Jane Gardam - Last Friends

Old Filth was all right, he lived just round the corner in his spartan, curtainless apartment where there were two small electric radiators, and Fiscal-Smith suggested that he might stay the night there as well. In case — though he knew he was probably safe — Feathers asked him to stay too, Veneering announced that he would go to The Goring Hotel near Buckingham Palace and not more than two minutes from the station and he set off holding his arms out in front of him, his brief-case between them. He immediately vanished thinking vaguely that somewhere there would be a taxi. Any hotel was way above his means, let alone The Goring. So, as a matter of fact, was a taxi. The brief fee for the lion-tamer’s boy had been seven guineas — the shillings to go to Tom Apse as Clerk — and anyway it hadn’t yet been paid.

London had fallen into the silence of death and all its lights were gone. Abandoned cars stood in the middle of the road. Occasionally a shadow trudged past him emerging from and disappearing into the mist like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. London had lost its voice.

Taking twenty minutes to cross into what he hoped was Grosvenor Street he collided with an elephantine shape standing lightless and empty. It seemed to be a bus. He turned from it, thinking that this was going to be slow, and stepped in front of a car whose lights were smudges. He thought that the nearest Underground station would be the only hope and cannoned into a lone newspaper boy shouting a cracked refrain— Star, News, Standard —to nobody.

‘Goin far, Guv?’

‘Inns of Court.’

‘You’ll not be there by morning.’

‘How are you getting home then?’

‘I’ll doss down the back of the statue.’

‘What, Marshall Foch?’

‘Don’t mind which Marshall. Any Marshall. Marshall and Snelgrove. Cheers, Guv.’

It was three hours later that Veneering reached Fetter Lane. There were a few flares burning here and there and along the Strand in front of the empty shops and restaurants. He went almost hand over hand towards Lincoln’s Inn — what he hoped was Lincoln’s Inn — decided that it couldn’t be, clutched at some masonry beside him and toppled upon the steps of Parable-Apse.

He fell inside. He found a light. He slammed his front door upon the murk. There came a flash of memory of a blue sea — his sunburst of life in the post-war Navy. His — hum, yes, well — his wife and lanky little boy.

In the office the fire was not lit but a sack of coals stood beside the shabby old grate. There was nobody now to tumble the coals down to the cellar via the coal hole in the road and nobody to drag it up to the grate from the cellar if they did. Coal, he thought.

He kept his in the sack, covering it with a blanket on the few occasions when anyone called. But too late — too tired — to light a fire tonight. He found a bottle of whisky in the cupboard and some cream crackers and swigged down the whisky. The greatest joy he had ever known!

He thought of the threat that the government were to ban coal fires in London and he thought of his mother. He informed her and asked what she thought, but received no answer. The fog had entered the house with him. It was wreathed above his head. It smeared the window. How it stank.

‘Mam — I’m packing this in. The Law. I’ve an interview with a paper. Foreign correspondent.’

‘Your collar’s filthy,’ she said.

‘It’s the fog.’

‘Steep it and wash it. You’ve got an iron?’

‘You lived by coal.’

‘I’d no option. You have.’

‘I need sleep.’

‘There’s time to sleep and there’s time to waken.’

Veneering crawled across the floor towards the bedroom stair. ‘I’m drunk, Mam. I want to go to bed.’

‘You’ll do it. Remember your father.’

‘He had you.’

‘Well, you have me, too.’

He was in his bed. He drew a cover over him. He slept. The horrible city sprawled outside in thick unanswering silence. Veneering was ready to leave it for ever. And so, to the horrible, still-yellowish morning.

* * *

The knocking upon the front door had the desperate, dogged quality of a long assault. On it went, on and on.

At last, ‘Message,’ said a youth Veneering had not seen before as he peered blearily round the door.

‘What?’

‘Message for Mr. Veneering. Urgent. Reply essential. Shall I step in?’

‘No,’ said Veneering, taking the note and shutting the door on the boy, feeling about in the dark vestibule, finding the door to his office, groaning and grunting. He read:

‘ Mr. Veneering . Appointment this morning, April 30th, ten o’ clock at No. 21, St. Yyes Court, Gray’s Inn. Respectable dress essential. Clear head. Mr. William Willy will see you for interview for possible place in new Chambers at present being established. Anticipating overseas connections. Reply to boy. Signed Augustus.’

‘Nobody could be called Mr. William Willy,’ said Terry Veneering. ‘On the other hand the Great Augustus — I’ll put my head on the block to it — has never made a joke.’

‘Oh, well then. Shame. After yesterday’s fiasco in the world of the eternal circus, he’s too bloody late, Augustus. I go a hundred miles to defend a poor little gormless insect who tickles ladies’ private parts as they’re sitting enjoying the lions and tigers and he gets three months! Three months for a bit of harmless fun. Clearly I’m not cut out for Crime. First and only time most of them ever got tickled. Most of them never even noticed. Great Grandee Edward Feathers has palpitations of shock-horror. He’s never tickled anybody’s legs. Never will. Gross indecency — etc. Is this what we got our First Class honours for? “Pom, pom, pom” honks Feathers, County Court moron judge nodding in support, all his chins wagging like blancmange. Little lad gets three months in gaol. Fuck the English Bar, I’m off to The New Statesman . Journalism for Veneering. Get the words about the world, not into the fly-spotted Law Reports. Sorry, Augustus, Willy is too late. I’m dressed for a different play. I am about to approach the political rostrum. You — laddikins — take a note back saying I’m busy.’

‘I can’t do that, sir.’

‘And for-why?’

‘Because Augustus has you in mind. You can’t not reply to Augustus, Mr. Veneering.’

‘It is, I know, very early in the morning but could you just try to realise, BOY, that even you are not the slave of this Olympian monster? Whoever he is — you are not in his THRALL. There are many barristers in thrall to their clerks. There are Judges in thrall to their clerks. Some clerks on the other hand have been murdered by — I am my own man, Boy, I make my own choices. Thank Augustus and say I have a previous engagement.’

He shut the outer door and listened to the boy marking time on the stones on the other side of it. After a while the boy rang the bell for a second time

‘YES?’ Veneering immediately flung it open. ‘YES?’

‘I think you better come, sir. Nothing to lose. Much to gain. And Augustus — well, you don’t want ’im for your enemy, now, do you?’

‘Oh, well then. O.K.’ said Veneering, ‘O.K. Say I’ll come. Soon. Better shave. I’ve a very important interview this morning already, at The New Statesman and Nation . Tell Augustus. And tell him that to be summoned before someone called Mr. Willy sounds an unusual command.’

‘Yes, sir. Shall I wait and take you round?’

‘Whatever,’ said Veneering, slamming the door, stamping up his stone spiral stair and surveying himself in his fur-lined waistcoat, pink open-neck shirt, tight black trousers, brown boots, long platinum new-look hair. He stared at the mirror for some minutes.