married, if you remember, Stephanie Besant, that frightful woman’s daughter, not altogether someone you could know, but then the second wife was of course Loveday Madden, such a pretty girl but epileptic and not altogether reliable because of that awful business with the son. Who disappeared, you know. They don’t talk about it but I expect he was in the Foreign Service—Puffy always says M.I.6. He was a radio ham. Now Bridget Faylesafe would be Emma’s cousin. Nice girl, Emma—it’s where we’re staying. Very provincial, of course, and mad about children and rather a bore if you’re not that sort. Very poor clothes, but pretty and frightfully OK. Born somewhere splendid and connections in Ireland—I mean real Ireland, Low-Church, not Catholic of course, somewhere near Dublin, decent country house. Hasn’t an accent, naturally, neither an Irish nor a Yorkshire one, but otherwise a bit wild and woolly. And, need I say, left-wing. My dear, she’s married a school-master, though not too bad at all—Winchester and related to the Bartram-Flites. I dare say we’ll see her, unless it’s the father we’re staying with. I’m really not quite clear.’

  ‘You surely know where you’ve invited us, Maddie.’

  ‘Well, it’s one or the other,’ she said. ‘Now here we are at Stamford and we can get them to carry in all the luggage. Excellent hotel.’

  ‘We’re not staying here, Madeleine,’ said Pammie, ‘we’re stopping for lunch.’

  ‘Of course we’re staying here. I booked us all in. We can’t do the journey in a day. We’re far too old. Anyway, it’s a chance for a fling.’

  ‘I certainly hope you have not booked us all in,’ said Giles. ‘It’s a hundred pounds a night.’

  ‘And dinner on top,’ she said. ‘Wonderful dinner.’

  ‘You live in a world of dreams,’ he said.

  But, as it turned out, not all the time, for three rooms had indeed been booked in the name of Seton-Fairley a week ago, and only just in time, for the hotel was very full.

  ‘I can’t possibly afford this,’ said Thomasina.

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Pammie.

  The general didn’t like to say that neither could he, though it was true—which was more than it was for either of the other two—and it would be even truer if he had to pay for Thomasina.

  ‘You’d be spending much more if you were in Cyprus, Thomasina,’ said Madeleine, looking sharp for a moment, ‘you and Pammie. And you, Giles, stodging away in the garrison. I don’t know what you spend your money on. You always had stacks of it.’

  Thomasina looked thoughtful. She had insisted on Egypt being a Dutch treat.

  ‘We can’t all stay,’ said Pammie, who had been examining the details at the desk. ‘There are only three rooms booked—two single and one double.’

  Neither Thomasina nor Giles could find the right words. The reception clerk waited, pen in air. The porter stood among the masses of luggage and bulb bowls, all surmounted by the general’s gun.

  ‘Well, I shall have to have one of the single rooms, obviously,’ said Madeleine, ‘and so will Giles. Surely you two girls can share? We all did at school, now and then.’

  Giles said nothing. (And that is it, thought Thomasina.)

  ‘Well,’ Thomasina said, ‘if we really are staying—and I think it’s totally unnecessary, I’m quite able to drive up even to the north of Scotland in a day, but I suppose I’m that much younger than any of you—if we must stay, and we all have our credit cards, I don’t mind sharing with Pammie. Unless it’s a double bed.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is a double bed. It is all that is left, madam. They’re not popular any more. It’s always the double beds that go last now. It’s a sign of the times. But it is a four-poster.’

  Lying side by side that night Pammie and Thomasina stared unbelievingly at the ruched satin lini
ng of the tester above them. It had, against all the rules, been a far from unpleasant afternoon. After lunch in a conservatory full of forced spring flowers and potted palms, all but Thomasina had gone for a siesta, arranging, as they left, to meet again at tea.

  Thomasina had set off for a walk through the church-lined streets of Stamford and on to the great park. She had walked fast and far, on and on, until it grew dark and she had turned back and seen the spires and towers of Rutland and Lincolnshire fading in the night as the stars came out. Back in the town she walked slowly, looking in tinselled shop windows. All the bright fruit shops. The Sally Army was singing in a square. Office workers in some tall eighteenth-century houses were looking down at them. A young woman with her children waited to cross a road. She had a baby in a sling against her stomach, a child on either hand. One child looked up and said something and the mother looked first down at her, then up at the lights across the street, and the starry sky. She laughed, and it was Holly’s laugh.

  It was Holly. It was five years from now. It was Holly with Faith and her younger children. They were on their way home. Andrew had a job at Stamford Hospital—‘Marvellous luck. Wonderful place. Burghley Horse trials’—for Holly had started riding again—‘Such nice people. You’d love it, Ma. You must come every year. Or come and live near. I shall have ten children: you’ll always be wanted.’

  Then the girl turned and she was plastered in make-up and chewing something. When she spoke it was broad Lincolnshire. The middle child, all of three years old, had a great dummy stuck in its mouth. Oh Holly, Holly, Holly, Holly, Holly.

  They played a little Bridge after tea, until Madeleine fell asleep and Pammie disappeared to her room again.

  Giles said, ‘Thomasina, we must talk.’

  ‘Not before Christmas,’ she said. ‘Let’s let things be till then.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That business about the room. Felt rather embarrassed, to tell you the truth. I’ve been thinking—were we quite ourselves, do you think, in the autumn?’