Jane Gardam - Last Friends

Waiting at the front end of the train was the elder of the village: Old Dulcie the widow, with her daughter Susan and her twelve year old grandson Herman, an American child, serious and very free with his opinions. Dulcie was half his size, a tiny woman in grey moleskin and a hat made of what could have been the feathers of the village rooks. It was a hat bought forty years ago in Bond Street for the Queen’s birthday in Dar-es-Salaam where Dulcie’s husband had been an easy-going and contented judge even at a hanging.

Susan, Dulcie’s stocky daughter, was a glum person, married to an invisible husband who seldom stirred from Boston, Massachusetts. Granny, mother and son were about to travel first-class in reserved seats.

The group of four, who had never reserved a seat for anything in their lives, were stamping noisily about waiting to fight their way into the last carriage, quite ready to stand all the way to Waterloo among the people who’d been down to Weymouth for the bank holiday and would be drunk or drugged or singing and drinking smoothies, some of the tattooed young men wearing dresses. These old Dulcie would somehow be spared. She had a heart-murmur.

The group of three settled themselves in first-class. Susan began to demolish the Daily Telegraph crossword, flung it from her completed within minutes and said ‘I don’t know why we’re going. We’re hardly over Veneering’s.’

‘Oh, I am,’ said Dulcie, ‘I quite enjoyed it.’

‘It’s not good for you, Ma. All this death. At your age.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Dulcie, ‘It keeps people in touch.’

‘I’m not keen on touching people.’

‘I know dear,’ said Dulcie looking at her grandson and wondering how ever he had come into the world.

‘I don’t suppose there’ll be anyone there we’ll even remember, you know. Filth was much older than you. You married from the school-room.’

‘Did I? Good gracious,’ said Dulcie.

‘Ma,’ said Susan and amazingly touched her mother’s hand, ‘You mustn’t be upset if there’s nobody much there. At his age. Veneering was younger.’

* * *

But surprisingly the church was full. There were young people there — whoever were they? — and people who didn’t look at all like lawyers. Groups seemed to be arranging themselves in tribes, nodding and smiling at each other. Some stared with polite surprise — some with distaste. There was a dwarf. Well — of course. He’d been Filth’s instructing solicitor for decades — but surely he was dead? Here he was, legs stuck out in front of him, face creased like an old nut, vast brown felt hat on his knee and sitting in one of the lateral seats reserved for Benches only: and refusing to move. The intellectual family man whispered to his wife that the dwarf was a celebrity, to tell the children to look at him. ‘Must be a hundred. They will tell their grandchildren. Said to have been dead ten times over. Had some sort of power over Filth.’ The two children looked unimpressed and the little girl asked if the Queen would be coming.

There was a pew full of generations of a family with the queer pigmentation of expats. Britons — a pale cheese-colour, like Wensleydale. There was a row of Straits Chinese and some Japanese who were being reprimanded about their mobile phones. There was a huge sad man rambling about at the back of the church near the medieval knights who lay with broken swords and noses. ‘Barristers?’ asked the children but the intellectual man wasn’t sure. The old man was silently refusing to be moved to a more distinguished seat, it having been discovered that he’d once been a Vice Chancellor.

There was Old Filth’s gardener and cleaning lady, who had parked the pick-up in the Temple this time round and had just finished a slap-up lunch at the Cheshire Cheese in The Strand. And there was a very, very old, tall woman, just arriving, sliding in among the Orientals, in a long silk coat — pale rose-pink — as the choir and organ set-to on the opening hymn.

‘I’ll bet that was his mistress,’ said the intellectual.

‘More likely it’s a ghost,’ said his wife.

And then they all began to sing, ‘I vow to thee my country’ which, for Old Filth, born on the Black River in the jungles of Malaysia, wrapped in the arms of a childish ayah, rocked by the night sounds of water and trees and invisible creatures and watched over by different gods, had never been England anyway.

After the service old Dulcie found that she didn’t want to stay long at the gathering in the Parliament Chamber across Temple yard. Talk had broken into chorus as they all streamed out. Conversation swelled. The dwarf was being waved off in a splendid car, tossing his hat to the crowd like a hero. Streams of guests were passing up the steps of Inner Temple hall and towards the champagne. Dulcie clutched Susan’s arm, then, inside the Chamber, watched people looking uncertainly at each other before plunging. She watched them watching each other furtively from a distance. She examined — and recognised — the degrees of enthusiasm as they asked a name. She saw all the things that had made her worried lately. So much going on that she seemed to be seeing for the first time, or analysing for the first time though she knew that it was everyday, as habitual as looking at the clock or holding out a hand. Yet whatever did it mean?

She was sure that she knew any number of the looming, talkative, exclaiming faces if she could only brush away the threads and lines that now veiled them. And the curious papery, dried-out skin! ‘I’m afraid it was all the cigarettes ,’ she said to someone passing by in pale pink silk. The woman immediately melted off-stage. Over in a corner rowdy people seemed to be passing around the dwarf’s hat and a cheer went up. ‘It is like a saloon,’ she said. She moved towards the lovely long windows, hearing everywhere half-familiar voices. And names of old friends lamented for being long-gone.

But they were not long gone to her. Oh, never! Since school-days, and just like her mother, Dulcie had kept all her address books and birthday books and a tattered pre-war autograph book. Some of the names, of course, were hazy on the page. Some were firmly crossed out by Susan. (‘But there were always Vansittarts at Wingfield. Susan, do not cross that out. I’ll be sending a Christmas card.’) I must learn this e-mail , she thought, tomorrow . ‘Susan — could we go home?’

Susan fetched her mother’s coat. Naturally Dulcie had kept her hat on. It made for a pleasant, feathery shadow but she had a wish that she were of this generation who would have left a hat in the cloakroom and shown that she wasn’t going thin on top like most of them; but she didn’t quite dare. Her fur coat was expensive and light as wool and smelled of evening-in-Paris, setting the odd old nostril quivering, as she passed.

A taxi had been called for Waterloo Station and the train home and Herman was being hunted down. Large and grave, the boy stood looking towards the Thames across the Temple gardens, ‘Where,’ he told his grandmother, ‘as I guess you know they organised the Wars of the Roses.’

‘Such lovely lime-juice,’ said Dulcie, ‘and how we missed it in the War.’

Herman glowered, saying that clearly only Americans were historians now.

‘They have so little of it to learn,’ said Dulcie.

‘Romantic vista?’ asked the ex-Vice Chancellor, plodding by. ‘Hullo Dulcie. I am Cumberledge. Eddie and I were lads together in Wales.’

‘Magnificent,’ said Dulcie. ‘They call it Cumbria now. So affected. Herman darling, I do think it’s time to go.’

‘The Thames once stank so much they had to move out of The House of Commons,’ said Herman.