Jane Gardam - Old Filth

QR: Kipling. You know Kipling had a start like Filth? Torn from his family at five. Raj Orphan.

PS&O: Kipling didn’t do too badly either.

QR: Kipling had a crack-up.

PS&O: Did he stammer?

QR: He went blind. Half blind at seven. Hated the Empire, you know. Psychological blindness.

PS&O: Are you having coffee?

QR: No. I just came in looking for Filth. Just missed him.

PS&O: Did we imagine him?

QR: I expect he was having his last look round.

Exeunt. Room apparently empty.

Filth rises from the chair and takes a long last look at Mr. Attlee.

Filth: Have I the courage to write my Memoirs?

Attlee: Churchill had. But on the whole, better not. Keep your secrets.

In that train of 1941, after the Oxford interview, Eddie had pushed the Times back into the hands of the man opposite, left the compartment and walked down the corridor where he stood holding tight the brass rail along the middle of the window. The train stopped very often, filled up. The corridor became crammed with people mostly silently enduring, shoulder to shoulder. Even so it was cold. Water from somewhere trickled about his feet. Troops started to climb in — maybe around Birmingham. These troops were morose and quiet. Still and silent. Everyone squashed up tighter. It grew dark. Only the blue pin-lights on all the death-mask faces.

And Eddie stood on.

At some point he left the train and waited for another one that would take him to the nearest station to High House, and there he jumped down upon an empty, late-night platform. After an unknown space of time he found that he was travelling in a newspaper-van that must have stopped to give him a lift. It dropped him outside the gates of the avenue which were closed and guarded by two sentries with rifles. He walked off down the lane, then doubled back through a hedge, then across in the darkness to the graceful iron railings of what he felt to be his home.

The house stood there with lightless, blindless windows and the dark glass flashed black. The place was empty. But there were army vehicles everywhere in the drive and a complex of army huts where the land began to drop away above the chimneys of the old carpet factory. Eddie walked round the resting, deserted house and met nobody. He began to try the familiar door handles: the side door from the passage into the garden with its dimpled brass knob; the door to the stables; the kitchens. All were locked. He grew bolder and stood beneath a bedroom window and called, “Mrs. Ingoldby? Is anyone there? It’s Eddie.” He rattled the door of the bothy where the gardener had lived. Nothing. No dog barked. In the garage, there was no old car, the car in which you had to put up an umbrella in the back seat when it rained. The Colonel’s vegetables stood scant and scruffy, Brussels sprouts like Passchendaele. The beehives had disappeared.

He set off on foot back to the railway station; slept the rest of the night on a bench along the wall of the waiting room with its empty grate; reached his aunts’ warm house by the following lunchtime.

There was no car outside it and so “Les Girls,” as they liked to be known, were not at home, but Eddie had his key and planted his bag and his icy feet on the rug in the hall. He stood.

He heard Alice, the midget maid, creeping up from the kitchen. She gave a chirp of surprise, touching her fingers to her lips, and Eddie remembered he’d slept in his clothes, wet through since Oxford, and was unshaven. He found — with the old terror — that he couldn’t speak.

“Mr. Eddie. Come, come, come,” she said and led him down to her kitchen and gave him tea and porridge which he could not eat. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” she said. “Have you failed your exams?” She had been sitting beneath her calendar of the King and Queen and the photograph of Mr. Churchill in his siren-suit, making more paper spills for the upstairs fireplace. Vegetables were prepared on the draining-board, the kitchen clean, alive and shining. “Oh dear, oh dear. I expect you have heard the news.”

“Yes. I read it in the paper.”

She seemed puzzled, and he remembered that nobody in this house cared a fig about the Ingoldbys.

“I’m meaning their news, Mr. Eddie. Miss Hilda’s and Miss Muriel’s. I don’t know what’s to become of us all now. Or this house. Or you and me, Mr. Eddie. Mind, I’d seen it coming. There’s been talk for years. They think I’m deaf. They never told me a thing, never warned me. I’ve been here nearly twenty years. It was little to expect.”

“They’ve never sacked you, Alice?”

“In a sense, yes, Mr. Eddie.”

The slam of the front door above. The clash of the vestibule glass. The shriek of Hilda spotting the bag in the hail. “He’s back. See? Now for it — Eddie? Where are you?”

“Yes. I’m back.” His head rose up from Alice’s cellar rabbit- hole, and he saw that the eyes of the girls were particularly wild. He thought: They must have won a cup. “Have you been on the course?” Then he saw they were wearing Air Force blue with several stripes. Not golf.

“We have some news for you,” said Muriel. “Better get it over and tell you right off. We’re getting married.”

For a dizzy moment Eddie thought they were marrying each other.

“You’ll easily guess who,” said Hilda, and mentioned two names from among the red faces at the golf club.

“Married!”

He thought: Whatever for? Old women. Over forty. And this great house full of their stuff. And Alice.

“Go and wash, Eddie dear. Then come and have some champagne. It’s been on the cards for years but of course we couldn’t split up and leave you until we’d got you off our hands.”

He looked at their untouchable hands.

“But you mean you’ll be living apart now?”

“Oh, quite near each other. And near Royal St. Andrews. In Scotland. All four of us.”

“Does my father know?”

“We’ve written. He’s known for several years that we — well, we put off our plans. For you. That’s why he’s been so generous to us while you’ve been living here all these years.”

“Living here?”

“Yes. Ever since you were a tiny.”

When he came downstairs again Alice was anxiously laying up the dining-table. The silver and glasses shone. When she saw him she scuttled out of sight.

“What about Alice?”

“Oh, she’s much too old to move in with either of us. Someone else will probably take her. She’s got her Girls’ Friendly Society. And she’s over seventy and pretty well” (Hilda whispered like a whistle) “ past it . She ought to retire. So it all fits in.”

“ Fits in ?”

“Alice retiring. You going out to Alistair as an evacuee. And this tragedy of the Ingoldbys.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know. I saw it in the Times . I’m surprised you did. Or that you even remembered — their name.” (Tears, tears, stop. And, bugger it, my voice is going.)

“Of course we remembered. They used to have you over there. Very kind to help us out. Anyway, someone rang up.”

“Someone? Who? Please, who ?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t ask. It was a girl. Quite a young voice. Yes, Isobel. Isobel Ingoldby. That would be a sister? Rather snooty we thought. La-di-da.”

“Did she leave a number?”

“No, no. Very quick she was. Now dear, no brooding. Let’s talk about you. And Singapore.”

“It’s Singapore you’re going to,” said Hilda. “Alistair’ll meet you there. Safest place in the world.”

“Did you pass your exams?” asked Muriel.

“Yes.”

“Jolly good. Something to look forward to after the War. Your tickets are all fixed up and you leave next week.”