Jane Gardam - Last Friends

The twins looked frightened. ‘She’s from a very expensive agency. They said she did smoke but not in the house. But she does.’

‘It’s so strange that we mind,’ said Faery. ‘We all smoked once.’

‘And I suppose we are a horrible job,’ said Olga. ‘Even though she gets double. She goes on and on about how wonderful her last job was. “Lovely people”. She calls them by their first names, Elizabeth and Philip. Do you think it was with the Royal Family?’

‘I don’t. And if it was, Down with the Royal Family.’

‘Oh, don’t start, Dulcie. We’re wiser now.’

‘I want to kill her. Oh, for some men .’

‘Don’t be a fool, Dulcie, we’re all over eighty and we’re feminists.’

They sat. The room was cold with no sign of a fire. Faery’s legs were wrapped in loose bandages.

‘Marriage must be a help in old age,’ said Olga, ‘but since the husband usually goes first it doesn’t rate much now. No penniless spinster daughters at home to look after us either. Must say, I’d like one.’

‘Well, my Susan would be hopeless as a Daughter at Home.’

‘But she comes and takes charge often,’ said Faery. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are Dulcie. You never did.’

‘But she makes me feel such a fool all the time. She’s married and clever and well-off and has a son and yet she’s never happy. Never was.’

‘She has her girl-friends,’ said Olga and there was a long pause. The Carer was hard at work across the front hall, complaining on her phone at high speed in an unknown tongue.

‘Did you know? Well of course you’ll know.’

Faery said, ‘Hugely rich, we hear. And no girl. Woman almost your age.’

‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Dulcie.

The Carer returned and said that she must start to get the girls to bed. Dulcie saw her lighting up another cigarette as she held open the front door.

In the sitting room the two women stared at their playing-cards and listened to the Carer texting messages (plink, plink) in the kitchen.

‘My special subject at Oxford was Tolstoy,’ said Faery.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Olga.

‘Perhaps fiction was a mistake, it has rather fizzled out.’ said Faery. ‘We should have pioneered Women’s Rights.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Olga. ‘It was the wrong moment. Fiction got us through. Fiction and surviving the ship-wreck at 15 years old.’

‘Yes. And just look at us now.’

‘It’s nothing to do with us being born women that we’re wearing nappies and in the charge of a drug-addict,’ said Olga. ‘Men get just the same. No family backing, that’s the trouble. Poor old Dulcie’s an example. Hardly went to school you know. Married in the cradle. Daft as a brush. Like a schoolgirl. Silly women haven’t a brain to lose.’

‘Yes. I wouldn’t have wanted to share a cradle with Pastry Willy! He never liked us, you know.’

‘No. I suppose we shouldn’t have told her about Susan and her old girl? Nasty of us. Poor Dulcie.’

‘Lesbians are always looking for their mothers.’

‘It must be hard for them.’

The two old trolls sat over their cards thinking occasionally of Tolstoy.

* * *

Dulcie, having left the aged twins, began to walk home through the lanes, past the infertile egg-box, the village shop. When Janice, her cleaning lady, drove by in her new Volvo Dulcie stared at her as at a stranger.

Susan loving someone who is a woman and not her mother! Such an insult to me. I suppose it’s been going on for ages and I am the last to know. It was that boarding-school at eight, in England, when we were in Shanghai or somewhere — I forget. I’ve done everything wrong. I wrote her hundreds of letters at school. I did try. She hardly answered them.

But she was so happy here in England. All her friends were here, everyone’s parents over-seas. All seemed so jolly . Everyone did it. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it. Lesbian ! I wonder if they all were? I’m sure I didn’t know the meaning of the word. Well, anyway, we’d never have talked about it. Men get turned on by divine discontent, and challenged when a woman’s mind is always somewhere else, dreaming. I wonder if Betty — no. I heard once that there had been something between Old Filth and that Isobel, but of course I won’t believe that . Edward would have had an apocalyptic fit if he’d thought that Betty had ever embraced a woman. Whatever would my mother have thought? Well — I suppose there was Miss Cleaves—.

I’m not sure that the word is apocalyptic?

I wonder who’s got Filth’s house? And fortune! A woman — that pale pink woman? Isobel. The femme fatale. No not Isobel. No — there was only ever Betty for Filth. Nobody else. Not ever. Surely? Do you know, Willy (Willy, where are you?) I think I’ve been left behind.

Oh, is nobody ever virtuous any more — as our mothers were? Well, I think mine was. I didn’t see her very often — Pastry — please tell me. Whatever would you make of this?

I suppose Pastry, you never—? No. No. Had a—?

You would say, my faithful man (though I was never happy about that old Vera) you would say, ‘Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ Pastry? Listen to me.

The point is that, as a lonely widow in a big empty house and few friends left (I’ve forgotten a handkerchief) there is nobody to discuss anything with any more. That is the sharpness of loss. The feelings don’t go, even when the brain has begun to wither and stray. I know some very nice widowed people who manage so well. There’s poor Patsy, laying up dinner-places for all her dead relations. Seems perfectly happy. She’s got that funny middle-aged son who goes round clearing everything away again. Those with latter-day brains are the lucky ones.

I can hardly discuss anything with Olga and Faery. You would have told me to keep clear of them. They smell of decay. They can never forget that they went to the university and think I am beneath them. They’re senile, though. Serves them right for being so patronising at school. And they only got upper-seconds someone said, or was it actually lower -seconds? I bet they both remember that. And I will not leave them comfortless even if they are church-going atheists. I will always be their old friend. I suppose. For what I’m worth. Oh. Oh, dear. I must not crack up.

In the drive of Privilege House stood her rickety car and finding the key in the lock Dulcie climbed in and drove away. She reversed, ground the tyres into the cattle-grid, and swept down the hill and up the un-metalled driveway jointly shared by Old Filth’s ghost and Veneering’s ghost, dividing, one down, one up, and leading nowhere now, she thought. Even those awful rooks don’t seem to be there anymore.

She accelerated noisily towards Veneering’s yews and here, head-on towards her, came a huge crucifix with a pretty woman marching behind it and smiling. Anna.

* * *

Anna saw Dulcie’s cigarette-lined, little monkey face peeping behind the wheel and her expression of panic and she flung the crucifix aside (it was a home-made sign-post), pounced on Dulcie’s car and opened its doors.

‘I’m just fixing up a bigger B and B sign, Dulcie. Whatever’s the matter!’

‘Nothing. The car looked as if it needed a little run. We used to say “a spin”. So I’m spinning.’

‘You’re crying! Come on. I’m getting in with you. Can you drive on up? I’ll get you something to eat with us.’

‘Oh, but I must get back.’

‘Nonsense. Go on. Re-start the engine. Don’t look down Filth’s ridiculous precipice. Stupid place to build that lovely house, down in a hole. I’ll bet he had a bad chest.’