Jane Gardam - Old Filth

Walking across the fields with Pat, Eddie made about the only comment on anyone’s life he had ever made.

“Your mother seems to feel the same about everybody. Why is she always happy?”

“God — I don’t know.”

“She’s not bitter at all. Nobody liked her. Her parents sound awful if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“You’ve had Aunt Rose and the footman? They were all barmy, if you ask me. Raj loonies.”

“She seems to feel — well, to like everybody, though.”

“Oh, no, she doesn’t. They were brought up like that. Most of them learned never to like anyone, ever, their whole lives. But they didn’t moan because they had this safety net. The Empire. Wherever you went you wore the Crown, and wherever you went you could find your own kind. A club. There are still thousands round the world thinking they own it. It’s vaguely mixed up with Christian duty. Even now. Even here, at Home. Every house of our sort you go into, Liverpool to the Isle of Wight — there’s big game on the wall and tiger skins on the floor and tables made of Benares brass trays and a photograph of the Great Durbar. Nowadays you can even fake it, with plenty of servants. It wasn’t like that in my grandfather’s generation. They were better people. Better educated, Bible-readers, not showy. Got on with the job. There was a job for everyone and they did it and often died in it.”

“I think my father will die in his. He thinks of nothing else. Sweats and slogs. Sick with malaria. And lost his family.”

Pat, who was unconcerned about individuals, slashed at the flower-heads. “I’ll be an historian. That’s what I’m going to do. It’s the only hope — learning how we got to be what we are. Primates, I mean. Surges of aggression. Today’ll be history tomorrow. The empire is on the wane. Draining away. There will be chaos when it’s gone and we’ll be none the better people. When empires end, there’s often a dazzling finale — then—? Germany’s looming again, Goths versus Visigoths.”

“But you’d fight for the Empire, wouldn’t you? I mean you’d fight for all this?” Eddie nodded over the green land.

“For the carpet factory? Yes, I would. I will.”

“You will . Fight then?”

“Yes.”

“So will I,” said Eddie.

Wandering about that last peacetime summer with the Ingoldbys, Pat now seventeen, Eddie sixteen, the days were like weeks, endless as summers in childhood. They walked for miles — and at the end of each day of sun and smouldering cloud and shining Lancashire rain — stopped at the avenue. In the soft valley, more certain than sunset, the factory workers set off for home after the five o’clock hooter, moving in strings up The Goit and through the woods on paved paths worn into saucers and polished by generations of clogs. Sometimes on the high avenue, with the wind right, you could hear the horse-shoe metal of the clogs on the sandstone clinking like castanets.

Wandering on, the two of them would watch the Colonel in a black veil puffing smoke from a funnel stuffed with hay, and swearing at his bees. “If he’d only be quieter with them,” said Pat. “Want any help, Pa?”

“No. Get away, you’ll be killed. They’re on the rampage.”

“Oh — tea,” said Mrs. Ingoldby. “You’re just in time. I’ll get them to make you some more of the little tongue sandwiches. Did you have a good walk?”

“Wonderful, thanks. Any news?”

“Yes. Hitler’s invaded Poland. Don’t tell your father yet, Pat. He can do nothing about it and there’s his favourite supper. Oxtail stew.”

“It’s not all an act, you know,” said Pat, the thought-reader, Mrs. Ingoldby having gone up to change for dinner. “It’s a modus vivendi . Old-fashioned manners.”

“I like it.”

“Not upsetting the guests, yes. But she keeps anything horrid inside, for her own safety. My mother’s not the fool she makes herself out to be. She’s frightened. Any minute now, and farewell the carpet factory and security. It’s going to be turned over to munitions. Ploughshares into swords. It’s been our safe and respected source of income for two generations. This house’ll go. Jack’s going into the Air Force, and I intend to.”

“You?”

“Yes. I suppose so. After I’ve got in to Cambridge. If they’ll have me. Get my foot in for later.”

He didn’t ask about Eddie’s plans.

“As I’ve been through the OTC,” said Eddie. “I suppose I’ll go for a soldier. My father was in something called the Royal Gloucesters — I don’t know why. He might get me in there.”

“By the way,” said Pat, like his mother avoiding rocks in the river. “All that about footmen and Ma — it’s balls, you know. Too many Georgette Heyers.”

“But your mother’s so—” (he was going to say innocent but it didn’t seem polite) “—truthful.”

“She’s self-protective,” said Pat. “Can you wonder? She was through the Great War, too.”

That evening after dinner they listened to the wireless with the long windows open on to the lawn. A larch swung down black arms to touch the grass. A cat came out from under the arms and limped across the garden and out of sight. It was shaking its paws crossly.

The news was dire. After the Colonel had switched it off, you could hear the clipped BBC tones continuing through the open windows of the servants’ sitting-room. Shadows had suddenly swallowed the drawing-room, and it was cold.

Mrs. Ingoldby draped a rug about her knees and said, “Pat, we need the light on.” The heart-breaking smell of the stocks in the nearest flower bed engulfed the room like a sweet gas.

Pat lit up a cigarette and the cat walked back over the grass, a shadow now. Two green lamps of eyes blinked briefly. Pat put the light on.

“Whatever’s the matter with the cat?”

“Don’t talk to me about the cat,” said the Colonel. “I threw it out of the bedroom window.”

“Pa!”

“It had done a wee on my eiderdown. I threw the eiderdown after it. I’d have shot it if the gun had been handy. I’m keeping it loaded now for the Invasion. That cat knows exactly what it’s doing.”

“Do be careful, dear. It’s not a Nazi.”

“Cats and bees and the world, all gone mad. I tell you, there’ll be no honey this year. Everything’s a failure. I’m thinking of buying a cow.”

“A cow, dear?”

“There’ll be no butter by Christmas. Powdered milk. No cream.”

“Why ever not?”

“It’ll be rationed. Forces first. Are you a fool?”

At bedtime Eddie leaned out of his bedroom window — the bedroom now seemed altogether his own — and looked at the dark and light rows of the vegetable garden, the Colonel’s obedient regiment standing to attention under a paring of moon. Silence until six o’clock tomorrow, and the factory hooter. Then the chorus of clicking feet trudging down The Goit as if nothing could ever change. Along the landing he heard the trumpet-call of the Colonel, “Rosie — do not shut the window. And don’t bring in that eiderdown. It stays there all night. I dare say it will rain. Let it rain.”

Eddie could make out the square shape of desecrated satin lying up against the house like a forlorn white flag.

The morning after the ghastly day in London — the solicitor had muddled her diary or had had to stay at home with sick children or her mobile phone was out of order or a mixture of the three, which had meant their trip to Bantry Street had been for nothing — Filth was seated in the sun-lounge, very fierce and composing a Letter of Wishes to add to his Will. He wondered if he was quite well. A wet square of eiderdown kept floating into sight. Tiredness. He was half-dreaming. Wouldn’t say anything to Betty.