The Man in the Wooden Hat

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Well, yes. There is money,” Edward agreed. “Yes.” (Reluctantly.) “The fees do begin to roll in at last. But I feel we should not be rash.”

“Decorate white throughout,” said Betty. “The electric shop knows a couple of men down the mews. Then the new place, Peter Jones in Sloane Square, it’s reopened. It’s the place for all carpets and curtains. And furniture. Do you think it’s time we had a car?”

“Good God, no!”

“It could stand in the road.”

“It would need lights at night.”

“We could have a wire through the sitting-room window. On a battery. They all do.”

“It’s against the law. It’s carrying a cable across the public highway. One day the whole street will catch fire.”

“The fruit shop van stands outside all the time. By the way, he says he’ll deliver free.”

“Since he’s only next door. .”

“And Delilah Dexter’s going to help me with the interior decoration.”

“Which one is Delilah Dexter?”

“Married to the singing butler. They know you. Leave it all to me, but I need a bank account of my own. And something to put in it.”

“That,” said Filth, “is, I imagine, usual now.”

Delilah was very decisive when the bank account was in place. The whole house was to be the very purest white, like Lady Diana Cooper’s used to be in the Thirties, though she wasn’t, Delilah found, the purest white herself. Nor was England. “And we’ll have one sitting-room wall in simulated black marble, surrounding the white marble chimney piece. And crimson and silver brocade striped curtains. The sofa and chairs are good — Edward says they came from Lancashire but can’t remember how. They can be loose-covered in pale citron linen. And the carpet should be white. Fitted to the walls. And thick and fluffy.”

“I’m not sure that Edward. .”

“Oh, and silver candlesticks with black candles on the chimney piece with a tall looking-glass behind them. It happens that I have some silver candlesticks somewhere. We used them in the Scottish Play. Now, let me go ahead.”

“The Chambers want to give us a wedding present,” said Filth three weeks later, standing outside the sitting-room door and wondering whether to remove his shoes. “This white carpet. It’s where we eat?”

“Oh, we’ll eat in the kitchen now. It’s beginning to be considered O.K..”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t eat in a kitchen.”

“It’s not like it used to be. It will be clean.”

“The Chambers,” he said, in his bony stockinged feet, “want to give us an armchair. I told them we have one coming from the East.”

“Dear love,” she said. “We’ll not see that again.”

Filth looked sad.

“What’s wrong?”

“I remember your face when I bought it. Ecstasy.”

“Oh, I was being childish. Look, tell them we want a black chair from Woollands of Knightsbridge. I’ve seen it in the window. It has cut-out holes in it like Picasso. It sprawls about. It will add a revolutionary touch.”

When the chair arrived it still had the price tag attached. Twenty-two pounds!

“Crikey,” said Betty. “Your Chambers must like you. We’d better give a party.”

“I never give parties,” said Filth. “They know me.”

“They don’t know me,” she said. “Come on. I’ll make a list. I’ve done coq-au-vin for dinner, all red gravy. It’s in the kitchen.”

“Very well,” said Filth and, later, politely, “Very good.”

“I wasn’t sure about leaving the feet in.”

Filth’s splendid face began slowly to crack into a smile. Regarding her, he began to laugh, a rare and rusty sound.

“Well, I was born in Tiensin,” she said.

“Do you know what you are, Elisabeth Feathers?”

“No?”

“You’re happy. I am making you happy.”

“Yes. I am. You are. Come on. Eat up your feet.”

She thought about it as she cleared up the unconscionable amount of washing-up engendered by the coq-au-vin, as Edward sat in the Picasso chair, his papers for the next day fanning out all around him on the white carpet. Getting down to them on his knees for a moment, he got up covered in white fluff, but said nothing.

“You are happy,” said Delilah next morning over the garden wall as Betty hung out washing. “What are those queer little tabs? Is it a variety of sanitary towel?”

“No, it’s Edward’s bands,” she said. “Barristers’ bands to tie round his neck in Court. They have to be starched every day. He used to have them sent out, which is fine in Hong Kong, but here — he says they are four pence each.”

“Aren’t you going to get a job? Did you ever have one?”

“Yes. Foreign Service once.”

“Oh. Clever, are you?”

“Yes. I am. Very. But I’m having a rest. I can’t help it, Delilah, being clever. Oh, God!” The washing line came down in the flower bed.

“But when the baby comes?”

Betty, scrabbling and disentangling Edward’s under-garments, froze.

“Well? I’m right, am I not? I can always tell. To an actress it is vital.”

Betty sat back on her heels, stared up at the flamboyant trees behind Delilah’s head. Said nothing.

“Do I speak out of turn? Most humble apologies.”

“No, no, Delilah. Not at all.”

At length Betty said, “Yes.”

“There’s a doctor down the road. He’s set up his brass plate except that it is not brass but a piece of cardboard in the window. It is one of these new Indian doctors who are coming over. I believe they’re very good, if you don’t mind them touching you.”

Betty got up and went into the house and stood in thought. She stared at the white carpet.

“That will have to go,” she said.

She looked at the long windows open to the floor and the road below, and wondered if the balcony outside was strong. She smiled and addressed the black candles from the Scottish Play and said, “I thought I couldn’t be happier and I find that I am,” and alone she set off to the doctor.

And that day she walked and dreamed, smiling lovingly at every passer-by, crossing roads when lights were red, touching heads of children. At Buckingham Palace she stood gazing through the railings like a tourist. She crossed to the steps of the monument to Queen Victoria and looked up at the ugly, cross little face. Scores of children! she thought. And madly in love.

In St. James’s Park she leaned on the railing of the bridge and watched the ducks circling busily about and every duck became a celestial duck and the bridge was made of silver, and diamonds were scattered about on the muddy path. The willows swung and sighed over the water. She walked up Birdcage Walk and across Horse Guards Parade, shabby and colourless with wartime sandbags still here and there in sagging heaps. She walked past the door of Number 10 Downing Street that needed a coat of paint, and to the river that rolled deep and fast beside her and would do so long after she was dead. And the baby too.

She walked past the end of Northumberland Avenue, past Cleopatra’s Needle, the flaking dying Savoy Hotel with its medieval-palace cellars. She walked up to the Strand, crossed over into Aldwych, up to the Temple and to Edward.

“Yes?” said the clerk, sharpish. “What name please? Mr. Feathers is in conference.”

“I’m Elisabeth Feathers. Betty Feathers. I’ve come to thank you for the chair.”

A clutch of girls behind massive typewriters all looked up at the same moment and a junior clerk, like Mr. Polly in a stiff collar, dusted a chair and brought it for her.

“We can’t disturb him,” said the clerk. “I’m so sorry. But he won’t be long. Congratulations on joining our Chambers!”

“Well, I’m not a barrister,” she said. “Maybe I will be one day. I feel I could do anything. Oh, and we’re giving a party.” As she spoke and they all sat observing her she knew that she looked beautiful. Happiness makes you beautiful. I am happy and beautiful as an angel. .

The door into the clerks’ room opened and Edward came in and stopped, astounded.

Beside him, reaching not much above Edward’s waist, stood Albert Ross.

“It’s all right,” one of the typists was saying. “Mrs. Feathers? It’s all right. You just fainted for a moment. Here. Water. All right? Sit up carefully.”

“Jet lag,” Edward was saying. “We’ve been home for weeks but we almost covered the globe on our honeymoon. Elisabeth, you’ve been working too hard at the bloody house.”

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Ross, Albert Ross. I thought I saw him standing beside you.”

“You did. He’s gone. Don’t worry, we’ll both be seeing more of him soon. There’s a big new Case in Hong Kong. Betty, sit quite still until they get us a taxi. I’ll come back with you.”

“No. Don’t fuss. I’m fine. I just couldn’t stop walking. I walked all the way from home.”

“But it’s miles! It must be four or five miles!”

“It was lovely. I just thought I’d call in.”

When Mr. and Mrs. Feathers had gone, Charles, the head clerk, went to the pub and the junior clerk for his sandwiches. The typists brought out their packed lunches and thermos flasks and cigarettes. One girl lay back in her chair. “Pregnant,” she said. “Well! Good old Filth.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

After the miscarriage of her child at four months, Elisabeth was to be in Hong Kong again with Edward and it was universally agreed that it would be excellent for her health. “Look at the colour of you,” said Delilah. “Milk-white, pinched and drawn, and staring eyes. Go back to your old friends and sit in the sun.”

“I like my new friends,” she said. “I’ve never had friends I like better. I can stand on the doorstep in my dressing gown and watch the world go by. In Hong Kong they open the hotel door for me and I wear gloves and a hat to keep my English skin milk-white. Like my grandmother.”

“But you’re not recovering. Not like us at your age. Gave thanks when it happened. Better than back streets and penny royal.”

“Don’t. Please.”

“I’m sorry, Elisabeth. Dexter and I had none and we never felt the loss. We had each other. And work.”

Elisabeth drifted in her narrow garden. She didn’t go out into the beautiful Regency crescents and squares behind Mozart Electrics towards Knightsbridge and Hyde Park, where the war-torn houses were being returned to their natural composure. Old cottages built for nineteenth-century artisans and mews houses and stables for grooms and horses round Chester Square were going freehold for a song. “We should buy one, I suppose,” said Edward. “It might be useful.” But she refused to go to look.

The streets around Victoria were full of prams. Once she took a bus to Hyde Park (“for the air,” said Delilah) and there were wild rabbits in the bushes. The Peter Pan statue was being repaired in Kensington Gardens. Unchanged, the nannies in navy-blue uniform and pudding-basin hats were striding out behind baby carriages, each bearing a spotless baby. The war seemed to have made no difference. Some perambulators had crests painted on their flanks. When Elisabeth sat down on one particular park bench, two nannies approached her and one of them said, “Excuse me, but this seat is only for titled families.” She walked the side streets after that but there was nothing that brought her comfort.

At last she said, “Well, I’d better go to Edward.”

“You had. But I’ll miss you,” said Delilah. “Next time you’re here you’ll be laughing again. I promise. And we’ll go to the music hall together and see Late Joys.”

Without saying goodbye to anyone she picked up a note Delilah had put through her letter box, looked across at the drawn curtains of the electrician who was getting up later and later now, and stepped into the taxi for the airport. She left no message for her new Jamaican cleaner, who had saved her life, because she could not face her. Even to think of her made her cry.

It had been the cleaner’s morning.

Elisabeth had, from the start, given her her own key. Singing, the young woman had come tramping up the stairs, flung open Elisabeth’s bedroom door, flung in the vacuum cleaner. Then stopped. Betty in bed. Eyes black pools. Sheets to chin.

“I’m losing the baby.”

“God a mercy! Where gone the doctor?”

“He came but he went. We’ve been expecting this. Things began to go wrong two weeks ago. He’s coming back. He didn’t think it’d happen yet. Well — I suppose he’s coming back.”

“And sir? Does sir know?”

“I phoned.”

“When you phone, ma’am?”

“An hour ago. He’s busy. He’s finishing a set of papers.”

The woman plunged at the bedside telephone. Then she was yelling from the window on the street. Then she was calling from the back window on the gardens where Delilah was regarding her flowers. Then she was boiling water. Then she was propping open the street door with the bicycle so that the ambulance men could run straight through. She had found a chamber pot with roses painted round it and set it by the bed, soothing Betty and telling her it would soon be over now.

“It’s coming in waves,” said Betty. “It’s like labour. Like they told us in the classes. Maybe I’m full-term? Maybe I’m just having a baby?”

“No, ma’am,” said the cleaner.

“Hold my hand,” said Betty.

“Give me this Chambers number. Right. Now then. Mr. Feathers, this is your cleaner speakin‘. You get you skinny arse home. Here. Now.”

A scuffle of people at the street door. The cleaner shouting down the stairs. A scream from the bed.

“Don’t look, don’t look,” Betty shouted to the cleaner. “It’s all over. It’s in the. .” and she screamed again. “Get the dog out! The bloody dog.” It was Delilah’s dog. A daily visitor. It sniffed the air. Then fled.

“It’s the dog of the rat!” And she fainted. As she fainted she saw the little sliver of life slopped wet in the chamber pot. It had beautiful miniature hands.

Edward was too late to see. And too late to see her, for she had been taken off on a stretcher. Neighbours stood about the open door watching the arrival of the doctor, and the cleaner roaring at him. Edward had walked from the tube station, bringing with him his heavy briefcase to finish his work at home.

At the hospital they wouldn’t let him see her.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A decade or so on, in their golden house in the row of judges’ houses on the Peak, protected from the world which he was paid to judge and in which Elisabeth worked all the time with her charity work, certain friends would occasionally touch on the Feathers’ childlessness. Betty, so fond of children — what a shame — etc. Betty had grown expert in her replies.

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think either of us was very child-minded. We knew nothing of children. We’d never had brothers or sisters ourselves. Poor Filth was a Raj orphan, you know. My parents died very young, too. We were ignorant.”

“You’ve had a wonderful marriage.”

“It’s not over yet, thank you.”

(Ha, ha, ha.)

“You must have been a child yourself, Betty, when you married. So young.”

“Yes,” Elisabeth always said, “I was.”

Hong Kong had embraced her again, wrapping her in its dazzle and warmth and noise: the smells of her childhood, the food of her childhood, the lack of false sentiment of her childhood. They took a furnished apartment on the Mid-levels and women friends came round for drinks and chat at lunchtime, and they went shopping with her in the blinding light of the big stores. She bought embroidered pillowcases and guest towels. She grew languid and lazy, and drifted away from Amy. Someone said that she should take up Bridge.

“Take her out of herself,” said a Scottish banker’s wife to the wife of an English judge. “Who hasn’t had a mis?”

The other woman said that she had to drive up into the New Territories and Betty could come too.

“I’m looking for a rocking horse,” she said.

“A rocking horse?”

“The grandchildren want one. We’ll get it shipped home. They’re twenty-five pounds in Harrods and these are just as good. There’s an old chap up there somewhere who makes them. They look a bit oriental but that’s part of the fun. He sells them unpainted but then we could stipulate.”

“You mean stipple them? I don’t think. .”

“No, no — we could tell him what we want. A bay or a grey. That sort of thing. I’ll ask the grandchildren in Richmond Gate what they’d like.”

“Is it tactful? Children’s toys? If we’re taking Betty?”

“Oh, come on. She’s got to get over this and have another.”

So they set off into the New Territories in a smart little car, Betty smoking Piccadilly cigarettes. The city did not disappear so much as change and become a canyon between concrete cliffs of new housing for city workers. “Further than this?” said the judge’s wife looking at the map. “I’ve never been as far as this. Oh yes, here’s that little temple. In those trees. Shall we go in? Have a breather?”

It was midday and very hot. The courtyard of the temple was silent, its surrounding trees unmoving. There was no chatter of birds. On the temple steps a dead-looking dog lay like dried-out leather, one lip lifted as if in disdain. In the courtyard in front of the steps sat two old men at a table. They wore traditional black tunics and trousers, and one had a pigtail and a wisp of beard. They were playing chess under the trees and all was black and white except for the bold red lacquer of the soaring temple. Occasionally a grey leaf detached itself from the trees and fell about the chess players like pale rain.

“Well! You’d have thought they might have stood up,” said the banker’s wife, “as we went past. And I don’t like the look of that dog. It’s ill.”

“It’s hot,” said Elisabeth. “It’s having its siesta like the whole of Hong Kong. Except us. And the chess players.”

“Well, don’t go near it. A bite could kill. Oh, look here! This is monstrous!”

The temple steps were cracked and littered with papers and Coca-Cola cans, and the portico broken. The figures of the Buddha inside, arms raised, more than life-sized, were thick with dust. At a desk to one side, presumably selling things, a heavy girl lay sprawled asleep, head on arms. Her desk was thick with dust and dust seemed to emanate from the walls and ledges high above, resting on all the carvings like snow. The girl opened her eyes and made a half-hearted move to get up.

“Look here,” said the judge’s wife. “This won’t do. What sort of impression does this make on the tourists?”

“Well, it’s very Chinese, Audrey.”

“Not New Territories Chinese. It’s all very well sending people to prison for graffiti on the new tower blocks where nobody goes except the workforce, but what about our own image here? This temple is in the guidebooks. Everyone comes.”

“There don’t seem to have been many recently,” said Elisabeth.

“I’m not surprised,” said Audrey and began to harangue the girl in execrable Cantonese. The girl drooped again, but said nothing.

“I think we should report this. I really do. Betty, have a word with Edward. I’ll speak to Ronnie. We’ll see they hear about it in Government House. It isn’t fitting.”

“But it’s their religion,” said Elisabeth. “It’s nothing to do with us. Perhaps dust doesn’t matter to Buddhists.”

“Oh, but it’s more than dust. It is slovenly.”

“And neglected,” said the banker’s wife.

“It’s theirs to neglect, I suppose,” said Elisabeth. “If they wish to.”

“Hong Kong is still ours to administer,” said Audrey, and Elisabeth walked away, handing some dollars to the girl as she passed. The girl was pregnant.

Elisabeth went down the temple steps, stopping to stroke the dog, and her eyes were full of shame and tears as she stood in the glaring courtyard looking across at the chess players.

There was now a third man pondering the board. He was standing facing her, a blond European, dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, and when he looked up and across at her she saw that it was Veneering.

The querulous voices of the women floated out from the temple behind her and she walked forward across the courtyard towards Veneering’s beckoning arm. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Come with me. There are some seats lower down in the trees,” and they dropped down to a wooded track, passing the old men by. The old men did not stir.

There was a red-painted bench and they sat down and Veneering said, “Whatever are you doing out here?”

“I’m on the way to buy a rocking horse.”

They looked at each other for a minute or more and Veneering said, “I heard that you have been ill.”

“Yes. The rocking horse is not for us. It’s for one of the others. She’s a granny.”

“Then she should have had the tact not to bring you.”

“She’s one for soldiering on. Getting over things. Following the flag.”

“She sounds like my son Harry. He’s a blimp.”

“How is he?”

Veneering smiled and said, “Skiving off cricket. Says he has a limp. I’ve told him to go running. He’ll get to Eton all right. Probably be a scholar.”

“Is he happy?”

“Oh, Harry’s always happy.”

They fell silent and Elisabeth said, “I didn’t know you played chess.”

“It’s just to keep up with Harry in the holidays.”

“Does Elsie. .?”

He gave her a look.

“Give Harry my love,” she said. “Is Elsie. .?”

“It’s Saturday. She’s at the racecourse. Elisabeth, are you going to live here always with Edward?”

“Why?”

“Because if you are I’ll have to go. I’m going to apply for a judgeship in Singapore. Hong Kong, the English Bar here — it’s too small.”

She said nothing for a long time and then they heard the women coming back down the steps of the temple and passing by them through the courtyard above.

“I want to go back to London now,” she said. “I was so happy there after the — honeymoon.”

“And Edward?”

“Who knows where Edward is happy? He belongs to Asia. He was born here.”

“So they tell me. Betty, we can’t go on. Both of us living here. You look so ill. So sad.”

“We may change.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“And I will never leave Edward. I must go. They’re shrieking about, looking for me.”

“Give me your London number.”

“It’s — we’re — in the phone book. Don’t ring me.”

She ran up the track and joined the other women in the car.

“Elisabeth! — Where were you? You look exhausted.”

“Just wandering about.”

They roared off, erratic and talkative, towards the rocking-horse maker.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Elisabeth began to be elusive. She was not seen at anything. She sat staring out to the harbour below and said very little. “You’re not picking up,” Edward said one evening at the Repulse Bay Hotel where he’d taken her for dinner, the stars and moonlight magnificent. “Betty, they’re telling me you are ill.”

“Who?”

“Well, Willy and Dulcie, among others.”

“And are you worried?”

“I want you to see a doctor. Have a check-up. You were told to go back to a hospital in three months.”

“Was I?”

“You were. When they let you travel out here with me, you promised to see someone. They said the medicine here is very good. Well, we all know it is.”

“Oh, I’m just low.”

“I know. You are bound to be. It will take time. They told me you would need — er — cherishing.”

“And do you cherish me, Edward?”

“Well, I try. You frighten me these days, Elisabeth. I — well, I still can’t”—the stutter threatened—“quite get over my luck in having you. All the time.”

“Edward, how sweet!”

He looked at her. Watched for a sneer. Betty — sneering!

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m scared of losing you,” he said.

One day, while he was at work, she rang up Amy who said, “Come over.”

“Could you come here, Amy? It’s not easy for me,” and Amy soon — though not as soon as she would have done once — arrived, and without a child in tow. They sat in Elisabeth’s smart sitting room with drinks.

Amy said, “You’re drinking whisky.”

“Yes.”

“In the morning.”

“Yes. It’s for the pain.”

“What pain?”

“Well, if you want to know, I’m bleeding. Most of the time.”

“You’re what?! Great heavens, I’m taking you straight to the hospital. Now!”

“Oh, it’s all right. I’ve always had trouble. For years after the Camp. There was nothing for years. Nobody menstruated. Then with me it began to go the other way. Embarrassing. Scarcely stopped. One of the pleasures of pregnancy was the relief from it.”

“Does Edward know?”

“Of course not. I don’t think he’s ever heard of menstruation. We sleep apart now, mostly.”

“But someone. .”

“No. I’d probably have told Delilah. But you know we don’t talk about it, do we? Look at novels.”

“Be damned to novels, you’re seeing a consultant.”

“Well, let’s keep it from Edward.”

“Not on your nelly,” and she rang Edward to say she had made an appointment with a mainland-Chinese gynaecologist. Edinburgh-trained.

“Ah, Edinburgh-trained. That sounds very good, Edinburgh.” (The Scot speaking, though he had never been to Scotland.) “I perhaps should go with her?” he said faintly.

“I don’t want him,” said Elisabeth.

But the consultant thought otherwise and, after X-rays and examinations, telephoned Edward to tell him that he was to come with his wife to the hospital and bring with him a decent bottle of wine.

He told Edward that Elisabeth needed surgery. There was every sign of trouble. He believed that a complete hysterectomy might be necessary.

“But I’m not even thirty. I’m childless. No!”

“You’ve put your body — no, history has put your body — through hard times. You were half starved in the Internment Camp. And I believe you lost your parents?”

“Yes. It was all jolly rotten.” (Who is this speaking through my lips?) “But I’m basically strong as a pit pony. Well, I look like a pit pony, don’t I?”

Nobody laughed.

“Think about it. I can do the operation here or I can send you to the best people in London. No, no — not Edinburgh. Too far from home. Your friends will be in London.”

“But Edward’s in the middle of an Arbitration.”

“Think about it. But not for long. You should have it done now.”

Edward said, clearing his throat in his embarrassed and famous roar, “Are you suggesting this might be cancer?”

“It’s possible. I’ll leave you to talk it over. Oh, dear — oh, hold on. .”

Edward was gripping the edge of the doctor’s desk and sliding to the floor.

“For heaven’s sake!” Betty was holding him up in her arms and glaring at the doctor. “Open the wine,” she said. “Have you a corkscrew? Then you shouldn’t have told us to bring it. Water, please.”

Amy was breastfeeding the newest child when Elisabeth arrived, the previous baby now crawling about and heaving itself up on supporting objects such as Mrs. Baxter’s difficult leg. Mrs. Baxter was deep in a missal.

“Don’t worry about her,” said Amy. “She’s not listening. Let me think.”

Elisabeth took the child on her lap. “All I need to decide,” she said, “is whether to get it done here or in London.”

“Oh, London,” said Amy. “No question. You’d be O.K. here but they’re better with Chinese than European cancers. There are different treatments. Look — go home at once, have it done, and let Edward fly back to see you when the thing adjourns. When is it? Within a month?”

“Yes. He’s in a bit of a state. He doesn’t speak.”

“Well, he’ll be in a worse state if you go into hospital here. He’ll have to be coming to see you every day from the other side of Kowloon. Maybe for two or three weeks. He’ll concentrate better if you’re far away.”

“D’you think so? Edward can always concentrate.”

“Yes, I do think so. And we’ll all look after him.”

“You mean I just buy myself an air ticket and turn up in the Westminster Hospital all by myself?”

“Certainly. Why ever not? The bloke here will send them your medical records. What would you do if you weren’t married? You’d get on with it by yourself.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Baxter, waking up. “You must now be the Bride of Christ.”

“I always think that sounds blasphemous. And silly,” said Elisabeth.

“Well, Christ would say get on with it. Trust me,” said Amy. “Think of the woman with the issue of blood for twelve years. Trust. You’ll be rewarded.”

“Reward?” said Mrs. Baxter. “Is there any reward? I’m beginning to doubt it.”

“Oh, Mrs. Baxter, do shut up.”

“I am lonely and bored,” intoned Mrs. Baxter. “Reassure me, Good Lord.”

“Mrs. Baxter!”

“And inform me about it. Is there any reward? I’m beginning to doubt it. Poor child, poor child,” she said. “And scarcely left the altar.”

Elisabeth and Amy began to laugh. “Wherever did you get that awful verse? This isn’t a tragedy.”

“Not yet,” said Mrs. Baxter.

It was from the moment of laughing that Elisabeth knew that she would recover. The knowledge that she would never have children lay deeper and she did not, presently, disturb it. Taking one thing at a time.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The haemorrhaging that had been heavy but monthly had become fortnightly and then almost continuous so that she travelled to London first class. She spent many of the fourteen hours’ flight in the aircraft toilet to the distress of other passengers.

On landing, things let up for a while. The car that Edward had ordered was waiting for her and she was back in the embrace of the little house in Ebury Street within two hours of landing. Flowers had been sent by Edward and arranged on the black table by Delilah, with trailing leaves and swatches of blood-red roses falling like a ballerina’s bouquet. There was food in the fridge, a bottle of wine, the bed made up. She rang the hospital, which expected her the day after tomorrow. “You need to settle after the journey,” said the Almoner. “And well done.”

The phone rang and it was Edward. The familiar lovely voice, the familiar understatements. Case going well. Missing her. Desmond and Tony taking him out to dinner. Very civil of them. Amy had rung. He had forgotten to ask Betty if she had enough money.

“Yes. And I have forgotten to remind you that before long, I shall be thirty and come into my inheritance.”

He was not interested and only said several times how much he felt he should be with her. But his voice did not convince.

The haemorrhaging came and went. She had begun to get used to it. She’d be glad to be rid of the whole beastly business. Blood, blood. Women and blood. The “blood line.” Lady Macbeth. The phone rang again and it was Delilah next door. Should she come round? “No. Sleep’s what I want,” said Elisabeth lying down on the bed.

But sleep is no part of jet lag, and blood and sleep are not good bedfellows. “Oh, dear God,” she prayed in the beautiful plain bedroom with its lime-washed walls. “Maybe I’d better ask them if I can go in now.” Tears came. “Dear God — oh, it sounds like a letter — dear God, I can’t suffer any more. No child will come out of this. I’m suffering more than if it was labour, and nothing at the end of it.”

The phone by the bedside rang and it was Veneering, in Hong Kong. “You went Home then. Someone said so. Thank God. Look — Elisabeth, there is a very bad thing.”

“What? Edward? Not Edward, oh, God, no. No, we just spoke.”

“It’s Harry. My son, Harry,” and the line fell silent. At last, when it revived, Veneering was in mid-sentence: “. . operate tonight.”

“I missed that. The phone cracked up. What’s happening?”

“Harry is very seriously ill. They’ve just had the X-ray of his leg. His femur. He’s been limping. .” The voice faded again.

“Yes? Terry?”

“The school had him to the local hospital and the X-rays show. .” Emptiness again. Then “show a hole in the femur the size of a hen’s egg. The leg is on a thread. It’s about to break. They want to operate tonight.”

“Tonight! Tonight? Where?”

“In south-west London. It’s not far from you. It’s a small hospital and there’ll be a bed for you there. In Harry’s room. It’s the hospital this man likes — he’s said to be the best surgeon in the world: but they always say that — it’s where he likes to operate. I’ll give you the number. The Housemaster’s taking Harry in now and he’ll stay until you come. He said he’d stay all the time, but was there somebody closer? I can’t get there until tomorrow. I’m taking the first plane out. Will you go? Just be there during the operation?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a miracle you’re back in London. It was just the slightest hope. I had to ring. Yet I was sure you were in Hong Kong.”

“Tell me exactly where and when. I’ll phone the school now.”

“He loves you, Betty.”

“And Elsie—?”

“Oh, she’s coming over, too. The day after me.”

“I’ll go at once. I’ll try to be there ahead of him.”

“I love you, Betty.”

Ordering the taxi, scrabbling in her still-packed luggage for night things — medication, sanitary towels, sponge bag — she found that the haemorrhaging had stopped and she no longer felt ill. She thought of the woman in the Gospel whose issue of blood of twelve years had stopped as she touched Christ’s garment so that he felt faint with the love she had drained from Him. Christ understood women. He romanticised nothing.

She arrived at the little hospital near Barnes Common ahead of Harry, and was told to wait in the room they were to share until he went down to theatre. Someone came in and asked her to go to see the surgeon who was standing in his consulting room examining X-rays, slotting them up on a wall against lights.

“Ah, come in and look at these, Mrs. Veneering. Good afternoon.”

“No, I’m not a relation, just a close friend. I’m sorry. I’m a bit squeamish. I can’t look. The father will soon be here. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be squeamish. By tomorrow this X-ray will be far out of date.”

He flung down into a pedestal chair that began to revolve, this way and that. The music goes around and around, she thought. But no, it does not. The end is silence.

The surgeon stretched out his legs and rested his heels on a window ledge, the back of his head towards her. They both stared at the sun setting over Barnes Common.

“Mrs. Veneering”—she thought: Oh, let it go—“Mrs. Veneering, we shan’t know that this is cancer until I have seen it with my eyes, but when I do, I shall know at once. The cyst seems to have sharp sides to it. Cancer usually has a woolly edge. A turbulent look. I believe that there is just a hope that this is not cancer and if not I shall go on at once to fill the cavity with bone chips which we’ll take from another part of Harry’s body where we hope they will coagulate. The cavity is very big. The operation to fill it will take most of the night. The longer you wait the more hopeful you can be. If I come to see you quickly it will mean that it is bad news and we shall be stitching him up at once. Then you and I and Mr. Veneering will talk together about the next step.”

“You mean there might be an amputation?”

“Oh, we won’t talk about that now.”

“If it is cancer, how long will Harry live?”

“About eighteen months.”

“Does Mr. Veneering know?”

“Yes. We spoke. But you will know the diagnosis before he does, as we are not able to reach him during the flight from Hong Kong. I want you, please, to stay here until he comes.”

“Well, yes. Of course.”

“You’ll be in Harry’s room and we’ll see that you have supper. Don’t drink any alcohol. It does not help.”

“Thank you.”

They shook hands and she said to him, “How do you manage?” and his glance moved away from her and he began to straighten the pages on his desk.

“How do you manage?” he said. “As a parent?”

When she got back to the room with the two beds there was Harry sitting waiting with his Housemaster from school. He was bright-eyed and making jokes, and when she came in he leapt to his feet and flung his arms round her neck.

“If it isn’t Mrs. Raincoat! Why ever are you here?”

“Your father sent me my orders.”

“He does have a cheek, my dad. I’m glad you’re here, though. There’s a great do on about my leg.”

“He’s worried.”

“He’s crazy. I’m fine. I mean, they’re not going to cut it off. Goodbye, sir. Thank you for bringing me in. Sorry. I’m fine with Mrs. Raincoat.”

“Your old nanny?”

“No,” said Elisabeth. “But don’t be embarrassed. It’s been said before.”

“The school will be in touch all the time. You have the number?”

“I’ll stay until Harry’s father arrives.”

“Goodbye then, Veneering. Good luck. We’ll be saying our prayers for you in Assembly.”

“It must be bad, then,” said Harry. “That’ll make them sit up. I’ll be playing cricket again next season, sir. That’ll disappoint them.”

“He got out pretty quick, didn’t he? Was he glad to see you! Hey, Raincoat, what’s it all about?”

“We’ll know in the morning. Your father will be here. He’s flying over now and I’ll be standing by till he arrives.”

“Staying here? In the hospital? You must all be nuts.”

“Yes. I am, anyway. Now, be quiet and say your prayers. Here are a lot of people and a trolley, and they’ll take you down to start things off any minute.”

“They’re coming to take me away, tra-la,” said Harry. “Goodbye. See you tomorrow, Raincoat.”

She left him being told to take off his shoes and she walked down the long green corridor towards the glass doors and the canteen and the trivial world. She took some food and coffee and sat down with it and looked at it. Then she got up and walked out of the hospital into the Upper Richmond Road where the people were tramping or driving or walking or biking about, and the grit was blowing in their faces. When she got back to the room it was empty and Harry’s bed had only a sheet on it. Hers was turned down neatly for the night. The hospital was quiet and she felt light, without sensation or presence, and sat down on the basket chair that faced the door.

A nurse put her head round it, her face trying to disguise her pity with a smile that showed huge teeth. There was a row of the ugly new biro pens along her starched top pocket.

“There you are, Mrs. Veneering. All right? Harry is in theatre now and I expect you’d like a cup of tea.”

“No, thank you,” and she sat staring at the closed door asking God for the operation to be the long one. The long, exhausting, difficult, delicate one that would ensure that he would live for more than eighteen months.

“If I come to speak to you within the first hour,” he had said, “that will be bad news.”

Dear God. Please do not let me hear him coming within the first hour. Please let me wait all night long before I hear the sound of his feet. Tell me then how to bear the waiting. She listened and in minutes heard the sound of his feet.

It was at that moment, very early morning in Kai Tak, that Amy woke up and began thinking about Elisabeth. She should now be safely in London, resting from the journey before going into the hospital on Wednesday.

Should she ring? All of three pounds? And it might upset Bets if she thought that Amy was nervous about her. Amy the strong? Or it might wake her up just as she’d got to sleep after a long flight.

But yes. Amy would ring.

In Ebury Street, opposite Mozart Electrics, the phone rang and rang and was not answered. Well, then, Amy would ring Edward before he left the Peninsular Hotel for the Arbitration and send love, and hope that all was well. Edward said: Yes, all was perfectly well. He had spoken to Betty just after she arrived home and she was going to be resting all day and tomorrow. Perhaps it would be best not to bother her, for she had sounded perfectly normal. Yes — a very good journey. Thank you, Amy!

Hmmh!

Then Isobel Ingoldby rang Amy in Kai Tak. Isobel was in Singapore but she knew all about Elisabeth. She’d been trying to telephone her in London, but no reply. Had Amy any news?

“No. And it’s odd she doesn’t answer,” said Amy who had tried again. “What about the neighbour? Shall I ring her? She’s called Da-lilah Dexter, if you can believe. I could get her through International Enquiries.”

“I have her number,” said Isobel. “If I don’t ring you back it means that all’s well.”

In half an hour Isobel rang Amy back. “The Dexter saw her leaving the house just after she arrived home. She had an overnight bag with her and got into a taxi. She didn’t say goodbye to anyone and she left the front door wide open. No, she isn’t at the Westminster Hospital. I rang it. She’s expected there tomorrow. Look, I shouldn’t worry. She’ll be staying with a friend or something.”

“I might just ring Edward again. I could go round to the Arbitration,” said Amy. “Or I could try to speak to the solicitor, the demon dwarf. He knows everything. Albert Ross. He’s probably sitting in the Arbitration rooms.”

Isobel said, “Well, be careful. He doesn’t like Betty. He’s bonded to Teddy with hoops of steel. He’s frightening.”

“To hell with that,” said Amy and left a message at the Arbitration for Albert Ross to ring her at lunchtime. Ross did not ring.

She rang again and said that she was unhappy about her friend — her school-friend — Mrs. Feathers — who seemed to have disappeared from her London address. Ross did not call back.

At last she lost patience, phoned Nick to come home from work, left all the children except the baby with Mrs. Baxter, and turned up outside the conference room of the hotel where the Arbitration was being held and marched in.

The room was empty.

She sat down for a minute in the cigarette smoke. There were ashtrays and a few scattered pens, and a disquiet in the air. Then she flung off again to the hotel’s reception desk.

“They have adjourned,” said the concierge. “The Counsel for the contractors has had to fly suddenly to London. Illness. A child.”

“Good heavens! Mr. Feathers? But I spoke to him today.”

“No, Mr. Feathers is for the architects. This is Mr. Veneering. Would you like to speak to Mr. Feathers’s instructing solicitor? He could tell you more. He is somewhere about.”

“No. Thank you. It’s rather confusing. This is all to do with Mrs. Feathers. It’s nothing to do with Mr. Ross.”

“Ah, but it is,” said Ross behind them, and she turned and saw that he was seated in the foyer, his legs stuck out before him showing the soles of his tiny feet, his great head a sort of centrepiece to the mound of orchids and potted palms arranged on the marble floor. His hat lay beside him.

Ross did not look up from his playing cards as she walked across to him, the baby on her hip, and, still without looking at her, he said, “Mrs. Feathers has gone off with Mr. Veneering. Mr. Feathers does not know. I know, but no one else knows. I shall see that the matter is resolved. Mr. Feathers will never know, and if you or Miss Isobel Ingoldby ever let him know, I will break you. Is that clear? I will break you both.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

If I come to speak to you within the first hour of the operation,” the surgeon had said, “That will be to bring bad news. I have to make this clear. You do understand?”

“Yes.”

It was hardly half an hour since they had brought her tea and told her that the operation had begun when she heard the swing doors slam-bang at the end of the corridor and feet running.

Of course the feet need not be his. Harry could not be the only patient in this silent little hospital. The feet were running. It could be anyone. But the feet stopped outside her door. And at the same moment she realised that the feet had been running. Nobody runs to break bad news. The feet had been running!

She stood up and a man opened the door clumsily, pushing it with his shoulder. He had a turban of dark green cloth round his head and a green apron tied about with tapes. He was holding up his hands and arms at right-angles from the elbow as if he were a priest at votive offering. Or maybe a janitor. There was a smell of disinfectant.

The eyes, however, were the surgeon’s eyes, very bright. He said, “Mrs. Veneering, all is well. All will be perfectly well,” and was gone.

All she could think was: Now he will have to take all that off and scrub up again before he can go back to do the chips of bone. And she sat down again and looked at the closed door.

She sat on and on until someone suggested she changed into night things and went to bed. “I shan’t sleep,” she said, but slept almost at once.

When she woke she was in familiar trouble, gathering her towel and sponge bag and clothes, finding a bathroom. Returning, two solid young nurses were looking down at her sheets with amazement. In shame — she could not say one word to them — she went along to the duty nurse outside, and the duty nurse smiled at her.

It was the toothy nurse. “I can see into theatre from my little room,” she said. “The lights were on all night. It must have been nine hours! I thought, “Oh, that poor boy, he’s still in there. But he’s alive. They’ll get him back.”’

“It’s not, after all, cancer, nurse. Did you know?”

“Oh, we all know. Word went round. All round the hospital. We’ve all been thinking of you.”

“Thank you.”

“Mr. Veneering’s just arrived. They’re telling him the good news downstairs.”

“Then,” said Elisabeth, “I’ll go. I’m not Harry’s mother, nurse, but I know his father very well. They’ll both be all right now. They won’t need me.”

At the entrance to the hospital she asked the desk to get her a taxi and kindly ring the Westminster Hospital — she gave them the correct extension — to say that she was coming in this morning, at once.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Her hysterectomy, the nurses told her the next day, had been “very necessary.” ‘There were pre-cancerous cells,” said the surgeon. “They were in one ovary and the womb is gone too, but we have left you with the other ovary so that you won’t suffer a premature menopause.”

“Thank you.”

“We’re really delighted that you came to us so quickly. And just in time. You are young and strong, Mrs. Feathers. Is your husband about the hospital today?”

“He’s about his work on the other side of the world.”

“Brave girl. Brave girl.”

(Oh, shut up, she thought. Meet Amy.)

“And he will soon be coming back? You are going to need a lot of care. Have you any children who could help?”

“No. I am not yet thirty.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

Yesterday when they returned her to the ward after the operation she had partly woken and found that she had changed sex and century. She was a man, a soldier being tipped into some sort of mass grave. She smelled the wet earth of France. When she woke much later there was sunlight all round her body, which was neatly arranged under a thick white sheet. Bouquets and clumps of flowers were all around her. I am on my catafalque. And I have woken up. How embarrassing for them. I will sit up very slowly in the middle of the service as they sing me out. Someone pushed her down against a pillow and, when she woke next, Filth was sitting by the bed, reading The Times. He glanced across, saw her open eyes and smiled, stretching to her hands and kissing her fingers and wrists.

“You came,” she said.

And he said, “Of course. I’m going back on Monday. Short adjournment.”

“You’ll kill yourself. Jet lag—” and dropped asleep.

When she next woke he was asleep in the chair and she watched his peaceful face.

“He is open as the day.”

“What?” he said. “What?”

“You are as open as the day.”

“Why should a day be open? I’ve often wondered. Some days are sealed off, thanks be. I don’t want to open up the day of your operation again.”

“I thought of you. Now and then.”

“Needless to say, the other side was to have been Veneering, but he bunked off back to London. Left his junior, a useless fellow, and I ran him into the earth in double quick time. I got here for breakfast. Saw two moons rise.”

“Shall you see two more rise, going back?”

“I didn’t come here to look at moons.” He rested his head against their clasped hands on the bed sheet.

She said, “I’m sorry, Edward. No children now,” and slept.

She woke again and he said, “D’you know, I never really wanted any children. Only you.”

When she woke next he had gone, and when she left the hospital two full weeks later it was with Isobel Ingoldby.

She had found Isobel standing at the foot of the bed, tall as a camel and eating a pear.

“Home,” she said. “I’m taking you.”

“Oh, Lizzie. Lizzie-Izz.”

“Wrap yourself up. It’s turning towards autumn. Get this on over your sweater.” It was a brown and gold pashmina, warm and light and smelling of spices.

The nurses were kind, full of congratulations about how well she had done. They settled her into a taxi and into the world again.

“But we’re not going towards Pimlico! Lizzie, we’ve missed the roundabout.”

“Yes.”

“Izz, why aren’t we going to Ebury Street?”

“Because we’re going to the Temple.”

“That’s wrong. That’s Eddie’s Chambers. It’s wrong. We have this flimsy lovely house in Ebury Street.”

“Talk later,” said Isobel. “I just do what I’m told. Here’s the Embankment and we drive under the gateway and — my goodness! Teddy’s certainly made his mark. The Inner Temple! Here’s your new apartment. Gor-blimey, first floor looking at the river.”

“But where’s all our. . Where’s my house? Our white carpet? Wedding presents? What’s Eddie been up to? The black chair?”

“I’ve no idea. There seems to be plenty still to unpack. There’s a huge red chair, none too clean. Superb rooms! However did he get them? Rooms in the Temple are like gold. Oh, well, I suppose he is made of gold now. Mr. Midas.”

Elisabeth walked to the window and looked across the river at the rising post-war blocks of cement.

She said, “What’s happened to them? They’ll have got bread and milk in for me, and ordered the papers. They’ll worry.”

“Hush. Too soon.”

“Tell me.”

“No. Well, oh, all right. Ebury Street is being pulled down. The hospital knew but didn’t want to tell you. You said it was fragile. All the bombing. .”

“Pulled down! No! Not in three weeks.”

“No. Not yet. But they’ve started demolition at the Victoria end. They said — your pals—“Don’t let her come back.” They’ve mostly been rehoused already.”

“What about Mozart Electrics? Across the road?”

“Someone told me — I went round there — that he’s gone into a home. Very crippled.”

“And Delilah? And the butler? And the greengrocer?”

“The greengrocer’s gone to Lowestoft. I found the building firm. Teddy had organised the furniture to come here to the Temple and they gave me a key to have a look around. I collected your post off the floor.”

Elisabeth stood watching the river for some silent minutes and said, “Well, he’s taken everything from me now.”

“Oh,” said Isobel. “No! Poor Teddy! And working like hell.”

“He could have told me.”

“He was told not to upset you. The Chambers know. They’ll be coming. He arranged everything, except me. He doesn’t know we know each other — remember?”

“Yes. But I forget why.”

“Don’t think too hard. Listen, you’re going to have help here — shopping and ironing and so on.”

“You are crowing!”

“Why? Crowing? Me?”

“Because I shouldn’t have married him. You said so.”

“God’s truth!” shouted Isobel. “I traipse round builders, I look up neighbours, I get your post, I fetch you home. .”

Elisabeth turned back to the river and said, “Had they started the demolition?”

“Yes. The bank on the corner has closed and the little paper shop, and there’s scaffolding up. At the back in those gardens. .”

“Yes?”

“They were chopping down the trees. Listen, get Teddy home and stop crying. You’re menopausal.”

“I can’t. I’m not. I’m rational and sad,” she said.

“Then go off with bloody Veneering! I can’t do more,” and Isobel slammed away.

Elisabeth walked to another window in the new lodgings, to try to see Lizzie cross the Temple yard towards the alley to the Strand and the Law Courts. It was very quiet in the new apartment that was presumably now her home. She saw that there were flowers in cellophane with cards pinned to them, a pile of letters on a desk. She looked in the one small bedroom with two single beds, fitted end to end. A midget kitchen and a bathroom made for giants, with a bath on feet. And silence. Silence from the corridor outside and the scene below, and from the uncaring river.

She thought: I’m on an island in an empty sea. I’m cast away. Her legs felt shaky and she sat down trying to remember that being alone was what most of the world found usual. She thought that in childhood she’d been in crowded Tiensin, a crowd of Chinese servants day and night. In the Shanghai Camp, people and people, a slot in a seething tent; my hand always held by my mother, or riding on my father’s back. The crowded ship to England, the crowded London school, the crowds of students at her all-women Oxford college, the return to Hong Kong and the infrastructure of Edward’s world. Now this solitude. Double-glazed silence. I suppose I must just wait. It’s the anaesthetic still inside me. I have memory so I must still be here. I have nobody, but I have memory. There was a knock on the door.

But the door of the apartment seemed a mile away and she could not move. She stared at the door and willed it to open of its own accord and after a moment it did, and Albert Ross walked in.

“No! Get out! Go away!”

He took off the broad brown hat and sat down on the red chair and looked at her from across the room.

“Go away. I hate you.”

He twirled his shoes, regarded them and, without looking at her, said, “I’ve come to apologise. I dealt you the Five of Clubs. It was a mistake. I seldom make a mistake and I have never apologised for anything before, being of a proud nature.”

She watched him.

“The Five of Clubs means ‘a prudent marriage not for love.’”

She watched him.

“I am very much attached to your husband. I saw only your faithlessness. It affected the pack. I was wrong.”

“You were always wrong. You stole his watch once.”

He became purple in the face with rage and said, “Never! He gave it to me when I had nothing. It was all he possessed. He trusted me. It was to save my life.”

“You are cruel!”

“Here is a telephone number you must ring. It will be to your advantage.”

“I don’t need your help.”

He sighed and put out a hand to his hat and she thought, He may have a knife. He could kill me. He is a troll from a stinking pit.

But he brought out of the hat only the pack of cards, looked at it, then put it away.

“This is a transition time for you. You still don’t see your way. This telephone number is from someone who cares about you. Her name is Dexter,” and he put a visiting card on the table and was gone.

A dream, she thought.

She did not move, but slept for a minute or perhaps an hour, then crossed to the table where there was no visiting card. She searched everywhere, under the table, even along the passage outside the door. Nothing.

Then the telephone rang and a voice said, “Might I have the honour of addressing Mrs. Edward Feathers?”

“Delilah!”

“Aha,” said the familiar phantom voice. “Seek and ye shall find! I am speaking from the West Country. From Dorsetshire. England.”

“Dorset?”

“You will remember that we have our country estate in Dorset? Well, it is, by some, designated ‘country cottage.’ Now that we have been cast out of our London home we have taken refuge in it.”

“But where exactly, Delilah?”

“Well, we are not exactly on the estate, but some fifty miles away in the fine city of Bath where mercifully Dexter has been granted God’s gift of The Admirable Crichton.”

“Who—?”

“The comedy of that name written in honour of the immortal figure of the English butler. Second only to the incomparable Jeeves. Five performances a week plus matinées, good cheap theatrical lodgings thrown in. Alas, however, he is in at the final curtain every night and grows a little wearier each day.”

“Oh, Delilah!”

“But we find ourselves affluent, well-housed, awaiting the compensation for our London home. Our country property is deserted. We hear that you are recovering from surgery and our little empty dacha in the woods awaits you, if you would like to stay in it. For ever if you like.”

“Like to!”

“It is yours to use as long as you like. I am in touch with dear Eddie’s clerk. He will make all the arrangements. Why do you weep?”

“With joy and disbelief. Oh, Delilah, it’s like a musical!”

“There is, I fear, no music at our dacha,” she said, “except the music of the rooks and the morning chorus of a myriad other species of feathered creature; the pizzicato of the rain and the crashing tympani and singing strings of the west wind. There’s no electricity, dear, no running water and no abominable telephone.”

“Oh, it’s not abominable! How else could we be talking?

“Milk and bread are delivered daily to the lane — a little climb up from the back of the house. Also the daily papers. You can give them lists of groceries and you will pay in the basket provided before you go home. No one will disturb you. Dexter has a splendid theatrical library, if a trifle damp, and there is the evening softness of lamplight.”

“Delilah — I’m a bit potty at the moment. I’ve had surgery and I’m still full of anaesthetic. I’ve just had a hallucination. Is this another?”

“Hallucination, dear? No. Hallucination demands vision. Nor am I an aural manifestation. The return fare from Waterloo to Tisbury Junction is modest and you will be met. Contact Eddie’s clerk. Bring a wrap for the early mornings so that you can walk in the dew. And an insect repellent. You will be quite alone.”

“Are we going to meet there, Delilah — dear, beloved Delilah? I’m so bloody lonely.”

“Very good for you, dear. And I hardly think we’ll meet. My duties to Dexter are very onerous. He sends his love. We shall possibly meet again one day, of course. These things may happen. I don’t suppose”—her voice trailed away to nothing, then came back like a thread on a lute string—“you’ve heard anything about the gardens? They haven’t cut them down, have they? My London forest trees?”

She said, “No, no. I’m sure not,” and the line clicked shut.

But the phone number? She couldn’t call Delilah back. She must telephone Chambers. She must think of timetables on the Southern Railway. She must make lists of supplies. She must phone Edward. She must think of supper.

In the fridge she found milk and food, and on the table yet another bouquet of flowers from Edward and a note from the Inn with the times of Sunday services at the Temple church. Then the phone began to ring again and again, friends from near and far. The world grew smaller and smaller and so crammed with kind enquiries that she left the receiver off. Kind and rowdy, the city surged up to her from the river and the Embankment and the Strand, rich and glorious. Tomorrow she would be coping with rooks.

Then she saw, in the mail on the desk, a packet from Hong Kong lying beside the cards and she took it across the room and slowly and carefully opened it. Inside was a short double string of pearls with a diamond clasp and a note saying, He is better. He will live. Return these at your peril. For ever V. PS: Where did you go?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was a train ride of pure celebration. A train ride like childhood’s. Edward’s Chambers saw her on to the platform and right into the reserved seat for Tisbury Junction. The clerks gave her chocolates and told her that there would be a taxi waiting. At Tisbury she climbed out upon the single-track platform and sat on a seat in the sun and, like an old film, a man came along and said in a country voice, “Taxi, ma’am? Let me take your case.”

He drove along the lanes and she saw a tree above a hedge like a hen on a nest, then a long stone wall, and in a gap in the wall she looked down upon a dell and a massive stone chimney pot attached to something unseen. The driver and the bag went ahead down the slope until they were on a level with the chimney pot and looking at an almost vertical track below and a thatched roof.

“I’ll never get the case down there. This must be the back. There must be a front way somewhere.”

“What shall we do?”

“I’ll have a try.”

He trundled and slithered, Elisabeth following, and they arrived at a paved yard and a back door. She paid him.

“You O.K. here, miss?”

“Yes,” she said, liking the “miss.” “Thank you,” and leaving the luggage in the grass she went looking for the front door where she had been told there would be a key under a mat. She could find neither door nor key and the silent valley beyond watched. In an outhouse which was an earth closet there was a huge black iron key and she thought she would try it in the back door, and set off further round the gentle, sleeping house and came to a front door with a Yale key in it, waiting to be turned. Inside were dark rooms and the smell of damp books. She saw furniture under dust sheets, a paraffin lamp with a cloudy globe, a box of matches alongside and a fresh loaf on the table.

It was not yet dusk and so, after standing a kettle on a black stove that seemed to be warm, she walked outside again into the garden.

It was a glade cut out from woodland. The stretch of grass that led to more faraway trees was not so much lawn as meadow where vanished trees were waiting somewhere to reclaim their home. She felt the stirring of life under the grass and saw spirals of bindweed standing several feet high seeking some remembered support. They swayed as if they were growing under water. There was nothing more, only the dwindling path, the dwindling light, the pearly quiet sky.

She returned to the house, removed the kettle, found a staircase behind a cupboard door, reached a bedroom with wooden walls and smelling of cedar trees. She opened the window and looked at the glimmer of the evening and without even a drink of water, without locking the house or turning a key or taking off her coat, she lay down on the patchwork quilt and listened to the end of the day. Soon all the small sounds stopped, and she slept.

It was an eerie dawn, blowy and cloudy, and she had no idea where she was. When she remembered, she listened for the rooks but they were silent. She was afraid for a while that yesterday’s journey belonged to someone else. Then, rolling from the bed, walking to the window, she saw that this was a strange place but in some way she knew it. The window looked at a wall of vegetation so close to the glass that she could stretch and touch if she opened it. She saw the roof of a shed that must be the earth closet. Yet she had remembered golden space.

And then she remembered that she had chosen the tiny back bedroom to sleep in. The other room with its mighty feather bed had seemed too intimately a part of the Dexters’ lives to disturb. She went downstairs, dragged the black kettle across the wood-burning stove until it was over the hotplate — still hot. More wood was needed and when she looked, there it was. She found a tin teapot and a tea caddy that said it was a present from Blackpool. A jug of milk stood in a bowl of water on the pantry floor. Across the top, it had a muslin cloth weighted down with little coloured beads. The pantry stones were cool under her bare feet.

She carried her tea with her towards a door — the cottage was shadowy — which she pushed open to reveal the stretch of meadow-lawn cleared from the forest. The trees around were wildly tossing and the grass was wet with dew. A fox stood still in the middle of the space, staring at her with black eyes, interested in an alteration of the scene. A dead bird hung down heavy and soft on either side of the fox’s mouth. It turned tiptoe on its black feet and was gone. Then the wind dropped and lemon-coloured light soaked over the garden and the river spread wide to the horizon where above the far trees a triangle of hilltop was crowned with a knot of trees like a garland.

It was warmer now. She sat outside on the shabby wooden balcony and drank the tea. She thought of her new London home that commanded a view of a thousand nameless lives. Here she was alone of her kind. She felt perfectly happy, no more lonely than the fox, or the rabbits she began to see in the bracken, or the strutting pheasant which appeared now at her feet. No telephone would ring, no car stop on the road above, she would hear no human voice.

Amy, in her Kai Tak slum, would say, “Betty, this will not do. You need a cause.” Elisabeth thought of the hollow-cheeked crowds in the stinking streets. The old man who sat with no legs, his crutches splayed across his patch of the street, breaking open crustaceans, chanting the prices, cracking the shells. Urine in the pools. “We must forget ourselves, Bets. Our Englishness.” Amy had not been in the Camps.

She sat on, looking towards the topknot garland of the next-door village and saw to one side of her, higher up than the Dexter trees, a flicker. There must be a building up there, and her heart plunged. No — too dense. An illusion. She looked back down her vista of meadow, and two children were walking hand in hand. They paid her no attention and slipped back into the tall grass. Later, a young man crossed from one side of the garden to the other but further away. He was lean, unkempt, dark-skinned, alert and self-contained. Some sort of Gypsy. He was swinging something like an axe and did not look towards the house. She heard the distant sound of the car bringing her groceries on the road above. The rooks began their civic racket. I must decide what to do with the day, she thought. But not yet.

On the balcony was a long wooden chair with a footrest and padded cushions, and she thought: That will be damp, but lay down and found it warm and sweet-smelling, and she fell asleep again.

All week she stayed alone in the house and garden, collecting groceries from the top of the steep slope, leaving money and details of supplies for the next day. A can of soup, a piece of cheese, three apples. She worried at first about water. Someone had left out two jugs on the slab in the pantry, otherwise there was only a stream. She washed in the stream, boiled some of it, eventually drank it unboiled, catching it in a tin mug as it rushed by. She liked the earth closet. Seated there, the door wide to the view, she commanded territory crossed by Roman cohorts on the march to Salisbury.

On the third day she began to notice things to do in the garden and spent a morning getting out weeds, shouldering them in armloads to what seemed to be a compost heap. She amazed herself. She did not know where her knowledge came from. She marvelled at the rich soil — remembering the scratching in the earth by the skin-and-bone labourers in the lampshade hats of her Chinese childhood. She imagined a continuing supply of vegetables and along an old red wall a sea of European tulips. Then she remembered that this was Delilah’s garden.

In the evenings, after a first attempt when black flakes flew to the ceiling and the wick roared like a petrol fire, she mastered the oil lamp and sat reading the books about old theatre productions and biographies of great actors. Sometimes, prising a book out of the damp shelves, she let loose a sheaf of theatre programmes. Some were signed flamboyantly with forgotten names, some smelled of long-dead violets. Once or twice a pressed flower fell out — a gardenia (gone brown) or a rose — and crumpled before her eyes when she tried to pick it up. Some of the books were inscribed, To my darling Delilah, the ultimate Desdemona, or, To my own Mark Antony from his adoring wife and the date of over half a century ago.

Love, thought Elisabeth. Adoration. Was it all just theatre?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

One day she woke up and forced herself to think: When am I going home? In fact she knew the date. Somewhere it was written down, perhaps on her return railway ticket. A taxi was to pick her up that morning, to put her back on the London train. She remembered that.

But when was it? She had no way of knowing the date: no radio, no daily paper. Letters had come for her but she had not opened them and they would not have helped. She would ask the village shop to put tomorrow’s newspaper in with her baked beans. They would not keep the Telegraph or The Times or the Manchester Guardian. Perhaps they only had the weekly local paper. She thought she’d try for the Daily Express. When she collected it, she found that she had only one day left. This day. The taxi would be here to take her towards London before nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

She could hardly bear it.

Suppose she ran from the house tomorrow and hid in the woods? She could creep back again in the evening? Or on another evening? She could sleep in the woods.

But then, word would go round. The village shop (wherever it was) would come making enquiries. Friends in London — Chambers — even Edward in Hong Kong.

I’m still trapped, she thought. I’ll have to go.

She cleared the kitchen of the glorious squalor she had made in it. She dusted. She trimmed the lamp, thinking that there were very few people left in the world who could trim a lamp (and where had she learned? And when?). Fitting back its beautiful globe, she smashed it to pieces and was horrified. The lamplight had been the wonder of her evenings and the carrying up of the heavy lamp, one hand shading the light, to bed at night. Oh, Delilah! Oh, if there were a telephone. .

Well, no. Thank God. And I don’t know the number. I shall leave you, Delilah, a huge sum of money to replace the lamp. I shall scout the London markets for a new one.

She scrubbed the whole house clean. That evening she walked down the garden and looked at the red wall in the fading light. The rooks grumbled their way to bed.

In the morning she gathered her things together around the door and ate some bread. There was a fumbling shadow outside the window and she saw the Gypsy person ambling about outside. He was trying to look in.

“Yes?” she called, not opening the door. “Yes?” He was trailing the thing like an axe. “Who are you?”

He mouthed words at her. She thought: The poor thing’s simple. But the axe made her hesitate. He was speaking of a key. He needed a key. The taxi would be coming.

“But the axe,” she said.

“It’s for the w-w-w-wood. Firewood.”

She brought him in. “I’m so sorry. I was afraid of you.”

Among the things she had been leaving for the Dexters were two bottles of village shop wine and she handed them now to the Gypsy. He looked bewildered so she gave him some money. He took the key and the money and went ahead of her with her case and, when she was through the front door, he locked it behind her and put the key in his pocket. He went ahead, up the steep bank through the slit in the wall, not helping her, and when she had climbed the perilous slope there was her suitcase beside the road, and he was gone.

She sat down then on a stone on the roadside, her back to the wall. It was not yet a quarter past eight. It was beginning to be cloudy. Cloudy and wettish. England in October, although it was only September. Nobody passed by.

I had to be here for the taxi, she thought, before nine. I hadn’t thought of rain. It’s only eight twenty.

Out of her bag she dragged the brown and gold pashmina and wrapped it round her. When the rain began she rearranged the coloured silk to cover her head. Bright against the dark bushes she sat on in the rain and when the village shop van passed she waved, but she had paid her bill yesterday and the car went by.

Nobody came. The rain became heavier. It was after half past eight now and the wind blew the rain in surges and began to sound angry and bitter. The rain lashed back.

Elisabeth looked up the road and down it, and wondered how far it was to the village. Below her the cottage was all securely locked up. Maybe she should stumble down the slippery path again and shelter in the earth closet.

No. Ridiculous. The taxi was taking her to catch a particular train. At Waterloo Station a cab had been ordered by Edward’s Chambers to take her back to the flat in the Temple. All arranged. Foolproof.

But no taxi.

I’ll go and see if there is a house up there, she thought, and shuddered. She was frightened of houses in woods.

No. She would walk into Salisbury, carrying her suitcase. Her scar still hurt and still bled a little but she didn’t care. She tightened the silk cloth about her, picked up her suitcase and heard the sound of an approaching car. Thank God! Oh, thank God!

She stood holding the suitcase as the car spun into sight and it was not a taxi, but an ordinary private car going by. It was travelling very fast and splashed past her and down the hill, and vanished round the bend in the road and was gone.

So much, she thought, for answers to prayer.

She gripped the handle of her suitcase tighter, turned to face what she hoped would be Salisbury, soaked now to the skin, and heard the same car roaring back again up the hill, so fast that she had to jump into the side of the hedge.

The car stopped, the driver’s door flew open and Edward stood in the middle of the road.

Wet to the skin, enclosed in his long arms, Elisabeth began to cry and Edward to set up the curious roaring noises that had overtaken him since his stammering childhood but now only when he was on the point of tears.

She said, “Oh, Eddie! Oh, Filth!” her wet face against his clean, warm shirt.

She thought: I love him.

He said, “I thought you’d left me!”