Jane Gardam - Last Friends

The Cossack lay on his bed. He held the letter unopened in his hand for an hour.

Later Peter Parable came in. He and the Odessan read the letter.

The Odessan said, ‘This will be the end of Florrie.’

‘Send her with him. I have money,’ said Parable.

‘She’d not leave me. And no-one will take me to Canada.’

Before long Florrie arrived, warm and clean from the sandstone bath-house and drying her soft hair. She stopped and looked at them.

‘What’s this then?’

She took the letter and after reading it slowly put it down again on the bed. She filled the kettle and set it to boil. She said, ‘I’m glad we somehow got that wireless in. It’s terrible you know in London.’

‘They’ll be up here next,’ said the Odessan. ‘You must move in with us, Peter Parable. They’ll not let you live on by the shore.’

‘Aye,’ said Florrie, ‘You can have his room. He’d best go, Anton.’

All three, all thinking that she never spoke Anton’s name in public, began to pass the letter between them.

‘Fondle’s running,’ said Parable. ‘Calls it “escorting”. In luxury. He’s running away.’

‘Saving himself,’ said Florrie, ‘and her with him.’

‘If he saves his boys—? His star boys—?’

Florrie was pouring tea carefully into the trefoil cups. ‘He’d best go,’ she said. ‘Canada’s very English. A great clean amiable country and a good long way off from trouble.’

The night before the departure to Canada of Mr. Fondle’s unanimously evacuating school, Terry Vanetski slid out of Muriel Street and down to the rabbit-hole houses by the sand dunes to say goodbye to Mr. Parable.

He was at home. The flames from the sea-coal fire could be seen far down the passage behind him, glittering and painting the walls a rosy orange.

Parable opened the door wider and said, ‘Yes? I have been waiting.’

‘I couldn’t come before. There’s big activity. Piles of clothes. I don’t know where she finds them. I told her I’d leave her all me coupons. I shan’t need them in Canada.’

‘Who knows?’

‘She doesn’t. Dad’s come up with things, too. Things we never knew. There’s a crucifix and a Missile.’

‘It will be a Missal. A prayer book. Come in. I’d have thought that would have been for the Holy Father to give you.’

‘He’s given me a bobbly thing. A rosary.’

‘You know my feelings about the Roman Catholic Church. Well I suppose you’ve come to see what I am going to give you?’

‘It never entered my head, Mr. Apse.’

‘Just as well. I am giving you nothing. Nothing for the moment, that’s to say, except naturally my prayers. Nothing extra for now, but there will be something in the years to come. It will be handled by my head office — you may have heard that I have branches in other parts of the country? I am speaking of my Will.’

‘Thank you very much, Mr. Parable.’

‘Apse — Peter Parable-Apse — it will not be a fortune. You must make your own: as I had to do in London on—.’

‘Yes, Mr. Apse. On ten shillings a week.’

‘Did me no harm. But all this is for after the War. When you are back home again. You will come back. We shall win the war. But I think you should not come back up here. Go to London where I have significant connections, which will quietly endure. You will not want.’

‘I’ll write, Mr. Apse. From Canada.’

‘Remember your Bible, boy. And I shall need to know your address before I die.’

‘But, if you die, Mr. Apse—?’

‘—in order for my executors to send you your inheritance. I don’t mind telling you that, chiefly on account of my esteem for your dear mother and my admiration for your father’s courage, I intend to leave you twenty-five pounds.’

‘Will that be per annum, Mr. Para — Mr. Apse?’

‘No, it will be net, boy. Your capital.’

‘Why are you doing this, Mr. Apse?’

‘Don’t grin, boy. Do not mock. I do this wholly for your mother, fool though she was not to marry me.’

* * *

‘Did you nearly marry Mr. Parable, Ma?’

‘Peter Parable? I did not.’

There was a roar from the bed.

‘More fool me,’ she said, stirring the pot.

‘No,’ said Terry and from the bed came a more acquiescent rumble. ‘It wouldn’t have done, Ma.’

‘Well, I suppose I might have had silk stockings and a fur coat by now if I had.’

‘More like,’ said Terry, ‘you’d have been singing hymns on the sands in a bonnet,’ and the three of them laughed.

‘And you’d not have had me,’ said the child.

‘Well, that could have been a relief.’ She ladled out dumplings and rabbit stew. Then there was apple tart and custard.

‘You’ll miss this good stuff in Canada,’ she said. ‘It’ll be plain stuff there.’

* * *

‘Bed then, aye? Sleep well,’ she said later.

His bag for tomorrow by the door. His papers in a satchel nearby. ‘Up early now,’ she said. They did not kiss. The Odessan took Terry’s hand as he passed the bed. He put money in the hand and spoke to him in Russian. Then the Odessan roared out a spate of some other language in a new horrible, terrifying voice and his eyes looked blind. Florrie ran out to the yard. Terry stood like an object. He said nothing. The Odessan said, ‘You have Russian blood, say something, for the love of Christ. I have nothing to give you. Nothing.’

‘Yes. A chess set. Make me a chess set, my Da.’

‘You will write or cable? Every day, my boy?’

‘Of course.’

‘We cannot speak directly of the love of God,’ said the Odessan. ‘But, I can bless you.’

‘Thanks, Da.’

The next morning there was the Holy Father in the house. There was bustle. Sleeplessness had ceased with dawn and now they were all bemused by late heavy slumber. ‘Come on. We go,’ said the Canon and Terry found himself out on Muriel Street where Florrie said, ‘Goodbye then. I’ll not come to the train. Did years of that. I’ll go get your father his breakfast.’ He walked with the priest to the end of the road and turned to wave, but she had gone.

On the station all Mr. Fondle’s evacuees were gathered just as if it were an ordinary school day of years ago. Today however they were going the opposite way.

There did not seem to be very many evacuees. The parents — quite a small group — stood together in a clump talking to each other rather than to their children. Most parents were being very bright. Most children seemed very young. They coursed about the platform being aeroplanes, bright and smiling, noisy and wild. Some swung their gas-masks round their heads. The gas-masks were on long shoulder-strings and in square cardboard boxes. Even Mrs. Fondle carried a gas-mask but it was boxed in black satin and on a ribbon.

‘You can throw them all in the sea the minute we’re out of sight of land,’ Mr. Fondle called, and Mrs. Fondle marched about, smiling.

* * *

The officials in the ticket-office crammed up against the glass partition some with handkerchiefs against their faces. A few of the better-dressed parents gathered closely around the headmaster and his wife and the tall handsome boy (is it Terry? They can’t be sending Terry! ) so much older than the rest.

‘Is he your son?’ a woman asked Griespert. Two tiny girls in smocking dresses and Start-Rite London sandals stood silently beside her. ‘He’s surely too old to be an evacuee?’

‘I am a Catholic priest. He is not mine.’

‘Oh — the poor boy must be an orphan.’ The woman waggled a finger at Terry. ‘And so good-looking. You’ll be an American Hollywood star one day.’

‘We’re going to Canada,’ said Terry. ‘Do your children know?’