Jane Gardam - Old Filth

“C-cou-cousins,” came out of Edward’s mouth. He liked this man.

“I know nothing of girls,” said Sir. “I know everything about boys. I am a very good teacher, Feathers, as your father may remember. By the time you leave my Outfit there is not a bird, butterfly or flower, not a fish or insect of the British Isles you will not recognise. You will also read Latin like a Roman and understand Euclid like a Greek.”

“Will he still have to do Welsh?” asked blonde Claire.

“Welsh! I should hope not.”

“What if you get a stupid boy?” asked Babs from the shadows (and thought: I do not like this man; he’ll change Eddie).

“Eddie isn’t stupid,” said Claire and, suddenly aware — for here came Auntie May with luggage — that Eddie was going away, she jumped from her plinth and hugged him as she had never done in all the terrible years since they met at Liverpool Docks. She began to cry.

“Sh-shut up, Claire.” Eddie turned to the man accusingly and said, “Claire never cries.” He looked down at Claire’s top-knot, felt her arms round him, did not know what to do about it and carefully removed himself.

“Auntie May,” said Auntie May to Sir. “I am Auntie May.”

“Ah, the redoubtable Auntie May. You are seeing to the girls, I hear? This would be quite outside my territory. I teach only boys. My establishment is very expensive and very well-known. I am unmarried, as is Mr. Smith, but let me say, for all things good should be noised abroad, that there is absolutely nothing unpleasant going on in my school. We are perfectly clean. There is nothing like that.”

“Well, that will be a change for him,” said Auntie May. “There’s been nothing pleasant here.”

“So I understand. Or rather I do not understand for such events are beyond comprehension in a well-run Outfit. There is no corporal punishment in my school. And there is no emotional hysteria. One can only suppose that these things are the result of the mixture of the sexes. I never teach girls.”

“What happened here was not to do with a school. These children went to the village school.”

“Which accounts for the pink child’s regional accent. Come, boy, say your goodbyes. At my school nobody leaves with an accent.”

“Goodbye,” said Eddie, looking only at Sir’s face. He remembered to shake hands with Auntie May and say, “Th-th-tha-thank you.” Ignoring the girls, for the three of them would all their lives be beyond formalities, he picked up some of his belongings, Auntie May some more and Sir none at all and they processed to the car, where Sir unfastened broad leather straps and the back was lifted, like the lid of a bread-bin.

“It’s marvellous. Your car.”

“Marvellous, Sir .”

“Marvellous, Sir.”

Sir stood back and watched the luggage being put inside the bread-bin. Then he nodded at Auntie May, pointed to the dickie seat and watched Eddie climb in, Babs and Claire looking on nonchalantly from above.

“You have the address?” said Sir to Auntie May. “And Feathers has yours? Not too many letters, please; we have work to do. He should write regularly to his father only. No letters from the girls or from this village. I think that was the understanding? Why does the boy stammer?”

“It began years ago.”

“Nothing in the least to worry about now,” said Sir, cranking an iron handle in front of the bonnet, then flinging it over the car into the dickie, just missing Eddie’s head, and leaping behind the wheel to keep the engine alive. Without a toot or a wave or a word of farewell he reversed on the springy grass and flung the car back into the stony lane and went bounding between the low walls and out of sight; leaving a considerable silence.

It was Babs who burst into tears.

“Now then, this stammer,” said Sir, an hour or so later, “I suppose it’s never mentioned. That’s the current policy.”

“It — it — it was. At the sch-school.”

“Ah, well they were Welsh. The Welsh have an easy flow and cadence. They can’t understand those of us who haven’t. I, for example, am not musical. Are you?”

“I d-don’t know.”

“Chapel? Chapel?”

“I d-didn’t sing. If I did they all turned and l-l-looked. Babs sang. B-b-b can sing.”

“The dark one?”

“She sang clear and sh-sh-sharp. Not at all sweet. Not Welsh singing. They d-didn’t like it. So she went on.”

“A prima donna. Girls are very difficult. Hush. Stop a minute. I see swifts.”

He stopped the car in the middle of a leafy lane with trees. Swooping about in high pleasure were some dart-shaped birds cutting the air high and low and gathering invisible flies. “Listen!” said Sir. “Hear that?”

“It’s rather like b-bells.”

“Good, good. You will never forget swifts now. There are birds, you know, who actually do sound like bells. They’re bell birds and they call to each other across the rainforests of Eastern Australia. Don’t let them tell you there are no rainforests in Australia. I have been there. Is that understood? I dare say?”

“Y-yes, Sir.”

“Good. And it is writhing with dragons.”

“D-d-, Sir?”

“They are a form of armadillo, enlarged wood-lice. (The common prawn is related to the wood-louse.) Fat low beasts and over-confident. Rather disgustingly beautiful.”

“Like the lizards in Kotakinakulu?” said Eddie, amazing himself by the memory of the platinum lizards with crocodiles’ merciless eyes, steel slit of a long mouth, not seen since. .

“Seen some, have you? Interested Darwin. You’ll have to tell the others, stammer or no stammer. Claudius had a stammer. Have you come across Claudius?”

“Claudius who?”

“Who, Sir . Claudius the Emperor of Rome. Splendid fellow. The Prince of Wales has a stammer. He’s having lessons for it.”

“Did he get it in Wales?”

“I shouldn’t wonder. Pity they didn’t send him to me.”

On sped the car. When they reached main roads conversation ceased. Sir’s long scarf kept flapping behind him into Eddie’s face. A precarious mirror hooked to the car at the height of Sir’s ear but in front of him showed Sir with concentrated gravity clenching his teeth on a curly pipe, unlit. Now and then he squeezed a grey rubber bulb attached to a small trumpet and a high bleat sounded off.

The rubber thing reminded Eddie of something vile. Old Mr. Didds’s constipation. Eddie’s face disappeared from Sir’s mirror, and Sir drew to the side of the road and stopped. “Just letting her cool down somewhat. Where are you? On the floor, I dare say?”

Eddie was squashed down on the floor of the dickie, knees to chin and pale green.

“Feeling sick? Not unnatural. Breathe slowly. It may be the car. Others have felt the same.”

After a while Eddie scrambled up.

“You could come and sit beside me but I never allow it. You are in my care. Do you know much about cars?”

“It’s the f-f-first—”

“First time in a car? Excellent. You can write the experience down. Did they teach you to write?”

“Yes. In a w-ay.”

“You mean they struck you with rulers? Beat you about the head?”

“Y-yes.”

“This does not happen in my Outfit. If you do not work — do not try —then Mr. Smith takes you for a run. All weathers. Along the shores of the lake.”

“D-do we wear labels?”

“Labels?”

“We carried labels on our backs.”

“Did this happen to you?”

“To all of us, it d-did. Babs had UGLY. I had MONKEY.”

“And the pink girl?”

“Oh, she never got c-caught. Well, they l-liked her.”

“Nothing can be further from my Outfit,” said Sir, closing his eyes for a moment. “What do you think of my mirror?”