Jane Gardam - Last Friends

Willy had always made the early-morning tea. Not in Hong Kong, of course. There had always been a slender maid with a tray, smiling. They thought, the Chinese and the Americans, that it was disgusting. Called it ‘bed-tea’. Oh Willy! She tried not to think of Willy in case once again she found that she had forgotten what he had looked like. Ah — all well. Here he came on the stairs, his fastidious feet, balancing tea-cups and deeply thinking. ‘Oh, Willy ! So many years! I haven’t really forgotten what you looked like. “Pastry Willy”—but you grew quite weather beaten after we came home. It’s just, sometimes lately that you’ve grown hazy. Doesn’t matter. Changes nothing. I wish we could have a good talk Willy, about money. There doesn’t seem to be much of it. I always put the Bank letters in your desk. Very silly of me. I don’t open many of them.’

He was watching her up by the kitchen ceiling, very kindly, but noncommittally. No need ever to discuss the big things. He knew she was — well — superficial. Hopeless at school. Men love that, Nannie had said. But shrewd, she thought. Oh , yes. I’m shrewd. An unshakable belief in the Church of England and God’s mercy, and Duty and ‘routine’. Early tea. Clocks all over the house (fewer now I’ve sold the carriage clocks) wound up each Sunday evening after Evensong. Jesus had probably never seen a clock. Were there any? She tried to imagine the Son of Man with a wrist watch, all the time putting from her hazy early-morning mind the fact that she couldn’t remember Willy at all. ‘I can’t see your face ,’ she called.

Come on. Hospitality, said his voice from behind the kitchen curtains. Tags and watch-words, she thought. That’s what all the love and passion comes down to. We never really talked.

And imagine, sex! Extraordinary! I suppose we did it? Susan was a lovely baby.

She made tea from the loose Darjeeling in the black and gold tin and carried up a pretty tray with sugar basin and milk jug—. What am I doing all this for , Willy? It’s no wonder Susan just thumps down a mug. Our bloody parents. Highest standards. But what of, Willy? Standards of what? Oh! He had vanished again.

Good. He couldn’t answer her.

‘Now then, Fiscal-Smith. Rockingham china for Fiscal-Smith. I bet he lives off pots and shards in Yorkshire. Mugs there, certainly. And I’m still trying to show him the rules.’ She tottered up to the guest room and found it empty.

‘Hullo?’

‘Fiscal-Smith,’ she called. (What is his first name? Nobody ever knew.)

‘Hullo?’

(That must be sad for him. Nobody ever asking.)

‘Hullo?’

Silence. The bed in his room was tidily turned back — his pale pink and white winceyette pyjamas folded on the pillow, his dressing-gown and slippers side by side by an upright chair. (So he’d brought his night-things. He’d intended to stay from the start. The old chancer!)

Except that he was absent.

She sat down on his bed and thought, he says he comes in honour of Filth and yet all he wants is to be looked after here. That’s all he’s after. Being looked after. You were so different, Willy. And now all I want is someone to deal with those letters (My slippers. Time for new slippers) and peace and quiet. And — absolute silence.

There was a most unholy crash from below stairs.

As she shrieked, she remembered that she was not alone. There were others in the house. Left over from yesterday. She couldn’t actually remember the end of yesterday. Any yesterday. The evening before had usually slipped away now by morning. King Lear, poor man—.

But last night hadn’t there been something rather sensational? Rather terrible? Oh dear, yes. Poor Old Filth’s empty house had burned to the ground. Or something of the sort.

She looked at her feet. Yes, it was time for new slippers. Then through the window she saw Fiscal-Smith tramping up the hill towards her, from the direction of Filth’s house, still in yesterday’s funeral suit and he was looking jaunty. Eighty plus. And plus. 5.30 A.M. Beginning to rain. He saw her and called out, ‘All well. It’s still there.’

‘What?’

‘Filth’s nice old place. The boy was wrong. No sign of fire. I’ve a feeling that boy is a stirrer . He was a stirrer years ago at that lunch you gave. A little monkey!’

‘Do you never forget anything, Fiscal-Smith? What lunch? A life-time of lunches. And with’—for a wobbly second she forgot her grandson’s name. ‘When? Where?’

‘Two fat sisters. And a priest. And Veneering, of course. Oh, I forget nothing. Mind never falters. It is rather a burden to me, Dulcie.’

‘You are arrogant, Fiscal-Smith.’

‘I simply put my case,’ he said.

He was with her in the kitchen now. She said, ‘Your case is in your bedroom. Do you want help with packing?’—and shocked herself.

There fell a silence as he stepped out upon the terrace with his cup of tea.

* * *

At the same moment, down in Old Filth’s house in the dell, Isobel Ingoldby, wrapped now in his Harrods dressing gown instead of her own pink silk coat, was turning off the lights which she had left burning all night. Foolish, she was saying, I’m the one paying for the electricity now. Until I sell. Why did I light the whole place up through the dark? Some primitive thing about the spirit finding its way home? But he won’t be searching. His spirit is free. It’s back in his birth-place. It maybe never quite left it.

She boiled a kettle for tea but forgot to make any. She wandered about. Betty’s favourite chair stood packed up in the hall. His present for Fiscal-Smith. Nobody gave Fiscal-Smith presents.

This house — the house she had inherited — watched her as she went about. So tidy. So austere. So dead. Betty’s photograph on a mantelpiece, fallen over sideways.

Isobel had slept in his bed last night. Someone had removed the sheets and she had lain on the bare mattress with rugs over her. She thought of the first time she’d seen him in bed. He was about fourteen years old. He was terrified. We both knew then. I was only his school-friend’s older cousin, but we recognised each other. All our lives.

* * *

Fiscal-Smith still stood on Dulcie’s terrace half an hour later, still examined the view over the Roman road towards Salisbury, the wintery sun trying to enliven the grey fields through the rain.

Dulcie came walking past him towards the wrought-iron gates, fully dressed now in tweed skirt and cardigan, remarkably high heels and some sort of casual coat, not warm, from the cupboard under the stairs. She carried a prayer-book. Fiscal-Smith shouted, ‘Where are you going? Filth’s house is perfectly all right.’

‘I am going to church.’

‘Dulcie, it’s six o’clock in the morning. It is clouding over. It’s beginning to rain. That coat you had in Hong Kong. And it isn’t Sunday.’ He came up close to her.

‘I need to say my prayers.’

‘It will be locked.’

‘I doubt it. The great Chloe is supposed to open it but she usually forgets to shut and lock it the night before.’

‘The mad woman who runs about with cakes?’

‘Yes. Well-meaning, but the mind’s going. Sometimes she locks in the morning and un-locks at night. We shall have to tell the church-warden soon. Actually I think she may be the church-warden. There’s nothing much going on in the church. Not even anybody sleeping rough. It’s too damp—.’

He was padding along behind her.

‘There you are,’ she said. ‘Unlocked. Unlocked all night.’

* * *

Inside, the church scowled at them and blew a blast of damp breath. Hassocks looked ready to sprout moss and there was the hymn-book smell. Notices curled on green baize gone ragged, and the stained-glass windows appeared to bulge inwards from the flanking walls. Two sinister ropes dangled in the belfry tower. It was bitterly cold.