Jane Gardam - Old Filth

He had his usual Christmas dinner at the White Hart in Salisbury and over the next few days put his desk in order, adding a codicil to his Will that left Mrs.-er — Kate (her name was Toms, Katherine Toms) the amethysts. He left Garbutt a cheque, then tore it up and left him a much larger one. He topped up his bequests to the National Trust and the Barristers’ Benevolent. And so the last dead days of December passed.

On the thirty-first, he was waiting for the car in the hall, seated upon Betty’s rose-and-gold throne, alone, since Kate had her family to think about at New Year, and the car drove him without incident in pouring rain the hundred miles to Heathrow.

The airport was almost empty. There had been “an alert.” How ridiculous, he thought. We are letting these people win. Security was meticulous. He was made to step three times under the scaffold before anyone realised that the alarm signal he gave off came from his old-world eyeglass. The suitcase with its emblazoned studs and Muslim appearance was passed through without a glance. Islam. There was a little hesitation about the X-ray picture of Pat Ingoldby’s clothes-brush which looked like a gun.

And, then, the plane.

How stewardesses do smile these days, thought Filth. How cold their eyes.

He wondered what it would be like to be hi-jacked? He wondered once again, an hour or so later, when the plane plunged like a stone for a thousand feet over the Alps.

“Just a bit of turbulence.” The pilot came strolling through, presumably to give confidence, and Filth was pleased with himself for continuing to drink his soup.

“Are you comfortable, sir?”

He was pleased that the fellow was English. Pilots nowadays tended not to be.

“What route are we taking, Captain? Round the edges?”

“Oh, sure. Well to the South. Not a missile in sight. It’ll be dark over Afghanistan. Singapore for a cup of tea and then up to Dacca.”

Filth said, “When I first used to come out here, it was Vietnam we had to avoid. Had to refuel twice then. The Gulf. Then Bombay. Bombay’s called something else now, I gather. There used to be half a marble staircase on Bombay airport. Gold and cream. Lovely thing. It stopped in mid-air. Symbolic.”

“Time marches on.”

“Not so sure it marches anywhere in particular though.”

He slept. Once, jerking awake from a dream, he yelled out, thinking he was being put into a body-bag. An air stewardess with tendril arms was tucking a blanket around him.

The black night shuddered all around the plane. When he next woke there was a pencilled line of gold drawn round each oval blind.

Dawn already.

“We are in tomorrow,” said the girl. “It’s the sunrise. A happy New Year.”

(You’d think I’d never flown before.)

He watched the dawn.

Later he looked down upon a fat carpet of clouds and saw something he had never seen in his life before. Two suns stood side by side in the sky. A parhelion. A formidable and ancient omen of something or other, he forgot what. He looked about the cabin, but the other two or three First-class passengers were asleep under their blankets and the stewards out of sight.

The whiteness outside the plane became terrible. The plane was a glass splinter, a pin. It was being flipped into eternity, into dissolution. They were beyond speed now, and in infinity — travelling towards what he understood astronomers call “The Singularity.”

But they were bringing the orange juice and hot cloths.

And soon it was evening again.

At Singapore a wheelchair had been provided for him. (Very old gentleman with limp.) It stood waiting at the mouth of the wrinkled tube that joined the aeroplane to the earth (and that certainly had not been there in the seventies; they had had to climb down steep stepladders). He disregarded the chair and walked stiffly along the bouncing tunnel and into the air-cooled glitter of the shops, and eventually to the shadowy First-class lounge. Two hours, and a long sleep, later — and he walked easily all the way back.

The seat next to his was now occupied by a young man in an open-necked collarless white shirt and jeans who was already at work upon a laptop. Filth read across a white laminated folder “Instructions to Counsel.”

Filth felt garrulous.

“You a lawyer? So was I. I used to work on the flight out, too. All the way out, all the way back. Don’t know how I did it now. Straight into Chambers from the airport. We all got used to working through the night, even in London. Mind you, I never went straight from a plane into Court. Never did that. Too dangerous.”

“We do now,” said the boy. “No time to hang about.”

“Dangerous for the client. Dangerous for Counsel. Going into Court not feeling tip-top.”

“I always feel tip-top. I say — you’re not by any chance. .?

“Yes. Old Filth. Long forgotten.”

“Well, you’re still remembered out here.”

“Yes. Well, I dare say. I hope so. Ha. Did you ever come across a chap called Loss?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Or Islam?”

“They’re all called Islam.”

“He’s probably dead. Certainly retired. I’ve got one of his suitcases. Called a Revelation.”

A new stewardess, a Malay, browner, silkier, gentler, with more rounded arms and in a sari, came along with potted prawns. “Shall we pull down the blinds for you, sir?”

“No thanks,” said the young Silk. “Less than two hours left. Let’s watch the stars.”

“You married?” asked Filth after a long rumination looking at but not eating the prawns.

“Sure.”

“I used to take mine along,” said Filth. “Always.”

“Mine’s in banking. And I don’t think she actually would describe herself as ‘mine.’ We’re landing. Good. And we weren’t hi-jacked.”

As he made to leave the plane, a black misery suddenly came upon Filth like the eye bandage slapped around the face before it is presented to a firing squad. Then he wondered if, in fact, on this journey, he had really hoped only for death. . Had wanted the knife slipped out of the shoe. The gun in the sleeve. The “Nobody move!” The spatter of bullets and blood. One blessed, releasing explosion. Lived long enough. Get the thing over.

He had been waiting.

For what was there left for him in the Donheads?

Stuck in that wet woodland place with Garbutt and Mrs.-er, and lacy Chloe?

Well, there was still hope for obliteration on the return journey. Might achieve it.

And if I don’t — what? I’ll move. I’ll take a flat in The Temple. Don’t know anyone now. Ghastly lot of new Judges. Still, they are one’s own.

Bleak, uncertain, nodding thanks to the pretty girl, Filth made gingerly for the door.

From the top of the gangway, the East hit him full in the face. The thick, glorious heat washed on to him and around him, lapped his swollen old hands and his tired feet, bathed his old skull and sinewy neck, soaked into his every pore and fibre. Life stirred. The resting plane was vibrating with heat, the air around it vibrating, the airport vibrating and dancing in the soft dark. High glares and electrics together shone along the low parapet where people were waiting to meet the plane, clustered like dark flies, like frenzied butterflies.

The tremendous chatter of talk, the excitement. The toots and hoots and wails and the drumming. The prayers and the prostrated prayers and the prayer mats. The old, old beloved smell.

Betty seemed to be beside him, grinning away, waving back at all the people. Just at his shoulder.

“Watch it, sir. Let me help you. Is something wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” said Filth. The kind arms stretched. “Nothing at all is wrong.”

For he was Home.