Jane Gardam - The Man in the Wooden Hat

“We’re getting a bit senile,” he said and she went out to the garden and began to turn the compost with a fork.

She stayed outside for hours and Filth had a try at preparing supper and broke one of the Delft dishes. They had a wakeful night in their separate bedrooms and were only just asleep when the rooks started up at dawn.

“I’m going up to London next week,” he said. “There is a Bench Table at the Inn. I can stay overnight with someone or other.” (They had long since given up the flat.) “Or we could go together. Stay at an hotel. See a show.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. .”

“You’re getting stuck, Betty.”

“No, I’m making a garden. We’ll open for Charity next year.”

“I don’t know what you think about hour after hour. Day after day. Gardening.”

“I think about gardening,” she said.

“Well,” he told Dulcie in the lane, “I suppose this is being old. “All passion spent”—Shakespeare, isn’t it?” and Dulcie pouted her pink lips and said, “Maybe.”

After Filth had set off to London, Dulcie went round and found Betty, brown as a Gypsy, busy with the first pruning of the new apple trees.

“Does that gardener do nothing ?”

“He does all the rough.”

They sat over mugs of coffee on the terrace, staring down the wandering lawn towards the new orchard and out to the horizon and Whin Green. Dulcie said, “Are you sure you’re well, Betty?”

“Fine, except for blood pressure and I’ve always had that.”

“You don’t say much, any more. You seem far away.”

“Yes, I’m a bit obsessive. I’ll be going on gardening outings in coaches before long with all the other village bores. Look, I must get on. I’m working ahead of frost.”

“Who are those people in the garden?”

“What people?”

“I saw some children. A boy and a girl. And a man.”

“Oh, yes. It’s a garden full of surprises.”

One day, deep beyond the meadow grass, beyond the orchard and the apple hedges, on her knees and planting broad beans, she saw two feet standing near her hands. They were Harry Veneering’s.

“Harry!”

He was delighted when she shrieked.

“I’ve found you, Mrs. Waterproof! I heard Filth was up in London. Thought you might be lonely.”

They had lunch at the kitchen table and he drank a whole bottle of wine (Filth would wonder!) and made her laugh at nothing. As ever. He mentioned his father.

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No. I’m a grown-up. I’m going bald. Anyway, we’re not getting on too well, the old showman and I.”

“Oh? That’s new.”

“No. It isn’t. He thinks I’m rubbish. He’s thought so for years.” He took a flower from a jar on the table and began to pull it to bits. He kicked out at a stool.

“Harry! You may be losing your oriental hair but you’re still eight. What’s wrong?”

“I’m supposed to be a gambler.”

“And are you?”

“Well, yes, in my own small way. He’s always bailed me out. Now he says he won’t. Not any more.”

“How much?” she asked.

“Never mind. I didn’t come for that.”

“Of course not,” she said, watching him. Now he was picking at a pink daisy.

“Stop that!”

“Oh, sorry. Well, I’d better be going.”

“How much do you want?”

“Betty, I have not asked. I’d never ask.”

“How much do you owe?”

He slammed away from the table and looked down the garden. “Ten thousand pounds.”

Then he pushed past her out of the back door and disappeared.

In time she went and found him smoking in the dark alley where she had first arrived at the house, leaning against the great chimney breast. He was in tears.

“Here’s a cheque,” she said.

“Of course I couldn’t!”

“I have a lot of my own money. It’s not Filth’s. I spend most of it on the garden. If I’d had children it would all have been for them. I’ve not had a child to give it to.”

He hugged and hugged her. “Oh, how I love you, Mrs. Raincoat. How I love you.”

“Come. You must go home now. You’re a long way from London and it’s a nasty road. I’ll walk with you to the car.”

“No, it’s all right. Oh, thank you, so very, very much! Oh, how I. .”

“I’ll just get a coat.”

“Don’t. I’m fine.”

But she insisted and they walked together down the drive and up the hill towards the church.

“I’m just round this corner,” he said, “and I’m going to hug you again and say goodbye. I’ll write, of course. At once.”

“I’d like to wave you off.”

Very hesitantly he walked beside her round the side of the churchyard to where his car was parked. It was a Porsche.

“You don’t get a thing for one of these second-hand,” he said.

When the Porsche was gone she turned for the house, stopping quite often and staring at the familiar things in the lane. Loitering gravely, she nodded at the old Traveller in the hedge, busy with his flail. (He must be a hundred years old.) He stopped hacking at the sharp branches and watched her pass and go towards the front door.

Inside it on the mat lay a letter which must have been wrongly delivered somewhere else first because it was grubby and someone — the Traveller? — had scrawled Sorry across the envelope. It had come from Singapore to her, care of Edward’s Chambers. Though she had scarcely seen his handwriting — once on the card with the pearls so many years ago — she knew that it was from Veneering.

There was a half-sheet of old-fashioned flimsy airmail paper inside signed THV and the words: If Harry comes to see you do not give him money. I’m finished with him . She threw it into the wood-burning stove. Then she went into the garden and began clearing round the new fruit trees, toiling and bashing until it was dark.

“Hello?” Filth stood on the terrace.

“You’re back! Already. There’s not much for supper.”

“Doesn’t matter. London’s all eating. Come in. You can’t do much more in the dark.”

“I’ve made a vow today,” he said. “I’ll never work in London again. I can do Hudson just as well at home, with a bit of planning of references. I am tired of London which means, they tell me, that I am tired of life.”

“Possibly.”

“Which makes me think that you and I ought to be making our Wills. I’ll dig them out and revise them and then we’ll make a last trip to London, to Bantry Street, and do the signing.”

“All right.”

“Could we go up and back on the same day, d’you think? Too much for you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

And he began to make meticulous revisions to his Will and appendices of wishes. Did she want to read it? Or should he look over hers?

“No, mine’s all straightforward. Most of it to you and Amy. If you die first it will all go to Amy’s children.”

“Really? Good gracious! Right, we’ll get on with it then. Take three weeks — getting the appointment and so on, I’d think. We want everything foolproof.”

So the appointment was made for 3.30 P.M., on a November afternoon, which was rather late in the day for the two-hour journeys, one up and one down. The new young woman at the firm was excellent and therefore very busy. Never mind.

But getting ready on the day took longer now, even though shoes were polished and all their London clothes laid out the night before. Betty had seen to it that their debit cards and banknotes, rail cards, miniature bottle of brandy (for her dizziness) and the tiny crucifix left to her by Mrs. Baxter were all in her handbag, along with the pills for both of them (in separate dosset boxes) in case for any reason they should need to stay overnight.