Jane Gardam - The Man in the Wooden Hat

“But we’re not going towards Pimlico! Lizzie, we’ve missed the roundabout.”

“Yes.”

“Izz, why aren’t we going to Ebury Street?”

“Because we’re going to the Temple.”

“That’s wrong. That’s Eddie’s Chambers. It’s wrong . We have this flimsy lovely house in Ebury Street.”

“Talk later,” said Isobel. “I just do what I’m told. Here’s the Embankment and we drive under the gateway and — my goodness! Teddy’s certainly made his mark. The Inner Temple! Here’s your new apartment. Gor-blimey, first floor looking at the river.”

“But where’s all our. . Where’s my house ? Our white carpet? Wedding presents? What’s Eddie been up to? The black chair?”

“I’ve no idea. There seems to be plenty still to unpack. There’s a huge red chair, none too clean. Superb rooms! However did he get them? Rooms in the Temple are like gold. Oh, well, I suppose he is made of gold now. Mr. Midas.”

Elisabeth walked to the window and looked across the river at the rising post-war blocks of cement.

She said, “What’s happened to them? They’ll have got bread and milk in for me, and ordered the papers. They’ll worry.”

“Hush. Too soon.”

“Tell me.”

“No. Well, oh, all right. Ebury Street is being pulled down. The hospital knew but didn’t want to tell you. You said it was fragile. All the bombing. .”

“Pulled down! No! Not in three weeks.”

“No. Not yet. But they’ve started demolition at the Victoria end. They said — your pals—“Don’t let her come back.” They’ve mostly been rehoused already.”

“What about Mozart Electrics? Across the road?”

“Someone told me — I went round there — that he’s gone into a home. Very crippled.”

“And Delilah? And the butler? And the greengrocer?”

“The greengrocer’s gone to Lowestoft. I found the building firm. Teddy had organised the furniture to come here to the Temple and they gave me a key to have a look around. I collected your post off the floor.”

Elisabeth stood watching the river for some silent minutes and said, “Well, he’s taken everything from me now.”

“Oh,” said Isobel. “ No ! Poor Teddy! And working like hell.”

“He could have told me.”

“He was told not to upset you. The Chambers know. They’ll be coming. He arranged everything, except me. He doesn’t know we know each other — remember?”

“Yes. But I forget why.”

“Don’t think too hard. Listen, you’re going to have help here — shopping and ironing and so on.”

“You are crowing !”

“Why? Crowing ? Me?”

“Because I shouldn’t have married him. You said so.”

“God’s truth!” shouted Isobel. “I traipse round builders, I look up neighbours, I get your post, I fetch you home. .”

Elisabeth turned back to the river and said, “Had they started the demolition?”

“Yes. The bank on the corner has closed and the little paper shop, and there’s scaffolding up. At the back in those gardens. .”

“Yes?”

“They were chopping down the trees. Listen, get Teddy home and stop crying. You’re menopausal.”

“I can’t. I’m not. I’m rational and sad,” she said.

“Then go off with bloody Veneering! I can’t do more,” and Isobel slammed away.

Elisabeth walked to another window in the new lodgings, to try to see Lizzie cross the Temple yard towards the alley to the Strand and the Law Courts. It was very quiet in the new apartment that was presumably now her home. She saw that there were flowers in cellophane with cards pinned to them, a pile of letters on a desk. She looked in the one small bedroom with two single beds, fitted end to end. A midget kitchen and a bathroom made for giants, with a bath on feet. And silence. Silence from the corridor outside and the scene below, and from the uncaring river.

She thought: I’m on an island in an empty sea. I’m cast away. Her legs felt shaky and she sat down trying to remember that being alone was what most of the world found usual. She thought that in childhood she’d been in crowded Tiensin, a crowd of Chinese servants day and night. In the Shanghai Camp, people and people, a slot in a seething tent; my hand always held by my mother, or riding on my father’s back. The crowded ship to England, the crowded London school, the crowds of students at her all-women Oxford college, the return to Hong Kong and the infrastructure of Edward’s world. Now this solitude. Double-glazed silence. I suppose I must just wait. It’s the anaesthetic still inside me. I have memory so I must still be here. I have nobody, but I have memory. There was a knock on the door.

But the door of the apartment seemed a mile away and she could not move. She stared at the door and willed it to open of its own accord and after a moment it did, and Albert Ross walked in.

“No! Get out! Go away!”

He took off the broad brown hat and sat down on the red chair and looked at her from across the room.

“Go away. I hate you.”

He twirled his shoes, regarded them and, without looking at her, said, “I’ve come to apologise. I dealt you the Five of Clubs. It was a mistake. I seldom make a mistake and I have never apologised for anything before, being of a proud nature.”

She watched him.

“The Five of Clubs means ‘a prudent marriage not for love.’”

She watched him.

“I am very much attached to your husband. I saw only your faithlessness. It affected the pack. I was wrong.”

“You were always wrong. You stole his watch once.”

He became purple in the face with rage and said, “Never! He gave it to me when I had nothing. It was all he possessed. He trusted me. It was to save my life.”

“You are cruel!”

“Here is a telephone number you must ring. It will be to your advantage.”

“I don’t need your help.”

He sighed and put out a hand to his hat and she thought, He may have a knife. He could kill me. He is a troll from a stinking pit.

But he brought out of the hat only the pack of cards, looked at it, then put it away.

“This is a transition time for you. You still don’t see your way. This telephone number is from someone who cares about you. Her name is Dexter,” and he put a visiting card on the table and was gone.

A dream, she thought.

She did not move, but slept for a minute or perhaps an hour, then crossed to the table where there was no visiting card. She searched everywhere, under the table, even along the passage outside the door. Nothing.

Then the telephone rang and a voice said, “Might I have the honour of addressing Mrs. Edward Feathers ?”

“Delilah!”

“Aha,” said the familiar phantom voice. “Seek and ye shall find! I am speaking from the West Country. From Dorsetshire. England.”

“Dorset?”

“You will remember that we have our country estate in Dorset? Well, it is, by some, designated ‘country cottage.’ Now that we have been cast out of our London home we have taken refuge in it.”

“But where exactly, Delilah?”

“Well, we are not exactly on the estate, but some fifty miles away in the fine city of Bath where mercifully Dexter has been granted God’s gift of The Admirable Crichton .”

“Who—?”

“The comedy of that name written in honour of the immortal figure of the English butler. Second only to the incomparable Jeeves . Five performances a week plus matinées, good cheap theatrical lodgings thrown in. Alas, however, he is in at the final curtain every night and grows a little wearier each day.”

“Oh, Delilah!”

“But we find ourselves affluent, well-housed, awaiting the compensation for our London home. Our country property is deserted. We hear that you are recovering from surgery and our little empty dacha in the woods awaits you, if you would like to stay in it. For ever if you like.”