Jane Gardam - Old Filth

“Who?”

“Billy Cumberledge.”

“Babs?”

“My lover.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Babs. And he died, too?”

“I’m not sure. I used to see him in Oxford. He was a lovely man. She could never touch his soul, never break him utterly. He and I — no, you and I, Teddy. We got into one bed that night to be near together while Claire went to get help.”

“I’d forgotten.” (A wave of relief. So that’s what she’d meant in the tea-shop.)

“Yes, he was my lover. But not my last lover. My present lover you may have seen just now as he went scampering down the steps.”

“But that was a schoolboy. .”

“Yes, but a genius. I don’t do examination work now, except for this one. He is a genius.”

“Yes. I see.”

They drank the First Flush which was not noticeably refreshing.

“This is of course a First Flush of some time ago.”

“Yes,” he said. “Some time ago.”

The lights in the street came on and revealed a Broadwood piano by the front window and a piano stool lying on its side. He remembered the terrified boy.

“Edward,” she said, abandoning the tea to the grate, “oh, Edward, we were so close. I have to tell someone. I am in love again.”

“Oh — Oh dear—”

“He is fourteen. You know how old I am. Way over seventy. It makes no difference.”

Something out in the passage fell with a crash to the floor and there was the sound of running water.

“It’s that dog,” she said, weeping. “Everyone’s against me. I need God, not a dog.”

All that Filth, now deeply shaken, could say was, “But you haven’t got a dog.”

“Haven’t I? Of course I have. I need some protection, don’t I?” (And, sharply, in Betty’s voice.) “Come on now, Filth. Work it out.”

A cat ran down the hall as Filth stepped out into it, and water was still dripping from a vase of amazingly perfect lupins.

“Let me help.” Filth stood, unbending.

“It’s all right. They’re artificial. I always put them in water though, it seems kinder. I arrange them for him . The boy. My boy. I don’t somehow think he’ll be coming back.”

“He won’t?”

“No.” She clutched the shawl around her and bent forward as if butting at a storm.

“You see — I showed my hand.”

“Your hand?” (Again, he thought hysterically of Bridge.)

“I showed my hand. I showed my heart. I showed my. . Oh, Eddie! I fell to my knees. I told my love.”

Filth was now on the top step. Very fast, he was on the bottom step. “So sorry, Babs. Time to go. Sorry to leave you so. .”

“Don’t worry about the flowers,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She was now on her knees crawling about in the water.

“So sorry, Babs. Not much help. Terribly sorry. God, I wish Betty. . I’ll try and think what’s to be done.”

He could not remember getting back into the car nor the road he took next, but in time found that he was hurtling back in the dark and then into the blinding lights of traffic coming towards Yarm. The Judges’ Hotel was before him, agreeably behind its lawns like a flower in a gravel pit. He drove through its gateway with care for he was beginning to shake, and at its great studded doors he stopped. A cheerful young man, in a livery that would not have disgraced Claridges, but eating a sandwich, bounded forward and opened the driver’s door.

“Good evening, sir, staying the night? Out you get, leave the key, I’ll park it. Any luggage? Nasty weather!”

Filth stepped in to a black-and-white marble hall with a grand staircase and portraits of judges in dubious bright oils hanging all the way down it. How very odd to be here. Yes, there was one room left. Yes, there was dinner. Yes, there was a bar.

Filth removed his coat in the bedroom and regarded the two single beds, both populous with teddy bears. A foot-massager of green plastic lay by the bedside and a globe of goldfish with instructions for feeding them (“Guests are asked to confine themselves to one pinch”—was it hemp?). There were no towels in the bathroom but a great many plastic ducks. The noble height of the room that had in the past seen scores of judicial heads on the pillow seemed another frightening joke. I suppose I don’t know much about hotels now, he thought and had a flashback of the black towels and white telephones and linen sheets of Hong Kong.

For the first time in many years he did not change his shirt for dinner but stepped quickly back into the hall where the eyes of the old buggers on the staircase, in their wigs and scarlet, gave him a sense of his secure past. Glad I got out of the country though. No Circuits in Hong Kong. No getting stuck in luxury here for weeks on end with the likes of Fiscal-Smith. He wondered where the name had come from. Hadn’t thought of the dear old bore for years.

Good heavens.

Fiscal-Smith was still here. He was sitting in the bar in a vast leather armchair and as usual he was without a glass in his hand, waiting for someone to buy him a drink.

“Evening, Filth,” said Fiscal-Smith. (Ye gods, thought Filth, there’s something funny going on here.) “No idea you’d be here. Thought you’d retire in Hong Kong. How’s Betty?”

“We retired and came Home years ago,” said Filth, sitting down carefully in a second leather throne.

“Oh, so did I, so did I,” said Fiscal-Smith. “I retired up here though.”

“Really.”

“Got myself a little estate. Nobody wants them now — it’s the fumes. It was very cheap.”

“I see.”

“Or they assume there are fumes. Actually I am out on the moors. Shooting rights. Everything.”

“How is. .?” Filth could not remember whether Fiscal-Smith had ever had a wife. It seemed unlikely. “. . the Bar up here these days?”

Fiscal-Smith was looking meaningfully over at the Claridges lad, who was hovering about and responded with a matey wave.

“Have a drink,” said Filth, giving in, signalling to the boy and ordering whiskeys.

“Don’t be too long, sir,” said the boy. “Dining-room closes in half an hour.”

“Yes. Yes. I must have dinner. Long drive today.” He was beginning to feel better though. Warmth, whiskey, familiar jargon. “Are you staying the night here?” he asked Fiscal-Smith.

“I don’t usually. I go home. Always a chance that someone might turn up from the old days. Very good of you. Thank you. I’d enjoy dinner.”

They munched. Conversation waned

“Fancy sort of food nowadays,” said the ancient judge. “Seem to paint the sauces on the plates with a brush.”

The waitress patted his shoulder and shouted with laughter. “You’re meant to lick ’em up. Shall I keep you some tiramisu?”

“What on earth is that?”

“No idea,” said Filth, his eyelids drooping.

“Trifle,” said the waitress. “You’re nothing now, if you haven’t tried tiramisu.”

“Is this usual?” asked Filth, reviving a little with coffee.

“What — trifle? Yes, it’s on all the time.”

“No. I mean the — familiarity. They’re very matey. I never worked the Northern Circuit.”

“It’s not mateyness.”

“Well, it’s not exactly respect.” Filth’s mind presented him with Betty ringing for the invisible and silent maids. He suddenly yearned for that sycophantic time in his life, like a boy thinking of his birthday parties. “They’re very insensitive. And I can’t understand the teddy bears. I always detested teddy bears.”

“What teddy bears?”

“The beds are covered with them. Is it a local custom?”

“I’m afraid you are ahead of me, somewhere. But of course, yes, it’s different up here. Very nice people.”

“But you’re not local, Fiscal-Smith. Is there anybody to talk to? On your estate?”