Jane Gardam - Old Filth

Filth, lying like a knight on a slab, holding his cup to his chest, swivelled his eyes at her.

“They don’t marry any more,” she said. “Surely you’ve noticed? It’s over. Their children are unbaptised so there’ll be no baptismal record. Our times will become dark as Romano-Britain.”

“Genes not genealogy?”

“Exactly. I know you don’t care for children. .”

He drank the tea and waved the empty cup for her to take, sat up in bed and looked uneasily at the hat-boxes.

“The hat-boxes were your mother’s,” said Claire. “I’ve no idea how they got here.”

“Anyway,” she then said. “You will have to meet a thirty-six-year-old child today. Oliver’s coming for the weekend with Vanessa.”

“Vanessa?” (Which one was this?)

“Yes, Vanessa. She’s his partner. She’s at the Bar.”

“Is Oliver at the Bar?”

“No, he’s an accountant. Vanessa ’s at the Bar. His partner.”

Filth was about to say that at the Bar there are no partners, but lost confidence.

“They live together, Eddie dear. They ‘co-habit.’ They have ‘co-habited’ in Wandsworth for six years.”

“In Wandsworth! They’re not doing too well, then?”

“Wandsworth, dear Eddie, is now the crème-de-la of the Euro-chics.”

“Rubbish. It’s where all the taxi-drivers live.”

“Not now. It’s full of rich thirty-year-olds who owe thousands on their credit cards and go to Tuscany for their holidays but have never heard of Raphael.”

“They sound particularly unattractive.”

“Yes, they are. But they seem to have a very good time.”

“And two of them are coming here? Look here, Claire, I’ll be off. Can’t have your boy arriving with nowhere to sleep.”

“He’s staying with Vanessa at the George at Stamford, so don’t fuss. I’ve told them you will be here. They’d be mortified if they thought they’d pushed you out.”

“I very much wonder if they would?”

“Don’t wonder, Teddy, learn . You’ll like Vanessa. You’ll have so much to talk about. She’s Inner Temple, like you. And nobody—” she said, taking the empty cup towards the door, looking kindly back at him, speaking of the only area in which she had been blinded for life, “—nobody, if I dare say so, could possibly dislike Oliver.

“And what they do all have nowadays — this isn’t the sixties (I must give all these old things in the dress-boxes to Vanessa) — what they do have now, Eddie, when they come here, is perfect manners.”

And so they bloody should, thought Eddie.

And it was afternoon and Filth was drinking tea again and Vanessa sat near his hammock on the wide, shaven lawn in front of the house, adding more hot water to the teapot from a silver thermos jug. There were small sandwiches. It was a warm late November and Claire’s dahlias glowed and dripped with sunlight. The exposed garden, on a corner — High Light was an end-of-terrace site on a rise, like a Roman villa built over a hill fort — looked down and across at a shiny shallow lake where boats were moving about and children shouted. Beyond, straggled the town and, beyond that, droned the invisible motorway like bees in the warm afternoon.

Oliver had taken his mother out in his car for tea in Saffron Walden, a suggestion she had greeted with the luminous silence which was always followed by refusal.

“I’ve not been into the town for—”

“Oh, come on. You’ll be fine.”

(The black butterfly opened its wings.)

“It’s no distance and we’ll have the top down. It’s a lovely day.”

“ Not on the motorway, Oliver.”

“Of course not.”

“I can’t take the motorway. Not until I’m dead.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The crem is on the motorway. I really don’t care for it.”

“Ma, would I take you to the crem?”

“Though I dare say you can get a cup of tea there,” she said. “Darling, what if the doctor saw me as we pass the surgery?”

“We won’t pass the surgery.”

“I think we have to.”

“Then we’ll disguise ourselves.”

“Oh, Oliver — what as?”

“Barristers. We’ll borrow Vanessa’s and old funny-face’s wigs.”

“I don’t think they travel with their wigs.”

“Well, get a big hat out of the spare room, and some dark glasses.”

“I haven’t enjoyed anything like this for years.”

“Hold on to your hat.”

“I will. I wore it at poor Babs’s wedding. It must be thirty years old.”

“Is Babs still alive?”

“What? Can’t hear. Are you sure this isn’t the motorway? Oliver ! How dare you! This is Cambridge. It was the motorway.”

They sat by the Cam and the low sun shone through the straps of the willows. Students called to each other and splashed about, or glided along. King’s College Chapel reared up like a white cruise-liner on a grassy sea. “I’ve organised tea for us,” he said. “Come on. It’s not far.”

She walked lightly beside him on the tow-path and over a bridge. Fat common people in tight clothes licked ice creams and ate oozing buns and shouted. Some, despite the season, had bare midriffs. Some looked at Claire’s hat. She was enchanted.

“It’s a shame so many young people are bald now,” she said. “I wonder why? Is it Aids or this awful chemotherapy? I’m sure we never had either.”

“It’s the fashion, Ma.”

“Oh, it can’t be. That’s dreadlocks.”

“No, they’re out. Or at any rate localised.”

“Do they go over their pates every day like their chins? Will you be doing it, Oliver?”

“Ma, I’m nearly forty and I’m a chartered accountant.”

“Yes, and you have lovely hair, Oliver. What is Vanessa’s hair like — I mean, when she lets it grow?”

But they had reached Oliver’s old, undistinguished college; a door and a staircase of someone of distinction; a huge, gentle old man. Claire did not catch his name. He was expecting Oliver and was pleased to see them and he nodded at Claire and looked affectionately at her hat. They sat in a room with a tall window that seemed to let in little light and where mountains of books and furniture were deep in dust. They ate cinnamon scones. Other crumby plates lay about the room among the books and balled-up garments that suggested socks and what Claire thought of as woollies. What a peaceful quiet place. What a nice man. How nice for him to know Oliver.

“We thought we’d make for Evensong at King’s,” said Oliver. “Have we missed it, d’you think?”

“Oh, no. Still the same programme,” and the old man began to talk about politics. “I am very fond of Oliver,” he said as he stumbled along with them to the door of the chapel. They all said goodbye.

“Tired?” asked Oliver as they sat down in the choir stalls.

“Not in the least. Did he put on that performance just for us? I didn’t know there were any left.”

“Any what?”

“Eccentrics. Had you told him we were coming?”

“Yes, I rang him up. At the petrol station.”

“From a call box?”

“From my handset.”

“You keep his number?”

“No. I dialled directory enquiries.”

“You are wonderful, Oliver.”

“I am.”

“The world is full of miracles,” she said, “but I think you set it all up. There were computers and internets and e-mails hidden in all those books, and he was an actor who does E. M. Forster parts. I really loved him. Who was he?”

“Who’s E. M. Forster? Anyway, he liked your hat. He was the Dean.” Delighted with the day, the music, the chapel, he said, “You’re a cynic, Ma. Go on — he fancied you. Have him over.”