Jane Gardam - Old Filth

“Watch your blood-pressure, Filth. You’ve gone purple.”

He flung about the house looking for the right pen.

“You could do it on the computer. You can make changes much quicker.”

(They both played the game that they could work the computer if they tried.)

“I shan’t be making many changes.”

“The point is,” she said, “be quick. Get everything witnessed. Locally — why not? So much cheaper. We might die at any time.”

“So you said all the way home in the train. Solicitors!”

“So you have often said.”

He glared at her, then softened as he watched her healthy, outdoor face and her eyes that had never caught her out.

“I hate making Wills,” she said. “I’ve made dozens,” and looked away, not wanting to touch on inheritances since there was nobody to inherit. She didn’t want to see that Filth didn’t mind.

“I think,” said Filth, astonishingly, “one day I’ll write you a Letter of my Wishes. My personal wishes.”

“Have you so many left then?”

“Not many. Peace at the last, perhaps.”

And that you will never leave me, he thought.

And now, standing with the trowel, head racing a bit with the effort of being John Travolta, she closed her eyes against dizziness. She opened them again, shaded them with her hand and saw him seated above her in the sun-lounge. He had some sort of wrap over his bony, parted knees. The drape of it and the long narrow face staring into the sun made him look like a Christ in Majesty over a cathedral gate. All that was needed was the raised hand in blessing. His eyes were closed. How long is he going to last? she thought. How he hates death. However, Christ in Majesty opened his eyes and raised a hand not in blessing but holding an enormous gin.

“Gin,” he called down. “Felt like gin.”

I won’t get any nearer to him now, she thought, turning to pick up the bulb-basket, taking off her gloves. Too late now. The holes look good, but I’ll do the planting tomorrow. There might be a frost. I won’t risk them out all night on the grass.

After her funeral, Filth, now old as time, was at his desk again. Garbutt, the odd job man, trundled a wheelbarrow stacked up with ivy between the sun-lounge and the tulip bed. Garbutt’s jaw was thrust forward. He was lusting after a bonfire. The woman, Mrs. Thing, arrived at Filth’s shoulder with a cup of coffee, then with a Ewbank sweeper.

“Lift your feet a minute and let me get under them and then I’ll leave you in peace,” she said. “Here’s more letters. Shall I come back with your ironing tonight? I could make you a salad. The way he goes at that ivy!”

“Thank you, no. Perfectly capable,” said Filth. “I must keep at desk.”

“I liked the ivy,” she said. “Not that my opinion. .”

“It’s done now,” said Filth.

“I’m sorry. Well, there’s plenty in the fridge and you’ve only to phone up. .”

“Letters,” he said. “Letters. Many, many letters,” and he picked one up and waved it about to get rid of her. There were no black-bordered ones now, thank God. They had disappeared with the Empire. This one was in a pale green envelope and came from Paris. As the woman, Mrs.-er, slammed the front door and Garbutt stamped past again with the empty barrow, Filth had the sensation of a command not to open this letter and looking across the garden saw Betty standing on the lawn watching him with an expression of deep annoyance.

“Ha!” he said, and stared her out. “Leave me be,” he shouted. He picked up the ivory paper knife to slit the envelope and saw the name: Ingoldby . He stared, looked back at the now empty lawn, looked down again.

Not the Colonel or Mrs. Ingoldby, long ago gone. Not Jack or Pat. No issue there. I. Ingoldby , it said on the envelope and so it must be Isobel. Ye gods.

Well, I’d better face it.

The year that Eddie left Sir’s Outfit for his Public school, he was to spend the summer as usual at High House. Pat Ingoldby, a year older, had left Sir the year before but had written a weekly letter from the new school to Eddie and Eddie had written back. Other boys did the same with absent brothers. Sir had insisted from the start on weekly letters to parents and, although Eddie had had none back from his father, the habit had continued until Pat moved on. Then Eddie had struck, and asked to write to Mrs. Ingoldby instead of his father and, as Eddie’s stammer was threatening again after Pat’s departure, Sir agreed, and Mrs. Ingoldby did write back occasionally, in a hand like a very small spider meandering across the thick writing paper and passing out and dying off in the faintest of signatures. Years later, in a different life, Eddie found that his father had kept all his letters from Sir’s Outfit, numbered carefully and filed in a steel safe against the termites. Eddie’s letters to Mrs. Ingoldby and to Pat did not survive.

Sir had also insisted on letters being written to Auntie May, who occasionally sent a postcard; Uncle Albert, her missionary husband, once sent the school a coconut for Christmas.

Pat’s short, succinct, witty letters from the new school were a great pleasure to Eddie. He absorbed everything offered for his information: accommodation, lessons, boys, games (which were more important than church), menus, lack of humour among staff. Both boys missed each other but never referred to the fact, nor to the fact that the fraternal arrangements of the holidays would of course continue. Eddie wrote to his aunts, one of about three letters in his five years with Sir, asking if he could have some of the money his father had put aside for him, to give Sir a present, and Aunt Muriel sent a ten shilling note.

“I don’t accept presents,” said Sir, looking briefly at Three Men in a Boat . “This is a clean school. No nonsense. But yes, I’ll have this one. Send your sons here when you’ve got some. Present us with a silver cup for something when you’re a filthy rich lawyer, I dare say? Yes. You’ll be a lawyer. Magnificent memory. Sense of logic, no imagination and no brains. My favourite chap, Teddy Feathers, as a matter of fact. I dare say.”

“Thank you, Sir. I’ll always keep in touch.”

“Don’t go near Wales. And keep off girls for a while. Soon as girls arrive exam results go down. Passion leads to a Lower Second. Goodbye, old Feathers. On with the dance.”

High House — it was now 1936—where Eddie now brought all his (few) possessions, was reassuringly the same and here was Pat on the railway platform, taller and spotty, with a deep voice but still talking. Talking and talking. There was to be a girl staying, he said, but not to worry as almost at once she was going off on holiday to the Lake District with his mother.

“She’s here already. She’s a cousin. Pa’s niece. She’s causing trouble.”

But up at the House there was no sign of this cousin and nobody mentioned her and she didn’t show up all day.

The next day at breakfast Eddie asked the Colonel about her.

“How’s your niece, Sir?”

“Done very badly in her Higher School Certificate. And she’s too old to try again. I tell her nobody will ever ask her what she did and she’ll forget it herself in six months. She’ll find a husband. Poor fellow.”

“One can’t be sure,” said Mrs. Ingoldby. “She’s rather secretive . I’ve a feeling that a husband isn’t on the cards. And very stubborn, I’m afraid. I’ve sent her breakfast up as she has a headache. And she’s upset.”

The next day there was a sighting of Isobel Ingoldby pacing about the garden, up and down, up and down in the rain with a haversack on her back.

“Is she going somewhere?” asked Pat.