Jane Gardam - Old Filth

The November sun blazed. It was almost warm enough to sit out of doors but Filth liked a desk before him when he was thinking. He liked a pen, or at least one of the expensive type of Biro — several because they gave out — and a block of A5 of the kind on which he had written his careful Opinions. Diligent, accurate, lucid, no jargon, all thanks to Sir, his Opinions used to be shown to juniors as models of the form. Then they had left him for the Clerk’s rooms, where they were typed. First by a single typist — Mrs. Jones, who in between whiles did her knitting, often in her sealskin fur coat for there was no central heating. Later there were five typists, later still twenty. Over the years Filth had scarcely noticed the changes, from the clatter of the old black Remingtons and all the girls chain-smoking, to the hum and click of electronics, to the glare of a screen in every Barrister’s room, the first fax machines, the e-mails and the mysterious Web. He was relieved not to have had to cope with all this as a junior or a Silk, and that by the time he made judge and lived in Hong Kong he had stepped into a world so advanced in electronics that he could hand everything over to machines but keep his pen too. His handwriting — thanks again to Sir — was much admired. He had been in Commercial Chambers. The construction industry. Bridges and dams.

And what a great stack of money I made at the Bar, he thought. It was a noble act becoming a judge on a salary. Letters of Wishes . . Bequests to Friends . . I’ve left it too long. The best friends are all dead.

And no children to leave it to. He looked across from the sun-lounge to Betty planting the tulips. She seldom spoke of children. Never to children when there were any around. She seemed — had always seemed — to have no views on their barrenness.

As it happened, had he known it, she was thinking of children now. She was wondering about yesterday, when she and Filth had made an abortive attempt to give what they had by dying. The death of Terry’s child. The solicitor forgetting her job because of her children’s measles. This dazzle of a morning, thirty years beyond her child-bearing years. The trees across Wiltshire were bright orange, yellow, an occasional vermilion maple — what a slow leaf fall — spreading away from the hillside garden, the sun rich and strong, the house behind her benign and English and safe, as well-loved now as her apartments and houses in the East. There would have been grandchildren by now, she thought and heard their voices. Would we have been any good with them? She could not see Filth looking at a grandchild with love.

She had never been sure about Filth and love. Something blocked him. Oh, faithful —oh, yes. Unswerving unto death. “Never been anyone for Filth but Betty.” And so on.

All this time in the tulip bed, she had been on her knees and she tried now to get up. It is becoming ridiculous, this getting up. Ungainly. Not that I was ever gainly , but I wasn’t lumberous. She lay down on her side, grinning, on the wet grass. And saw that her pearls had come off and lay in the tulip bed. They were yesterday’s pearls, and for the first time in her life she had not taken them off at bedtime nor when she bathed in the morning. “I am becoming a slut,” she told them. Her face was close against them. She said to them, “You are not my famous pearls, though he never notices. You are my guilty pearls. What shall I do with you? Who shall have you when I am gone?”

“No one,” she said, and let them slither out of sight into one of the holes made ready for the tulips. With her fingers, she filled the hole with earth and smoothed it over.

Then she brought her firm old legs round in front of her so that they lay across the flower-beds. She noticed that each hole had a sprinkle of sharp sand in the bottom, and hoped the sand would not hurt the pearls.

Still not out of the wood, she thought. Hope Filth doesn’t look up, he’d worry.

She rested, then twisted herself, heaved and crawled. The legs obeyed her at last and came round back again and she was on all fours. She leaned on her elbows, her hands huge in green and yellow gloves, and slowly brought her bottom into the air, swayed, and creakily, gleefully stood up. “Well, I was never John Travolta,” she said. “And it is November. Almost first frost.”

Amazed, as she never ceased to be, about how such a multi- tude of ideas and images exist alongside one another and how the brain can cope with them, layered like filo pastry in the mind, invisible as data behind the screen, Betty was again in Orange Tree Road, standing with Mrs. Cleary and Mrs. Hong and old friends in the warm rain, and all around the leaves falling like painted raindrops. The smell of the earth round the building-works of the new blocks of flats, the jacarandas, the polish on the banana leaves, children laughing, swimming in the private pools. The sense of being part of elastic life, unhurried, timeless, controlled. And in love. The poor little girl selling parking tickets in her white mittens against the sun. Betty’s eyes filled with tears, misting her glasses. Time gone. Terry’s boy gone.

Trowel in hand, a bit tottery, she turned to look up the garden at Filth.

Since yesterday he had been impossible. All night catafalque-rigid, sipping water, at breakfast senatorial and remote. The Judge’s dais. He had frowned about him for toast. When she had made more toast and set the toast-rack (silver) before him he had examined it and said, “The toast-rack needs cleaning.”

“So do the salt-cellars,” she’d said. “I’ll get you the Silvo. You’ve nothing else to do today.”

He had glared at her, and she wondered whether his mind, too, was layered with images. Breakfast on The Peak for eleven years at seven o’clock, misty, damp and grey, she in her silk dressing-gown making lists for the day, Filth — oh so clean, clean Filth — in his light-weight dark suit and shirt so white it seemed almost blue, his Christ Church tie, his crocodile briefcase. Outside the silently-sliding Merc, with driver waiting in dark-green uniform, the guard on the gate ready to press the button on the steel doors that would rise without creak or hesitation. And the warm, warm heavy air.

“Bye, dear.”

“Bye, Filth. Home sixish?”

“Home sixish.”

Every minute pleasantly filled. Work, play and no chores.

And the sunset always on the dot, like Filth’s homecoming. The dark falling over the harbour that was never dark, the lights in their multitude, every sky-scraper with a thousand eyes. The sky-high curtains of unwinking lights, red, yellow, white, pale green, coloured rain falling through the dark. The huge noise of Hong Kong rising, the little ferries plying, the sense of a place to be proud of. We made it. We saw how to do it. A place to have been responsible for. British.

“I’ll do the silver later,” said Filth. “I shall be busy this morning with my Letter of Wishes. I shall see to my own Will.”

“I suppose I should do a Letter too,” she said. “I’d thought the Will would be enough. But after yesterday—”

“The less said about yesterday the better. London solicitors!” and he rose from the toast-rack, still a fascinatingly tall and taking man, she thought. If it wasn’t for the neck and the moles he’d look no more than sixty. People still look up and wonder who he is. Always a tie. And his shoes like glass.

“I’m going to plant tulips.”

“I’ll clear up the breakfast.”

“Do you mind? It’s not Mrs. T’s day.”

“I want to get on with the Will whilst I’m still in ferment.”

“Ferment?”

“About that woman. Solicitor. You know exactly. Lack of seriousness. Duty. Messy. The distance we travelled! Messy diary. I expect her diary’s on a screen.”