Jane Gardam - Last Friends

‘Someone said I’d make a good one. He left me all his money. He wasn’t born rich. He qualified down here in London living on ten shillings a week. He set up offices in various parts of the country for worthy chaps like me. He was a sort of saint.’

‘Oh, I’m afraid he would never have been in the swim.’

‘No, he wasn’t. As a matter of fact I’m living on about ten shillings a week myself.’

‘He was a member of the Bar , this benefactor?’

‘No. Just a solicitor. In the north-east. He was killed in an air-raid. His name was Parable. . ’

‘I can’t believe it! It is pure John Bunyan! He can’t, if you don’t mind my saying so, have left you very much money if you have to live on ten shillings a week?’

‘It turns out that my inheritance has gone missing. His house and office both took direct hits in the north in 1941. I only received twenty-five pounds in notes which had been in a friend’s keeping and a letter saying all his other assets were to be mine when I’d taken Bar Finals. I have my Royal Navy pension of two hundred a year.’

‘Oh, my dear chap — yes, thank you Hamish, just up to the top — and, he impressed you?’

‘Of course. He made sure I left home and didn’t get killed myself in the same air-raid. I was en route to Canada as an evacuee. . ’

‘Oh, my God! What dramatic lives we have all led. Thank your stars you weren’t torpedoed aboard The City of Somewhere . All the little babies floating upside down in the water like dead fish. Depth-charged. Wonderful accounts of the few survivors plucked from the debris. Upturned boats, basket chairs — even a rocking-horse! Not very sporting. Now — just a minute, Toby,’—and the red-lipped man walked Terry out of the room, a manicured hand around his shoulder. ‘Dear boy, I would dearly like to have you. Have you tried other Chambers? You have? Ah well, you know, the chance will come. Give it time. There’s no work anywhere at present. Nobody sane is going to Law. The price of victory is lethargy and poverty. We must bide our time and use our private money. I’m sure you’ll find Mr. Parable’s treasure somewhere. But as you can see. . As you can hear. . ’

The noise and the odours of bibulous men, the cigarette smoke, the good white burgundy followed Veneering out and back in to the stately planting of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

‘I have simply no room for another pupil,’ said the Head of Chambers, shaking hands. ‘Dear Fellow, how I’ve packed them in already! I’ve got them swinging from the Chandeliers!’

* * *

‘So!’ said Veneering. ‘Ha!’ and he walked across the grass and up to the stagnant static-water tanks set in place years ago to deal with the coming fire-bombs on the Inn. ‘It has come to this. A decadent country, threadbare, idle, frivolous, cynical, hidden money.’

He longed all at once for Herringfleet. For his shadowy brave father, for Peter Parable. High-mindedness. The coal-cart. He kicked his feet in the tired grass.

‘So much for the Law. The Law is still a ass, as the great man had said over a hundred years ago. Dickens. Lived near here. Must have had a splendid view of the Law in action when you think about it. Five or ten minutes’ walk from his house in Doughty Street. I’ll go and see it. I’ll go now. I’ll pay homage. I’ll prostrate myself on his study floor and I’ll say, “Dickens, you did what you could (And why didn’t you get a knighthood? Queen Victoria liked you. Was it the infidelity?) and you did a lot. And you changed it all without a Law degree. You did it on your own with a pen and a bottle of ink.”

‘I am not going near the Law now. I’m going to be a journalist. A left-wing journalist. The New Statesman offices are up at the end here, up the alley. I’ll walk in now. I’ll demand a job.

‘And I’ll be given one. I feel it in the wind.’

* * *

Back in the Libel Chambers the clerk, Augustus, was pushing his way through the throng of the party. Finding his Head of Chambers he said, ‘Sir? Where is he?’

‘ Who ? Augustus, have a drink.’

‘Him. The foreign fellow. Looking for pupillage?’

‘Oh, him . Goldilocks. No good, Augustus. Useless. Too odd. Too foreign.’

‘You never sent ’im away, Sir?’

‘Oh, he wasn’t desperate.’

‘But we are desperate, you fool, Sir. That one’s a winner.’

‘Now then, Gussee, how d’you know?’

‘I’m a Clerk. I know what I can sell. He’s young and fit and he misses nothing. Brilliant. Better qualified than anyone in this room. You’ve lost us all a fortune you bloody fool, Sir.’

‘Oh, don’t say that! Get him back then, Gus. We’ll take him on. I’ll write to his tutor.’

‘He won’t come back. Not that one. It’s love me or leave me with that one. You’ll hear of him again all-right, but he’ll always be on the other side. That one’s a life-time type. Not that he’ll want much truck with libel and slander now. It’ll be the Commercial Bar for him, he’s poor. You’ve lost him his beliefs, about helpless widows and orphans. That one’s for Lord Chancellor. He’ll be on the Woolsack if he wants to be. I feel like going with him. You dolt, Sir.’

‘Oh dear! Augustus — Augustus, have a pint with me later in the Wig and Pen Club.’

* * *

Veneering walked away from the static-water tanks on Lincoln’s Inn Fields and towards the offices of The New Statesman and Nation where he would, of course, be taken on immediately. Then a short walk to Dickens’ house in Doughty Street, a hand-shake with his ghost, then cadge a lift somehow back to Oxford to recover his books, lecture-notes and dissertation, then burn the lot.

After which. .! Back East, and into the iron grip of Elsie’s family business.

Oh!

Towards the north end of Lincoln’s Inn the crowds, en route to their buses and trains home to north London, were tramping beside and behind him. Crowds tramping south towards the river and Waterloo Bridge and station were advancing towards him in similar numbers. Nobody spoke or smiled or paused.

But Terry Veneering stopped dead.

He stopped dead.

The crowds washed round him, one or two people looking up at his pale face and glaring eyes and platinum hair. (About to faint? Hungry? Gormless? Mad?) Some grumbled, ‘What the hell’ and stumbled and some said, ‘Bloody hell! You had me nearly over.’

Terry turned round and began to walk slowly back with the south-bound throng, retracing the last twenty or so yards. Then, he stopped again, turned again and looked, fearfully, at the building to his right. There was a little patch of old garden, its railings taken away years before to make Spitfires, a scuffed stone archway with a scuffed stone staircase twisting upwards. Up the first two steps of the staircase, on the wall of the old building was a faded wooden panel with its traditional list of the Lawyers’ names who worked within. The list was far from new, but painted in immemorial legal copperplate. He read the words ‘Parable, Apse & Apse, Solicitors.’

* * *

The door was not locked. He walked straight in expecting a derelict abandoned store-room, fire-buckets, stirrup pumps, tin hats abandoned since the Blitz. Just inside he saw instead a row of iron coat-hooks where someone had hung a bowler hat and folded a pair of clean kid gloves on top of it.

Terry opened an inner door without knocking and facing him sat a young man at a desk, a sandwich suspended in time en route to his mouth. Beside him on a smaller and more splintery desk stood a gigantic Remington type-writer on which was arranged a pocket mirror, a paper napkin, paper plate and similar sandwich. A middle-aged woman wearing a seal-skin coat sat behind it.