Jane Gardam - Last Friends

‘Who?’ Anna took her in her arms and rocked her.

‘No need for that,’ said Dulcie. ‘Fiscal-Smith of course. I’ve known him over 60 years. My oldest living friend. I can’t believe it. I am mortified .’

‘But Dulcie, you didn’t want him. You didn’t invite him. He drives you mad. And to be truthful you deserve better. Dulcie?’

‘Yes. Well, no. You see, he’s never been known to leave anywhere early unless, of course, he’s been kicked out. I’m afraid that does happen. He was never exactly one of us. Not important to us. We didn’t know much about him. Though I believe that somehow Veneering did. Somewhere long ago, I was never close to him, he was so boring. But you see, this morning I was locked in the church with him. We had to wrap ourselves up together in the golden Cope.’

‘Oh, Dulcie! He’ll get over it. He’s used to being ignored.’

‘Oh, the vestments!’

‘Dulcie, I’ll see to them. Now get up, I’ll find you some clothes and you can come over to us. I’ve sent Herman over already. I’ll make the kids cook the lunch. Where’s your daughter?’

‘Susan’s driving him to the station.’ Dulcie began to cry. ‘He’s so ashamed. He was always frightened of being shamed. It is the Yorkshire accent. And — he never said goodbye.’

‘Come on. Get this jersey on.’

‘He won’t come back. He’s a terrible bore. I don’t like him, but Willy said he was a very good lawyer. Incorruptible.’

‘Like Veneering then?’

‘No,’ she said, her mind at last at work. ‘No. Not like Veneering. Simpler than Veneering. But he’s the last link. The last friend.’

‘Coat,’ said Anna, ‘Gloves. Head-scarf, it’s still raining. Put your feet in these boots.’

As Anna’s car, Dulcie in the head-scarf beside her, hardly up to her shoulder, passed Old Filth’s house in the dell Anna looked down at its front door and saw a window slightly open. The five-barred gate was padlocked but something very queer and large had appeared behind it wrapped in a tarpaulin. There came a sudden insolent puff of smoke from Old Filth’s medieval chimney.

Better say nothing, thought Anna. Enough for one day. And it’s only nine in the morning.

Susan, clamp-jawed, had not looked towards Old Filth’s house as she took Fiscal-Smith to the station, nor did she alone, on the way back. She was taken up with thoughts about her mother, who was obviously going down-hill fast.

Not fit to be left alone. These new people are a god-send, but you can’t expect—. And Herman and I go back to America tomorrow. I wonder when I ought to tell her that I’m not married anymore? Herman hasn’t told her. Well I can’t tell her. It would be all over the village.

And as to what she’s done now ! Not so much this senile episode in the church. It’s what she’s done to poor little Fiscal-Smith. She’s bloody hurt him. She can hurt. She does. She used to hurt poor old Dad but she doesn’t remember. He had to find new books to read all the time and work for the Thomas Hardy Society, which got him only as far as Dorchester. He asked me to look after her but she’s so silly. He knew she was silly. I don’t think he ever spotted that she’s also rather nasty . Got me off from Hong Kong soon as I was out of the pram to a boarding school in England — her old school of course. I hated Hong Kong. I hate all that last lot who came home, with their permed hair, thinking they’re like the Last Debutantes curtseying in the court of heaven. Hate, hate, hate—.

‘My mother,’ she told the passing trees along the lanes towards St. Ague, ‘let everyone call me Sulky Sue from the beginning. I guess she was the one who invented it. She’s hard, my mother. She’s not altogether the fool she makes herself out to be: the fool who is very sweet. She’s neither foolish nor sweet, really. She’s manipulative, cunning and works at seeming thick as a brick. And nasty .’

Through tears, on Privilege Hill Susan braked as a woman passed in front of the car. It was the tall old woman who was at the do in London yesterday. In pink. Silk. Long coat. She’s still in it! It’s Isobel. She’s got Betty Feathers’ pink umbrella. Lovely-looking person. Wish she was my mother.

At least there’s plenty of money. She’s not a burden to me. But we must think about death-duties one day soon. She won’t like it, but we must.

And Fiscal-Smith. Ancient little Fiscal-Smith. Ma’s really hurt him this time. Deep — twisted in the knife. Whatever has she said to him? Oh God — I wish I had a mother I could love. I wonder if she’s beginning to like him, or something.

I must go and see these new people to say goodbye.

Florrie Benson — that’s to say she was Florrie Benson before she married the man from Odessa in Herringfleet, Teesside, England ten years back in 1927 and became Florrie Venetski or Venski or some such name — Florrie Benson walked every day of the school term with her son to see him on to the school train. The son was ten, the place the cold east coast, the time 7.30 in the morning and the year 1937.

The boy, Terence, did not walk beside her. He never had, from being five. He disappeared ahead of her the minute they were over the front doorstep.

It was not that he was in any way ashamed at being seen with his mother. He never had been. It was just that life was an urgent affair of haste and action and nothing in it should be missed.

He was a big, blond, good-looking, lanky, athletic sort of child, in top-gear from the start, his mother plodding behind him. By the time she had caught up with him on the station platform he had disappeared into the raucous mob of local children, his flash of white blond hair running among them like a light.

Florrie never even turned her head to look for him. Never had. She arranged herself against the low rails by the ticket-office her kind, big hands hanging down over it, her smiling brown eyes gazing at the cluster of girls — always girls — who rushed to her like chickens expecting grain. All she seemed to do was smile. What the girls talked to her about goodness knows, but they never stopped until the train came.

Florrie was not particularly clean, or, rather, her clothes were rusty and gave her skin a dark tint. Sometimes the school-girls, daughters of steel-workers and not very clean either, stroked her arms and hands and offered her sweets which sometimes she accepted.

Florrie didn’t fit in. Her essence seemed to be far away somewhere, way beyond her stocky figure. She suggested another life, a secret civilisation. She looked a solitary. For her ever to have shouted out towards the boy, Terence, to remind him of something would have been almost an insult to both, but an invisible string seemed to pass between them.

Terence — Terry — the spark running in the wheat — never looked at his mother as he ran in the crowd, never waved goodbye when the train came in. When the children had been subsumed into it and it had steamed away on its six-mile journey along the coast Florrie would heave herself off the railings, nod towards the ticket-office (‘Now then, Florrie? ’Ow are yer?’) and make for home. Her daily ritual was as much a part of local life — quite unexplained — as the train itself, its steam and flames, the fireman shovelling in the coal with the face and muscles of Vulcan. She never seemed to watch him but he was not unaware of her. He sweated in the red glow and wiped his face with a rag.

No other mother came to the station. When the children were smaller the other mothers used to shout ‘’ere Florrie. Can you look to him? Or her?’ Very occasionally at the beginning Florrie would find herself near one or other licking a handkerchief and scrubbing at faces, straightening the slippery scrap of a tiny green and yellow rayon tie. Never Terry’s.