Jane Gardam - Old Filth

“I think she wasn’t much fun. She hadn’t had much fun,” said Filth.

“Oh that terrible King!” said the girl. “All those pheasants. All he ever thought about, my gran said. Where the children came from, we’ll never know, my gran said.”

“Yes, that’s often a puzzle,” said Filth.

He was in a private room. It might be a cabin of some sort. Outside the window there were trees but trees do not grow in the sea and the sea still moved beneath him, up and down, up and down, lift and drop. Seven months at sea. But the clouds above the window sailed along without the elf-light from the sea beneath them. And these tree tops? A woman ran by him and her hat was a plume of white starch. Her dress was navy blue but she, too, had nothing to do with ships. She had a face of wrath and across her broad front hung a watch and chain. She did not speak. He floated away.

Later he opened his eyes on a member of the Ku Klux Klan seated at the end of his bed playing cat’s cradle with some bedtape.

“Hello?” Eddie said and the dreadful figure looked up with surprise. It was Oils again.

“Hello, sir.”

“Hello, Feathers. Well done. Awake?”

“What for, sir? Why well done?”

“Getting home.”

“Not in my hands, sir.”

Adrift again. He was remembering the image at the end of the bed when it was suddenly present again.

“Hello, sir. Why are you in those clothes?”

“They’re antiseptic, Feathers. You’re infectious.”

“What have I got?”

“A variety of things.”

“Will I recover?”

“Yes. Of course. In time. Then you can come back to school until it’s time to go to Oxford.”

Away he floated. Nurses came and went and put needles in different parts of him, and tubes. Did unspeakable things to him. They wore masks. An unpleasant one told him he’d no right to be there. “You should be in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases,” she said, “but it’s too far off. They’re doing tests on you there. We’re not equipped here. We’ve had to ask for volunteers.”

“What for?”

“To nurse you.”

“Thanks.”

Here was the Ku Klux Klan again, now back with the yo-yo. “The Headmaster sends his good wishes. He says you must convalesce at school.”

“Thanks. You mean in the San?”

“I suppose so, Feathers, but we’ve not planned anything yet.”

“I won’t go in the San.”

“The Headmaster has offered you a room in his house.”

Remembering the tea-cosy, Eddie flinched.

“My aunts have gone to Scotland somewhere,” he said. “I don’t know where. If you find out, don’t tell them. But I’d like to know about my father. If you can find out somehow.”

“I have to go now,” said Oils. “Ten minutes at a time.”

A nurse came in one day with mail which lay by the bed for several days.

“Shall I read it?” asked another nurse. “Well, this is nice, it’s from your aunts. It says: ‘ Bad luck, Eddie dear, what a hoot .’”

“The police found them,” said Oils on his next visit, embarrassed. “Your aunts.”

“Can they be lost again?”

“I’d think so,” said Oils.

“This visiting card’s been stuck to your locker since the first day you came in here,” said the Red Cross hospital librarian, pushing round her trolley. She always stopped by his bed though he read nothing. Masks had been abandoned now. “You’re not ready to read yet, are you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t blame you. These are all awful old trashy paperbacks. They have to be burnt in case they get into the general library and spread infection. They can’t get librarians for this ward. I wipe all the books in Dettol — not a nice job. Shall I read you this visiting card, it says Isobel Ingoldby , that will be the girl that brought you in, her and the schoolmaster — he’s a funny one.”

“Has she been back?”

“Yes. Several times. When you were not with us.”

“Where does she live?”

“The card has her address. It’s in London.”

“However did she find me here?”

“How did you find me, Mr. Oilseed? I’m glad you’re out of your overalls, sir.”

“You’re not infectious any more. You’re to sit up at the window tomorrow.”

“But how did you know I’d be on that particular ship?”

“There were signals sent of some sort. From Colombo. To me and to Ingoldby’s sister and maybe to others but we haven’t heard. The Admiralty tracked the ship. Ingoldby’s sister has some underground job there somewhere. Something to do with the Admiralty.”

“ Underground in the Admiralty? Was it signed? What was it — a telegram?”

“It was a cable. Unsigned. I gather it came by way of a place called Bletchley Park. Where Isobel Ingoldby was.”

“Could it have been from my father?”

“No,” said Oils. “No. Sorry. I don’t think so. Singapore isn’t in touch. Some prisoners have got letters out, somehow. . but no. .”

“D’you think someone in Colombo got a message to him?”

“I’d not think so. Not unless someone knew every single one of our addresses.”

They moved him by ambulance to the South of England and Oils said goodbye, with some relief, Eddie thought. “By the way, we’ve informed Christ Church. You are not forgotten. As soon as you’re released.”

“Thanks. Thank the Headmaster for me, sir.”

“Yes. Of course. And well done again. You’re fit now.”

“But I’m going to another isolation ward. The Plymouth Naval Hospital. Whatever for?”

“The ways of medical men are very strange.”

“Sir — thanks for being so brave.”

“Nothing brave about me,” said Oils. “Matter of fact you’ve cheered me up. Glad you’re better.”

In Plymouth, in the isolation wing, he kept apart from the rest who were thoroughly dispirited, most of them gnarled old salts who swore considerably and talked of past delights. One of them had been at Gallipoli, and he talked on through the night of the horrors of the deep. “There was one sailor,” he said, “looked ninety. Homeless. Living miracle. He was so riddled with corruption — look, one day on deck he coughed up something with legs and a backbone.

“A backbone,” he said. “I’ve never forgotten it. What’s the matter with the lad? Squeamish?”

Slowly they let Eddie walk about outside along the old stone terraces. It was autumn. The air was sweet.

Then one afternoon came Isobel, striding along.

“They wouldn’t let me in before,” she said. “They didn’t tell me what you’d caught, either. Whatever have you been doing? You never left the ship, did you?”

“I a-a-ate bananas in Freetown.”

“Your stammer’s come back.”

“Only i-i-in-intermittently.”

“You’re keeping something to yourself.”

“I suppose so but I don’t quite know what.”

She leant towards him and stroked his arm. “You look like a grub,” she said. “One of those things you can see through.”

He was in tears. “Sorry. I’ll be OK in a minute. Don’t go.”

“I have to get the train back. I’ve come two hundred miles.”

“Isobel.”

“You’ve got my card and number.”

“Come next leave.”

“My next leave maybe I’ll go to Scotland to flay your aunts.”

“ Don’t, ” he said. “I’m nothing to do with them now. Just get me near to you. Somehow. For ever.”

“Child,” she said, and was gone.

And — six full months later—“You are passed and fit, Feathers,” said the Surgeon Commander, RN, with a facial tic and a foghorn voice who ran the hospital like a cruiser, each patient to attention each at the end of his bed. “I suppose you will now depart to Oxford?”