by Jane Gardam
‘As we must suppose,’ Feathers put in quickly, before Dulcie realised what Fairy had said, ‘this monk has. He is certainly without inner manners.’
Everyone waited for Dulcie to say something but she didn’t. Then, ‘Granny, why are you crying?’ and Herman ran to her and stroked her arm. ‘Hey, Granny, we don’t care about the monk.’
‘He—he suddenly felt—indisposed and—he vanished.’ Her lunch party—her reputation as the hostess on Privilege Hill—gone. They would all laugh about it for ever.
Dulcie couldn’t stop imagining. She could hear the very words. ‘That brought her down a peg. Asked this VIP bishop, or archbishop, or [in time] the Prince of Wales, and he took one step inside the house and went right out again. And she’d offered to drive him to the airport. What a snob! Of course, Kate knows more than she’ll say. There must be something scandalous. Drunken singing and drums. African drumming. Yes—at Dulcie’s. But Kate is very loyal. They’ll all be leaving her a nice fat legacy.’
‘A funny business. He probably caught sight of the other guests.’
‘Or the dreadful grandson.’
Etc.
Then someone would be sure to say, ‘D’you think there was a monk? Dulcie’s getting . . . well, I’ll say nothing.’
‘Yes, there was someone. Standing looking in at them over that trough of umbrellas. Some of them saw him. Dripping wet.’
‘Didn’t he have an umbrella himself?’
‘No. I don’t think they carry them. He was wearing see-through plastic. It shone. Round his head was a halo.’
‘On Privilege Hill?’
‘Yes. It was like Star Wars.’
‘Well, it makes a change.’
The story died away. The Iraq war and the condition of the Health Service and global warming took over. The weather continued rainy. The old twins continued to drowse. The carer had home thoughts from abroad and considered how English country life is more like Chekhov than The Archers or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared. She would write a paper on the subject on her return to Poland.
But the startling image of the dripping monk remained with her. She felt like posting him an umbrella.
Kate, the ubiquitous cleaner, told her friend the gardener, ‘Oh yes, he was real all right. And young. And sort of holy-looking.’
The gardener said, ‘Watch it! You’ll get like them. They’re all bats around here.’
‘I feel like giving him an umbrella,’ Kate said. ‘Wonderful smile.’
And one day Dulcie, in the kitchen alone with the gardener, Herman visiting Judge Veneering for a jam session, said, ‘Don’t tell anyone this, but that day, Father Ambrose in the rain, I kept thinking of Easter morning. The love that flowed from the tomb. Then the disappearance. I want to give him something.’ She splashed gin into her tonic.
‘Don’t have another of those,’ said the gardener to his employer.
Later, to old Feathers, who had called to present her with his dead wife’s pink umbrella, having wrested it the day before with difficulty from Veneering, she said: ‘I want to give him something.’
‘Come, Dulcie. He behaved like a churl.’
‘Oh, no. He must suddenly have been taken ill. I did know him, you know. We met at a day of silence in the cathedral.’
‘Silence?’
‘Yes. But our eyes met.’
‘And he wangled a lunch and a lift?’
‘Oh, didn’t wangle. He wouldn’t wangle. We talked for a few minutes.’
‘A fast worker.’
‘Well, so was Christ,’ said Dulcie smugly.
Feathers, wishing he could tell all this rubbish to his dear dead wife, said, ‘You’re in love with the perisher, Dulcie.’
‘Certainly not. And we’re all perishers. I just need to fill the blank. To know why he melted away.’
‘He probably caught sight of Herman.’
‘How dare you!’
‘No—I mean it. Monks have to keep their distance from small boys.’
And Dulcie yearned for her dear dead husband to kick Feathers out of the house.
‘I have a notion to send that . . . person in the garden—an umbrella,’ said one twin to the other. ‘I shall send it to Farm Street. In London. The Jesuit HQ. “To Father Ambrose, from a friend, kindly forward to St Umbrage on Skelt.”’ The other twin nodded.
Fiscal-Smith, who never wasted time, had already laid his plans. On his train home to the north on his second-class return ticket bought months ago (like the stew) to get the benefit of a cheaper fare, he thought he would do something memorable. Send the monk a light-hearted present. An umbrella would be amusing. He would send him his own. It was, after all, time for a new one. And he had had a delightful day.
‘Staunch fellow,’ he thought. ‘Standing out there in the rain.’
Veneering phoned Feathers to see if Feathers would go in with him on an umbrella for that fellow at Dulcie’s on the way to the Scottish islands, the fellow who didn’t turn up. Feathers said no and put the phone down. Feathers, a travelled man and good at general knowledge, had never heard of an island called Skelt or a saint called Umbrage. No flies on Judge Feathers. Hence Veneering because the pleasure of the lunch party would not leave him—the boy who liked him, the Bechstein, the drumming, the jam sessions to come—amazed himself by ordering an umbrella from Harrods and having it sent.
Five parcels were delivered soon afterwards to Farm Street Church. One parcel had wires and rags sticking out of it. And because it was a sensitive time just then in Irish politics, and because the parcels were all rather in the shape of rifles, the Farm Street divines called the police.
Old Filth was right. The Jesuits had never heard of Father Ambrose. So they kept the umbrellas (for a rainy day, ho-ho) except for Fiscal-Smith’s. And that they chucked in the bin.
The stories in this collection first appeared in the following
publications:
‘Hetty Sleeping’—Woman, 1977
‘Lunch with Ruth Sykes’—Family Circle, 1977
‘The Great, Grand Soap-Water Kick’—The Sidmouth Letters, Hamish Hamilton, 1980
‘The Sidmouth Letters’—The Sidmouth Letters, Hamish Hamilton, 1980
‘A Spot of Gothic’—The Sidmouth Letters, Hamish Hamilton, 1980
‘The Tribute’—The Sidmouth Letters, Hamish Hamilton, 1980
‘The Pig Boy’—Good Housekeeping, 1982
‘Rode by all with Pride’—London Tales, Hamish Hamilton, 1983
‘The Easter Lilies’—The Pangs of Love, Hamish Hamilton, 1983
‘The First Adam’—The Pangs of Love, Hamish Hamilton, 1983
‘The Pangs of Love’—The Pangs of Love, Hamish Hamilton, 1983
‘Stone Trees’—The Pangs of Love, Hamish Hamilton, 1983
‘An Unknown Child’—The Pangs of Love, Hamish Hamilton, 1983
‘Showing the Flag’—Winter’s Tales, Constable, 1987
‘Swan’—Swan, Julia MacRae, 1987
‘Damage’—Showing the Flag, Hamish Hamilton, 1989
‘The Dixie Girls’—Showing the Flag, Hamish Hamilton, 1989
‘Groundlings’—Showing the Flag, Hamish Hamilton, 1989
‘Grace’—Daily Telegraph, 1994
‘Miss Mistletoe’—The Oldie, 1994
‘Telegony’—Going into a Dark House, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994
‘The Boy who Turned into a Bike’—You, 1995
‘Missing the Midnight’—The Oldie, 1995
‘The Zoo at Christmas’—The Spectator, 1995
‘Old Filth’—The Oldie, 1996
‘The Green Man’—Missing the Midnight, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1997
‘Soul Mates’—Missing the Midnight, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1997
‘The Peopl
e on Privilege Hill’—The People on Privilege Hill, Chatto & Windus, 2007
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jane Gardam is the only writer to have been twice awarded the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel of the Year. She has published four volumes of acclaimed stories, including Black Faces, White Faces (winner of the David Higham Prize and the Royal Society for Literature’s Winifred Holtby Prize). Her novels include God on the Rocks (shortlisted for the Booker Prize), A Long Way from Verona, Crusoe’s Daughter, and the Old Filth trilogy: Old Filth (finalist for the Orange Prize), The Man in the Wooden Hat (finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize), and Last Friends. She lives in the south of England near the sea.
ALSO BY
JANE GARDAM
FICTION
A Long Way From Verona
The Summer After the Funeral
Bilgewater
Black Faces, White Faces
God on the Rocks
The Sidmouth Letters
The Pangs of Love and Other Stories
Crusoe’s Daughter
Showing the Flag
The Queen of the Tambourine
Going into a Dark House
Faith Fox
Missing the Midnight
The Flight of the Maidens
Old Filth
The People on Privilege Hill
The Man in the Wooden Hat
Last Friends
The Stories
FOR CHILDREN
Bridget and William
The Hollow Land
A Fair Few Days
NONFICTION
The Iron Coast
ILLUSTRATED
The Green Man