Jane Gardam - Old Filth

Filth’s eyes were startled as a dog’s. This silvery, powdery woman.

“Oh, Teddy,” she said. “So easily shocked.”

“Well, Claire, really. We are way over. . seventy.”

“Yes. And I have a weak heart.”

She poured him an immense whiskey and sat on, smiling beyond him out through the gleaming clean window.

Soon Filth eased himself down in the chair, tilted his head back on the curved rim and looked up at the ceiling which was studded with dozens of trendy spotlights, like an office. He took another deep swig of whiskey and sighed.

“Our mutual cousin, or whatever she is, Babs, exists in perpetual darkness and you in perpetual light.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s odd. I can’t get enough of it. Maybe my eyesight’s going. I’d love a cataract operation, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m lucky there,” said Filth. “I brought you a present, by the way. Betty wanted you to have them.”

“Oh, yes?” She looked canny. She examined his face for lies.

“Nothing much. Family stuff mostly. Some from way back. She wanted you to have them. She was insistent. If she departed first — only you.”

“What about Babs?”

“She’d put something else aside for Babs. As a matter of fact we were in the m-m-m-middle of our, what’s called ‘Letters of Wishes.’”

“I see. She had other friends?”

“Yes. Don’t know how well she kept them, though. Not exactly friends. At the funeral. .”

“Ah yes. The funeral.”

“Didn’t bother you with the funeral. Sorry now. Thought I’d spare you. Never get this sort of thing right. And a big journey. Our time of life, it’s a funeral a week in the winter. They don’t do anyone any good.”

“I hope mine will be private. On the Ganges on a pyre.”

“I never read obituaries. No idea Betty was getting one.”

“Did nobody turn up at the funeral, Teddy?”

“No idea.”

“Teddy—?”

“Didn’t look around. Eyes front. Usual hymns. Discipline and all that.”

“Of course,” said Claire. (Oh, where was the boy, the blazing young friend in Wales?) “Of course. You were with the Glorious Gloucesters in the War.”

He gave her a look.

“I believe there was a pack of church ladies,” he said. “From the flower committee. Coffee rota. One of them walked me home and made herself rather too friendly. I’m told you have to watch this.”

“Was there a wake?”

“Bun-fight in the church hall.”

“Nobody from Chambers?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. My Clerk. Retired now. Very civil of him.”

“Well, you made him a packet.”

Again the look.

“And there were a few from the Inn. Hardly knew them. Can’t think why they came, trains being what they are.”

“But, Teddy, they may have wanted to come. They were fond of Betty. Maybe it helped them to wear a dark suit, make an effort on your behalf. Respecting you. Helping you.”

“Helping me?” He looked at his glass. “Nonsense, Claire. Whenever did I need help?” He seemed outraged. “We all come to an end.”

“Teddy, you must grieve for her. You will soon. It hasn’t hit you yet, but listen, there may be a very bad time coming. You were married nearly half a century and you never — I’d guess strayed?”

“Strayed?”

“You were never unfaithful to Betty with another woman?”

“Good God, no.”

Yet his eyes were dazzling, hungry eyes. Claire thought how Betty had underestimated him. And fooled him.

“Then, Teddy, you are in trouble. You are in shock.” (“She should have seen you on the motorway,” said Betty to Filth on her mobile.) “Why else would you have come charging round the country after Babs and me?”

“How did you know about Babs?”

“She rang.”

“Was she drunk? She was drunk yesterday. On tea from Fortnum’s, or worse. Very squalid.”

“You can be a cruel man, Teddy. More whiskey? Hello, who’s this?”

Outside in the road a motor-bike came clattering up to the gate and a young man in a medieval black helmet with belligerent lip got off and stood looking at the Merc.

“Oh, Lord, it’s the Vicar. I’ll get rid of him. Unless of course. .”

“No thanks,” said Filth as the Vicar removed his disguise and emerged as the cherub of the sedan chair. “I’ll find your spare bedroom and lie down,” and he seized his bag from the hall and made off.

“Ah, I see you are not ready for each other at the moment,” called Claire.

The young man in the road, having walked round the car and examined the number plate, climbed back on his bike and roared away.

“He saw I had a visitor,” said Claire, and went to the kitchen to look in the freezer. Fish fingers. Oven chips, but she kept these for Oliver so she and Teddy mustn’t eat them all. A square of mild cheddar in plastic. Flora margarine and frozen peas. Splendid. Though Teddy never noticed what he ate.

“Or anything else,” she said, sadly, and mistakenly.

Parents’ weekend, thought Claire’s younger son, Oliver, in Wandsworth on Friday, flinging a few crumpled things into a sports bag. Wonder if I need petrol. Trip to the bank machine. No need for condoms, anyway, all by myself. Might step out and buy some real flowers for Ma, not petrol-station ones. Saturday morning.

He was happy to be going to see his mother and trying not to face the fact that he was happier because he was going alone. Vanessa, at present snarling and snapping incisively into the sitting-room phone, was off in a moment to her own parents in Bournemouth. They arranged these filial visits every other month, Oliver ringing his mother every week to check up on her diabetes, Vanessa ringing hers, who was hale and hearty, every three. When Vanessa was not about, Oliver sometimes rang Claire in between times from station platforms, airports, or the forecourt of the Wandsworth supermarket. He had premonitions about his vague and undemonstrative mother and found it hard to look at the advertisements in the papers showing resigned old women with bells round their necks like Swiss cattle lying waiting for rescue, or for the end. He knew that, should his mother fall over, she would never ring for help, but would lie there, thinking. Thus she would be avenged for his believing her immortal. Another part of him said that his mother was a cynic, even a torturer. Then he thought: And I am a swine, and don’t believe in selflessness. He adored her.

Vanessa was brisker. The three-weekly call to Bournemouth was always made at 6 p.m. sharp on a Friday, and she set aside half an hour. She was a Barrister in Shipping Chambers, a prestigious area and rare for a woman. She had had to swim enjoyably hard to keep up with the tide. She was respected in the Chambers and held in awe in Bournemouth where her parents knew nothing of the Bar except what they saw on television. She regaled them, third Fridays, with accounts of her daily round — from the 7 a.m. orange juice in the super-nova kitchen, to her reading Briefs last thing at night. (“A case you’ll be seeing in the papers.”) Her Opinions were not usually complete before midnight.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know how you fit it all in,” her mother said. “How do you do your housework and shopping and cooking? And laundry?” (And where are the children?)

Vanessa ignored her. Work first. No philosophising.

“Whenever do you see your friends ?” asked her mother. (Or us?)

“Oliver and I have it all under control. We eat out. Friends at weekends. We probably see more friends than you do.”

“I miss your friends, Vanessa,” said her mother. “Every weekend we saw your friends, all through school and Cambridge, they used to come. I miss your friends.” (And I miss you, too. I don’t know this sharp-faced, black-suited, almost bald-headed, lap-top sprite.)