Last Friends

CHAPTER 10

When Fiscal-Smith’s train reached Waterloo after the dreadful morning in Dorset he found himself reluctant for some reason to continue his journey to King’s Cross and then on to the North.

He was, for one thing, not exactly expected at home. He had intimated that he had been invited to stay for some time with old friends. And, also, he was now feeling distinctly unwell.

Already it had been a long morning for a man of his advanced years: up at 5 A.M. in the Dorset rain to examine a building half a mile away, said to be burnt out and which had turned out to be in perfect condition. Then that idiocy with Dulcie, locked alone with her inside the parish church and having to ring the bells for rescue. And so on.

And then Dulcie herself. Distinctly unwelcoming. And the awful daughter. And the glaring grandson. Sometimes, he thought, one should take a long, hard look at old friends. Like old clothes in a cupboard, there comes the moment to examine for moth. Perhaps throw them out and forget them. Yes.

But he had been able to make his mark with the delightful, new village family who had bought Veneering’s pile, his frightful Gormenghast on the hill. Fiscal-Smith would rather like to keep his oar in there. He would be pleased to have an open invitation to sleep in Veneering’s old house, tell these new people about their predecessor. Though maybe not everything about him.

Not that Veneering himself had ever once invited him there. Not even after that ridiculous lunch of Dulcie’s years ago, where all the guests were senile except himself and that boy and that desolate Carer. Like lunch in a care-home. Turned out in the rain. Had had to walk to the station on that occasion. Walk! Couldn’t do it now. Taxi would have cost three pounds even then. God knows how much now.

But there wouldn’t be much chance of making his mark with the new people either. Very casual manners these days. And Dulcie had taken against him. She’d always been a funny fish. Probably never see her again. Probably never see any of them again. Oh, well. End of it all.

At Waterloo he burrowed for his old man’s bus-pass and stood for a bus that crossed the bridge and turned towards the Temple. Taxi fares prohibitive and the drivers not pleasant any more. Mostly Polish immigrants. Very haughty. One had told him lately how the Poles had saved us in the War and then added, ‘Now we’re saving you for the second time. We work.’ He had not replied. For the second day running Fiscal-Smith made for the Strand and the Inns of Court.

Only twenty-four hours since the bell was tolling for Old Filth.

Different scene now. Earlier in the day.

Streams of black gowns pouring about, papers flapping, lap-tops gleaming, wigs on rakish, neck-bands flopping in the breeze. Home, he thought, I am home and young again. Bugger Dorset and the living dead.

And it was lunch time. I’ll go to lunch at the Inn. They’ll remember me. It can’t be more than ten years. Say fifteen. And it’s free. I am a life member, A Bencher — of this Inn.

Inner Temple Hall was roaring as he used his old key to let himself in (watch-chain). Then up the stairs. He pushed at the swing doors to the Hall. Hundreds of them inside, hundreds! Yelling! How much bigger they all are than we were. No rationing now. What a size some of them—. Sitting down to plates of what looks like excellent hot food. Stacks of it. Fiscal-Smith had not been offered breakfast. Only that watery tea.

Fiscal-Smith set down his substantial over-night valise and went to pee. No gentleman now, he thought, ever makes use of the facilities on British Rail. So sad. There were once towels even in third class. The W.Cs. now look like oil-drums. They can trap you inside them. Enough of that for one day.

Fiscal-Smith tidied himself up and made for the dining-hall, and was stopped on the threshold. ‘Yes, sir? May we help?’

‘Fiscal-Smith.’

‘Are you a member of this Inn, sir?’

He tried a withering look.

‘Bencher. For more than half a century. I am from the North. I am seldom here.’

‘We may have to ask you to pay, sir.’

As he turned the colour of damson jam someone called to him from the High Table where senior Silks and judges were leaning about like a da Vinci frieze. Sharks, whales, porpoises above the ocean floor. Scarcely registering the shoals of minnows in the waters below but not near them.

‘Fiscal-Smith! Good God! Over here, over here. Excellent!’ and he felt at once much better.

‘Been staying with old Pastry Willy’s widow in Dorset. Invited me back after Filth’s do yesterday. Very old friends of course.’

Nobody seemed to have heard of Pastry Willy.

‘Good do, I thought,’ said the oldest of the great fish. Touching. Very well-attended, considering his age. Weren’t you a particular friend?’

Fiscal-Smith sat down, comforted. Roast pork, vegetables with nuts in, gravy and apple sauce were put before him and he was asked if he would like a glass of wine.

‘Extraordinary,’ he told a childish-looking Silk beside him. ‘When I was starting out and we came to lunch here it was bread and cheese and soup and beer. And free. We were thinner, too. And more awake perhaps in the court in the afternoons.’

‘During the War?’

‘Afterwards. Just after. Place here all dust you know. Direct hit. First made me think there might be a future in Building Contracts. Early in the War I don’t think there was any lunch at all. But I was still at school then.’

‘Really? Were you? Where were you?’

‘Oh, in the north. I’m Catholic you know. Roman Catholic.’

‘Not much in the way of work in those days, I hear?’

‘No. Not for years after the War,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘Fighting was passé. We’d lost the taste for it. So poor we washed our shirts and bands ourselves. Fourpence at the laundry. We bought this new stuff — detergent. ‘Dreft’ it was called. And a Dolly Blue. Starched them too. Too poor for wives. Tramped the streets in our de-mob suits looking for Chambers.’

‘It’s said that even Filth and Veneering couldn’t get Chambers. Did they hate each other from the start? Did you know them then?’

‘I knew Veneering from being eight years old.’

‘Yet nobody ever really knew him — we understand?’

Fiscal-Smith kept a conceited silence.

At length he said, ‘I was Veneering’s oldest friend on earth.’

Then he added, seeing a suggestion of Veneering’s sour old man’s face somewhere up in the repaired rafters of the Great Hall, ‘He was much cleverer than I was of course. So was Old Feathers — they called him Old Filth. Both wonderful brains.’

‘So,’ someone eating apple-crumble and custard, called from down the table, ‘So we understand. One wonders why they stuck so long with the Construction Law. Charismatic, well-educated, intellectuals. Double Firsts. A life-time writing building contracts and a twilight of editing Hudson. No politics. No crime. No international high-lights.

‘I can tell you why.’

Fiscal-Smith stretched his short — very old — legs under the table, legs that earlier that day had been disguised under a choir-boy’s cassock. ‘I was present. They made a joint decision. It occurred in the Brighton County Court. I was Veneering’s unpaid pupil and I’d gone down with him there to observe. It was a gross indecency case.’

‘Yes,’ said the apple-crumble eater, ‘Can’t see Old Filth distinguishing himself there. Veneering — possibly. More worldly man. And merrier. Bit of a clown.’

‘None of us was merry that day,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘All of us fairly depressed. We went to Brighton of course by train — none of us had a car. Train called The Brighton Belle. Beautiful train. Ran every hour on the hour. Pink linen table-cloths and table lamps even in the Second Class which I think was still called Third. What the first class was like—. Maybe solid silver and bits of parsley on the sandwiches — I don’t know. Veneering and I sat at one table and aristocratic Filth sat as far away as possible from both of us at another, with his back to us, fountain-pen poised. Small glass of dry sherry. Filth and Veneering hadn’t then exactly quarrelled. It was long before the infidelity. Long before Filth marrying Betty. Or perhaps that is all forgotten now? It was just something brewing. Inexplicable. Witch’s brew. Or simple distaste.’

‘Ah, it happens,’ said the apple-crumble eater.

‘Well, the train was late. Stood still God knows how long. Fizzing steam. Could hear people cough. No information of course. No tannoys then. We stuck on the line for an hour, took two taxis to the Brighton County Court from the station, arrived after mid-day. Furious judge. Sent us to the back of the queue. Didn’t get on till after three o’ clock. Filth prosecuting, Veneering for the defence.’

‘Gross indecency?’

‘Yes. Ridiculous. Occurred in a circus.’

‘What, with animals? Bestiality?’

‘No. Lion-tamer’s apprentice.’

‘You’re not making this up, Fiscal-Smith?’

‘No. Lump of a lad. Retarded. Maybe Down’s Syndrome. Employed most of his time shovelling dung. Dirty-looking child. He’d been going round during the performances under the tiers of seats in the Big Top, and tickling the private parts of women in the audience with a long straw. Up through the slats.’

‘You are making this up!’

‘No. Tickle-tickle. They would all start wriggling and scratching. All round the tiers like a Mexican wave. In those days, you know, ladies’ tights hadn’t been invented (Yes thank you. I will. The claret is still excellent) and there were all these pale pink arcs of skin between the stocking-tops and the knickers. School-girls, I believe, used to call the gaps ‘smiles’ or ‘sights’.

‘Well, the lion-tamer’s boy went along beneath the rows tickling all the smiles and you should have heard the pristine Filth going on about him. “Obscene”, “Depraved” etc. and the judge nodding his head. Veneering and I wriggling about, at first trying not to laugh. Shaking the papers about. “Perverted.” Then Veneering just slammed down the Brief and walked out.’

‘What! Out of Court? He walked out of Court!’

‘Yes. Slam, bang up the aisle, through the swing doors and out. Filth had risen to his feet, turned and watched him go. Closed his eyes as if the King had died. And nobody said a word.’

‘So, I thought I’d better go and find him. I asked for permission and ran out. Judge said nothing. Looked struck by lightning. “Unheard of.” “Unbelievable.” “Taken ill?” etc. whispered around. I bowed, and then ran and found Veneering dragging on a cigarette in the corridor. I said — and by the way Filth’s solicitor, the dwarf, had appeared from somewhere—

‘Yes. The Albert Ross. Dodgy—.’

‘Veneering was shouting, “Bloody, pompous, fucking toffs.” Never been in the world — I happened to know that Veneering had a penchant for circuses — and he thundered back into court — no excuses — and put up a great performance about what fools we were making of ourselves. Wastage of court’s time. Harmless prank. Bleak life in the circus. Boy orphaned. Neglected. Confused. Unloved. Half-starved.

But that boy got three months. Three months! Filth standing there, Holy Moses. Very pleased with himself. And we all paraded out except for the lion-tamer’s boy who was taken to the Black Maria in hand-cuffs.’

‘Unbelievable! When was this?’

‘Well — look it up. It’s in the statute book. Just after the War.’

‘I suppose a century before it would have been a hanging.’

‘A century before,’ Fiscal-Smith said, ‘it would not have come to court at all. Audience would have dealt with it on site.’

‘Thrown him to the lions,’ said the apple-crumble Lord.

‘Well, anyway — this is an excellent cheese — on the way home Veneering said to me — we’d treated ourselves to a small gin and orange—“That’s settled it, Fiscal-Smith. I don’t think I’ve much of a future in Crime. I’m going for the Commercial Bar.” I told him that he’d probably find Old Filth there too. Filth may have won but he was way out of his depth with circuses. And easily shocked. Veneering said, “Well, I suppose that will have to be endured.”

After the coffee, Fiscal-Smith made for the London Underground feeling greatly restored. Yet as the tube rattled along to King’s Cross, everybody sitting blank and dreary staring at their thoughts, his good-humour ebbed. It was now mid-afternoon.

In the Flying Scotsman, heading North — not the old patrician Flying Scotsman but a flashy lowlander calling itself so — the seats, his being one of the last free, were lumpy and small. The train was cold. In two other seats at the small table for four there were two lap-tops plugged in and hard at work. In the fourth seat was an unwashed young man rhythmically nodding his head, an intrusive metallic hissing emanating from the machinery in his ears. The journey was to take three hours, the corridor packed solid towards the Buffet and a cup of tea. No drinks’ trolley. Where had he put his over-night case? The luggage rack was too narrow for anything but a brief-case or a coat. He was wishing for a coat. A coat on his back. He was really cold now. Actually, he was shivering.

Nobody spoke. Nobody smiled. Many coughed. Above the perpetual restless shuffling noises of the lap-tops, raucous, overhead messages about where the train was going and where it would stop and which would be the next station-stop quacked out every few minutes. Ding-dong signals shouted into mobile phones up and down the coach had one loud universal message: that their owner was expecting to be met by a car at his destination.

Met. Fiscal-Smith had made no arrangements to be met at Darlington. He was slipping. Why ever had he wasted all that time telling those old bores on the Bench about the lion-tamer’s apprentice of over sixty years ago? Shouldn’t drink at lunch-time. Broken the life-time rule of his profession. Long day. Those church vestments! That time with Susan on Tisbury station telling her about Veneering. Sulky Sue. Feeling hot now. And cold. Not so young as I was. Ninety in a few years. Ye gods!

At York many alighted but many more struggled aboard. ‘You OK, chum?’ asked a Jamaican who was replacing the man with the electronic ears. Still strange to see a Jamaican up north. Like Jamaicans. Good case there once. Six months sunlight. Veneering’s junior. Old Mona Hotel outside Kingston. Sunsets. Lizards. Rum and pineapple. Case about a gigantic drain. Old Princess Royal there. Could she drink gin! Wouldn’t go to bed. All her ladies-in-waiting asleep on their feet. Queen Mother? Blue eyes. Blue as Lady Mountbatten’s. Now, there was a—. Should have told those babes in arms at the Inner Temple how the Queen Mother once came to dinner in Lincoln’s Inn and beamed round and said, ‘What a lot of Darkies.’

I really do feel rather ill.

At Darlington he clambered out, the Jamaican helping with his bag, coming along the platform with him, trying to find someone to give the old guy a hand.

No-one. Dark night.

He tramped the long platform, down the steps and through the tunnel of white glazed brick. Contemptuously — no contemporary—with Stevenson probably. Graffiti. Strange faces in the shadows. Urine-smells. On the empty taxi-rank he waited, feeling his forehead. It was on fire.

‘Where?’ asked the taxi driver twenty minutes later. ‘Yarm? It’s ten miles!’

‘The Judges Hotel.’

‘I doubt it’s going to be open this time of night. It’s dark.’

‘I can’t get to my own house tonight, it’s up on the moor. On my grouse moor, actually.’

‘They’ll have to fly you in then. I’m not risking that road up. Come on then, mister, hop in. We’ll try the Hanging Judges. I’ll give them a bell.’

‘I was ringing church bells this morning at half-past five,’ Fiscal-Smith told him, and thought, I’m wandering. This day is a feverish dream. Not good. Lived too long.

But through the oak door of what had once been the very comfortable Assize-Court lodging for itinerant judges, a woman in disarray was coming running, shouting and waving a torch.

‘Whatever time o’ night d’you call this, Fred? Why din’t yer book in? Yes, there’s a bed and yes you can have the downstairs Sir Edward had with the gold-fish and the bears. Quick, you’re not well. Top and tail wash while I find you a hot-water bottle. I’ll bring you a tray to bed. At your age! Should be ashamed. A man with a good brain — except for living in that daft place up the hill. Hot milk and aspirins. No — no whisky. You’re shaking. It’ll be the bird flu and stress. Doctor first thing tomorrow. I looked down the Telegraph list of folk at Sir Edward’s memorial service and first thing I thought, Now then, did he tek his coat? I meant you.’

Deep in good wool blankets — none of your duvets — roasting with two hot-water bottles, fore and aft — and a tray across his stomach (ham sandwiches which he did not want) Fiscal-Smith sank into fitful sleep. Old Filth had slept in this bed. What’s left of him now in Malayan swamp? Gold-fish bubbling. Terrible teddy bears. Queer massage machine for feet. Chamber pot! Chamber-pot! Like the Cossack and Muriel Street. ‘Please do not feed the fish.’ ‘Click here for music’. No, no. Silence in court.

Someone was switching things off. Covering him with an extra blanket. Talking about him, but just to herself. Didn’t have to answer. North is a better country.

* * *

Did I really tell them about that case? The ladies’ parted legs? The ‘smiles’? Personally never seen such things. Wouldn’t want to. Dulcie. Very long day. Poor Veneering dead on Malta! Never thought ahead. None of us.

I shall probably die now. Bugger the Temple, The Knights Templar.

What’s left of them will have to come up here to mine. Do them good.

CHAPTER 11

About ten years after the Guy Fawkes Party, London blazing and bombardment of cities all over the country, Terry Venetski, safe from the Works, and now one of Mr. Fondle’s elite, came home from school at The Towers one day to No. 9 Muriel Street carrying a third letter to his parents, formally addressed and sealed.

He was taller now than either of them, broader and stronger. His hair was still extraordinary, wild and long, and white gold, and he had the same alert charm as the baby born nearly fourteen years ago after the Russian circus came to town. The letter said:

“In view of hostilities in the south of the country and the attacks on our ports and industrial centres I and the Governors of my School, The Towers, are asking for parents’ views on its evacuation to Canada in September.

A magnificent newly-built cruise-liner recently completed in India, The City of Benares, has generously been put at our disposal by the government, mostly for London children rendered homeless by the Blitz. There are berths for two hundred children, all of whom will travel free. There are also private passengers, trained voluntary foster-parents for the journey, excellent fostering promised for the time in Canada, however long this may be.

The ship is luxuriously appointed with excellent food, entertainments and comforts. The stewards are highly-trained, and love children. They almost all come from the city of Benares in India. All are ready for torpedo attacks and the ship will of course be escorted by corvettes of the Royal Navy. Mrs. Fondle will be accompanying us and we plan to remain in Canada for the duration of the war.

Nothing can be agreed upon unless all parents support the evacuation. We ask for an immediate reply. Signed HAROLD FONDLE, M.A. OXON.”

Terry tossed the letter upon the bed as he came in, then went out again and down to the Palace Cinema where he met up with a waiting girl and they went into the back row, supposedly to watch Deanna Durbin in A Hundred Men and a Girl.

The Cossack lay on his bed. He held the letter unopened in his hand for an hour.

Later Peter Parable came in. He and the Odessan read the letter.

The Odessan said, ‘This will be the end of Florrie.’

‘Send her with him. I have money,’ said Parable.

‘She’d not leave me. And no-one will take me to Canada.’

Before long Florrie arrived, warm and clean from the sandstone bath-house and drying her soft hair. She stopped and looked at them.

‘What’s this then?’

She took the letter and after reading it slowly put it down again on the bed. She filled the kettle and set it to boil. She said, ‘I’m glad we somehow got that wireless in. It’s terrible you know in London.’

‘They’ll be up here next,’ said the Odessan. ‘You must move in with us, Peter Parable. They’ll not let you live on by the shore.’

‘Aye,’ said Florrie, ‘You can have his room. He’d best go, Anton.’

All three, all thinking that she never spoke Anton’s name in public, began to pass the letter between them.

‘Fondle’s running,’ said Parable. ‘Calls it “escorting”. In luxury. He’s running away.’

‘Saving himself,’ said Florrie, ‘and her with him.’

‘If he saves his boys—? His star boys—?’

Florrie was pouring tea carefully into the trefoil cups. ‘He’d best go,’ she said. ‘Canada’s very English. A great clean amiable country and a good long way off from trouble.’

CHAPTER 12

The night before the departure to Canada of Mr. Fondle’s unanimously evacuating school, Terry Vanetski slid out of Muriel Street and down to the rabbit-hole houses by the sand dunes to say goodbye to Mr. Parable.

He was at home. The flames from the sea-coal fire could be seen far down the passage behind him, glittering and painting the walls a rosy orange.

Parable opened the door wider and said, ‘Yes? I have been waiting.’

‘I couldn’t come before. There’s big activity. Piles of clothes. I don’t know where she finds them. I told her I’d leave her all me coupons. I shan’t need them in Canada.’

‘Who knows?’

‘She doesn’t. Dad’s come up with things, too. Things we never knew. There’s a crucifix and a Missile.’

‘It will be a Missal. A prayer book. Come in. I’d have thought that would have been for the Holy Father to give you.’

‘He’s given me a bobbly thing. A rosary.’

‘You know my feelings about the Roman Catholic Church. Well I suppose you’ve come to see what I am going to give you?’

‘It never entered my head, Mr. Apse.’

‘Just as well. I am giving you nothing. Nothing for the moment, that’s to say, except naturally my prayers. Nothing extra for now, but there will be something in the years to come. It will be handled by my head office — you may have heard that I have branches in other parts of the country? I am speaking of my Will.’

‘Thank you very much, Mr. Parable.’

‘Apse — Peter Parable-Apse — it will not be a fortune. You must make your own: as I had to do in London on—.’

‘Yes, Mr. Apse. On ten shillings a week.’

‘Did me no harm. But all this is for after the War. When you are back home again. You will come back. We shall win the war. But I think you should not come back up here. Go to London where I have significant connections, which will quietly endure. You will not want.’

‘I’ll write, Mr. Apse. From Canada.’

‘Remember your Bible, boy. And I shall need to know your address before I die.’

‘But, if you die, Mr. Apse—?’

‘—in order for my executors to send you your inheritance. I don’t mind telling you that, chiefly on account of my esteem for your dear mother and my admiration for your father’s courage, I intend to leave you twenty-five pounds.’

‘Will that be per annum, Mr. Para — Mr. Apse?’

‘No, it will be net, boy. Your capital.’

‘Why are you doing this, Mr. Apse?’

‘Don’t grin, boy. Do not mock. I do this wholly for your mother, fool though she was not to marry me.’

* * *

‘Did you nearly marry Mr. Parable, Ma?’

‘Peter Parable? I did not.’

There was a roar from the bed.

‘More fool me,’ she said, stirring the pot.

‘No,’ said Terry and from the bed came a more acquiescent rumble. ‘It wouldn’t have done, Ma.’

‘Well, I suppose I might have had silk stockings and a fur coat by now if I had.’

‘More like,’ said Terry, ‘you’d have been singing hymns on the sands in a bonnet,’ and the three of them laughed.

‘And you’d not have had me,’ said the child.

‘Well, that could have been a relief.’ She ladled out dumplings and rabbit stew. Then there was apple tart and custard.

‘You’ll miss this good stuff in Canada,’ she said. ‘It’ll be plain stuff there.’

* * *

‘Bed then, aye? Sleep well,’ she said later.

His bag for tomorrow by the door. His papers in a satchel nearby. ‘Up early now,’ she said. They did not kiss. The Odessan took Terry’s hand as he passed the bed. He put money in the hand and spoke to him in Russian. Then the Odessan roared out a spate of some other language in a new horrible, terrifying voice and his eyes looked blind. Florrie ran out to the yard. Terry stood like an object. He said nothing. The Odessan said, ‘You have Russian blood, say something, for the love of Christ. I have nothing to give you. Nothing.’

‘Yes. A chess set. Make me a chess set, my Da.’

‘You will write or cable? Every day, my boy?’

‘Of course.’

‘We cannot speak directly of the love of God,’ said the Odessan. ‘But, I can bless you.’

‘Thanks, Da.’

The next morning there was the Holy Father in the house. There was bustle. Sleeplessness had ceased with dawn and now they were all bemused by late heavy slumber. ‘Come on. We go,’ said the Canon and Terry found himself out on Muriel Street where Florrie said, ‘Goodbye then. I’ll not come to the train. Did years of that. I’ll go get your father his breakfast.’ He walked with the priest to the end of the road and turned to wave, but she had gone.

On the station all Mr. Fondle’s evacuees were gathered just as if it were an ordinary school day of years ago. Today however they were going the opposite way.

There did not seem to be very many evacuees. The parents — quite a small group — stood together in a clump talking to each other rather than to their children. Most parents were being very bright. Most children seemed very young. They coursed about the platform being aeroplanes, bright and smiling, noisy and wild. Some swung their gas-masks round their heads. The gas-masks were on long shoulder-strings and in square cardboard boxes. Even Mrs. Fondle carried a gas-mask but it was boxed in black satin and on a ribbon.

‘You can throw them all in the sea the minute we’re out of sight of land,’ Mr. Fondle called, and Mrs. Fondle marched about, smiling.

* * *

The officials in the ticket-office crammed up against the glass partition some with handkerchiefs against their faces. A few of the better-dressed parents gathered closely around the headmaster and his wife and the tall handsome boy (is it Terry? They can’t be sending Terry!) so much older than the rest.

‘Is he your son?’ a woman asked Griespert. Two tiny girls in smocking dresses and Start-Rite London sandals stood silently beside her. ‘He’s surely too old to be an evacuee?’

‘I am a Catholic priest. He is not mine.’

‘Oh — the poor boy must be an orphan.’ The woman waggled a finger at Terry. ‘And so good-looking. You’ll be an American Hollywood star one day.’

‘We’re going to Canada,’ said Terry. ‘Do your children know?’

‘Oh, it’s about the same thing,’ she said.

‘This boy’s parents are both living. He means everything to them.’

Terry was examining the chocolate slot-machine, empty since sweet-rationing, with its metal drawer hanging out. The priest watched, hoping that Terry had heard.

Terry was still dazed and unnerved by Florrie’s absence.

She’d stood at the door steady and confident as a sergeant-major. Hand on latch had said, ‘Well now. Got everything then? Got the cake? Stamps? You’ll need one when you write home tonight from Liverpool.’

She — and Terry — knew that he would never say ‘Aren’t you coming as far as the train?’ That she would never kiss him in front of anybody. He had moved his feet on the step, looking to each side of her, marking time. The shadow of his father crawling back to the bed, skirting the chamber-pot, moved behind her. In a minute his father’s pointed knees rose like Alps inside the snowy counterpane.

‘You’ve got one of your socks going to sleep inside one of them shoes,’ said Florrie. ‘That won’t suit Canada. It’s a good fault though, too big. No doubt they’ll wash them in too-hot water. It’s good to see you in long trousers. I’ll send a second pair. Now, you’ll remember to write tonight. And watch your manners.’

That was when she had gone in and shut the door behind her.

When the train steamed in, it gathered the children in to itself, the parents’ flustering, faces against windows. Few children cried. Some looked unconcerned, and remote, blank as the dead. Some of the parents on the platform tried to wave little paper flags.

Inside their carriage the Fondles were talkative and encouraging as with their entourage they set off across the world to safety.

Terry had a corner seat in the Fondle’s first-class carriage but as the train gathered speed he stood up, opened the window by its leather strap and leaned forward to push his head out into the blowy day. At one blast he was caught into the slide and clatter of the train, the sudden, knowing hoot from the funnel. He watched the strings of coarse red council houses, the gaunt chimneys of the iron-works above them. At his back were the Cleveland Hills where Mr. Smith lived with his sick wife and little Fred. Behind the chimneys, in front of Terry and invisible, rolled in the sea towards the mine-fields of the sand-dunes and the barbed wire and Mr. Parable. All his life’s landscape was passing out of sight. Here was the long fence at the end of the grounds of Mr. Fondle’s school. There was a For Sale notice up, facing the train, beside the open Fives Court.

Pressed up against this fence, arms outstretched before her towards the running train, mouth gaping, face yearning, eyes blank and terrible and blind, stood his mother.

Then the train had swished and trundled by and Terry stood at the window until Veronica Fondle twitched at his coat and told him to close it, and sit down.

He never knew if his mother had seen him passionately waving.

CHAPTER 13

A mile or two inland and over sixty years later, old Fred Fiscal-Smith was deep in some gleaming, bubbling ocean. Seaweed trailed in it and there were soft, gulping bubbles, tropical ripples and gentle waves. Java, perhaps? Wonderful case there in the seventies. Faulty refrigeration plant, junior to Veneering. And to Filth.

But Fiscal-Smith’s forehead seemed to be resting now on a smooth glass, globular surface, and he was a baby again. More alarmingly he was gazing into a wide mouth with bright lips turned inside out like a glove, opening and shutting, moving tirelessly, eyes staring with disbelief. Ye gods, it was a gold-fish and he was slipping off the edge of the bed!

Where’d she gone? The Madame?

A bang and a rushing figure, and she was back. It was morning in the best bedroom of The Judges’ Hotel and the curtains were being drawn back. Her voice rattled on. And on.

‘Now then, Fred. Thermometer. Straighten yourself out before we’re gathering up the gold-fish off the floor. They’re meant to soothe the guests, not frighten them. My own idea. Copied from dentists. It’s raining and right cold this morning — almost afternoon. You’ve slept twelve hours, Fred. You’ll be right in a day or two and you’d best stay here till you are.’

‘No, no. I must get home.’

‘I’ve told him, your so-called “ghillie”, I call him Bertie as I call you Fred, Fred, when we’re alone. Since Herringfleet school—.’

‘Tell Bertie—’

‘I’ve told him. Returned from one of his memorial services, I said, with the flu. Staying here. Told him to bring down any post, except that, knowing him, he won’t. Bone idle. Here’s the paper. More about the Service. What a mob of double-barrels!’

‘Do go away. I’m not awake. Home—.’

‘Now don’t tell me Lone Hall’s ever been home, Fred. Just as Fiscal-Smith’s not the name you were baptised. You and I hailed from Ada Street first, just as his high-and-mighty hailed from Muriel Street. It was your Dad fancied the Hall up here long since and now you can’t get rid of it. Smith was your name.’

‘I’d never try. I’m denying nothing about Ada Street. I’ve come back up here. In the North. Might never have left Hong Kong. I’m faithful.’

‘Breakfast. Here. Eat it. They’ve done you eggs and bacon.’

He munched, his back against the pillows. Beside him on the table the gold-fish hung in their blob of ocean, then shrugged and shimmered away into some ornamental pebbles and ferns.

‘You’re kind, Margaret. You’d never order me out. I’ll stay a day or so for old time’s sake. I can’t really afford—.’

‘You’re worth millions, Fred. Shut up. What happened down there? Something’s upset you.’

‘Oh — didn’t know many people. Didn’t feel very welcome as a matter of fact. Old friends change. Or die. Or both. Thinking of Hong Kong — I was Sir Edward Feathers’ best man there you know — and, well, rather aware that nobody has ever, exactly, wanted me. And the obituaries were full of mistakes. Terry Veneering’s “childhood in Russia”. Old Filth’s “uneventful life”! Ha!’

‘Come on, get your own life, Fred.’

‘Bit late now, Margaret. Everything’s getting right dim, now.’

‘You said that like a local, Fred. Go back to sleep.’

‘Aye. And put a cloth over them bloody fish,’ he said in a voice that would have been unrecognisable in The Temple. As he fell asleep he said, ‘Remember Florrie Benson? Terrible business that. Terrible world.’

CHAPTER 14

The huge four-decker cruise ship stood like a city in Liverpool Dock and the faces looking down from the upper decks were dots. Gang planks stood robust and heavy. Rows of lifeboats, all tested and passed, hung like fruits.

There had been a last-minute delay and now the date of embarkation would be tomorrow, Friday the thirteenth. Normally no big ship would have risked such a date, but there was a waiting group of convoy ships and Liverpool was being heavily bombed and more bombardment expected. There was a sense of urgency.

The ship was carrying around a hundred children mostly the East End of London poor, homeless, and some orphaned already in the Blitz. National newspapers had been carrying photographs of dead children laid out in rows. Churchill had not yet vetoed these evacuations by sea but, there was serious lobbying about patriotism for one’s country being the noblest place to die; and also suggestions, since the sinking of a similar ship carrying children less than a month earlier, of nervousness.

Most of the London children had said goodbye to their parents at Euston Station and continued by train to Liverpool where the delay had meant a stay of two nights in rat-infested hostels. Some had cried, a few fallen ill — there was a case of chicken-pox (this boy was taken home) — but most of the rest were noisy and excited and looking forward to the six days of crossing the Atlantic to a new life. None of them mentioned the partings from home. They had transformed themselves into a new, intimate community consisting only of each other.

‘When are we going?’ they lamented. Not only the German bombs at night but the huge barrage of Liverpool gun-fire thundered all around them, hour after hour all night. ‘Soon,’ they were told, ‘Soon.’ Two of the children had been on board the earlier evacuee ship a fortnight ago which had been torpedoed, but everyone saved. These two seemed stolidly unconcerned.

There were also the paying passengers, ‘business-men, diplomats and professors and people of pre-war opulence,’ as was later reported in the press. Among these were Mr. and Mrs. Fondle and their party from North Yorkshire, expecting to board the S.S. City of Benares at once.

But the train had been slow and they had been obliged to sit with their elite group of children in one of the sheds on the quay. And, later, their supper was the same as the children’s. Veronica Fondle picked at the slices of National Wholemeal bread — pale grey — a little grey pie, some wet grey cabbage and a dollop of ‘instant potato’ called Pom.

The Fondles did not seem to be hungry. They leaned back from the communal bench and smoked black cigarettes with gold tips. Mrs. Fondle patted the seat next to her and said, ‘Not long now, Terence.’ The poorer children raced about and screamed and shouted like a flock of autumn starlings suddenly wheeling, like smoke, out of sight of the dormitory sheds. Terry said, ‘There’s not one of them older than ten.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Terry. Terry you must stop saying “Wan”. You are travelling with us.’

He could think of no answer. He could not bear her face or her voice. After a time he took a last bite into the so-called tart (Apricot, but it was marrow jam) and said, “One” and she said, ‘Much better.’

‘Can I get a message home? I’ve got the priest’s number. It’s only one and twopence.’

‘Oh, I don’t think we want to unsettle them.’

‘Well, I’ll write, then, Mrs. Fondle. I promised. She give me the stamp for it.’

‘Gave,’ said Mrs. Fondle. She and Harold Fondle then disappeared.

Terry wrote his letter and went to find a post-box, with no success. It was bed-time apparently now and they were sent to a place full of bunks. Two big, plain, confident girls — twins — were to sleep below him. They looked to be eleven at most, but large and commanding. ‘You an escort?’ one asked. ‘You’re no evacuee. Not your age.’

‘I’m not quite fourteen.’

‘D’you not want to stay and fight then?’

‘I don’t know about that. Do you?’

‘We’re girls,’ they said ‘It would just to be in Munitions. I don’t want to make bombs for anyone. There must be kids like us, over there.’

In the night he heard one of the girls crying and her sister’s head rose up like a vision beside his face on the bunk above. ‘Our dad and mam’s dead in the raid. Faery’s weak. I’m her twin sister.’

He rose early next morning, both sisters humps in grey blankets below. He dressed and put on the hooded coat his mother had made him. He was so tall he might have been anybody.

He climbed aboard, up a steep gangway unnoticed. He walked about on deck. He slipped amidships and soon came to a graceful staircase like Hollywood. Like A Hundred Men and a Girl. And high above him on the stair he saw the toes of shiny golden curled slippers jutting over the top step. He found that these feet were attached to the graceful Aladdin-trousers of a golden man in a golden coat and purple turban. This smiling man beckoned and bowed.

‘Come little sir. Welcome to the East. Welcome to the City of Benares. See what is now before you.’

What was before him was The Arabian Nights. The palms. The languid loungers, the gleaming restaurants, the clean cabins for them all — not only for the paying passengers. The white linen hand-towels, the ballroom, and everywhere a glorious smell of spices and food he seemed somewhere to have known. An orchestra was tuning up upon a white marble dais.

There was a play-room for the little ones, full of toys. A rocking-horse stood there against a wall, its nostrils flaring. It was a strong rocking-horse with basket-work seats fastened one to each side of the saddle, all wicker-work but very firm and beautiful. Then away went the steward, about the ship. Coloured streamers, big white teeth smiling, princes bowing to him. It must be a film!

Terry felt very much afraid. He was being mocked. He needed to speak, not to his father but to his mother. There were no women on board this ship. They were all princes, all bowing at him and all false. He had never seen anything like this in the Palace Cinema in Herringfleet.

‘I don’t think I am meant to be here,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘I am a steward on this glorious ship. It is only one year old. It is known as The Garden of the East. You, all you children, are going to be in heaven. You will be Royalty, even the smallest, away from all harm of war. You will eat chicken and salmon and eastern fruit, rich meats, wines, sherbets, bananas and ice-cream—.’

He was terrified. ‘I have to go back. I am not meant to be here. It’s a dream.’

‘Perhaps the whole world is a dream.’

He ran back on deck. Children were beginning to climb the gangways now, some hand in hand, some solemn, some excited, none looking back, none crying. All so little.

On the quay a few flags were being waved. Someone began to sing half-heartedly ‘Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye’ and from across the harbour on one of the escort ships which were to come with them to keep them safe, the song was taken up and sailors on her deck began to sing and to wave and cheer. The two stolid twins, big and heavy in what looked like their mother’s winter clothes, passed Terry by without noticing him. From the inside of the ship came cries of amazed delight, the Pied Piper’s children passing inside the mountain.

He asked someone about the Fondles, and was told that they would already have boarded by a different gangway for the paying passengers.

He said ‘I’ll go back to the quay then, and find it.’

‘No need,’ said another golden Indian man in white. ‘Come this way.’ He had gold tabs on his shoulders.

‘I have to go down. I’ve left my bag.’

‘Someone can escort you.’

‘I can manage.’

‘Hurry then, little master.’

He began to push against the stream of passengers coming up the gangway. He pushed harder, knocking them out of the way, and he was free.

Across the quay, in and then out of last night’s dark lodging — his luggage was still there.

‘Get aboard!’ A Liverpool voice. ‘’Ere — you! You’s a passenger — I seed yer. I remember the hair.’

‘Just going.’

He pulled up the hood of the coat and half an hour later he was far away, running like mad from the port, wandering in battered, broken Liverpool, looking for a phone-box.

* * *

He had the right money and he telephoned Father Griesepert. There was no answer, so he rang Mr. Smith’s number, up in the house on the moor — no phones yet in Muriel Street — and after a long time and the telephonist twice asking if she should disconnect him, little Fred Smith’s voice answered.

‘It’s Terry. Is yer Dad there?’

‘Yer’ll ’ave ter ’old on. They’re not awake yet after last night.’

‘Get him, Fred.’

* * *

‘Hullo? Terry? Terry!’

‘Yes. Sorry, Mr. Smith. I’m comin’ home.’

‘You can’t. It is utterly impossible.’

‘Well, I’m coming. I have the money from Da.’

‘You can’t. There’s no trains. Middlesbrough station was destroyed last night. The lines are broken everywhere.’

‘Yes. Well. I’m still coming. Somehow. The ship’s awash with bairns and little kids and them Fondles is after me. I don’t know why, I don’t trust them. They think I’m theirs. I’m not theirs. I’m me Mam’s. And me Dad’s. I’se jumped ship. The ship’s about to sail. I’m somewhere in Liverpool. They’ll never find me.’

The operator said, ‘Your three minutes is up. Do you want to pay for more time?’

He pushed some shillings and then pennies into the slot and after they had clattered down there was silence again.

But then, at last, Mr. Smith’s voice saying, ‘D’you think you can find The Adelphi Hotel? Terry? Very big. Dark. Ask anyone.’

‘Yes. I think it’s right near. I think I’m beside it. I must have gone in a circle.’

‘Go in there. I’ll phone them and say you’re coming. Right. Now, sit in the main Bar there if they’ll let you. Out of sight if you can. Say someone’s coming for you. Say you’ve had bad news from home that means you are unable to leave the country just now. Give anyone this number. Terry — if this is panic it may not be too late—.’

There was a boom like the Last Judgement across the City of Liverpool and The City of Benares, its funnels calling out like organ pipes, began its graceful journey towards the Atlantic Ocean.

‘It’s not panic, Mr. Smith. And it is too late. I know I’m doing right, Mr. Smith. I’m sorry.’

‘You’ve been listening to the slaughterer, Mr. Churchill, forbidding us to run away.’

‘No. Look. Will you tell Mam and Da? I’m coming home.’

‘You’ve had your three shillings’ worth and more,’ said the operator. ‘I couldn’t help listening. I’m not sure of Churchill neither. Always was a war-monger. Death and glory. I’d go home meself if I was you lad.’

‘Thanks. I know what I’m doing,’ said Terry. ‘Thanks, Mr. Smith. I’m fine.’ But his hand shook so much that it took him three attempts to get the heavy black hand-piece back on its hook. Behind it he saw his face in the small spotted mirror. It looked set and certain. Totally certain. I look like me Da, he thought. So that’s O.K.

CHAPTER 15

Still there?’

The barman at the Adelphi’s shadowy and vast main bar was, towards evening, still polishing glasses. Terry was almost out of sight as he had been for hours around the side of the bar on a black-painted step near the floor, his case beside him, waiting for the telephone to ring.

‘You’s sure now that he’s coming? It’s after tea now.’

‘If Mr. Smith said so—.’

‘Well, he said there’d be someone coming to get you, not him. Someone nearer, but not that near. Fromt Lake District. Not nobody, not God, could get over from Teesside today. News travels. It’s not int papers or ont wireless yet. Bombed and flattened the steel-works. First bad ’un they’ve had there. We’s all but used to it ’ere. You’s well away — there’ll be more. Aren’t you the daft ’un not on that luxury liner with the toffs?’

Terry sat on. ‘Can I have a drink? A bar drink.’

‘I’ll give you one small beer.’

‘No. I want Vodka. I’m partly Russian.’

‘I’ve been noticing the hair.’

‘I’ve been collecting round my school for the Red Cross Penny-a-Week fund for Russia.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m a Communist.’

‘Oh God,’ said the barman. ‘Switch off. You’ve got ground to cover yet. Never mind your father. Hullo? Oh, good evening? Yes. Along here. Someone is coming.’

It was a false hope. Terry sat on. He said, ‘We never met anyone from the Lake District. Where’s the Lake District? I thought it was Canada — like Erie and Michigan and that.’

‘By God, you’re ignorant. Where you been all your life, Lenin? Herringfleet? Cod’s-head folk.’

‘That’s right. Can you get me a sandwich?’

‘There’s none here to get it for you and nowt to put in it if there was! Mebbe in the police-station if none turns up here for you.’

‘Bit longer,’ said Terry, ‘Mr. Smith won’t forget. What’s that?’

Far away in the main foyer of the hotel there was, drawing nearer, a clear, rhythmic, distinctive mechanical sort of voice. ‘—let that be understood. From the beginning. Thank you, yes.’ A small man was walking towards them from the far end of the long shadowed passage, talking as if addressing an audience. ‘And this is my passenger, I dare say?’

‘If you’ve come from a Mr. Smith,’ said the barman.

‘I have. Good afternoon. Stand up, boy. Shake hands with me. A straight back and a direct look. Good. Good. My name is Sir. Just Sir. I am the headmaster of a school in the Lake District where Mr. Smith was once my deputy. All my deputies are called Mr. Smith but this Mr. Smith is authentically Smith. A fine man. My school is called a Preparatory School, or Prep School. My Outfit. I’m afraid you are rather too old for my Outfit but we shall see what can be done.’

(‘He’s a Communist,’ said the barman. ‘We must discuss the matter,’ said Sir.)

‘It is a pity that you are so old for I believe there is much I can do for you. Hair-wise (look up hair in Latin. Roman customs and barbering) and now what exactly is your name? I gather that it is uncertain.’

‘Yes. It has always been a sort of uncertainty.’

‘It must be settled at once. It is most important. If I can do nothing else I can do that. Venitski? Vanetski? Varenski? Are you all illiterate in Herringfleet?’

‘Dad never really discussed it. He came from Odessa.’

(‘It’s Ivan-Skavinski-Skavar,’ said the barman and began to sing the tune.)

‘Enough!’ shouted Sir. ‘This is a very serious matter. Your name henceforth shall be Veneering. Yes. Delightful. Polished. In Dickens, Veneering (look up Our Mutual Friend) is an unpleasant character and you will have to redeem him. Veneering has a positive and memorable ring. Rather jolly. You do not look un-Dickensian, but you look far from jolly.’

‘So—let us leave at once. Tonight you will be staying in the Lake District mountains in my Outfit. Mr. Smith is coming to remove you tomorrow.’

‘Does he know that you will have given me a new name?’

‘He won’t be surprised. A most sensible man. Has a son of his own. Maybe I’ll get him. Such a pity Mr. Smith had to leave me to get married. I have no married teachers in my Outfit. Marriage brings distractions. In my Outfit we are too busy for distractions.’

Handing the barman a five pound note the small loquacious man turned and left the Adelphi Hotel and Terry followed dragging all his worldly possessions in the suitcase.

‘The Adelphi Hotel is haunted,’ said Sir. ‘It is the hotel where doomed passengers of ship-wrecks have always gathered before embarkation. Filled with shadows. Such rubbish. In the back, now. The dickey-seat. I don’t ever drive with a boy along-side me for there is always talk in a Prep School. Mine is a clean school. Was yours?’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Sir. Mine was run by a man called Fondle.’

‘That,’ said Sir, ‘is a bad start.’

They roared away north-north-east towards the Cumbrian fells, Sir occasionally blasting off into the empty night, upon the car’s bulbous horn, at resting rabbits. After a time the light around them began to fade into a gentle sunset. Sir stopped the car.

‘Bladder relief.’

‘Now,’ he said, ‘another day is done. By what I hear it has been a day you are unlikely to forget. Time will tell us if you were directed by some spiritual force of nature, by instinct or by selfish whim. I heartily advise you to beware, if it is because of “whim” (look the word up. Old English sudden fancy or caprice OED), never to do such a thing again. Is that understood? I dare say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Now, look at the dark hyacinth-blue of the umbrageous mountains (look up ‘umbrageous’: and ‘hyacinth’ too, they both have a splendid classical root). Tell me, do you care for birds?’

‘Well, I think we only have sea-gulls at Herringfleet.’

‘A pity. And most unlikely. Birds can be a great solace. They never love you and you can never own them. Dogs often — and even cats sometimes — can cause pain by their enduring love. Sycophancy (look that up) is never to be encouraged.’

(Who is he? A madman? I like him.)

‘And although I wish I could have the privilege of teaching you, you are, as I say, a little old. We stop at twelve or thereabouts. Where are you bound for next, I wonder?’

For the first time it occurred to Terry that he had not the faintest idea.

‘I should like to come to your school, Sir, but I don’t think there is any money. I stand to inherit £25, but not until my benefactor is dead.’

‘Is that per annum, boy?’

‘No. It will be net.’

‘Ah.’

‘I could make an exception,’ said Sir, ‘but I will not. We might grow fond of each other, I fear that we are unlikely to meet again.’

‘I’m very sorry, Sir.’

‘Yes. I have to admit that I am often very sad, when a boy leaves my school (though not always). There was one excellent boy called Feathers came to me. Left a year or so ago. Had a cruel stammer. We cured it in a term. He’ll be a barrister. You’ll see. Rather your sort of calibre. Feathers will have a charmed life and he deserves it for he had a terrible start. He was unloved from birth. Whereas you — boy — I understand have had a loving home and interesting parents. This will get you through everything. Almost. Because you were loved you’ll know how to love. And you will recognise real love for you. Here we are.’

The school was on a hill up from a lake that gleamed through black fir trees. Boys erupted through its front door and took charge of a large package, the size of a double-bedded bolster, which Sir took from somewhere beneath his feet. ‘Warm it up at once. Fish and chips. Hake. Irish sea. Made me late at Liverpool. Hake a wonderful fish, not common. Good for the brain (look up “hake”. Is it Viking?). God bless our fishing boats. No car here yet? No Mr. Smith to take you home? Boys, this is Terry Veneering. Yes.’

The boys were all disappearing into the school with the bolster. ‘Veneering, you’ll have to stay the night,’ said Sir and Terry felt suddenly that it had been a long day.

* * *

He stayed for three nights with Sir and there was no message from Herringfleet. He slept in an attic and listened to the birds. He was hauled in to help with football and was a success. In the gymnasium it was even better. ‘You may start them on Russian,’ said Sir, passing by on the third day. ‘We may all be needing it soon. I forbid German, however.’

‘I think there’s a car, Sir.’

‘Where?’

‘Standing in the drive. It might be Mr. Smith.’

‘Excellent. Start now. First Steps in Russian with Class 1. Call them “First Steppes” and see if they get—. I will send for you. You are right. It is Mr. Smith. They are approaching slowly: There seems to be a priest with him.’

An hour later Terry was summoned to the Parents’ Waiting Room where a tray of tea and Marie biscuits, off the ration, had been laid out and Mr. Smith and Father Griesepert told him that both his parents had been killed in the air-raid on Herringfleet the night he left home. Muriel Street was gone, as were the old rabbit-hole houses in the dunes. Mr. Parable-Apse was dead, along with the people in the ticket-office, and nobody had seen Nurse Watkins.

* * *

Terry was to leave that same evening in Mr. Smith’s car. Father Griesepert was a governor and an old boy of a famous Catholic boarding school where it was hoped Terry would remain for the next few years. He went to see Sir again by himself and found him seated at a desk which looked far too big for him, staring ahead.

But he was talking before Terry was through the door. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘You will not only survive but you will shine. Remember the boy, Feathers. You will outshine him. I know, I am never wrong.

‘But remember — I am only a walk-on part in your life. This is merely a guest-appearance. You will have to get down to your own future now.’

Pompous, Terry thought. Totally self-absorbed. Stand-up comedian. Needs adulation. Probably homosexual. Twerp.

‘And so, goodbye, Veneering.’

‘Goodbye, Sir. And thank you.’

‘Hurry up. I have work to do. Mr. Smith is waiting.’

Veneering turned at the door to shut it behind him and saw Sir staring ahead, his eyes immense, wet beneath his glasses. Unseeing.

CHAPTER 16

On her Memory-Dream mattress sixty years later Dulcie was now listening to the Dorset rain. A sopping Spring. At last she heard the swish of Susan’s car returning from the station, the front door opening and closing. Some kitchen sounds. The radio—.

(She’s taking her time to come up.)

‘Susan? Susan? Is that you? Are you back?’

‘You know it’s me, I’m getting your lunch. Here. Sit up. Soup and cheese. I seem to have been bringing people food all day. Oh, don’t snivel, Ma. I suppose you’ve forgotten that I’m going home tomorrow?’

‘No, I haven’t. Is Herman going too?’

‘Where else d’you think he’ll live?’

‘And I’m not snivelling. It’s a cold. I must have caught it in the church.’

‘The less said about that the better. Ma — tell me something. Did Fiscal-Smith have some sort of a thing about Veneering? I always thought it was Old Filth he was mad about.’

‘Thing?’

‘Is he gay?’

‘Oh my dear! Good heavens, no. He’s 80 plus.’

‘He’s not related to Veneering, is he? Told me at the station he’d known him since they were eight.’

‘Well, they’re both from the North somewhere. Nobody knows. The North is big I suppose. I must say they’ve both dealt pretty well with the accent. They’re both Roman Catholics. Expensive schools and Oxford.’

‘How weird. It’s just that Fiscal-Smith, poor little scrap, flipped a bit as the train came in. Made a speech at me about Veneering. At me. Eyes glittering. Very odd. He kept pressing that lighted button on the carriage door and all the doors kept opening and closing.’

‘Once,’ said Dulcie, looking away, ‘you were fined twenty-five pounds for that. Pulling the cord for fun. We did it once at school and then we all jumped out and ran across the fields and my foster family nearly killed me. I wrote to my father in Shanghai to come and rescue me and he wrote back saying he would never write to me again and nor would my mother until I’d written letters of shame to everyone, including the railway company. It was the dear old LMS.’

‘Whatever that was. Here, Ma. Eat your rhubarb.’

‘I hate the way people call it rhubarb now. It should be rhu-BUB. Only the Queen and I pronounce it properly.’

‘When did you discuss rhubarb with the Queen? The last thing — when the doors did close — Fiscal-Smith was saying was that Veneering once had a different name and he was some sort of a hero. Very brave. Huge admiration. Did you know?’

‘Perhaps he was Veneering’s best-man, too.’

‘Oh now! Veneering was married frightfully young. When he was doing his national service in the Navy after the War. His ship was showing the flag around the Far East. He met and married Elsie ten years before he met the rest of us. Before he met Betty.’

‘Yes. We know all that. Everyone knew his wife drank. People always do.’

‘Elsie was Chinese of course. Never saw anyone so beautiful. But she drank.’

‘We knew all that, too.’

‘She was rather after the style of that pink-coat woman at the funeral, Isobel.’

‘Isobel does not drink!’

‘That will do, Susan! Do you know Isobel?’

‘O.K. — keep your hair on. I did once. It can’t be the same one.’

‘Actually,’ said Dulcie, spooning rhubarb, ‘there was some link between little Fred Fiscal-Smith and Edward. Something awful. Orphans, of some sort. Well, you don’t ask, do you? Not done.’

‘I was a Raj Orphan,’ said Susan.

‘Yes. You made a great fuss. I can’t think why. It is such a character-forming thing to be separated from one’s parents. I never saw mine for years. I didn’t miss them at all. Couldn’t remember what they looked like after about a week. But then, I’ve never been very interesting and I’m sure they weren’t.’

‘I missed mine,’ said Susan.

‘Your father, I suppose.’

‘No. I missed you. Dreadfully.’

‘Susan! How lovely! I had no idea! How kind of you to tell me. I did write you thousands of letters—. But—. I think I’ll get up now and write to Fiscal-Smith. I think I was a little hard on him for bringing that overnight-case. He’ll be nearly home by now. I hope there was a dining car on the train. He remembers — and so do I — when railway cups and saucers—.’

‘“Had rosebuds on them”. Yes, we know. And for godsake, Ma, don’t get up until I’ve done down-stairs. The kitchen’s full of damp church vestments.’

‘And after this,’ she said in the kitchen, ‘thank God, we must start packing for America.’

Dulcie, not waiting to dress got out of bed, found some writing paper and sat at her dressing table.

My dear Fiscal-Smith,

I am sorry that we did not say a proper goodbye after our little adventure this morning. I had not expected you to leave immediately and I am very sorry if we seemed to be hurrying you away, Sincerely, your oldest friend, Dulcie.

PS: I don’t seem to be able to get not Old Filth — Eddie — out of my mind, but Veneering. Am I right in thinking that you knew him better than anyone else did? That there are things you never told us? Just a hazy thought. I’ve so often wondered how he got where he did. So flashy and brash (if I dare say so) so brilliant in court, so good at languages, so passionate and so — whatever they say about him with women — so common. But oh so honourable! Don’t forget, I knew Betty very well. But I am saying too much — too much unless it is to a dear last friend which I know it is.

DW.

* * *

And now I am completely restored, she thought the next day, waving Susan and her grandson off in the hired car for the airport, back to Boston, Mass.

Susan had kissed her goodbye. Even Herman had hugged her, if inexpertly. This visit had been a success! Susan talked of returning soon. Even of sending Herman to boarding school here with the boy his own age over in Veneering’s old house, the poet’s son. Well, well! I wish she’d say what’s happened to her husband. An electric fence around her there.

* * *

Today and probably for the next few days Dulcie decided she would do nothing. It was time for her to be quiet and reflect. So idiotic at my age, but I must reflect upon the future. ‘Reflect’, perhaps the wrong word. It has a valedictory connotation. But I am not too old to consider matters of moral behaviour. There is Janice coming to clean on Wednesday and Susan’s already done the sheets. I will not go over to Veneering’s house to see that new family. I mustn’t get dependent on them. I mustn’t become a bore. I shall—. Well I shall read. Go through old letters. Plenty to do. Prayers. Wait for Fiscal-Smith’s reply.

But when this had not arrived by Friday Dulcie began to think again how much he irritated her. She knew she had hurt him by sending him home, but, after all, she had not invited him. It was that supply of clean shirts she’d seen in the case that she couldn’t forget. The image brought others: his ease the night before with her drinks cupboard, his arrogance in the church. How he had criticised the vicar. He knew that the Church of England had to regard their priests as wandering planets now, the current one arrived on a scooter dressed as a hoodie and vanished after the service without a word to anybody; but Fiscal-Smith need not have looked so RC and smug. And disdainful of St. Ague’s.

Of course she knew the village was dead. Dorset was dead. It was gone. Submerged beneath the rich week-enders, who never passed the time of day. Came looking for The Woodlanders of Thomas Hardy and then cut down the trees. The only life-timer in The Donheads was the ancient man in the lanes with the scythe. Willy used to call him the grim reaper. Lived somewhere in a ditch — never talked. Some said he was still here.

There was no-one to talk to. The village Shop, as Fiscal-Smith had said, was dying on its feet. He didn’t have to tell her. She scrapped another letter to him, written this time on an expensive quatre-folded writing paper, thick and creamy, from Smythson’s of Bond Street — which Fiscal-Smith would never have heard of — and set out on foot to the village shop herself.

It was pure patriotism and she hoped that there were some faces behind the beautiful polished windows and luxury blinds of the weekenders in the lanes to see her. She didn’t need anything. Susan had stocked up for her as if for a siege, in the Shaftesbury Co-op. She bought at the little shop a tin of baked beans and listened to Chloe discussing whether Scotts Oats were better than Quaker when making flap-jack. There rose up a vision of golden heaps of sea-wrack, squid, banana fritters, marigolds and the smell of every kind of spice. A tired, dreamy Chinese chef spinning pasta from a lump of dough for the tourists; a stall piled high with cat-fish. Mangoes. Loquats.

On the way home she decided to get eggs from the farm. There was a wooden box hung on a field-gate. It had been there fifty years. You took out the eggs and left the money. Beautiful brown eggs covered in hen-shit to show how fresh they were. Today she opened the flap of the box and there were no eggs and no money but a dirty-looking note saying, ‘Ever Been Had?’

She was all at once desolate. The whole world was corrupt. She was friendless and alone. Like Fiscal-Smith she had outstayed her welcome in the place she felt was home. There was absolutely nothing for her to do now but walk back to empty Privilege Hall.

No she would not! There must be someone. Yes. She would go and call on the two old twins up the lane. The people in the shop had said that there was a new Carer there. Well, there nearly always was a new Carer there. (Oh! When was the last time there was anybody happy? It’s not that I’m really already missing Susan. I wonder if I’d have loved Susan more if she’d been a boy? With a nice wife who would sit and talk and play Bridge?)

She tottered up to the cottage of the two old high-powered (Civil Service) twins and was greeted by a dry young woman with a grey face, smoking a cigarette.

‘Yes?’

‘I am a friend—.’

‘They’re having their rest.’

‘But it’s lunch-time.’

‘They rest early.’

‘I am a very old friend. May I please come in?’

She walked through the nice cottage that seemed to be awash with rubbish awaiting the bin men, and saw Olga and Faery playing a slowish card-game at a table. They raised their eyes sadly.

‘Thank you.’ Dulcie turned to the Carer. ‘That will be all for now. You may take a break. I’m sure you need one. Please take your cigarette into your car.’

The twins looked frightened. ‘She’s from a very expensive agency. They said she did smoke but not in the house. But she does.’

‘It’s so strange that we mind,’ said Faery. ‘We all smoked once.’

‘And I suppose we are a horrible job,’ said Olga. ‘Even though she gets double. She goes on and on about how wonderful her last job was. “Lovely people”. She calls them by their first names, Elizabeth and Philip. Do you think it was with the Royal Family?’

‘I don’t. And if it was, Down with the Royal Family.’

‘Oh, don’t start, Dulcie. We’re wiser now.’

‘I want to kill her. Oh, for some men.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Dulcie, we’re all over eighty and we’re feminists.’

They sat. The room was cold with no sign of a fire. Faery’s legs were wrapped in loose bandages.

‘Marriage must be a help in old age,’ said Olga, ‘but since the husband usually goes first it doesn’t rate much now. No penniless spinster daughters at home to look after us either. Must say, I’d like one.’

‘Well, my Susan would be hopeless as a Daughter at Home.’

‘But she comes and takes charge often,’ said Faery. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are Dulcie. You never did.’

‘But she makes me feel such a fool all the time. She’s married and clever and well-off and has a son and yet she’s never happy. Never was.’

‘She has her girl-friends,’ said Olga and there was a long pause. The Carer was hard at work across the front hall, complaining on her phone at high speed in an unknown tongue.

‘Did you know? Well of course you’ll know.’

Faery said, ‘Hugely rich, we hear. And no girl. Woman almost your age.’

‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Dulcie.

The Carer returned and said that she must start to get the girls to bed. Dulcie saw her lighting up another cigarette as she held open the front door.

In the sitting room the two women stared at their playing-cards and listened to the Carer texting messages (plink, plink) in the kitchen.

‘My special subject at Oxford was Tolstoy,’ said Faery.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Olga.

‘Perhaps fiction was a mistake, it has rather fizzled out.’ said Faery. ‘We should have pioneered Women’s Rights.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Olga. ‘It was the wrong moment. Fiction got us through. Fiction and surviving the ship-wreck at 15 years old.’

‘Yes. And just look at us now.’

‘It’s nothing to do with us being born women that we’re wearing nappies and in the charge of a drug-addict,’ said Olga. ‘Men get just the same. No family backing, that’s the trouble. Poor old Dulcie’s an example. Hardly went to school you know. Married in the cradle. Daft as a brush. Like a schoolgirl. Silly women haven’t a brain to lose.’

‘Yes. I wouldn’t have wanted to share a cradle with Pastry Willy! He never liked us, you know.’

‘No. I suppose we shouldn’t have told her about Susan and her old girl? Nasty of us. Poor Dulcie.’

‘Lesbians are always looking for their mothers.’

‘It must be hard for them.’

The two old trolls sat over their cards thinking occasionally of Tolstoy.

* * *

Dulcie, having left the aged twins, began to walk home through the lanes, past the infertile egg-box, the village shop. When Janice, her cleaning lady, drove by in her new Volvo Dulcie stared at her as at a stranger.

Susan loving someone who is a woman and not her mother! Such an insult to me. I suppose it’s been going on for ages and I am the last to know. It was that boarding-school at eight, in England, when we were in Shanghai or somewhere — I forget. I’ve done everything wrong. I wrote her hundreds of letters at school. I did try. She hardly answered them.

But she was so happy here in England. All her friends were here, everyone’s parents over-seas. All seemed so jolly. Everyone did it. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it. Lesbian! I wonder if they all were? I’m sure I didn’t know the meaning of the word. Well, anyway, we’d never have talked about it. Men get turned on by divine discontent, and challenged when a woman’s mind is always somewhere else, dreaming. I wonder if Betty — no. I heard once that there had been something between Old Filth and that Isobel, but of course I won’t believe that. Edward would have had an apocalyptic fit if he’d thought that Betty had ever embraced a woman. Whatever would my mother have thought? Well — I suppose there was Miss Cleaves—.

I’m not sure that the word is apocalyptic?

I wonder who’s got Filth’s house? And fortune! A woman — that pale pink woman? Isobel. The femme fatale. No not Isobel. No — there was only ever Betty for Filth. Nobody else. Not ever. Surely? Do you know, Willy (Willy, where are you?) I think I’ve been left behind.

Oh, is nobody ever virtuous any more — as our mothers were? Well, I think mine was. I didn’t see her very often — Pastry — please tell me. Whatever would you make of this?

I suppose Pastry, you never—? No. No. Had a—?

You would say, my faithful man (though I was never happy about that old Vera) you would say, ‘Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ Pastry? Listen to me.

The point is that, as a lonely widow in a big empty house and few friends left (I’ve forgotten a handkerchief) there is nobody to discuss anything with any more. That is the sharpness of loss. The feelings don’t go, even when the brain has begun to wither and stray. I know some very nice widowed people who manage so well. There’s poor Patsy, laying up dinner-places for all her dead relations. Seems perfectly happy. She’s got that funny middle-aged son who goes round clearing everything away again. Those with latter-day brains are the lucky ones.

I can hardly discuss anything with Olga and Faery. You would have told me to keep clear of them. They smell of decay. They can never forget that they went to the university and think I am beneath them. They’re senile, though. Serves them right for being so patronising at school. And they only got upper-seconds someone said, or was it actually lower-seconds? I bet they both remember that. And I will not leave them comfortless even if they are church-going atheists. I will always be their old friend. I suppose. For what I’m worth. Oh. Oh, dear. I must not crack up.

In the drive of Privilege House stood her rickety car and finding the key in the lock Dulcie climbed in and drove away. She reversed, ground the tyres into the cattle-grid, and swept down the hill and up the un-metalled driveway jointly shared by Old Filth’s ghost and Veneering’s ghost, dividing, one down, one up, and leading nowhere now, she thought. Even those awful rooks don’t seem to be there anymore.

She accelerated noisily towards Veneering’s yews and here, head-on towards her, came a huge crucifix with a pretty woman marching behind it and smiling. Anna.

* * *

Anna saw Dulcie’s cigarette-lined, little monkey face peeping behind the wheel and her expression of panic and she flung the crucifix aside (it was a home-made sign-post), pounced on Dulcie’s car and opened its doors.

‘I’m just fixing up a bigger B and B sign, Dulcie. Whatever’s the matter!’

‘Nothing. The car looked as if it needed a little run. We used to say “a spin”. So I’m spinning.’

‘You’re crying! Come on. I’m getting in with you. Can you drive on up? I’ll get you something to eat with us.’

‘Oh, but I must get back.’

‘Nonsense. Go on. Re-start the engine. Don’t look down Filth’s ridiculous precipice. Stupid place to build that lovely house, down in a hole. I’ll bet he had a bad chest.’

* * *

She bundled Dulcie into the chaos of her own — once Veneering’s — abode above, where children’s clothes, toys, a thousand books and a thousand attic relics were scattered about the hall and her husband, Henry, was painting the walls bright yellow.

‘Hi, Dulcie,’ said he. ‘Did you know van Gogh called yellow “God’s colour”? Everything here was the colour of mud. Bitter chocolate. Well, they were farmers before Veneering. Fifty years. Well, you must have known them? Wanted the colour of the good earth inside as well as out. Hate farmers. Holes in the floor, no heating except a few rusty radiators that gurgled all night, electric fires just one red glow, worn light-fittings that blow up. And that’s after the farmers left. That was Veneering’s taste too, and he’d come direct from a sky-scraper in Hong Kong. Wasn’t a SOP — Spoiled Old Colonial — anyway, whatever he was. What was he, Dulcie? They say he was an ugly little old man bent over. With dyed hair. Dulcie, kiss me!’

‘He was my greatest friend,’ lied Dulcie, stern and angry. ‘To the end’ (another lie!) ‘he was one of the finest-looking men in the Colony’ (true). ‘Amazing white-gold, floppy hair’ (Henry’s was looking like mattress-stuffing tied back with string). ‘It wasn’t dyed. He could have been a Norwegian or one of those eastern-European people. Odessans? Slavs? He was a glorious man once. He was said to have had a mysterious father. But not dour—you know. No, no, never. He was noisy and funny and sweet to women, and he could read your thoughts. Could read your thoughts! And a constant friend. And — do you know — we none of us had a notion of how he got to England. Or about his past.’

‘Herman says he could play the drums. And the Blues. Wonderfully. We’re finding revelations in the attics. What do you think—five rocking horses! Come and see. Take anything Dulcie.’

‘And take a glass of sherry with you?’ said Anna. ‘There’s dozens of photographs up there. A lovely boy at Eton and The Guards. Film-star looks. Very fetching. A somewhat over-the-top boy I’d say.’

Dulcie said, ‘That was the son, Harry. Killed in Northern Ireland. Doing something very mad and brave. It broke—.’ (But why tell them? All this is mine. And Betty’s.) ‘It broke his father’s heart.’

‘Yes, I thought there was something. This is a broken-hearted house,’ said the husband. ‘We’ll change it. No fears. I wish you would tell us what to do with all his jig-saws.’

‘Nobody could really get near Terry Veneering,’ said Dulcie. ‘Nobody but Betty — Elizabeth — Old Filth’s wife.’

‘Yes. We have heard about that,’ they said. ‘Just a little.’

* * *

After lunch Dulcie was put back in her car on the drive and, looking up at the house behind her, she saw that already it was losing Veneering. There was the same hideousness of shiny scarlet brick-work, the same chrome-yellow gravel and the view at the top of the drive over the miles of meadow was the same shimmering water-colour dream. But Veneering’s house was coming to life. Filth’s great stern, phallic chimney still broke the dream apart but from the inside of Veneering’s house — doors wide — now came the sound of hearty singing and the family man (Henry) with his pig-tail, exploded across the doorstep in overalls covered with paint and kicking the cat.

‘Get out!’

The cat vanished into a thicket.

‘Goodbye Dulcie. Come back soon. Come for B and B. We’re going to make our fortunes when I’ve finished painting this place. Cat in the paint tins. Paws no doubt permanently damaged. Colour “Forsythia” like the bush. Horrible colour. Like urine, I always think, but the staircase seems happy with it. We are all going to be, like it tells us in the prayer Book, “in perpetual light”. I’m never sure about wanting that, are you? Tiring. “Perpetual light”.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Dulcie. (They are very self-confident, these people, for new-comers to the village.) ‘And thank you very much.’ (But you can discuss things with them and they’re not senile.) ‘By the way, I may not see you for a while. I am thinking of going on a cruise.’ (What? Am I?)

Through the driving mirror as she went off towards the road to her own Privilege Hall she saw them standing side by side, non-plussed. She waved a hand at them out of the car window and laughed. With her back to them, they could not see the imprisoned girl in her.

Oh, this is not such a bad little place, she thought. Donhead St. Ague. It hasn’t always been boring like now. It’s the cooling of the blood.

The cat rushed out from somewhere and under the car and into the scrub behind the bed-and-breakfast crucifix, and then dashed across the lane. As Dulcie turned towards home she saw it watching her, haughty and yellow-pawed in the bushes.

* * *

But it’s true, she thought, nobody really knows a thing about another’s past. Why should we? Different worlds we all inhabit from the womb.

CHAPTER 17

Old Filth, Terry Veneering, Fred Fiscal-Smith. Two accounted for, life completed.

And in the shadows, like a little enigmatic scarecrow, Fiscal-Smith, born to be a background figure.

Fred Smith, has lived his life-time in the same lonely Yorkshire landscape — what happened to him? Each day, he saw to his mother, who was an invalid and almost always in bed, getting himself to and from school from a bus-stop down in Yarm. His father (its headmaster) left the house at six A.M. often to walk with his bike to the school along the shore. A splendid headmaster but a cold father.

But Fred? After his success at secondary school and evening classes, and the deaths of both parents, silence.

Fred Fiscal-Smith is a qualified lawyer living alone.

* * *

Scene I: Lone Hall, Yarm, North Yorkshire.

Set: A room, upper floor of large tumbledown, scarcely furnished house where, at a window overlooking the sea a young man FRED sits upright at a desk, back to audience, writing a letter. The wide window he faces shows huge extent of racing sky.

Hour: just before sunset.

Month: October.

Year: Say, 1955

*

Stretching below are the great Chemical Works of the North East, a thousand narrow chimneys each one crowned with an individual flame. They stretch from the estuary of the busy river Tees and include the remains of the old fishing village of Herringfleet.

Pan to a dreary jerry-built town built over bomb damage of twenty years before. Trees that once marched along the ridge of the Cleveland Hills are limp and dying and stand out black and tattered, reminders of an ancient domain. Only the sea survives un-changed. It frames the shore of the flat and sorrowful landscape. It swings out. Swings in. For the letter-writer it is silent, and distant.

Figure at desk (Fred Fiscal-Smith) is writing a letter with a fountain pen (ink, Swan. Blue-Black). As he writes light is slowly fading from the sky which by the end of the scene has left darkness outside and the windows a splash of black light. Lights have begun to show across the estuary. A little flat, waltzing blue flame tops each of the forest of chimneys.

The smell of the chemicals rolls across the land and more disgustingly as night falls. Letter-writer holds handkerchief to his face. (Handkerchief white cotton. Large and clean. Marks & Spencer.)

Letter Lone Hall

To Terence Veneering M.A. Oxon. Herringfleet

Yarm

North Yorkshire

My dear Terry,

This is a letter of congratulation on the news I see in today’s Times: that you have passed out top in the Bar Finals Examinations and are henceforth to be revered as the best-qualified lawyer in England and life member of the Inner Temple.

But perhaps you don’t remember me? We haven’t met since our early school days. Nor have I heard of you since 1941 September 15th as I recall, 2 days after the air-raid when my father and Canon Greisepert came to collect you from some-where in the Lake District and took you to your new school, Ampleforth College: the day after you had so cleverly, providentially, jumped ship, The City of Benares, as she set sail to drown, or rather cause a German U-Boat to torpedo and drown, over a hundred people, most of them children in Mid-Atlantic and including your headmaster and his wife, the Fondles.

I did not come with my father and Griesepert to find you, but stayed with mother who was ill. We lived inland from the bombing of the coast and here I still reside. I breed a few Highlanders.

I have never set foot in Ampleforth College although it is nearby. I went to Middlesbrough Grammar School and then to Middlesbrough Tech a few miles from home. I too have become a Barrister, but on the despised Northern Circuit. It serves me well.

My parents are dead. I still live (alone) in the old house that looks across to Herringfleet and the sea, and its only disadvantage is that it is far from the railway. I am less prosperous than you people in the South but I am still in touch with those at the Bar, and I go to stay with them as often as possible. I very much hope that you and I might meet again? Trains from York are frequent and I can get to York with the aid of a series of buses.

It has taken me a little time to realise that Terence Veneering MA (Oxon) is the Terry Venetski (or Varenski? How insular we were!) of my school days. You made a wise move, to my mind. There are some very dubiously-named members of the Bar at present, many of them dusky.

You would not recognise Herringfleet. Nothing is left of what we knew. No slum terraces, no cooking on the fire-backs. Muriel Street? Ada Street? Who were they? Muriel and Ada? No weekly animal-sacrifice for the Sunday joint takes place in the slippery back alleys. You may well remember, just before the War, some of us coming with bowls to buy the blood? A salt-black — a black salt smell?

There followed after the war the smell of the chemical works. It was very toxic, but we sat it out. It rolled down the coast and up here into the hills. I wish some artist might paint the chemical chimneys. There will be no record left soon. The poisons here are now quite muted, though still released at night.

Some sort of phantom of the smell rolls yet along the coast and up here into the hills at nightfall when they hope we are asleep. And all the trees along the Cleveland ridge — Captain Cook’s statue you will remember? — are dying.

If you do think of returning for a visit however, there is an excellent hotel in Yarm. It was once the Judges’ Lodging, where they all stayed on Circuit — maybe for Assizes — I don’t know. Sometimes, even now, you can come upon nostalgic members of the Judiciary drowsing there on vacation and hoping for some decent conversation. Rather terrible vermilion and ermine, portraits grace the staircase. It is a place where, if you visited, I should be delighted to come if you thought of inviting me to dinner?

But, first of course, it would be pleasant to come and stay with you in London in your hour of glory.

Sincerely yours, Fred Smith

PS: You will see from the Law Lists that I am now known as Fiscal-Smith. Fiscal is my own invention, as (perhaps) Veneering is yours?

* * *

Scene II Fade to a dark place under the rafters of a brothel and a dodgy dentist on Piccadilly Circus, London.

The room is unfurnished except for books and a canvas bed with a metal frame. Coloured lights swing past its dirty window all night long; a released rainbow after years of war-time blackout. Noise of traffic and shouting continuous. The noise of post-war, but still threadbare, London trying hard for joy.

Figure (Terry Veneering) is lying on bed fully clothed. It has long blond hair. It is very drunk. The room is carpetless. The wash basin is blocked.

A bashing on the door. The figure on the bed, Terence Veneering, top of the lists of the International Bar Examinations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, puts a cardboard box over his head and shouts that he is not in.

Girl’s voice: It’s not the rent. I’ve got a letter for you.

Terry

Veneering: Money in it?

Girl: How should I know? Come on, I’ll cook you a dinner.

Silence falls. At last footsteps retreat. Outside, the crowds are screaming in Piccadilly Circus, the ugliest piazza in Europe, for the return of the statue of Eros the god of love, removed for safety during the Blitz. The lights revolve upwards and in the rafters it is like a light-house. Round and round.

Slowly light fades away and noise of crowds, too. From this tall and narrow old house behind the hoardings you hear only the odd occasional street-fight, tarts shouting, students singing. Lights, lights, lights, after the years of darkness still seem a daring extravagance. The blond man on the canvas bed groans.

The letter from Fiscal-Smith has been pushed under the door. Terry Veneering has no shilling for the meter and it is cold. He staggers about. Finds a cigarette. Takes letter to window in case they’ve cut off the electrics. Reads the letter.

It is from a lonelier man than he is. This shows in the reader’s face, which softens slightly. (Voice-over of letter here perhaps?)

Then he moves, finds paper to reply. There is only a defunct and grubby Brief long-settled out of court.

* * *

Dear old Fred,

Well I never! Thanks old chum for the congrats. Often wondered what became of you. I went up to Oxford for five minutes before the War. After school — R.C. Ampleforth College, fees paid in full by the school itself, thanks to old Greasepaint (remember?). Then Oxford again. Followed by National Service, showing the flag around the Med. In white and gold and proud salutes. Nothing nearer heaven than then! The girls at all the ports, all waving us in! Malta — oh Malta! The priests shook holy water over us. And the processions and the flowers! Mind you, the mothers made the girls get home by nine o’ clock for Mass next morning. Every morning! Hard to leave behind, Fred. Hard to leave. I’ll go back one day. Place to die in. (I’m a bit drunk.)

I waved goodbye to the ship off Point and waited for passage home, when, bugger me, Royal Navy sends me off again to parade ourselves around the Far East to show that England is England Yet (pah!). Married there. Yes. Chinese girl — very rich. Boy born rather soon. Harry. I am not of The Orient and I guess a weird son-in-law.

My wife Elsie (yes!) is said to be the most beautiful woman in Hong Kong. She has a bracelet round her wrist of transparent jade. There since birth and will be all her life. It was the transparency of the seamless jade did it for me. God, I am drunk, Fred Smith!

By the way — look again. I was not top of the Bar Finals. I share the silly honour with one Edward Feathers. I expect you’ve heard of him? Or know of him? We were at Oxford together on return visit — cramming — after the War. We hardly spoke. He was the Olde Worlde star of the Oxford Union and I was never called upon to open my mouth there in debate because I am louche, Fred, louche. Feathers is one of those born to the Establishment. Cut in bronze, unfading. Big connections I’ve no doubt. He dominated his Year. Hates the Arts. Does not drink or wench. Bloody clever. We hate each other — God knows why — we pass each other now in the Inns of Court without a word. He of course has got Chambers already. I am still cap in hand — wig in hand — but I can’t afford a wig. Nor a cap, come to that.

I can think of nobody I would have preferred NOT to share an honour with than Eddie Feathers. Remember Harold Fondle? No — he’s not as bad as that: but he has the fatal APLOMB.

Feathers is Prometheus. He is thoroughly, wonderfully good. The idea of sharing an honour with him is almost as terrible as that of sharing a woman with him. I cannot however think that this could ever, possibly, happen.

Also — how I run on! — he was ahead of me at the Prep School I would have given almost anything to go to. Where your father taught once, Fred. Man in charge called ‘Sir’. Met him when your Dad came and rescued me when I ran away from being an evacuee (and a corpse) on The City of Benares. Feathers was Sir’s star student. Sir clearly in love with him. Well, well, ‘this little Orb’. In-it amazing?

Why am I so full of hate for this man Feathers? ‘He hath a certain beauty in his life/That makes mine ugly’. We’ll go to a Shakespeare together shall we Fred? When you do come down to London? If I can afford a ticket. There’s Olivier being something or other in St. Martin’s Lane. Sorry. I’m drunk. Did I say that before?

Oh yes — don’t expect to stay with me. I’m sleeping on the floor at present. There’s no respectable accommodation to be had in London unless you have Oxford ‘connections’. No doubt Les Plumes of this ghastly world have. By the way, how interesting that you are ‘breeding Highlanders’. Do they wear the kilt? Do you know Bobbie Grampian?

London’s a bomb-site Fred-boy. Stay among your stinking chimneys.

Love from

Terry

* * *

Curtain to some solemn music.

CHAPTER 18

One week later

Terry sat in the Law Library of the Inns of Court looking at the envelope addressed to Fred Smith he had found in his pocket. It had been there for some days. Letter to the dreaded Fred of yester-year, the meanest boy in the school. He wondered about putting a penny or a penny-halfpenny stamp on it. Penny would do. He had few enough. F. Fiscal-Smith, Lone Hall, Near Yarm, North Yorkshire. A really merry-sounding address.

Think of swatty little Fred turning up! Well, well. And a lawyer. Post it when I go out. On the way to the interview. Why ever did I write so much to him? Terrible bore when he was eight. Will be worse now. Lawyer. Of course a lawyer! Well, he can’t come and land down here with me. I’m on the pavement.

Tonight would be the first Terry Veneering had no bed to go to. The landlady, so called, in Piccadilly Circus had said as he left the house that morning, ‘Oh, yes. There’ll be another man here tonight. I told him I thought you wouldn’t mind sharing’.

‘Well, you were wrong,’ he’d said, slamming upstairs, picking up his case, crashing out of the front door after leaving four shillings on the hall-stand.

Where to go? Think about it in the Law Library. He’d already been the rounds of the few people he knew in London. Might try MacPherson. Lived in Kensington somewhere with his mother. Thoroughly nice man. No side to him.

‘Hullo? Oh, hullo! So glad you’re in, Robert. It’s Terence. Yes, Veneering. Yes. Oh, thanks. Well of course I’m only joint top with Feathers. No — I haven’t actually met up with him lately. Listen Bobby, you once said if I was ever stuck for a bed in London — could I possible stay tonight? I’ve an interview for a place in Chambers around five o’ clock in Lincoln’s Inn and nowhere to sleep. I’d be gone by breakfast.’

Silence. Then ‘Tomorrow night is that, Terence? Tomorrow night?’

‘Well, actually tonight. My landlady told me this morning that she thought I wouldn’t mind sharing — with a stranger. So I. . ’

‘Good God. That’s terrible. Of course you’re welcome. Delighted. I’ll just check with mother. We’re having a bit of a party here tonight. Scottish dancing. We’ve a piper coming. I don’t suppose you have the kilt in your luggage? No? Well, never mind. Can lend.’

‘Actually, I haven’t much luggage at all. Toothbrush sort of thing.’

‘We have some splendid people coming. Do you reel?’

‘Well, no.’

‘Never mind. I seem to remember that you play?’

‘No! Well, saxophone. Bit of Blues. Piano.’

‘Oh, well. Shame. Just come. Not too early or late. Mother has very early dinner and goes to bed at nine.’

‘Actually, could I come another time? I can’t be sure of times tonight — I mean this evening — you see. Depends on how long this interview’s going to last. I’m looking for a seat in Chambers — anywhere, of course will do.’

‘Where’s the interview?’

‘Oh, just general. Libel and slander. Nothing distinguished. Not sure where. It’s on a bit of paper. Tutor at Christ Church set it up.’

‘Be careful. Libel’s a vile life. Come some other time won’t you, Terence?’

‘Thanks.’

‘Oh — and do you sing? Madrigals! Next week. .?’

‘Not very well, Bobby.’

‘Oh, pity. I live at home here you know. Shan’t bother with Chambers just yet. Bit nostalgic for the old days after three years in the German nick. Picking up the old life. . ’

* * *

Where would he sleep tonight?

Veneering crossed the Strand, the letter to little Fred in his pocket. He dropped it into a letter-box on the corner of Chancery Lane and thought of it being opened in the despoiled — and by him never re-visited — Cleveland Hills. It was late afternoon now and the fog had come down. He thought of Malta gleaming at dawn. Thought of Elsie’s jade bracelet, her creamy skin, the startlingly beautiful little boy, Harry. Veneering was wearing his only suit, his demob suit which was already getting shiny. Hideous. Cold. He was hungry.

Why in the name of God did he want a job as a working court-room lawyer? In a set of Chambers nobody had ever heard about? Because there were ten applicants and more for every vacancy and often war heroes and/or rich. Had to try everything that was offered. Otherwise — No Room at the Inn. Ha-ha.

He found the Chambers and walked in.

* * *

The Clerk — a very famous Clerk he had been told: Augustus, the king-maker — looked him up and down and said, ‘Oh yes. I remember. All right, I’ll see if he can see you. He’s very busy,’ and vanished, pretending to yawn.

Then, ‘Follow me.’

‘Mr. Veneering, sir, of Christ Church College, Oxford and new member of the Inner Temple, starred First, top of Bar Finals, introduced by old tutor, an old friend of these Chambers.’

The tall, dapper Head of Chambers, very scarlet about the face, shiny-lipped, found his way from among the crowd of young men, all drinking wine and shouting with laughter. ‘Mr. Who? Oh, yes, yes, yes. Mr. Veneering. Your tutor — he was mine, too, you know — I’m younger than I seem. How unbelievably young you all look now despite the recent conflict. I hear that you have travelled about the Globe? Showing the Flag? What a joy. All our troubles ended by the dropping of the splendid atomic bomb. Your — our — tutor never thought much of me you know, yet here I am at last proving myself useful to him. Soaking up the latent talent of our great College. He says you’re Russian? I don’t think — I’d better say at once — that these are quite the Chambers for a Russian. Have you tried one of the more un-noticeable professions? Perhaps the Civil Service?’

Veneering said that he was a lawyer.

‘Well exactly. Exactly. But we are exclusively Libel Chambers here. We are, I’ll admit, on the verge of being fashionable — even Royalty hovers — but all is very slow and fragile. So very few decadent duchesses. Huge sums to be made of course eventually, but, dear boy, not yet. Tell me, why did you become a lawyer?’

‘Someone said I’d make a good one. He left me all his money. He wasn’t born rich. He qualified down here in London living on ten shillings a week. He set up offices in various parts of the country for worthy chaps like me. He was a sort of saint.’

‘Oh, I’m afraid he would never have been in the swim.’

‘No, he wasn’t. As a matter of fact I’m living on about ten shillings a week myself.’

‘He was a member of the Bar, this benefactor?’

‘No. Just a solicitor. In the north-east. He was killed in an air-raid. His name was Parable. . ’

‘I can’t believe it! It is pure John Bunyan! He can’t, if you don’t mind my saying so, have left you very much money if you have to live on ten shillings a week?’

‘It turns out that my inheritance has gone missing. His house and office both took direct hits in the north in 1941. I only received twenty-five pounds in notes which had been in a friend’s keeping and a letter saying all his other assets were to be mine when I’d taken Bar Finals. I have my Royal Navy pension of two hundred a year.’

‘Oh, my dear chap — yes, thank you Hamish, just up to the top — and, he impressed you?’

‘Of course. He made sure I left home and didn’t get killed myself in the same air-raid. I was en route to Canada as an evacuee. . ’

‘Oh, my God! What dramatic lives we have all led. Thank your stars you weren’t torpedoed aboard The City of Somewhere. All the little babies floating upside down in the water like dead fish. Depth-charged. Wonderful accounts of the few survivors plucked from the debris. Upturned boats, basket chairs — even a rocking-horse! Not very sporting. Now — just a minute, Toby,’—and the red-lipped man walked Terry out of the room, a manicured hand around his shoulder. ‘Dear boy, I would dearly like to have you. Have you tried other Chambers? You have? Ah well, you know, the chance will come. Give it time. There’s no work anywhere at present. Nobody sane is going to Law. The price of victory is lethargy and poverty. We must bide our time and use our private money. I’m sure you’ll find Mr. Parable’s treasure somewhere. But as you can see. . As you can hear. . ’

The noise and the odours of bibulous men, the cigarette smoke, the good white burgundy followed Veneering out and back in to the stately planting of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

‘I have simply no room for another pupil,’ said the Head of Chambers, shaking hands. ‘Dear Fellow, how I’ve packed them in already! I’ve got them swinging from the Chandeliers!’

* * *

‘So!’ said Veneering. ‘Ha!’ and he walked across the grass and up to the stagnant static-water tanks set in place years ago to deal with the coming fire-bombs on the Inn. ‘It has come to this. A decadent country, threadbare, idle, frivolous, cynical, hidden money.’

He longed all at once for Herringfleet. For his shadowy brave father, for Peter Parable. High-mindedness. The coal-cart. He kicked his feet in the tired grass.

‘So much for the Law. The Law is still a ass, as the great man had said over a hundred years ago. Dickens. Lived near here. Must have had a splendid view of the Law in action when you think about it. Five or ten minutes’ walk from his house in Doughty Street. I’ll go and see it. I’ll go now. I’ll pay homage. I’ll prostrate myself on his study floor and I’ll say, “Dickens, you did what you could (And why didn’t you get a knighthood? Queen Victoria liked you. Was it the infidelity?) and you did a lot. And you changed it all without a Law degree. You did it on your own with a pen and a bottle of ink.”

‘I am not going near the Law now. I’m going to be a journalist. A left-wing journalist. The New Statesman offices are up at the end here, up the alley. I’ll walk in now. I’ll demand a job.

‘And I’ll be given one. I feel it in the wind.’

* * *

Back in the Libel Chambers the clerk, Augustus, was pushing his way through the throng of the party. Finding his Head of Chambers he said, ‘Sir? Where is he?’

‘Who? Augustus, have a drink.’

‘Him. The foreign fellow. Looking for pupillage?’

‘Oh, him. Goldilocks. No good, Augustus. Useless. Too odd. Too foreign.’

‘You never sent ’im away, Sir?’

‘Oh, he wasn’t desperate.’

‘But we are desperate, you fool, Sir. That one’s a winner.’

‘Now then, Gussee, how d’you know?’

‘I’m a Clerk. I know what I can sell. He’s young and fit and he misses nothing. Brilliant. Better qualified than anyone in this room. You’ve lost us all a fortune you bloody fool, Sir.’

‘Oh, don’t say that! Get him back then, Gus. We’ll take him on. I’ll write to his tutor.’

‘He won’t come back. Not that one. It’s love me or leave me with that one. You’ll hear of him again all-right, but he’ll always be on the other side. That one’s a life-time type. Not that he’ll want much truck with libel and slander now. It’ll be the Commercial Bar for him, he’s poor. You’ve lost him his beliefs, about helpless widows and orphans. That one’s for Lord Chancellor. He’ll be on the Woolsack if he wants to be. I feel like going with him. You dolt, Sir.’

‘Oh dear! Augustus — Augustus, have a pint with me later in the Wig and Pen Club.’

* * *

Veneering walked away from the static-water tanks on Lincoln’s Inn Fields and towards the offices of The New Statesman and Nation where he would, of course, be taken on immediately. Then a short walk to Dickens’ house in Doughty Street, a hand-shake with his ghost, then cadge a lift somehow back to Oxford to recover his books, lecture-notes and dissertation, then burn the lot.

After which. .! Back East, and into the iron grip of Elsie’s family business.

Oh!

Towards the north end of Lincoln’s Inn the crowds, en route to their buses and trains home to north London, were tramping beside and behind him. Crowds tramping south towards the river and Waterloo Bridge and station were advancing towards him in similar numbers. Nobody spoke or smiled or paused.

But Terry Veneering stopped dead.

He stopped dead.

The crowds washed round him, one or two people looking up at his pale face and glaring eyes and platinum hair. (About to faint? Hungry? Gormless? Mad?) Some grumbled, ‘What the hell’ and stumbled and some said, ‘Bloody hell! You had me nearly over.’

Terry turned round and began to walk slowly back with the south-bound throng, retracing the last twenty or so yards. Then, he stopped again, turned again and looked, fearfully, at the building to his right. There was a little patch of old garden, its railings taken away years before to make Spitfires, a scuffed stone archway with a scuffed stone staircase twisting upwards. Up the first two steps of the staircase, on the wall of the old building was a faded wooden panel with its traditional list of the Lawyers’ names who worked within. The list was far from new, but painted in immemorial legal copperplate. He read the words ‘Parable, Apse & Apse, Solicitors.’

* * *

The door was not locked. He walked straight in expecting a derelict abandoned store-room, fire-buckets, stirrup pumps, tin hats abandoned since the Blitz. Just inside he saw instead a row of iron coat-hooks where someone had hung a bowler hat and folded a pair of clean kid gloves on top of it.

Terry opened an inner door without knocking and facing him sat a young man at a desk, a sandwich suspended in time en route to his mouth. Beside him on a smaller and more splintery desk stood a gigantic Remington type-writer on which was arranged a pocket mirror, a paper napkin, paper plate and similar sandwich. A middle-aged woman wearing a seal-skin coat sat behind it.

Four jaws ceased to move. Four eyes stared. Terry said, ‘I believe that you are a firm of solicitors?’

‘Ah,’ said the young man, putting the sandwich down on a clean handkerchief on his desk. ‘Not exactly! Not for a few years. We are in a state of flux. But may we help you?’

‘You must know — have known Mr. Parable? Mr. Parable-Apse?’

‘No, sir. I’m afraid all the old partners in the firm are dead. We keep the names on the door in the old tradition. It is rather like the memorial friezes on the walls of the tombs of the Pharaohs. I am a very, very distant Apse. Thomas.’

‘And so this is — a set of Chambers?’

‘Well no. For years it seems to have been a solicitor’s office. One of a string of almost charitable centres for the poor — an early Legal Aid — set up by the founding Apse, a northerner. A lonely philanthropist who made a considerable amount of money.’

‘And he. .?’

‘Was killed in the war. We are in the process of being dispossessed by the Inn. Desperate for space. Work here is rather slow and no-one is really in charge. All the first Mr. Apse’s fortune was left to someone quite outside the family with a strange name, and he is dead.’

Very carefully Terry sat down on an upright chair with one leg missing and propped up by books. He said, ‘I should like to negotiate for these Chambers.’

‘I’m afraid it is quite impossible,’ said the woman in the seal-skin coat. She delicately tore the sandwich apart with her pink finger nails.

‘My name is Veneering.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘I was born Varenski.’

‘That has a ring,’ she said.

‘It seems that I am the one who inherited Mr. Parable-Apse’s estate. Though he promised me only twenty-five pounds.’

After he had finished his sandwich the young man repeated, ‘I am Tom Apse, a very distant relation just keeping the premises open. And this is my secretary, Mrs. Flagg.’

She nodded and picked up her knitting. She said, ‘I’m afraid that buying these premises will be impossible, Mr. Varenski. We will of course inform the Inn of your offer, as we do everyone else who comes in. Our only safeguard up to now has been that Mr. Apse is an Apse, like on the door. To keep them off. . ’

‘And,’ said Tom Apse, ‘Upkeep for any tenant will be astronomical. And I have my Egyptology to consider, and Mrs. Flagg, well, she has Mr. Flagg. There is money though. I’m sorry sir, in spite of your interesting name — I’m sure we’ve heard it before somewhere — I’m afraid you won’t be able to make a case for yourself. Old Mr. Parable’s Slavonic heir was drowned at sea in 1941 on the evacuee liner The City of Benares.’

Terry stood up.

‘I am that evacuee,’ he said. ‘Except that I wasn’t. I had a premonition and good friends.’ (The world is singing! The light of heaven fills the sky! Dear God! Dear Sir. Dear Father Griesepert.) ‘I changed my name.’

Tom Apse and Mrs. Flagg also rose to their feet and the three shook hands.

‘At present I am without money,’ said Terry.

‘Then how do you think you can buy this?’

‘Borrow,’ said Terry. ‘There must be Security somewhere. And a proper search. There doesn’t seem, if I may say so, to be much paper-work about the office.’

‘We get few clients,’ said Tom Apse. ‘We pass them on. The Apse archive is very daunting.’

‘You must consider us Caretakers,’ said Mrs. Flagg, ‘as the desultory fight drags on. The cupboards and the cellar are full of paper, though some of it is still dampish after the Blitz.’

She arranged her coat around her shoulders and on high heels rocked towards the wall where she opened a cupboard and watched several shelves of documents, tied up with tape that had once been red, vomit all over the floor.

‘Work to be done! We’ll start tomorrow,’ said Veneering. Now, the three of us are going to The Wig and Pen Club. Right NOW!’

‘Sir,’ said Tom Apse. ‘I’m sorry — but identification? We only have your word. How do we know who you are?’

‘You don’t,’ said Veneering. ‘Put your coat on fully Mrs. — I can’t call you “Mrs. Flagg”. What’s your — Daisy. Oh, pretty. Come on Tom.’

‘But money, sir?’

‘Mr. Parable lived on ten shillings a week. I haven’t broken into next week’s yet and I’ll be sleeping here free tonight if we can find a hammock.’

* * *

In The Wig and Pen Club in the Strand sat the red-lipped Libel Silk with friends. He rose at once and came across.

‘So delighted to see you again, Mr. — er — I have been sending out search-parties. I find that I have a place for you in my Chambers after all. My Clerk, The Great Augustus, is very cross with me for not making myself clear.’

‘Too late!’ Terry shouted, signalling a barman. ‘I’m fixed up. I’m off to discuss matters with the Treasurer of the Inn tomorrow morning. I seem to have inherited a sleeping set of Chambers of my own.’

‘You are fixed up? Already? You’ll find it a very lengthy business on your own. Take years. Ask anyone about the Parable-Apse fiasco for instance. A disgrace. Dragging on. Dickensian.’

‘Well, I have an inheritance looming. Fallen, by the grace of God, into my lucky lap. Meet my secretary Mrs. Flagg — and my — junior clerk — Mr. Tom Apse. I have a good senior clerk already in mind.’

‘I’m afraid Mr. — er—, you have simply no idea! It will take a life-time.’

‘Yes. But I’m young. I have wide connections, you know, especially in the Far East. And thanks for the interview. And thank Augustus. Tell him I shan’t forget him.’

‘I don’t forget anything,’ he added.

‘And now Mrs. Flagg and I are off to find a bed.’

Dizzily on the pavement Daisy Flagg burst into joyous tears. ‘Oh, come on,’ said Terry, spinning her around, ‘Beautiful coat. Is it real?’

‘It’s only coypu,’ she wailed, happily. ‘It’s only a superior kind of rat.’

‘When I come into my Kingdom,’ said Terence Veneering of Parable Chambers, Inns of Court, ‘You shall have sables.’

CHAPTER 19

And so Terry Veneering was established in his own Chambers as if by angelic intervention. And so began the long, slow, interminable legal process of disinterring his Parable inheritance.

He was never one to reflect on the meaning of life. Or the shape of his own life. He knew that from childhood he presented the figure of one certain to succeed, charm, delight and conquer. Not for him the grave, moral pace of the gentlemanly Edward Feathers.

But had he ever considered doing anything as dull as writing an autobiography he would certainly not have chosen as a pivotal point. He would have chosen the day some six months later when he had had to scrape the bottom of the judicial barrel down at the Brighton County Court alongside the beginner, little Fred Fiscal-Smith, and against — needless to say — Edward Feathers: the case of the over-sexed lion-tamer’s apprentice. For this was the day he realised that he had no stomach for Crime, even if it had not been so badly paid.

Stepping out of Victoria station at the end of that dreadful day his heart sunk even further, for in London there was fog. London fogs were getting worse again. During the War coal had been rationed. Now coal was back and so were the fogs that swirled about the East and West End. They nuzzled and licked and enwrapped everyone in yellowish limp fleece. They stained your clothes, your hair, got up your nose and down your ears. Your chest wheezed. When you sneezed, your handkerchief was dark ochre. You muffled your mouth. You coughed and coughed.

It was only when they stepped out of the Brighton Belle on Platform One that the three lawyers realised that, during their day in breezy, wholesome Brighton, the fog in London that had hung about for days had reached Dickensian proportions. It had turned into ‘The Great Fog’. It might last for days. It was also getting dark and there was no transport of any kind to get them home.

Old Filth was all right, he lived just round the corner in his spartan, curtainless apartment where there were two small electric radiators, and Fiscal-Smith suggested that he might stay the night there as well. In case — though he knew he was probably safe — Feathers asked him to stay too, Veneering announced that he would go to The Goring Hotel near Buckingham Palace and not more than two minutes from the station and he set off holding his arms out in front of him, his brief-case between them. He immediately vanished thinking vaguely that somewhere there would be a taxi. Any hotel was way above his means, let alone The Goring. So, as a matter of fact, was a taxi. The brief fee for the lion-tamer’s boy had been seven guineas — the shillings to go to Tom Apse as Clerk — and anyway it hadn’t yet been paid.

London had fallen into the silence of death and all its lights were gone. Abandoned cars stood in the middle of the road. Occasionally a shadow trudged past him emerging from and disappearing into the mist like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. London had lost its voice.

Taking twenty minutes to cross into what he hoped was Grosvenor Street he collided with an elephantine shape standing lightless and empty. It seemed to be a bus. He turned from it, thinking that this was going to be slow, and stepped in front of a car whose lights were smudges. He thought that the nearest Underground station would be the only hope and cannoned into a lone newspaper boy shouting a cracked refrain—Star, News, Standard—to nobody.

‘Goin far, Guv?’

‘Inns of Court.’

‘You’ll not be there by morning.’

‘How are you getting home then?’

‘I’ll doss down the back of the statue.’

‘What, Marshall Foch?’

‘Don’t mind which Marshall. Any Marshall. Marshall and Snelgrove. Cheers, Guv.’

It was three hours later that Veneering reached Fetter Lane. There were a few flares burning here and there and along the Strand in front of the empty shops and restaurants. He went almost hand over hand towards Lincoln’s Inn — what he hoped was Lincoln’s Inn — decided that it couldn’t be, clutched at some masonry beside him and toppled upon the steps of Parable-Apse.

He fell inside. He found a light. He slammed his front door upon the murk. There came a flash of memory of a blue sea — his sunburst of life in the post-war Navy. His — hum, yes, well — his wife and lanky little boy.

In the office the fire was not lit but a sack of coals stood beside the shabby old grate. There was nobody now to tumble the coals down to the cellar via the coal hole in the road and nobody to drag it up to the grate from the cellar if they did. Coal, he thought.

He kept his in the sack, covering it with a blanket on the few occasions when anyone called. But too late — too tired — to light a fire tonight. He found a bottle of whisky in the cupboard and some cream crackers and swigged down the whisky. The greatest joy he had ever known!

He thought of the threat that the government were to ban coal fires in London and he thought of his mother. He informed her and asked what she thought, but received no answer. The fog had entered the house with him. It was wreathed above his head. It smeared the window. How it stank.

‘Mam — I’m packing this in. The Law. I’ve an interview with a paper. Foreign correspondent.’

‘Your collar’s filthy,’ she said.

‘It’s the fog.’

‘Steep it and wash it. You’ve got an iron?’

‘You lived by coal.’

‘I’d no option. You have.’

‘I need sleep.’

‘There’s time to sleep and there’s time to waken.’

Veneering crawled across the floor towards the bedroom stair. ‘I’m drunk, Mam. I want to go to bed.’

‘You’ll do it. Remember your father.’

‘He had you.’

‘Well, you have me, too.’

He was in his bed. He drew a cover over him. He slept. The horrible city sprawled outside in thick unanswering silence. Veneering was ready to leave it for ever. And so, to the horrible, still-yellowish morning.

* * *

The knocking upon the front door had the desperate, dogged quality of a long assault. On it went, on and on.

At last, ‘Message,’ said a youth Veneering had not seen before as he peered blearily round the door.

‘What?’

‘Message for Mr. Veneering. Urgent. Reply essential. Shall I step in?’

‘No,’ said Veneering, taking the note and shutting the door on the boy, feeling about in the dark vestibule, finding the door to his office, groaning and grunting. He read:

‘Mr. Veneering. Appointment this morning, April 30th, ten o’ clock at No. 21, St. Yyes Court, Gray’s Inn. Respectable dress essential. Clear head. Mr. William Willy will see you for interview for possible place in new Chambers at present being established. Anticipating overseas connections. Reply to boy. Signed Augustus.’

‘Nobody could be called Mr. William Willy,’ said Terry Veneering. ‘On the other hand the Great Augustus — I’ll put my head on the block to it — has never made a joke.’

‘Oh, well then. Shame. After yesterday’s fiasco in the world of the eternal circus, he’s too bloody late, Augustus. I go a hundred miles to defend a poor little gormless insect who tickles ladies’ private parts as they’re sitting enjoying the lions and tigers and he gets three months! Three months for a bit of harmless fun. Clearly I’m not cut out for Crime. First and only time most of them ever got tickled. Most of them never even noticed. Great Grandee Edward Feathers has palpitations of shock-horror. He’s never tickled anybody’s legs. Never will. Gross indecency — etc. Is this what we got our First Class honours for? “Pom, pom, pom” honks Feathers, County Court moron judge nodding in support, all his chins wagging like blancmange. Little lad gets three months in gaol. Fuck the English Bar, I’m off to The New Statesman. Journalism for Veneering. Get the words about the world, not into the fly-spotted Law Reports. Sorry, Augustus, Willy is too late. I’m dressed for a different play. I am about to approach the political rostrum. You — laddikins — take a note back saying I’m busy.’

‘I can’t do that, sir.’

‘And for-why?’

‘Because Augustus has you in mind. You can’t not reply to Augustus, Mr. Veneering.’

‘It is, I know, very early in the morning but could you just try to realise, BOY, that even you are not the slave of this Olympian monster? Whoever he is — you are not in his THRALL. There are many barristers in thrall to their clerks. There are Judges in thrall to their clerks. Some clerks on the other hand have been murdered by — I am my own man, Boy, I make my own choices. Thank Augustus and say I have a previous engagement.’

He shut the outer door and listened to the boy marking time on the stones on the other side of it. After a while the boy rang the bell for a second time

‘YES?’ Veneering immediately flung it open. ‘YES?’

‘I think you better come, sir. Nothing to lose. Much to gain. And Augustus — well, you don’t want ’im for your enemy, now, do you?’

‘Oh, well then. O.K.’ said Veneering, ‘O.K. Say I’ll come. Soon. Better shave. I’ve a very important interview this morning already, at The New Statesman and Nation. Tell Augustus. And tell him that to be summoned before someone called Mr. Willy sounds an unusual command.’

‘Yes, sir. Shall I wait and take you round?’

‘Whatever,’ said Veneering, slamming the door, stamping up his stone spiral stair and surveying himself in his fur-lined waistcoat, pink open-neck shirt, tight black trousers, brown boots, long platinum new-look hair. He stared at the mirror for some minutes.

The boy had disappeared when he eventually emerged into Lincoln’s Inn and its water tanks. Ah well. Got the message. New Statesman first priority. The literary Editor there a woman. Sounded daunting. Not young. Apparently somebody. Chat her up. Who’s afraid? Not I who knew Mrs. Veronica Fondle — and I drowned her. This one had said on the phone that she promised nothing except a sandwich together in Lincoln’s Inn Fields sitting on the grass to talk about his future. ‘You sound so very young, Mr. Veneering. Did you not think of staying at Oxford — life as an academic?’ (She ain’t seen me yet!)

No, Mrs. Beetle-Bags, I did not. I don’t want to interpret the world, I want to put it straight. To spread the globe out flat like pastry on a slab like Ma made. Pick it up, slap it down, turn it over like a Tarte Tatin in Le Trou Normand in Hong Kong. Oh hell, that was wonderful! I don’t want a careful bloody life. Why am I turning to the right? This place in St. Yves Court — St. Yves, the Breton lawyer. And saint. (Might write a book on him?) Augustus’s chambers—

Where there is nothing but a gaping door and windows and a heap of rubble on the pavement with a rope round it and a red lamp you light with a match. And it’s eight years on. 1953—Christ! However did we win the War? No-one will ever know. I’ll tell my grandchildren.

Or will I? Will I reminisce? Will they give a fuck for historic Britain? Little ragged-edged, off-shore island and not my country anyway. Go to Russia soon, let’s hope. Everywhere fighting their neighbours to the death. Death doesn’t bring life — ever.

He saw his house-master at his Roman Catholic school saying, ‘Sharpen up, Veneering. The Resurrection?’ Oh, fuck.

He took his eyes off the heap of rubble and looked up steps to a tall row of early-Victorian houses where doors and window frames gaped empty. In front of each house was a heap of rubble similar to that at his feet: beams and floorboards and shelving and corner-cupboards and lead fire-backs. Nearby there was a little marble chimney-piece. It had a small deep-carved circle at the top of each pillar. Around 1740, he thought. He lusted after it. A man was loading all the rubble into a lorry.

‘Can I have that?’

‘What — that broke fireplace?’

‘Yes, how much?’

‘Take it for free. How you goin’ to get it home?’

‘I will. Leave it aside.’

He stood looking at the silken marble skin under the grime. Smooth as jade. He saw the translucence and perfection of the surface under the dirt of the war. He thought there must always have been people who stared at such things. He imagined his wife’s terrifying family at her birth, fastening the tiny jade rings around her baby wrists. Her shackles. He thought of his mother, pushing tripe about in the black frying pan on the coal fire. Her worn hands. He thought of all that his mother had had no knowledge of. Her tiny world where she, among all her family and friends, had alone pondered and sought helplessly for explanations.

Augustus was standing on the top steps of one of the un-restored houses. At the bottom of the steps near him, a girl’s bike was propped on one pedal, its basket on the handlebars full of flowers. A girl pushed past Augustus and came running down the steps towards the bike. She passed Veneering by like a whip-lash, but he had the impression of happiness, good temper, laughter, excitement. She leapt on the bike, balanced, kicked the pedal and hurtled away out of sight. She was bare-legged, sandaled, in a crazy new-look skirt that did not suit her (legs a bit short — though good). She had not seen him.

Augustus called from above, ‘Please come in, Mr. Veneering. I hope you are in time.’ A dreadful look was cast upon the fur-lined sleeveless jacket.

‘Mr. Willy can see you now. I hope.’

But there seemed to be nobody there.

The room was large but far from ready. The windows were newly glazed but still with builders’ finger-marks. There was no carpet. Bookshelves were not yet filled. There was a big plain desk with little on it except an enormous concoction of cellophane-wrapping with a bunch of spring flowers in the midst, and a book.

A voice said, ‘My god-daughter left them. The girl you were watching getting on to her bicycle.’

The man was small with a pasty face and sitting rather out of the light in an alcove beside a roundabout book-case. He had a sweet smile.

‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.’ Veneering found that he was tugging down the waist-coat. Pushing back his hair.

‘Veneering?’

‘Yes, er — you sent for me.’

Mr. William Willy said, ‘I have been asked to establish a new set of Chambers for specialising in engineering and construction Law. There is to be a great deal of building work—‘sky-scrapers,’ bridges, roads — which we hope will continue to be in the hands of British lawyers. English engineers are still very much the best, except for the Italians, and in Hong Kong and Singapore for instance, there are some huge contracts brewing for what we call “The Far East” and the Americans call “The Orient”, which shows a certain romanticism in them I suppose. I am Shanghai-born, Mr. Veneering. I am not a romantic. I understand you speak Mandarin? And you are a travelling man?’

‘Well, only post-war Navy. Round the China Sea. Showing the flag. Yes, I do speak Mandarin. I find languages easy.’

‘So you will travel?’

‘Yes. I have few allegiances.’

‘But you have a wife and small son in Hong Kong, Mr. Veneering.’

After a thoughtful space Veneering said, ‘This isn’t generally known. But yes.’

‘Would you stoop to practice in the Construction Industry? They often call it “Sewers and Drains”. High fees, international experience but you would be doomed to personal obscurity. No honours.’

‘I haven’t really thought. . ’

‘About whether or not you care about obscurity?’

The pale-faced man walked to the window behind his desk and turned his back on Veneering and looked across London.

‘You haven’t really started thinking yet. You and Feathers.’

‘If you are inviting Feathers,’ said Veneering, ‘then I’m not interested.’

‘And nor, I’d guess, is he. He has connections of his own. You of course could become an academic. Or you would make a very good journalist. Maybe at The New Statesman? I expect you are left wing? But you — I have made enquiries — like big money. And power. The power in the East of your father-in-law’s family?’

‘This is like the night I arrived at Ampleforth and the monks grilled me,’ said Veneering.

‘Ah, yes. That was the night The City of Benares went down. You were very lucky to escape. Have you second-sight, Mr. Veneering? That is always useful. You might be very useful all round.’

‘I don’t talk about it. No — I jumped ship because — I wanted to go home. But I thought nobody had been told about that business.’

Augustus came in and took the god-daughter’s flowers away to put them in water, leaving the book.

‘Your name is not really Veneering, is it?’

‘However do you know that. .?’

‘Because I know my Dickens. You can’t use a good name twice. It is a joke. Veneering was a nasty man. . ’

‘I haven’t actually read. . ’

‘But you are not a nasty man. I knew your father. His name was Venitsky. Was it not?’

Silence.

‘Your father, whatever his name, was I think from Odessa? A blond Odessan — very unusual. He had been a hero. He was left totally alone for years, at great risk, abandoned, crippled, fearless to the end. They got him of course. Not that I am suggesting that the whole purpose of the German air-raids in the north-east was to eliminate one defunct — shall we say specialist er — thinker? Political activist? Your father was a great man.’

Veneering said, ‘Are you telling me my father was a spy?’

‘I’m telling you, my dear fellow, to work for me in. . the Construction Industry.’

* * *

‘And have this.’ He handed the book that the god-daughter had brought across the desk. ‘I have any number of copies. Life’s Little Ironies. Thomas Hardy was a builder and architect by trade you know. In the construction industry.’

Out on the street — a very thin Brief in his jacket — Veneering flagged down a taxi and persuaded the driver to heave in the fireplace. Then he opened the book and read on the fly-leaf, ‘To my darling god-father Uncle Willy from Elizabeth Macintosh’.

CHAPTER 20

During that last year in The Donheads, Feathers and Veneering, as we have said, drew slowly together step by hesitant step as they had walked the lanes around their village. First they had pointedly ignored each other from a distance. Later they had nodded and looked away. Then came the famous Christmas meeting when Feathers had shut himself out of his house as, cut off from the rest of the world by a snowfall and the Dorset earth beneath his feet beginning to freeze, feeling death clutch at his wheezy throat, seep into his ancient bones, at last, hand over hand, up Veneering’s drive he went, from one branch of Veneering’s dreary over-hanging yew trees to the next, until he had dragged himself, ancient, decrepit orphan of many storms, to Veneering’s peeling front door.

Nobody locally — nor anywhere else — ever discovered what went on during the rest of that Christmas day, but afterwards the two old men met regularly in Feathers’ (much warmer) sitting room in his house down their joint driveway, for chess. Chess and a drink. Or two. But never more (though we don’t know what Veneering did back home up the slope, later in his lonely night).

Feathers never offered food. Nor did Terry Veneering ever suggest a return visit up the slope.

Their chess improved, their concentration deepened. The photograph of old Feathers’ dead wife Elizabeth (Betty), with whom Veneering had been in love since he first set eyes on her on a bike outside Pastry Willy’s office — and beyond her death, for he was still in love with her — surveyed the two old men from the mantel-piece.

It was a flattering photograph taken on a picnic on Malta where she and Feathers were completing their honeymoon half a century ago.

That day for the young couple (he had bought her a fat crimson and gold chair in a back street in Dacca during the honeymoon) had been a day of blue and gold on the cliff tips, the sea, far, far below — St. Paul’s Bay, where he slew the serpent — running bright green.

There has always been on Malta the belief that there is a crack in the cliff top where a fresh-water stream runs silver. It trickles down the slope, falls, sprays out into the dark below. Far, far below a spout of spittle shining like light above the ocean. Betty, the bride had said, ‘There! You see! There is a fresh-water spring dropping down to the shore.’

And the girl had stretched herself out and looked down through the crack, her legs out behind her. Her legs were not her best feature. They were Penelope’s legs, not Calypso’s — but they were brown and sleek and strong and her pretty Calypso feet kicked up and down and she lay, watching the clear water turn to mist. She shifted slightly and the water shifted slightly like a net. It revealed a very small glimpse of the creeping emerald tide below.

Sixty years on, comfortable in his winter sitting room, fire blazing, whisky coming along any minute and — (ha-ha!) — he’d taken Veneering’s queen — a sweet peace fell upon Edward Feathers and for the first time since he’d acknowledged his wife’s infidelity with this jumped-up good-looking cad he knew that his jealousy was over and that he could now look back over his life — and at his beloved wife with pleasure and pride.

Well, perhaps not. Perhaps love shall always be divorced from time.

What a delicious, young and merry face looked at him from the mantel-piece. The trophy of his successful life.

And only a photograph.

She was not necessary to him anymore.

She had never been a siren. There had been one or two of those, and he smiled kindly at his young self — oh almost possessed by that other one. Isobel. She must be gone by now. She never told her love. They say she only loved women. Rubbish. Did I re-write my will? I expect she’s gone by now. All shadows.

But potent shadows. We strengthened ourselves, Betty and I. Isobel weakened me.

Sometimes I mix them all up.

On the whole, he said, addressing an audience of some great court, I managed well. Better than Veneering and his idiot adolescent marriage. How lonely that shrill Elsie must have been. She left him of course and the boy didn’t love her. If we are honest, it was Madame Butterfly who left Pinkerton (I say, that’s rather an original thought) and Veneering knew his weakness. He knew from the beginning he was not the man he might have been.

‘Veneering,’ he said. ‘Check-mate, I think? Yes? Whisky now — you ready?’

Silence. Then Veneering saying, ‘Yes. Good idea’ and continuing to stare at the board.

‘Tell me,’ said Filth, ‘that’s to say if you have no objection — how did you get yourself entangled with Elsie?’

There was such a long silence that Filth looked down into his glass, then up at the ceiling, then winked at Betty’s photograph and wondered if he had gone too far.

Or maybe Veneering — God he was ugly now, too — was becoming deaf. He had rather wondered. Didn’t appear to be listening. He looked keenly now at Veneering’s ears to see if there were any of those disgusting pink lumps stuck in them like half-masticated chewing gum. Thank God no need of that himself.

No sign. What’s the matter with the man? Sulking? Thinks I’m prying. Not answering.

‘Sorry, Veneering. Shouldn’t have asked. Never even asked you about that ship-wreck incident you were in. City of Benares? They tell me you were in a life boat for twelve days and only a child. Amazingly brave.’

Still silence. A coal dropped in the grate. Then Veneering moved a pawn with a smart crack as he put it down. ‘Check-mate to me, I think?’ He picked up his glass and drained it at a gulp.

* * *

‘Elsie?’ he said. ‘Do you really want to know about Elsie, Filth? More dignified if you’d never asked. Rather surprised at you. And I wasn’t a hero of the Benares. I ran away before she sailed. Not brave at all.’

‘Good God, it’s not what we all believe.’

‘Ran off across Liverpool till I heard her hooter sounding off goodbye. Three days later she was torpedoed. Well, I probably wouldn’t have drowned. Some didn’t. Two in this village didn’t. Those fat twins. Never speak. I was sent away afterwards to a Catholic boarding school — I’m Catholic — because my family had copped it the same night in an air-raid. Then I started at Oxford and got called up for National Service post-war.

‘I missed that,’ said Filth. ‘Done the army. Older than you.’

‘Then off to the Med in the RNVR. Six months paradise. Every port. Showing the flag. God, the girls! Standing screaming for us on every quay. No reason not to spring into their arms. No Penelopes sitting sewing blankets back home and wishing we were there to take the dog out. Heaven. Then, just about to sail for Portsmouth — floods of tears and gifts and promises of eternal love — and they sent us on! On—out East to the Empire of the Sun. Hong Kong. Singapore. Unbelievable pleasure. Sun. No chores. Splendid naval rations, enough money, Tiger beer and all of us like gods, bronzed and fit and victorious, dressed in white and gold. Parties at governors’ residences. Parties, parties. I never read a book. I never thought beyond the day. I had no home to hurry back to. I met Elsie.’

‘I remember her.’

‘Oh, yes. Singapore. She was — well, you saw her.’

‘Not until about ten years later. She was so beautiful. To me she was beyond desire,’ said Filth.

‘D’you remember,’ said Veneering, ‘how when anyone saw her for the first time, the room fell silent?’

‘Yes.’

‘Chinese. Ageless. Paris thrown in. Perfect French. Poise.’

‘We all wanted poise in women after the war. The women who’d been in the war were all so ugly and battered. The rest were schoolgirls and they slopped over us. We thought nothing of them. We were looking for our mothers I think, sometimes. Beautiful mothers.’

‘Elsie was like your mother?’

‘No. My mother was a figure from — beyond the Ural mountains.’

‘She gave you your blond hair?’

‘No. Not exactly. She could have organised the Ural mountains.’

‘Elsie—?’

‘Just stood there at some meaningless party. Tiny pea-green silk cheongsam. Made in Paris. They were rich. Her father hovered. Seldom spoke. Watched me. Had heard I had a future. Knew I had a bit of a past but could speak languages. Bit of a reputation at Oxford—. Knew I had no money. I needed, wanted money. Women — well, enthusiastic. He invited me with the family group — I didn’t know that — to a dinner to eat crabs in black sauce on the old North Road. This is Hong Kong now. I think. Everyone shouting and clacking Chinese. I was already good at it. Showed off. Unfortunately got drunk — but so did they. So did Elsie. She wore these little jade bracelets on her wrists, fastened onto rich girl-babies. Tight, sexy. Just sat there. You know what it’s like. Round table. Non-stop talk. Suddenly all over and everyone stands up. Shouting. Laughing. Family — well, you know, unbelievably rich and — well — cunning. I found myself taking her home. It was considered an honour.’

‘You needed a friend, Veneering, to get you out of that one.’

‘I know. D’you know, I remember thinking that it would be good if Fred — little Fiscal-Smith — had been there.’

‘Well, I had to go back and marry her.’

‘Couldn’t old Pastry Willy and his Dulcie have helped?’

‘Not then. Well, they might have done. I don’t think they wanted to know me. I had swum through life after the war as I’d never have done on board The City of Benares. (Yes, thanks. A small one.) We were pushed into it in those days by — well by the Church. There is a Catholic church in Singapore. It survived. It is thronged. It was home. Somehow you keep with it. And so amazing that Elsie was Catholic. Or so they said. And we had a son.’

‘I remember your son. Who didn’t? Harry.’

‘Yes. He was a wild one. He had my language thing. I sent him to the same English prep school as the Prince of Wales. Elsie’s family flew him back and forth. He was—. He was, such a confrère. Such a brilliant boy—.’

‘I remember.’

‘Then they thought he was dying. Cancer in the femur.’

‘I heard something—.’

‘Betty — your Elizabeth — well, you must know. Looked after him. It wasn’t cancer. Back in England. Tiny, wonderful little hospital in Putney. I couldn’t be there in time.’

‘And his mother—?’

‘Elsie was in Paris. A hair appointment.’

‘And after that, you still stayed with Elsie?’

‘Yes. Well. I stayed with my boy.’

* * *

‘I’ll walk you home,’ said Filth.

‘Elsie died,’ said Veneering. ‘An alcoholic.’

‘I am so sorry. We did hear—. But you had the boy.’

‘Oh, yes. I had the boy.’

‘I had no child,’ said Filth. ‘Come on. Bedtime.’

‘Your supper smells good,’ said Veneering. ‘My mother could cook.’

‘I never knew mine,’ said Filth. ‘Now are you all set for your visit to Malta? Strange place. I envy you,’ and he waited to see if Veneering would say, ‘You should come with me.’ But Veneering did not.

‘Actually,’ said Veneering, ‘Elsie got very fat.’

‘She needed your love,’ said Filth.

* * *

But late that night, after his orderly, reflective bath-time, the evening lullaby of the rooks harsh and uncaring, Filth thought, He needed more than Elsie could give. He needed Betty. And Betty was mine.

* * *

The next morning Veneering’s hired car for the airport swished along his drive at six o’clock and he didn’t even look down at Old Filth’s great chimney as they sped by. It was raining hard and still not really light.

Interesting evening, though. Never talked to the old fossil before. Maybe never known him. Or each other. Maybe once could have talked about women with him before the Betty-Elsie days. I might have helped him there. The ones who could never have talked to each other were Betty and Elsie. Perhaps the seeds of hatred had always been in them?

And this black and wintry morning in the cold rain Filth was realising that, at last, he was seeing Betty from a little distance. As a man, not even loving her particularly. Seeing her away from this eerie village, thick with history, hung with memories like those ghastly churches in Italy hung with rags. Rags and bandages and abandoned crutches, abandoned because prayer had been answered, wounds all healed, new life achieved. Betty Feathers lay dead in Donhead St. Ague church-yard. The monumental husband was, at what must be the end of his life, turning out to have a persona apart from his wife. Level-headed, a comrade, all passion spent. Urbane enough to play chess with his life-long sexual rival, and forget.

What idiot years they had passed in thrall — whatever thrall is — to this not exceptional woman. Not a beauty. Not brilliant. Stocky. What is ‘falling in love’ about? And her attitude to life — it was antique.

She could love of course, thought Veneering. My God I’ll never forget the night she was with me. And she said so little. When I think of Elsie! All we hear about the silent, inscrutable Chinese! Elsie screamed and screeched and spat. She flung herself up and down the stairs in front of the servants. Hecuba! All for Hecuba! Didn’t care who heard her. Put off little Fiscal-Smith for life. White, as he watched her. Bottles flying. Jewels flung out of windows. How flaccid she became. Rolls of fat. She had the bracelets cut away. Her wrists above began to bulge and crease. She couldn’t understand English — not the words. Her ‘English’ was faultless. But what it meant! In Chinese there is no innuendo, irony, sarcasm. Bitch-talk she could do. She asked Betty, who was in her twenties, if she was a grandmother and Betty said, ‘Oh, yes I have seventeen grandchildren and I’m only twenty-seven’ and Elsie had no idea what she was talking about. The most hateful thing about Elsie was her fragile hands. She would pose with them, cupping them round a flower, and sigh, ‘Ah! Beautiful’ and wait for a camera to click. Life was a performance. A slow pavane.

For Betty it was a tremendous march. A brave and glorious and well, comical sometimes, endurance. All governed by love. Passion — well she’d forgone passion when she married. Her own choice. She’d taken her ration with me. She wouldn’t forget that night. Hello — Heathrow? Still raining. Why the hell am I going to Malta for Christmas?

* * *

Veneering was staying in what had been the Governor’s residence, or rather in the hotel wing of his ancient palace. Throughout the network of the cobbled streets of Valetta the rain poured down, turning them to swirling rivers. There was thunder in the winter rain. No-one to be seen. Cold. Foreign. Post-Empire. Oh, Hong Kong!

The hotel, or palace, stood blackly in a court-yard that was being bombarded by the rain and the huge doors were shut. Veneering sat in the taxi and waited while the driver with a waterproof sheet on his head had pounded at them and then hung upon a bell-rope. At last, after the flurry of getting him in, tipping the genial driver well — but not receiving quite the same excessive gratitude as long ago — Veneering stood in a pool of rain on the stones of a reception hall that rose high above him and disappeared into galleries of stony darkness. He was then led for miles down icy corridors with here and there a vast stone coffin-like chest for furnishing, the odd, frail tapestry.

The dining room reminded him of the English House of Commons, and he was the only guest. The menu was not adventurous. There was a very thick soup, followed by Malta’s speciality, the pasta pie, the pie-crust substantial, and then a custard tart. A harsh draught of Maltese red wine. There was no lift to take him back to his room which was huge and high, the long windows shuttered, the bed a room in itself with high brocaded curtains that did not draw around it. In one of them a hole had been cut for the on-off switch of a reading-lamp that stood on a bedside table that was a bridge too far. The sheets were clean but very cold. Rain like artillery crashed about the island. There was thunder in it. He lay for a long time, thinking.

But in the morning someone was grinding open the shutters and the new day shone with glory. Palm trees brown and dry but beautiful rattled against a blue sky and racing clouds. At breakfast, with English marmalade and bacon — and bread of iron — there was a pot of decent tea strong enough for an old English builder. A man on the other side of the breakfast room with another pot of it lay spread out like a table cloth over a rambling, curly settee. His feet reached far into the room. He said, ‘Hullo, Veneering. It is Veneering isn’t it? I’m Bobbie Grampian.’

‘Good Lord! Yes, I am Veneering. I’m said to be unrecognisable.’

‘Not at all. We’re all said to be unrecognisable. It’s just that there’s no one much left to recognise us. Staying long? I’m here with Darlington.’

‘I used to live near there.’

‘No, no. Chap. Darlington. Always been here. He wants to be a barrister’s clerk. Viscount or something. He’ll be delighted—.’

‘Hasn’t he left it a bit late? I’ve been retired about twenty years.’

‘Eccentric chap. Lives in the past.’

‘Are you still dancing? I mean reeling, Bobbie?’

‘O, God, yes. Never without the pipes. Mother’s gone I’m afraid.’

‘Well yes. Are you in the same house?’

‘Where you came that night? Kensington. Splendid evening — or was it the Trossachs?’

‘Actually I never quite got there.’

‘Remember you doing the reels—. But you inherited those marvellous Chambers! People pay to visit them now. Listed. Apparently once belonged to John Donne.’

‘John Donne? The poet?’

‘Wasn’t he the King of Austria?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Yes, “John Donne of Austria is marching to the War”. Dear old G. K. Chesterton. He was a Catholic.’

‘I think that was Don John.’

‘Yes? I’m very badly educated. Very sexy man John Donne. Sexy poetry.’

‘He was Dean of St. Paul’s.’

‘Extraordinary. To think you inherited a royal dwelling. Sold it I suppose? Get rich quick. What d’you think of this hostelry? Bit like after the war. What a funny new-old world we’ve lived through.’

‘Well,’ said Veneering, ‘it’s large and cold. I came here for Christmas cheer. A break from Dorset winter.’

‘Alone? Oh, most unwise. We must get together. There’s a Caledonian Club I’m sure, and I have the pipes. Ah — and here’s the man. Here’s the man!’

Unchanged since Betty and Edward Feathers’ honeymoon, a shambling person shuffled towards them demanding porridge. ‘Hullo?’ he said. ‘Know you, don’t I? Golf? Are you on your own?’

‘It’s Veneering,’ said the Scot.

‘Oh.’

‘Veneering. The retired judge. Friend, no, contemporary, of The Great Filth. Come here for a Christmas break.’

‘Ye gods! Very few of us left. Splendid. Anything special you want to see? Some wonderful ancient tombs, and so on. And the skeletons of pygmy elephants. No?’

‘Well I would rather like to see the cliffs again. There was a fresh-water spring.’

‘Place we used to go to for picnics. Very British place. Take you there now if you want. You’ll be able to see to the horizon and down to the depths. Heaven and hell, ha-ha. You coming with us, Grampian?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Ready then, Veneering? Porridge good here isn’t it? Actually Veneering, I have something to ask you.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve always had a hankering to be a Barrister’s clerk. Don’t know why. I can organise, and I like the Ambiance.’

(He must be eighty!)

‘You may have heard of me. Always around.’

‘What was — is — your profession?’

‘Never had one. It wasn’t a thing all the expats wanted after the war you know. Bit knocked about. Prison-camps and so on.’

‘You were in one of the camps?’

‘Not actually. A good many friends. Pretty upsetting—. I ought to write my memoirs. Trouble is I haven’t many of them. Getting on a bit! “Riff-raff of Europe” they used to call the English in Malta after the war, but actually I think we were harmless. Just rather poor—. Not unhappy.’

‘And you must know everybody?’ said Veneering.

‘I know the villagers of my village. And a good many ghosts. Could be worse.’

The exile from Darlington laughed heartily, not knowing what else to do. Stopped his ancient Rover on a hair-pin bend at the top of a steep slope and began to lead Veneering across a rough terrain of scrub.

‘A bit slippery,’ said Veneering. He looked about him. There was nothing but underbrush. Up above there was a circle of unfinished housing, ugly and raw, little stone gardens, scarcely a tree. Standing by itself, at the very edge of the cliffs was a small rose-pink palace with stone-work of white lace. ‘Eighteenth-century,’ said the would-be clerk. ‘For Sale. Dirt cheap. I could arrange something if you were tempted. Here we are. Stretch yourself out on your belly and you might see the silver stream. Runs under-ground most of the way. Then it falls towards the sea. Noise like choir-boys singing.’

‘Mind you I haven’t lain out flat on my belly for a long time. No-one to appreciate it — ha-ha. Not sure I’d know what to do now with a woman even if she was all laid out like lamb and salad as we used to say. We’re all impotent here you know. Don’t know what’s become of us all. If you ask me what we need is another good war.’

Veneering moved further off. The stones beneath his unsuitable shoes became sharper. Twice he stumbled into what might be a fissure in the cliff but saw and heard no running water. He decided to crawl about and dropped slowly and painfully to his knees. He put his ear to the rock.

‘You’re a game old bird,’ said his companion. ‘You know, the last time I was here was over half a century ago. Picnics up here were special. Planned months ahead. Time of “the sixpenny settlers”. More money than ever before. Each other’s houses, or sailing. Lots to drink. Fornicating. We came up here once though for a sort of honeymoon party. That arrogant old bugger Eddie Feathers (Old Filth they call him now, and I wouldn’t disagree) had his bride Betty with him. Should have seen his face when I asked him to arrange a clerkship for me.

‘As for her! Never forgot her. I was sitting cross-legged with my wine glass and she was standing right beside me, and she dropped on her knees and looked down the crack. She was like a kid. And she splayed herself out and I patted her bottom and she was up like a kangaroo, and she hit me! Yes, hit me. Don’t think he saw. — On their honeymoon it was. She said, “I’m going to get out of this. I’m going down the cliff to the sea” and she went off and him after her. Old Filth. Mind you, she was the one who I’d have thought not exactly pure as a lily. Some very nasty stories about her going off with men into the New Territories in Hong Kong. Even though she looked like a school girl. Oh, yes. She stepped on me! Small of my back, and made off down the cliff, him after her. Expect he knew she wasn’t all she might have been, even on the honeymoon. Hey, what’s the matter? Stop that. What have I done?’

Veneering’s pale fist had clenched and cracked into the monster’s jaw. Both men fell sideways and began to shout and yell.

Away over at the rose-pink palace some Germans were being shown round by an estate agent. They called out. One of the Germans looked through his enormous binoculars and said ‘It seems to be two old men fighting. It looks like a fight to the death.’

Across the seaside tundra there came a snapping sound and the thin old man with streaks in what had once been golden hair was lying still, one leg apparently missing. It had invaded the terrifying opening in the cliff from which the fresh water poured into the ocean.

‘Locally it is called the water of life,’ said the estate agent, but when they reached the two combatants this did not seem apt. Veneering’s ankle was broken, his foot hung limp and he had passed out. He came round only briefly when mobile phones had summoned help and he was being carried off on a stretcher towards the hospital. Before he died, after a thrombosis had set in, he told the would-be barrister’s clerk that he wasn’t having one word said, ever, against Elizabeth.

* * *

When Old Filth heard the news he said, ‘Silly old fool. Off on a jaunt like that at his age. I’d not have gone with him even if he’d asked me.’

Then Filth sat out the long day and the evening in Donhead St. Ague, listening to the rain, not looking up behind him at Veneering’s darkened house, not bothering with whisky or the television news or the supper left out for him in the kitchen. He sat on and on in the mid-winter dark.

When a post-card from Veneering arrived — written his first evening in the tomb-like hotel — Filth read how happy he was now with no desire to come home.

‘So he did get to heaven, then,’ said Old Filth to his wife’s photograph on the mantelpiece and Betty’s young face smiled back at him from another world.

CHAPTER 21

In Donhead St. Ague half-a-century on the family man and poet, hard at work clearing Veneering’s attic, his wife Anna cooking and laundering for her burgeoning bed-and-breakfast business, their children at school, their cat with activity of its own. A raw cold day and nothing in the village stirring. The family man appeared in the doorway of the ironing-place holding a battered photograph.

It is of a lipsticky young woman with bouffant hair. The photograph has been stuck long ago on cardboard and its margins covered with kisses.

‘Veneering again,’ he says. ‘I wonder which this one was? I’d guess it isn’t Betty Feathers.’ She takes it and turns it over. She reads, ‘From Daisy Flagg with love and gratitude.’

‘Isn’t she lovely?’ says Henry, the family man (and poet). ‘Like a juicy fruit.’

‘But she’s not his floozy,’ says Anna. ‘My head on the block, she’s not. I wonder what he did for her. That’s a fine fur coat. I’d guess a secretary of some sort. Adoration in the eyes. I’ll take it round to Dulcie. I expect she’ll know.’

But they forgot, and the photograph was put aside on a window-sill and then upon a pile of books and then tossed in the rubbish collection. A week later Anna yells at Henry to take the rubbish to the gate before he leaves for a Poetry Festival next day and he sees the photograph again and stands in contemplation. He says, ‘Anna — all this stuff in the attic and there’s not a sign of Betty Feathers anywhere. Not a letter. Not a post-card.’

‘Men are like that,’ she says. ‘I don’t expect her husband kept anything of hers either. It’s women who press flowers in books. Keep letters.’

‘Do you? Will you?’

‘No. Because I’ve got you.’

‘Don’t be so sure. I might run off with Dulcie.’

* * *

Then he left the photograph on the kitchen table and went off to the tip. When he came back he said, ‘We haven’t actually seen Dulcie lately. Go and show her this while I’m away.’

‘Isn’t she on a cruise?’

‘Oh, we’d have heard. Janice would have told us.’

‘Janice is on holiday. Two — no three — weeks. D’you know, I don’t think we’ve seen Dulcie since that day the cat went mad. I’d better go round. She’ll be on her own. The dismal daughter is back in America with the eccentric yoof.’

‘Go tomorrow after I’ve left. The sole of my shoe’s hanging off. You’re better at sticking it back on. And I’ve not finished my lecture.’

‘Sorry,’ said Anna, ‘There’s glue somewhere in a box. I’m going to Dulcie now.’

* * *

And she knocked and rang, although both the kitchen door and the front door of Privilege House stood open. She walked in, stood in the quiet hall and called, ‘Dulcie.’

Deep silence. Her neck prickled. The house felt cold, unoccupied. In the kitchen, a slowly-dripping tap. Everywhere empty of life.

In Dulcie’s bedroom her bed was un-made and the floor strewn with old clothes, probably sorted for a charity. Looking again Anna saw the crumpled expensive wool suit and the black funeral hat. There were some tiny antique corsets. White cotton stockings like Victorian fashion plates. However old is she? Are these menstrual rags? Virginia Woolf used menstrual rags. She only died in 1941. Dulcie must have been planning a fire like the cremations on the ghats of the Ganges.

And she is gone.

Then through the open door at the end of the landing she saw Dulcie’s child-like back, very upright at a writing-desk that faced the fields and empty sky. She appeared to be writing letters. Thick yellow paper around her feet was crumpled into balls.

‘Dulcie! Good heavens!’

She waited for the little figure to keel over sideways from the current of air disturbed by her voice; to slide to the floor. Dead for weeks.

‘Yes?’

‘Dulcie! You’re freezing up here. What are you doing? We thought you’d gone on a cruise.’

Dulcie shivered and tore up another letter but kept it tight in her fist, staring ahead.

‘You are — Dulcie, you are not still writing to Fiscal-Smith!’

‘Trying to. He hasn’t answered any of them the past weeks. He doesn’t seem to be on the phone or have this e-mail thing. Neither do I. Nearly a month and no thank-you letter. It’s unheard of. And this great pink chair has come for him. Wrapped in tarpaulin. It’s not that I want to see him, it’s just so out-of-character. When a friend of sixty years begins to act out-of-character you begin to wonder if you might never. . There’s nobody up there — it’s called Lone Hall — to contact. I don’t think it’s anywhere near a police-station. . ’

‘Oh, I’m sure we can find it.’

‘Anna, I was very cruel to him. I let him know that we had always thought him mean and grasping. All his life he’s been longing for company and nobody has wanted him because he’s, well, so awful, really. So disgracefully conceited. Clever of course. Efficient. But withdrawn and obscure. But — oh Anna! — he’s always been there. He has no charm and he knows it. Can’t connect. Can’t hear people thinking. Can’t help being what he is. He knows that nobody ever liked him. Haven’t I a duty to him, Anna?’

‘Certainly not!’

‘But I do. He’s broken the pattern. The cracks will spread. They’ll spread across all our crumbling lives, the few of us who are left.’

‘Oh, come on, Dulcie.’

‘He’s disappeared, Anna. It isn’t senility, Anna, and it isn’t spite or resentment because we’ve laughed at him all these years. It’s simple, determined rejection of us, of the very, very few last friends. Where is he, Anna?’

‘Come home with me. We’ll find out. Get your things — not the ones on the floor — and stay the night. I’m not leaving you here alone. You’ve got no tights on. No shoes. Your feet are navy blue.’

‘Oh, but I don’t do that sort of thing. Stay with people, if it’s not in the diary.’

‘You’re coming.’

* * *

‘Hi, Dulcie,’ said Henry holding cellotape and a shoe. ‘All well?’

‘It’s not,’ said Anna, and gave a resume.

‘Well, O.K. then,’ he said, ‘I’m off up North tomorrow, Dulcie. I’m lecturing on the Cavalier Poets at Teesside University tomorrow night. It’s about ten miles from Yarm. I’ll fix up the famous Judges’ Hotel, Execution Court, or whatever, for you to stay the night. I’m staying with the Dean at Acklam and a few Cavaliers, but you’ll be well-looked after at the Judges’ by all accounts. Then, next morning, before I bring you home, we’ll visit the Mandarin’s marble hall on the blasted heath and thunder on his door. Then we’ll come home. That very evening. I’ll — Anna will — ring the hotel now.’

‘Oh, but I couldn’t possibly! I don’t travel any more you know. I haven’t had my hair done. And — Anna — I’m afraid I have to get up in the night now you know. I’d never find my way back to my room in an hotel.’

‘They have things called “en suite” now, Dulcie.’

‘Oh, but I try not to eat them.’

‘RIGHT,’ shouted Henry returning to his pizza and Pesto at the supper table, children munching and doing homework unperturbed, ‘All fixed. Hotel’s got a room. Sounds rather an odd one but apparently The Great Old Filth once slept there. Probably Judge Jeffries, too. It’s en suite and much in demand. I said I’d take you up to the Fiscalry first and then see you in and make sure you’ll get a good dinner and then I’ll pick you up the following morning and bring you home. All right?’

Anna said, ‘I’ll go up to Privilege House now and get anything you’re going to need. Pills? Shoes? No. Be quiet. You’re going.’

‘But, it’s hundreds of miles and. . ’

‘Hong Kong’s a few thouands. . ’

‘Oh, but I know Hong Kong. And actually, Anna, I’m afraid I’m not very reliable on the motorway.’

‘You won’t be driving.’

‘No my dear, I mean the facilities. I would have to stop at least twice.’

‘Me, too,’ said Henry. ‘Always did. Don’t boast. We’ll be on the road by eight o’ clock. Could you manage that?’

‘I wake at four,’ said Dulcie, proudly.

‘And you go upstairs and finish that lecture now,’ said Anna.

‘And there are other things,’ said Dulcie. ‘I have to check on Filth’s house.’

‘There’ve been lights on,’ said Anna. ‘Someone’s taking care of it.’

* * *

Isobel heard the hired car arrive at the garden gate above. She put on her long silk coat, noticed that it was raining, noticed Filth’s old mac hanging on the back of the kitchen door. But no, she’d take nothing. She had everything she wanted (the house she would leave to the boy — Dulcie’s grandson) for Filth had given her everything, not only his worldly possessions, but his living spirit.

She pressed her face briefly against the old waterproof mac on the door and left the house.

On quick feet, without a stick, she climbed up the slope of the garden to the waiting taxi.

* * *

By eight-fifteen the poet’s car was heading North, Dulcie crouched like a marmoset in the back, defying whip-lash, her eyes pools of fear. By the motorway, however, she had settled and started the Telegraph crossword. After a stop at a service-station, cross country towards Nottingham she began to take notice. By lunch-time, when they stopped at a country house hotel Henry had known from literary Festivals before, she had a light in her eyes and was talking about the landscape of D. H. Lawrence and the Mitford sisters and Chatsworth. Soon she appeared to have blood in her veins again and was chatting up the austere black waiter over the cheese, telling him of arbitrations in Africa where he had never been.

‘Now—I am paying for this,’ Dulcie said and blinked when she saw the bill, holding it up first one way and then the other. A deep breath — then, ‘Oh yes. I am, and I am leaving the tip.’ She put down a pound coin. ‘Henry, this is wonderful. We must do this again and I will pay the petrol. Are you doing the Edinburgh Festival in August?’

It was already dark by the time they reached Yarm. Henry’s lecture was at eight o’ clock. ‘I’ll ring the hotel and say you’ll be late and to keep dinner for you and we’ll go up to Fiscal-Smith’s for a quick look now. I’ll make sure your room will be ready when I drop you back. Here we are, here’s The Fiscal turning. Hup we go to Wuthering Heights. God! There’s nothing!’

The steep lane ran on and up, up and on, white with moon-light, black with wintry heather and, lying to either side of it and occasionally on it, the green lamp-eyes of sheep. A few (‘Oh, look,’ she cried) new lambs with bewildered faces. Henry honked and tooted and the sheep ambled aside. ‘I have never. .,’ she said.

Down they went again into a village with a noisy stream, a small stone bridge, arched high. Up they went again, twist and twirl, and the stars were coming out.

‘Such stars!’ she said. ‘And I thought The Donheads were the country!’

‘You can see the Milky Way,’ he said. ‘They say it’s disappeared now over London. We’ve blotted it out.’

‘I don’t remember stars in Hong Kong,’ she said. ‘It’s such a competitive place.’

‘Aha!’ he said.

A gate across a track.

‘Henry — turn! You’re going to be late. It’s seven o’ clock. We can come back tomorrow on the way home.’

‘Won’t be beaten,’ he shouted, getting out, opening the gate, dragging it wide for the return journey, jumping back in, splashing the car through another rattling torrent. Over a narrow bridge came a sharp bend upwards, a one-in-three corkscrew, and a shriek from Dulcie. The car made it with only a foot to spare along the edge of a dark brackeny precipice.

‘The man’s a mad-man,’ said Henry. ‘Living here. Oh — hullo?’

Mist had been gathering but now, up here, moonlight broke through and in front of them stood another barred gate. A man stood behind it in silhouette carrying what looked like a pitch-fork or perhaps a rifle. To either side of his head behind the gate swayed the great horns of two wild beasts. Henry stopped the car once more and waited to see if it would roll back.

‘So what’s this then?’ asked the man.

‘Visitors.’

‘Visitors! This time of night. It’s past six o’ clock. Are you daft? Mek an appointment.’

‘Visitors. To Sir Frederick Fiscal-Smith.’

‘Fred’s out. I’m his ghillie. And these are two of his Highlanders.’

‘Out?’

‘Aye. An’ ’e’s not comin’ back. Hall’s for sale. He’s gone to Hong Kong.’

Dulcie stepped carefully out of the car and went over to the gate. She held out her hand to the ghillie. The two wild beasts disappeared into the mist. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, ‘to descend upon you in the dark, and we must go at once — there is a very important engagement. A poetry lecture in Middlesbrough. On The Cavalier Poets. But I just wanted to look in on my very old friend. I quite understand. We hadn’t realised that Sir — Fred’s house was so remote. Might I just come and take another look tomorrow? Could I just have a look in the letter-box? I have been trying to contact him.’

‘Letter-box? No letter-boxes. The letters get dropped down the bottom under a stone. I’ve been posting on yeller envelopes but I send them by the batch. Not straight off. You can’t catch the postman. You know, our Fred was always a mystery.’

* * *

‘I’ll have to abandon you,’ said Henry at The Judges’ Lodging Hotel. ‘I’ll be back to take you home after breakfast. I’ll have to step on it now. Here’s someone.’

An amiable-looking man in porter’s uniform was hanging about. He disappeared with Dulcie’s case and in a moment came a strong-looking woman down the hotel steps. She had the look of someone who had seen too many hotel guests from the south lately.

When she spoke, however, all was well. ‘Hot water, hot-water bottles and your dinner’s ready in half an hour and you can have the same room as the others had. We seem to get more judges than we ever did when they were on Circuit. Poor old Feathers crying into his coffee after his wife died. Fiscal-Smith up the hill, he nearly died in the room you’re having not six weeks ago. Pneumonia. Well, second memorial service in a few months. He can’t resist a train-ride to London. . ’

Henry said, ‘He’s in Hong Kong now.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me. Now, you get off to your poetry and we’ll get this one installed.’

Lying in the lights from the bed-side lamp Dulcie was put early to bed. She watched the gold-fish as they flicked and turned.

* * *

And at breakfast next morning she sat in the dining room looking up into the frowning hills and she was smiling. Susan — not any one of them knew where she was. There was no-one who would be screeching at her on a telephone to say that this journey had been foolish.

‘Sheer bravado!’ ‘Showing off.’ ‘At your age,’ and so on. Such an interesting visit up to the moors last night. Such a good hotel! Black-pudding for breakfast. Delicious. Here came the manageress. ‘Oh, yes, perfectly thank you. I slept perfectly. I wish I could stay here for a proper holiday.’

‘Well, it’s possible,’ said the lady — more coffee was being hustled to the table, unasked. ‘In fact I am afraid it is inevitable. There has been a message. . ’

‘Yes?’ (Oh God! Oh God, it’s Susan!)

‘From the University, I’m afraid your friend — that poet — he’s in the Great North Eastern hospital with a broken ankle.’

‘He is what?’

‘He slipped as he came off the stage last night after his lecture. Shoe fell to pieces. Got caught up in the audio wires. Foot left hanging like a leaf. They’re hoping to operate this morning.’

‘I must go there at once. At once!’

‘Have some more coffee. They’ve informed his wife and she’s on the train. We’ll go to Darlington to meet her. She’ll drive you back home tomorrow but — something about arrangements for the school-run. I said that we’d see to you.’

‘Oh, but I must go to poor Henry!’

‘He won’t be round from his anaesthetic yet. They may not even operate today. He has high blood-pressure.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me. Could you get me a car? I haven’t got my actual driver’s licence with me. I haven’t driven for quite some time, except around the village. But someone might lend me a map. I do thoroughly enjoy driving. I could drive Anna home — or just go by myself.’

‘Michael will drive you to the hospital whenever you need to go.’

‘Is he the ghillie? I’m not sure. . ’

‘No. He’s over there. The front-of-house receptionist standing by the portrait of Lord Justice MacPherson, drinking milk.’

Michael gave a little wave.

‘The milk,’ she said, ‘is one of his harmless peculiarities but I suppose it’s a good fault in a driver. Yes, it’s hard to get insurance when you’re over eighty. I hope I don’t speak out of turn?’

‘Oh, I can easily take a taxi just to the hospital.’

‘I don’t think they’re going to want you at the hospital my lady. You’re not next of kin. But where would you like Michael to take you? Is there someone you can visit?’

‘Oh no. I don’t know a living soul. Oh — oh yes, I must ring my daughter Susan. In America. But perhaps, well — no. She is rather easily annoyed. Though a wonderful person. Quite wonderful. Do you think — would it be possible to visit Lone Hall again?’

‘There is a call for you.’

‘Yes — oh Anna! Anna, yes, I’m very well.’

‘Dulcie. I’m on the train. The silly great fool.’

‘Who?’

‘Henry.’

‘Now don’t worry about me, Anna. I’m perfectly all right. I was often stuck in Ethiopia, you know (that road across the Blue Mountains), I do just wonder if I left the iron on. But we must think of Henry first.’

‘I’m coming. See you later. I’ll have to get Henry home. I’ll bring you back with him. I’m afraid he may be in rather a dreadful mood.’

‘All will be perfectly well Anna, and could you possibly ring Susan in Massachusetts in case she worries? You have the number. I’m going to drive about today with a splendid young man and we’ll leave some flowers for Henry though it’s still very wintry up here — bring a big coat — and there’s nothing but black heather. Oh, yes. Fiscal-Smith? I’d forgotten him. He’s not here. He’s gone to Hong Kong. I was mistaken ever to have worried about him.’

* * *

‘And now,’ she said, ‘young man, come along. They say you’ll get me to the hospital.’

‘I’ll get you there,’ he said, ‘but I can’t say what we’ll do next. It’s like a city. They made it out of the old chemical works. They were the steel works before that and the iron works before that and before that they were the Big Wilderness. Kept thousands working for a hundred years. Always work. Dirt and clatter. All gone now. Most folks have no jobs. They just stay in bed most days unless they have a profession like me.’

‘But this hospital’s enormous! There must be plenty of jobs here?’

‘Oh, aye. Mind, how many does any work in it?’ D’you want a bit of Cadbury’s fruit and nut?’

‘So very different from Dorset. And from Hong Kong. We’ll never find poor Henry here,’ she said.

But a car-park appeared and someone to take them to the right ward where the family man-poet lay with eyes closed and mind elsewhere. She felt affection for him and stroked his face.

‘He didn’t speak,’ she said when she came back. ‘I left him a packet of smarties.’

‘Hey ho,’ said Michael. ‘So where now?’

‘Well. I suppose back to the hotel.’

‘No — come on. I’ll show you Herringfleet. First we’ll go to Whitby for its fish and chips and I can get blue-top. Then there’s the museum with the preserved mermaid, mind she’s not that well preserved, being dead. We’ll take the old trunk road through the skeletal chimneys. They’re not that old,’ he said. ‘Younger than me! Mind not much. Can’t think of the place without them now.’

‘You were born here then, Michael?’

‘Oh, aye. Michael Watkins. Me great auntie was Nurse Watkins. Lived to be a hundred. Gypsy stock. Black eyes. Delivered us all here and laid us all out. She delivered your great man, Judge Vanetski or whatever. . ’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know. .?’

‘Changed his name and went south. Something you could spell more easier. Me Auntie Watkins knew ’em all. His mother worked the coal-cart round the streets. His dad were a Russian spy. Common knowledge.’

‘You can’t,’ she said, ‘mean Judge Veneering?’

‘It could be,’ said Michael, ‘they’re all dead now. Here then — Whitby. Home of Dracula and a load a’ saints. And, see them choppers ont’ cliff-top? Visiting whale. Made Jaws look like a minner. And here’s a human hand of some lass hanged somewhere. Stick a candle in it and you’ll never be frightened of ghosts.’

‘There’s nothing like this in Hong Kong,’ she said. ‘Though I wouldn’t answer for Java. In Java they keep the bodies of the dead for years. They take them food.’

‘Well there you are then,’ said Michael, ‘It’s a funny old world. What you think of this? Look up, now.’

Hanging on wires from the museum’s roof glimmered a painted wooden banner, pale green and gold. Trailing squirls and tendrils of delicate foreign flowers surrounded lettering she couldn’t decipher.

‘It’s wonderful. What is it? What does it say?’

‘Nobody can make out. But it’s not that old.’

‘It looks almost Classical.’

‘No. It was something from Muriel Street. The street was flattened with a bomb and this thing somehow survived.’

‘It looks as old as The Odyssey.’

‘Aye, it’s odd all right. Kind of sadness in it too. Horrible back-alley it hung in. They used to slaughter cattle there on a Thursday.’

She looked at him. ‘I’m not a complete ingénue, Michael.’

‘The guy painted that,’ said Michael, ‘wasn’t no jane-you neither. He was like a god. But he was broken up. He was that Vanetski’s dad. The Russian spy.’

‘I’m out of my depth, Michael.’ She took his arm.

‘Who isn’t?’ said Michael.

* * *

‘And,’ she said back in the car, ‘you’ve lived here all your life? How very interesting.’

‘I’ve had some foreign holidays. Now, before we set off back, tek a look down there. Look around.’

‘Sea?’ she said. ‘It’s rather pale — if you saw the Caribbean, Michael. . ’

‘Look along the coast-line. Right? All ripped off in the war. The big raid took the heart out of it. See that yellow house with the black holes for windows? Never re-built. Streets of little dwellings down the old high street. All gone. I never seed ‘em. Ripped away like the flounce on a skirt, me auntie says. Bessie. She’s still alive. D’you want to meet her?’

‘Well, I think we should get back.’

‘You’ve to see Grangetown. Ugliest place, it’s said, in Europe. Covered in red dust off the old ironstone works. It crosses the sea on the wind. They say Denmark’s covered in it too. It’s on a level with Ayres Rock Australia. D’you know, they used these beaches for filming D-Day? In that film. Nowhere in France poor enough. No. 326 Palm Tree Road, here’s auntie’s. She’s near a hundred, too. I’ll get her.’

Dulcie sat alone in the car. The long, long street of red houses was by no means derelict or poor but it was lifeless. Re-built since the war, dozen after dozen, all alike. Well-kept, anonymous, identical. Curtains were pasted against the windows. No-one to be seen. Concrete and weeds in the long, long vista of tiny front gardens. Silence. No people. Then a boy with small eyes came up beside the car and spat at it.

After a while a shuffling old man with a dog appeared, stopping and looking, looking and stopping. He put his face near hers at the passenger window and said through the glass, ‘Is it Lilian?’

‘No, I’m Dulcie.’

‘I’m looking out for our Lilian. She’s seldom coming by.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’d say the Germans have her.’

‘That was a very long time ago.’

‘Behind that Iron Curtain.’

‘That was a long time ago, too.’

‘No, it were yesterday. Not even the blacks come here, you know. Too dismal for ’em. Our Lilian was a grand girl.’

Michael came down his aunt’s concrete path, ignored the old man and said Dulcie was to come in. ‘And you get on with your walk,’ he said to the man.

‘Michael, this old man is crying. For his sister.’

‘Oh aye. Lilian. Half a century on. Killed in Middlesbrough. Shut up now, George. There was worse going on than Lilian. What about the Concentration Camps?’

‘It’s all stood still,’ said the old man.

‘Aye, and that’s the trouble,’ said Michael.

As Dulcie pulled on her little mohair gloves as she walked up the path the old man shouted, ‘It was wireless won us t’war. If it had been only bloody television we’d have lost it and mebbe got some soul back in us. It went out, did soul, with Churchill. We was all listening to him when the Dorniers come that night.’

A woman was watching them from the door-step.

‘Are you comin’ in then?’

* * *

She didn’t look a hundred, she looked fifty and very alert.

‘Friends o’ Terry’s? Terry Vanetski? Cup o’ tea?’

‘I’m afraid Terry is gone,’ said Dulcie, drawing off her gloves, Bessie watching, stretching over and taking one and stroking it. ‘I went to his memorial service. He died in Malta.’

‘What in heck was he doing there? He was that restless. Is’t true he married a Chinese?’

‘Yes. Elsie. I hardly knew her. . ’

‘Now then tell us. One thing we can still do here is talk. I wonder if she was like his mother, Florrie. Now she was a fine woman, like a man. With a back-to-front man’s cap. Here’s your tea and a fancy. It’s only shop.’

‘They — didn’t exactly get on. Terry and Elsie.’

‘Then there’d be someone else. Terry was born to love women. Serviette? You can’t see where he lived. Nowt left. Nowt much left of Florrie neither nor the Russian. Eighty-seven killed that night. Terry was out of it you know because they’d put him on some getaway-train that afternoon. He left without a tear. I helped get his mother home where she’d been waving at the train from the fence. Oh, she was a fine woman. She never knew if he’d seen her waving.’

‘And you’ve never moved away?’

‘Well, bus-trips with Michael, in a club, to foreign parts but I can’t recommend them. Up here’s better, even with the drugs and the knives — even in Turner Street! Turner Street where the doctors used to live and the manager of the Co-op. Even now it’s better than the Costa del Sol where you can’t understand a word they say. All those fat English women, they’re a disgrace. I was maid at a posh school here once you know. That was a nasty place, but interesting and you never saw anything like that Mrs. Fondle in her purples and satins. She fancied young Terry. Yes she did. Just as well she got drowned. There was tensions all right, what with Mrs. Fondle and circus performers and spies and coal-carts — bit of Dundee? I mek me own Dundee.’

‘It must have been a very — vivid — time,’ said Dulcie. ‘I was in Shanghai about then. It was really my country. I don’t know why we were all so mad on this one we’d never seen.’

‘I’d not think Shanghai would have been all water-lilies and flowers-behind-the-ear neither. But, like wherever you go, there’s great compensations. Great people.’

‘Oh — yes.’

‘Like Mr. Parable in Herringfleet. Now he was mad. He was what’s called a religious maniac but he was one of the nicest men you could hope to meet. I wonder where his money went?’

‘And then,’ she said, ‘there was that Mr. Smith. He had a son, too. Tight-up little chap. Never very taking. Father took no note of him but they say he did well, mebbe better than Terry. But yet, with little Fred, nobody ever seemed to take to him.’

‘Yes. I see. It’s another world to me you know. You make me feel very narrow Mrs.—’

‘Miss,’ she said. ‘Thank God.’

There was a silence, Dulcie thinking of all the countries she had lived in where nobody now cared for her one jot, Bessie thinking of the children of this grey place who had shone here once. ‘Did you say our Terry’s gone?’ she asked and Dulcie said again she had been to his memorial service. ‘We don’t go in for that round here,’ said Bessie, ‘whoever you are. It’s York Minster if you’re someone, but otherwise it’s Mr. Davison at Herringfleet church digging a hole. And we don’t go for these basket-work caskets neither. Remind you of the old laundry down Cargo Fleet. I suppose little Fred’s gone too.’

* * *

‘Thank you,’ Dulcie said to the milk-drinking Michael on the way back from the sea to the Cleveland Hills.

‘Pretty great, in’t she?’

‘What a memory.’

‘Aye, but Dulcie — what a terrible life.’

‘Michael, I don’t think so. Oh good! Look,’ for here was the Donhead car in the forecourt of the hotel. ‘Oh thank God! She’s back from the hospital. Now we can go home.’

CHAPTER 22

But the next morning they were both still at the hotel. Henry was being kept in hospital for another day and arrangements had to be made for an ambulance.

‘We’ll drive in convoy,’ said Anna, ‘you and I in the car. It’ll be rather slow. But more restful than the journey up. Today, I’ll go to the hospital and see the surgeon and arrange about physio. But what will you do?’

‘I’ll go to Lone Hall again.’

‘But you said it was grim.’

‘Yes. But I can’t stop thinking about him all alone in it.’

‘I hope you’re not thinking of joining him in it?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous Anna. I shouldn’t tell you this, but I can’t really afford Privilege House anymore and it’s in very good condition. This one needs a million pounds spending on it. Dear Anna — it’s idle curiosity that’s all. Could they get me a lift up there and back d’you think? The hotel?’

They could. She did. The ghillie was on his way up there now. He was meeting a possible buyer.

‘But would he let me in?’ she said. ‘I want to go round it alone.’

‘Dulcie?’

‘I tell you, Fiscal-Smith’s not there. He’s gone to Hong Kong.’

‘Look — it has nothing to do with you where Fiscal-Smith lives. He’s only there because he can’t shake off his childhood. That’s why he’s such a bore, Dulcie. You deserve better. Or just memories of Willy. Fiscal-Smith clings to his miserable past like a limpet to a rock.’

‘I don’t think anyone has ever loved him,’ she said.

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘Anna, you are being unpleasant. Fiscal-Smith is pathetic because he doesn’t know how to love. But there’s a For Sale notice up and this time — he never tells you anything — something must have happened. I believe, Anna, that he’s a virgin.’

‘I hope you’re not thinking of doing something about that.’

‘That will do, Anna. We don’t talk like that. And I’d be glad if you tell nobody that I’m short of money.’

‘Oh — ah! Well, well — Fiscal-Smith’s worth millions, just like the other two. Now I understand.’

‘I hope we are not about to quarrel, Anna.’

* * *

The ghillie dropped her off and she was allowed to go alone into the gaunt, wind-blown house on the moor. ‘I’m glad you trust me,’ she said as he handed her a key the size of a rolling pin. ‘I can tell a good woman,’ he said. ‘Ye’ll not pilfer. And it suits me because I have to wait outside for the estate agents. They’re bringing in a possible buyer. Some lunatic. I’ll look him over. Off ye go now and mind ye take care on the boards.’

‘Is it clean?’ she said.

‘Och, aye, it’s clean.’

Inside Fiscal-Smith’s Lone Hall, the smell of wood fires and heather. No carpets, no curtains and very little furniture. A kitchen range like a James Watt steam engine, rusted and ice-cold, a midget micro-wave beside it, an electric toaster, almost antique. Taps high above a yellow stone sink, and an empty larder. An empty bread-crock, a calendar of years ago marked with crosses indicating absences abroad. All colourless, clean, scrubbed. Eighteenth-centry windows, light flowing in from moor and sky.

Where did he sleep? Where did he eat? Where did he read — whatever did he do here? Room after room: empty. Not a painting, not a clock, not a photograph.

On her way out she opened a door on the ground floor behind a shabby baize curtain. The room within was cold — another tall window, unshuttered, the walls covered with shelves and upon them row upon row of boxes all neatly labelled. There was a man’s bike with a flowing leather saddle and a round silver bell. It stood upside down. A very old basket was strapped to the handlebars. On a hook nearby hung a dingy white riding-mackintosh with brass eyelet holes under the arms. It hung stiff as wood. There was a black, tinny filing-cabinet labelled ‘Examination Papers’. There was no sign anywhere of a woman’s presence, or touch.

There was a complete set of the English Law Reports in leather, worth several thousands of pounds — Dulcie knew this because she had recently had to sell Willy’s. There was an iron bed, like the campaign bed of the Duke of Wellington. Beside the bed, a missal, its pages loose with wear. Then she saw, on the wall behind her, a photograph of familiar faces: Willy waving. Herself in a rose-scattered hat — my! Wasn’t I gorgeous! Those tiresome missionaries in Iran. Eddie Feathers, magnificent in full-bottomed wig, Veneering cracking up with laughter, holding golf-clubs, hair flying. Drunk. Row after row of them and no girl-friends, no children, no-one who could have been Fred’s invisible, ailing mother. In the dead centre of the collage was a wedding group outside St. James’s church, Hong Kong. Eddie Feathers, so young and almost ridiculously good-looking in his old-fashioned morning suit and bridegroom’s camellia; the bride Elizabeth — darling Betty — in frothy lace, with a face looking out like a baby at its christening.

And there, beside her, astonishingly in a tee-shirt and what must have been the first pair of jeans in the Colony, was Fiscal-Smith the super-careful conformist, never wrongly-dressed. Asked to be best-man at the last minute, his face was shining like the Holy Ghost. The best day of his life.

No sign of Veneering in this photograph. No sign at all. Nor of Isobel Ingoldby, the femme fatale.

Willy was there. Oh, look at us, look at us! Still damp from our cocoons!

* * *

But it was the huge floor of the room in Lone Hall that held Dulcie now. It was slung from end to end with swathes of tiny metal ‘Hornby’ rolling-stock: points, buffers, level-crossings, signals, water-pumps, platforms, sheds, long seats, lacy wooden canopies, slot-machines; luggage trolleys like floats with unbending metal handles long as cart-shafts. Portmanteaux, trunks, Gladstone bags, sacks red and grey and all set up for midgets. And calm, good midgets stood in dark-blue uniforms blowing pin-head whistles, punching pin-holes in tiny tickets. Branch-lines swung far and wide, under the Duke of Wellington’s bed, and were criss-crossed by bridges, paralleled by streams where tiny men in floppy hats sat fishing. And the station platforms, up and down the room, were decorated with tiny tubs of geraniums. Time had stopped.

In the green-painted fields around lived happy sheep and lambs and cardboard figures carrying ladders over their shoulders and pots of paint. They went smiling to their daily bread. And the engines! And the goods-wagons! And the carriages up-holstered in blue and red and green velvets. And the happy pin-sized families untouched by care, all loving each other.

There was someone else in the house. The ghillie was at the door. He was furious. ‘This room is not on view. You are here without permission,’ and he locked the door behind her as she scurried out.

Another car, a Mercedes, was on the drive now, with the estate agent kow-towing and she heard someone say ‘Very sad. Hong Kong business-man. Made his pile. No, no — a local. Not in residence at present but lived here for years. Matter of fact we’ve just heard he has recently died — back in Hong Kong.’

‘Good afternoon,’ said Dulcie as she passed.

‘So sorry about your wasted journey,’ called the man with the shooting-stick. ‘I’ve bought it already. Fixtures and fittings. Splendid shooting lodge. I’d better not tell you how cheap it was.’

And he stood aside, laughing, and watched her climb into the ghillie’s car.

* * *

The next day she was driving south with Anna to The Donheads, the ambulance somewhere behind them, cautiously bouncing and now and then sounding its siren.

‘They wanted to keep him in longer, Dulcie, oh, I wish they had! He’s going to be hell downstairs at home. Physios coming in three times a day — on the good old NHS of course — and, pray God, they’re pretty. Oh — and he’ll be surrounded by the yellow staircase! Oh help me Dulcie.’

‘I suppose — did you hear anything about the lecture?’

‘Brilliant, of course. The wilder the preliminaries the better he always seems to be.’

‘It’s not like that in law-suits.’

In time:

‘Dulcie? You’re very quiet. You did want to come back home I hope?’

‘Yes. I did. I do. All is settled now.’

‘I’m so sorry. We messed it all up for you. It was meant to be a treat. We’re so dis-organised.’

‘Anna, stop. You have taken the leathery old scales from my eyes and I love you both.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I’ve rather gone in for romantic secrets in other people’s lives. “Romantic” is not quite right. It’s a dirty word now, meaning sexy and silly. But, for me, it has always meant imaginative and beautiful and private. By the way, did I tell you that poor Fiscal-Smith is dead?’

The car swerved and swung in an arc from the fast lane to the central to the slow and stopped with a screech of brakes on the verge. Traffic swore at them.

‘Dulcie! What—?’

‘Yes. Fiscal-Smith is dead. I heard up at the house. A rather awful man has bought it. He shouted it at me.’

‘Oh, Dulcie! It can’t be true. He was perfectly all right at Old Filth’s party — I mean memorial service. Who the hell are these morbid northern lunatics? I’ll e-mail Hong Kong. Where’s he staying? The Peninsula, of course,’

‘Not if he was paying the bill himself. No, Anna. It would have been the Y.M.C.A. He liked it there. Maybe I should go out there. At once.’

‘You do not stir, Dulcie. Not till we have the facts.’

‘I think I may. I think you’ve given me the urge to travel again, Anna. Oh, I do hope that at least some of my letters got there in time. I’m afraid I was very outspoken though. I apologised rather pathetically — I don’t really know why. I said too much. But actually — I don’t think one can say too much at my time of life, do you? Or ever. About love.’

‘I’m sorry, Dulcie. I just don’t believe he’s dead,’ and they drove on for many miles.

‘Life,’ said Dulcie, south of Birmingham, ‘is really ridiculous. Why were we thought worth creating if we are such bloody fools? What’s happiness? I wish I could talk to Susan like this.’

‘Well, you can’t. The idea that mothers and daughters can say everything to each other is a myth. But I know she loves you. In her way.’

‘That makes me feel better. But, Anna — why does it have to be “in her way”?’

* * *

They turned off at last into the unlikely lane off the A30 towards the Donheads and Dulcie felt herself pointing out to dear, dead Betty Feathers the tree in the hedge that looked like a huge hen on a nest. And the funny man — look he is still there! — who wanders about with a scythe. (‘He won’t go into Care you know. I can’t say I blame him. I’m going to stick on as long as I can at Privilege House, even if I have to sell the spoons.’)

‘Here we are Dulcie. I’m going to stop here and wait for the ambulance. It’s not far behind. Here it comes. Marvellous!’

‘And I’m getting out here,’ said Dulcie, ‘if you’ll get my pull-along out of the back. Yes — yes I mean it. You must go with Henry. I’ll walk to my front gate — you can see it from here, look. Don’t go on until I turn and wave.’

‘I’ll ring up in half an hour,’ said Anna. ‘And I’ll watch you in. We’ll bring you some supper. Soon. Now don’t forget, turn and wave at the gate.’

Dulcie trailed her case on wheels to the wrought-iron gate, which she was surprised to see open, and turned and waved.

Then she turned back towards the courtyard where Fiscal-Smith was standing surrounded by an enormous amount of luggage.

CHAPTER 23

It was Easter Day. St. Ague’s bells were clanking out and the steep church-path was at its most slippery and dangerous. Filth’s magnificent legacy was still being discussed. And discussed. What first? Heating, roof, floor, walls, glass, pews, path? In the meantime, in spring, the clumps of primroses would go on growing like bridesmaids’ bouquets in the nooks and crannies of the old railway-sleeper steps. Dulcie and Fred were proceeding cautiously towards the Easter Eucharist and on every side around them tulips, and daffodils and pansies graced the graves for Easter, in pots and jars and florists’ wreathes.

‘It’s like a fruit-salad,’ said Fiscal-Smith, ‘I don’t care for it. Never did. Pagan.’

‘Oh, “live and let—”,’ said Dulcie. ‘But no. That’s not very apt.’

‘I want these railway-sleepers out,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘They’re black and full of slugs. We can get good money for the Church for them. Install proper steps! There’s a church I’ve heard of in south Dorset where they’ve put in a lift and an escalator. I’ll have to get on with it.’

‘You’re a Roman Catholic, Fiscal-Smith. St. Ague’s is nothing to do with you.’

‘Wait til I’m on the parish council,’ he said. ‘Dulcie! Stand clear. Here’s that Chloe.’

‘On, on,’ he said. ‘End in sight. Doors wide open. Or we could construct a sort of poly-tunnel.’

A gold haze hung inside the church door. Lilies. Tall candles, a glinting Cope. ‘Don’t fuss — they can’t start without us,’ he said and Dulcie said ‘What rubbish.’

They had to pause again. Up in the porch they could see the gleam of one of the twins’ walking-frames and the Carer skulking round the back of a tomb-stone having a quick drag on a gauloise.

‘The gravestones are a disgrace too,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘Tipping about. I can see to that. The most useful thing I’ve learned in my long career at the construction-industry Bar is the importance of a reliable builder.’

‘I like them tipping about,’ she said.

‘I knew a man killed by a gravestone tipping about,’ said Fiscal-Smith.

‘I expect it was trying to tell him something. Just listen to Old Filth’s rooks! They’re back again.’

‘Were they ever away?’ he said.

‘Fred — the organ! It’s roaring. The Procession’s gathering up for “The fight is o’er, the Battle done”—. Come on. Wonderful! Hurry!’

‘Reminds me of old Eddie’s wedding day in Hong Kong,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you remember, Dulcie, but he chose me to be his best man.’

‘Were there no girls in your life, Fred?’

Arm in arm, they tottered.

‘Just you, Dulcie. Otherwise I’m afraid it was only trains.’

Singing mingled with the flooding thunder of the organ. ‘Calm, my dear,’ said Fiscal-Smith. ‘Calm.’

And so they made their way towards the Resurrection.

* * *

The End