The Man in the Wooden Hat

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Scene Hong Kong.

Crackle and swish of limousine bringing the Judge home from court at exactly the appointed hour (insert clock: 7 P.M.).

Interior. Elisabeth waiting for him in living room of Judges’ Lodgings, a row of mansions behind a wall and steel gates, guarded. She has an open library book face-down upon her knee. Outside, Edward Feathers’s driver rings the front-door bell.

Elisabeth counts silently. A full minute. Longer. Two minutes.

Slip-slop feet of Lily Woo from kitchen across polished hall.

Lily Woo: Good evening, sir.

Slip-slop she goes back.

Edward (Filth) takes off shoes in hall. Clonk, then clonk. Puts on house shoes left him there by Lily. We hear him go to wash in cloakroom. He opens living-room door and sees Elisabeth as ever waiting. (Pretty dress, neat hair, gold chains, perfect fingernails. She is changed.)

Filth: Gin? All well?

Elisabeth: Yes, please. And no. Not all well. Today I’ve had a revelation. I am now officially old.

Filth: Ice? Old?

Elisabeth: Yes, and yes. Today I heard myself telling someone on the Children’s Aid committee that we’d been living in Hong Kong for over twenty years and that it seems no more than about six; and where did all the years go? Saying that, I’m old.

Filth: God knows where they’ve gone. Into the mist.

Bell rings outside in hall. Tinkle, tinkle. It is a small brass honeymoon bell from India. Slip-slop of girl’s feet again as she returns to kitchen. Filth looks into his gin and vermouth and gulps it down.

Elisabeth: You’re drinking too fast. Again.

Filth: I need it. Various things. What’s this, being old?

Elisabeth: I feel it. Suddenly. I’m melancholy at things changing. So, I’m old.

Filth: They need to change. It’s a place of changes. Annexing Hong Kong set the scene for change at the start. It will never settle down. Never be contented. But what did we bring but good? Work. Medicine. The English language. The Christian faith. And the Law. With all its shortcomings they don’t want to change the Law.

Goes over to the drinks tray.

Elisabeth: That was the dressing bell. Dinner in twenty minutes.

Filth: Or three-quarters of an hour. She’s sloppy.

Elisabeth: Yes. Go on. Go up. Have a shower and change your shirt. You can have a whisky after dinner.

Scene Dining Room.

A quiet dinner. The silver and glasses are reflected in the rosewood dining table. Lamb chops, peas, new potatoes. (Lily Woo has learned to cook them very well and sometimes it is a pleasant change from chopsticks.) English vicarage tonight.

Filth: It would be good to finish off with cheese now.

Elisabeth: It would be astonishing to finish off with cheese. There’s not a speck of it in the Colony. Your mind is going!

After dinner Filth stares at tomorrow’s Court papers. He goes to bed early, without the whisky. In the middle of the night Elisabeth wakes to find him in her bed, his head on her breast. She takes him in her arms.

Filth: I condemned a man to death today.

Elisabeth: I know. I saw the evening paper. Was he guilty?

Filth: Guilty as hell. It was a crime passionel.

Elisabeth: Then he is probably glad to die.

They lie awake for a long time. The hanging will be at eight o’clock. Elisabeth has set the bedside clock half an hour fast and seen that Lily Woo has done the same to the grandfather striking clock downstairs. They lie awake together.

Filth: Capital punishment must go.

Elisabeth: They’ll take years.

Filth: They’ll have their own Judiciary by then. Someone spat at the car today when I left Court. They are changing. Lily Woo took five minutes to answer the bell tonight.

Elisabeth: No, only two. But I know what you mean. Respect is fading. Well, I don’t know if it was ever there. In the jewellers’, the girls hardly bother to lift their heads when I go in. They just go on threading the jade. They used to get me the best stones. They still get them for Nellie Wee.

Filth: Oh, well. She’s famous.

Elisabeth: Well, I’m quite famous. I do my best. I try to be like Amy used to be. I have got the OBE. And half my girlfriends are Chinese.

Filth: I used to say that when you were sifting through the jade in the market your eyes changed to slits and you became an Oriental.

Elisabeth: Slits, with English eyelashes. Filth, we do need to live out here, don’t we? We’re lifetime expats. Aren’t we?

Filth (after a long, long pause): I don’t know.

They took a holiday in a tin bus and bowled along on the Chinese mainland through Canton. For miles the road was lined with rusty factories all dropping to bits. “These were sold to us by the Russians,” said their guide. “We were conned.” In the shadows of the rusted chimneys lay wide stretches of murky water sometimes with lotuses. White ducks floated among the lotuses on the foul olive-green water. The road was terrible, full of gritty holes, narrow and mean. Tall factories trailed hundred-foot stripes of mould down their sides, like dark green seaweed. All the small windows were boarded up.

The bus stopped for photographs and most people got out and stood in a row looking down on men scratching the surface of fields. The cameras clicked. The men were so thin you could see their bones under their belted cotton blouses. Their hats were the immemorial lampshades, colourless and beautiful. “Make sure you get the hats in,” shouted the photographers. The fieldworkers continued to drag their sticks along the soil and never once looked up.

“Do they dream of Hong Kong?” said Elisabeth.

“We don’t know what they dream of.”

The bus lurched on and the guide beseeched them to look to the right, at the distant and very modern restaurant where they would be stopping for lunch. “On no account look left. Do not look left.”

Everybody looked left to where a ragged column of men in white robes and pointed hats jogged along the side of a field. Several of them carried a bundle tied to a pallet on long poles.

“It’s a funeral,” said Betty. “To see a funeral means bad luck.”

“That’s a Chinese funeral,” shouted another tourist on the bus. “Or it’s the Ku Klux Klan.”

The driver rattled on down the winding road and up the track to the restaurant. Someone shouted, “Isn’t it bad luck to see a Chinese funeral?”

“I saw no funeral,” said the guide. “What funeral?”

A very old English couple held hands, without looking at each other. “We were born here,” they said. “We’ve been away a long time.” “I was born in Tiensin,” said Betty. “I grew up in Shanghai.” They looked at her and nodded acknowledgement. “We are displaced people,” said the old woman and Filth said, “I suppose you didn’t know Judge Willy?” “What, old Pastry? Of course we did,” and they all smiled. “When Pastry Willy was born, you know, there was only one godown in Hong Kong.”

The bus reached a town where they all got off and went into a big store where the tourists began to run about excitedly, buying ceramic vases and teapots and enormous electric table lamps with Chinese scenes running round them, half the price of Hong Kong and a tenth of the price of Harrods. Filth asked Betty if they wanted a new table lamp. “No,” she said, “not these,” and was astonished to find that an image had appeared among the chinoiserie of a heavy brass oil lamp with a globe and chimney, and a thick white cotton wick. As she looked, the misty globe cleared and a flat blue flame appeared along the wick. It bounced up violet, then yellow, becoming steady and clear. A wisp of blue rising from the chimney. Betty stretched towards it and her hand passed through nothing.

“What are you doing?” asked Filth.

“I don’t know. Having a vision or something. Some sort of memory thing. It must be because of those old expats finding their own country. Let’s go back to the bus. There’s absolutely nothing for us here.”

Back in Hong Kong she said, “Filth — have we made up our minds? Will we be retiring here?”

He said, “I don’t intend to retire at all. I’ve masses still to do.”

“You’ll soon be over seventy.”

“I’m a better judge the older I get.”

“You all say that.”

“I’ll get the hint if they want me to retire.”

“So you’re just going to sit in judgement in a dying colony for the rest of your life?”

“If you must know, I’ve been asked to take a break and write up the Pollution Laws. It will be internationally important.”

“They have actually approached you, then?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, well, congratulations. When would I have been told? You know what they’ll say?”

“Yes. ‘Filth on Filth.’ I’m not stupid.”

“Sometimes I think there’s a wit at work in the Lord Chancellor’s Office, unlikely as they look to be. They choose you for your dotty names. Like ‘Wright on Walls.’”

He nearly said, “Next will be ‘Veneering on Shams,’” but didn’t.

“I feel quite honoured, as a matter of fact,” he said. “And another thing, I’ve been chosen to rewrite Hudson.”

“Who on earth is Hudson?”

“We’ve been married for a thousand years and you don’t know Hudson!”

“Only his Bay.”

“How very amusing. Ho-ho. Hudson on Building Contracts. I dare say I’ll get a knighthood.”

“How thrilling. But couldn’t you do this anywhere?”

“Well, London would be easiest. Or Oxford. The Law Library. Cambridge, maybe, but I’m not from that quarter. But, well, bit of a harsh old-age after here. No servants. No decent weather. Holidays in the Lake District. Cold. Raining. All these groups of singing boys strumming out rubbishy songs. And the food!!”

“Yes,” she said. “The food. But there’s opera as well as the Beatles, and there’s the London theatre and concerts.”

“Everyone talks about going to the theatre and concerts but how many of us actually go? And London’s not England any more. We’d be just another old couple.”

“We could look around. It’s twenty years since we went anywhere in England except London. We could go and look up Dulcie and Pastry Willy. Willy must be getting on a bit now. In Dorset.”

That same night, at the end of the Long Vacation and the trip to Canton and three months since the execution, Betty heard Filth yelling in his sleep and ran into his room. He woke, moaning, saying that they were going to hang him. After the handover in ’97 they would take him and hang him.

The following morning neither of them mentioned the night and he was driven smoothly in to Court as usual, but Elisabeth began to make plans for England and wrote one of her sketchy letters to Willy in the Donheads of Dorset.

Dear Dulcie and dear Willy,

We are coming back to see England again for a while and we would so much like to see you in particular. Time has not passed. We so often think of you. Christmas cards are not enough.

Could you write and say if you will be about around Christmas? Could we spend a night or so with you, or could you find us somewhere? We won’t stay long because we’ll be exploring. We don’t quite know what to do with our future.

With best love, as ever

Betty (once Macintosh of Shanghai)

PS How are your children? Have you grandchildren?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Two profiles, one imposed against the other, like images of royalty upon a medallion struck for a new reign: Edward Feathers and his wife Elisabeth, motoring into the sunset on the A33 through Wiltshire on a frosty winter’s afternoon.

They were looking for Pastry Willy and Dulcie, and wondering if there would be anything to say after so long.

“Didn’t they have some children?” Betty said. “A girl. She must be quite ancient now.”

“No. Born very late. Still young. Susan.”

“Oh, lawks yes,” said Elisabeth. “Sullen Susan.”

“Sullen Sue,” said Filth. “I’m glad we have no sullen daughter.”

She said nothing. They were passing Stonehenge.

“We turn off quite soon. Just past Stonehenge. There’s Stonehenge.”

He drove on, not turning his head. She made the sign of the Cross. Still not turning his head, Filth said, “What on earth are you doing?”

“Well, it’s the usual thing to make the sign of the Cross passing Stonehenge. There are thousands of accidents. It’s the magnetism of the stones.”

He said, after a time, “I sometimes wonder where you hear these things.”

“It’s common knowledge.”

“There are accidents because drivers all say “There’s Stonehenge — look!” and turn their heads. I have a certain amount of sense.”

“Well, then, quick! Turn left. Here’s the road to Chilmark. You nearly skidded! It’s much narrower. And winding. Oh, look at that tree. It’s enormous. It’s just like a hen!”

“A hen?”

“Like a huge hen nodding on a nest. Up at the top of a tree — we’ve gone under it now.”

“A hen in a tree?”

“Yes. And I’ve seen it before.”

“Very unlikely. We’ve not been here before.”

“I came down here alone once. After that operation. It was somewhere here. Somewhere.”

“No, that was much further west. I know. I came and found you. It was near Somerset. It was way beyond Bath. Near the theatre and those Dickensian people you liked then.”

“I suppose so,” she said. “We couldn’t find them either. We never saw them again. Did we?”

“Well, didn’t they die?”

“I suppose — I can’t remember if we heard or not. I did write. I sent them a replacement of something I broke. I can’t remember. .”

A very old man appeared out of the hedge and crossed the road in front of them. He was carrying an axe.

“Elisabeth — what is it now?”

“I don’t know. I just have the feeling I’ve been here before. A shuddering.”

“When people say that,” said Edward, “nobody ever knows what to reply, like when they tell you their dreams. Here’s a notice saying ‘The Donheads,’ whatever they are. St. Ague is the one we’re after. ‘Ague’—what a name! Here’s the hill marked on the map she sent. It could be quite soon now. What a maze.”

“I think it’s to the left. No, we’ve passed it. It was that double driveway, wasn’t it, dividing left and right? Down and up.”

“No,” he said. “We have to pass a church first. It says on the map. Here’s a church. Here’s Privilege Lane. Oh, yes indeed! Very nice! Trust old Willy! Wrought-iron gates! — oh,” and “Hello Willy! What a marvellous place!”

(Mutual exclamations of joy and Willy at once takes Elisabeth up and away from the house to the top of the garden and Edward takes the luggage while Dulcie goes to make one of her soufflés.)

“What a view, what a view, Willy! What a white and golden view! And Uncle Willy, we’ll never call you Pastry any more. You’re brown as a nut. It must be Thomas Hardy.”

“Thomas Hardy was always going up to London to the theatre but I never leave the Donheads,” and he began to totter back to the house, Elisabeth pretending that she needed his arm when they both knew that he was needing hers. He said, “We have a surprise for you. Two surprises. One is Fiscal-Smith.”

“Oh, Willy, no! How could you?”

“Motoring through looking for a cheap bed and breakfast, he says. Then, miraculously, remembering us.”

“But have you room for us all? You said Eddie and I could stay with you tonight.”

“Yes. Of course. Vast great place, this, in spite of the thatch and the button windows. Someone else is staying, too. Our second surprise: Susan. From Massachusetts. She says she’s not seen you since she was at school.”

“No. She hasn’t. Is she alone?”

“Don’t ask. Husband trouble in Boston. She’s walked out on him and the child. She doesn’t say much. We just let her thump around the countryside on a local horse. We’re used to it. Always doing it.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Willy.”

“Aha — there’s Fiscal-Smith at the front door! The wedding party is complete.”

The table in the palatial cottage was laid for a pre-war, middle-class English afternoon tea. There were dozens of postage-stamp sandwiches, brown and white bread and butter (transparent), home-made jams and seed cake. Dulcie sat behind a silver teapot.

Susan, however, was crouched in a corner on a rocking chair near the fire and her baleful eyes surveyed them. She had a mug of tea in one hand and was barefoot. As Betty and Filth came into the room her mouth was wide open ready to receive the slice of cake that was approaching it via her other hand.

“Susan,” cried Elisabeth, as was required.

“Oh, hullo.”

Filth nodded curtly. He was surprised to find her familiar, and a shadow from his schooldays passed before his eyes. Another girl at someone’s house during the war. Isobel Ingoldby. Tall Isobel, with her loping golden beauty, and her dark moods. He had thought that women were less disagreeable now. He watched this one bleakly. Oh, thank God for Betty.

Everyone sat down.

Later came dinner and Susan ate from a private menu. Again, for Filth, the great wave of memory and — well, actually — desire.

The next day Susan was not about at breakfast but passed the window later upon a steaming horse, not turning her head.

Fiscal-Smith left early. He was aiming to drop in on another old colleague, known to have a spare bedroom, who lived near York. “Have you looked around up there, Filth? Decided where to settle? You are coming Home, I hope? It would be good to have you nearby.”

But were they coming Home? They had certainly worked at it. Filth had prepared an itinerary as thoroughly as he had done for their expeditions to Java and Japan during Bar vacations. They had borrowed a tiny flat in the Temple as a base, hired a good car, bought maps and guidebooks and set forth anti-clockwise, up the Great North Road (now called the A1 and much faster than it used to be.) They by-passed Cambridge because it was so cold and not Oxford, and proceeded towards East Anglia which seemed colder still, and windy. They stayed a night with a delightful ex-judge who had taken up poetry and market gardening. They met his friends who were all, it seemed, growers of kale. They explored the eastern seaboard but Filth found the sea colourless and threatening, and Betty found the glittering churches too big for flower arrangements.

They drove on, up to York which was impersonal and then up to the Roman Wall where they had Hong Kong friends whose bodies and minds had shrivelled against the climate. Approaching the Border country they surveyed Scotland across the lapping grey waters of the Solway. “If our genes are here,” said Filth, “we ought at least to give Scotland a try.”

So they stayed at a grand hotel on Loch Lomond and visited another retired lawyer from the Far Eastern circuit, Glasgow-born and seeming ashamed of ever having been away. He was full of a Case to do with some local mountains that had been stacked with warheads in the seventies. They were all there, oh yes. He himself was not for Aldermaston. Always good to have defences. Bugger the Russians. They wondered if his mind had been touched, perhaps by radiation.

They stepped back from Scotland like people on the brink of a freezing plunge without towels, and turned south-east towards the Lake District and Grasmere because Betty had liked Wordsworth at school. Pilgrims queued outside Dove Cottage and the lakeside was thick with Japanese. They felt foreigners.

“There must be something wrong with us,” she said. “We are jaundiced has-beens,” and they stopped off at a roadside pub as pretty as a calendar to think about it. The pub was just outside the delectable little town of Appleby. It was 1.30 P.M. and they asked for lunch. “This time of day?” said the proprietor. “Dinner here’s at twelve o’clock! Sandwiches? You can’t ask him to make sandwiches after one o’clock. He needs his rest.”

So back south. They agreed, unspokenly, not to look at Wales where Filth had suffered as a child, nor Lancashire and west Cumberland where at his prep school — though they never talked about it — they both knew he had been unbelievably, almost unbearably, happy. A time sacred and unrepeatable.

Down the M6 they drove, and the air warmed. They spent a night in Oxford but did not look anybody up. (Too cliquey. Too long ago.) They drifted south towards Pastry Willy. And, for Betty, a dream garden that had probably never existed. She didn’t explain this. She wore new armour now.

And then the hen in the tree and a man with an axe.

Before they left Privilege Hill Betty said, “I’ve remembered, the place I stayed when I was convalescing was called Dexters. At least the people were called Dexter. D’you remember them? From Ebury Street? They were actors.” But Dulcie and Willy, waving from the wrought-iron gate, said there was nobody they’d heard of called Dexter in the Donheads.

“Goodbye,” they all called out to each other. “Thank you. Oh! How we’ll miss you,” and Willy took Elisabeth’s bright sweet face between his hands and kissed it.

Susan went back to Boston the following week and, leaving, said, “Those Feathers — I can’t stand them. Never could. So bloody smug. And politically ignorant. And culturally dead! And childless. And selfish. And so bloody, bloody rich.”

“Elisabeth,” said Dulcie, “wanted ten children.”

“Oh, they all say that. Posh brides with no brains.”

“Elisabeth has brains,” said Willy. “She was at Bletchley Park in the war, decoding ciphers, and Filth passed out top in the Bar Finals. And they’re neither of them posh!”

“Dry as sticks,” said Susan.

“No,” said Willy.

“Wasn’t there some sort of scandal about her?” Susan’s eyes gleamed.

“No,” said Willy.

“Oh, well,” said Susan. “Her memory’s not much. There’s a house called Dexters here in the village. I passed it out riding. It’s down that lane that divides. One up one down. You can’t see it from the road.”

“Oh, nonsense, we’d know it.”

“The Dexter place, all you can see is down its chimney unless you go round to the front entrance, down the hill, towards Donhead St. Anthony. It’s been a ruin for years. I asked because it’s being all done up.”

“Darling, why didn’t you tell them?”

“Why should they live here? I can’t.”

So the Feathers settled down for a London winter in the Temple, Filth working on his Pollution Bill, excellent Sunday lunches in the Inner Temple Hall after church, theatres, old friends and an occasional weekend in Surrey. They grew dull. Filth went back to Hong Kong for a while, but Betty stayed behind.

Old Willy died in the New Year and Betty asked Dulcie to stay with her in the flat, which was close to the Temple church where the memorial service would be held. Betty had gone to the funeral of course, in the Donheads, and seen Willy lowered into the Dorset soil in his local churchyard. Susan had not come from America but she would be at the memorial service. Betty invited her to stay with her in the Temple, too, but this was left uncertain. Which is to say that Susan did not reply.

Oh, well, thought Elisabeth.

It was a splashy, showery day and the congregation arrived shaking umbrellas and stamping their wet shoes in the porch of the Temple church. Willy had been so contentedly old, they were all telling each other, that this was a celebration of his life, not a lament. There were a few old lawyers from Singapore and Hong Kong and some Benchers from all the Inns of Court who faced each other sanguinely across the chancel, occasionally raising a hand in greeting.

Betty sat wanting Filth there. She felt very sad. Dulcie next to her was perfectly dressed in Harrods black with a glint of Chanel, eyes streaming, and sulky Susan was gulping and snuffling into a big handkerchief. Betty hadn’t bothered much with what to wear or whom to greet. She sat thinking of Willy and old Shanghai and nursery rhymes a thousand years ago. I do know love when I see it, she thought. He loved me and I loved him. Nobody much left. And she tried to ignore the hatchet face, directly across from her, of Fiscal-Smith in a black suit worn slippery with funerals.

There was a scuffle and commotion and, across the church, Fiscal-Smith made room ungraciously for a stumbling latecomer who was nodding left and right in apology. The Master of the Temple was already climbing to the pulpit to read from the Holy Bible. The latecomer looked at Betty across the chancel, directly head-on to him, and gave a delighted wave. It was Harry Veneering.

“Come on out to tea,” he said afterwards.

They were all gathering outside the church or crammed into the porch and some had begun to walk over the courtyard to the wake in Parliament Chamber. It was not quite raining but damp, and many of them were old. The senior Benchers were filing away from the church through their private door under umbrellas, and Dulcie and Susan were being cared for by the Master of the Temple.

“Come on, don’t go that way,” said Harry Veneering to Betty. “Come with me round here past these gents on the floor,” and he took her elbow and led her away among the circle of Knights Templar on their tombs, swords in place. Chins high.

“Promising juniors who didn’t quite make it,” said Harry. “I’d have been the same if I’d gone to the Bar. The Army was for me. Mind, the Army didn’t seem to do them a lot of good, proud bastards pretending to be like Jesus. Killing everybody. Taxi!”

“Where are we going?”

“The Savoy.”

“But it’s only a two-minute walk.”

“We’re not walking. I’m an Officer in the Brigade of Guards.”

“And,” she said, “we haven’t booked.”

“Oh, they’ll find me a table.”

He gave the saluting doorman a wave, and took her through the foyer laughing and smiling around. Yes, of course, sir, a table. No, of course not, sir. Not too near the piano. They sat in an alcove where lamplight and warmth denied the soggy day.

“Yes,” he said, “full afternoon tea and, yes, the glass of champagne. Naturally. And—” he looked at her and took her hand.

“Harry, stop this at once. They’ll think you’re my — what is it called? — toy boy!”

“Oh, but I am,” he said. “Mrs. Waterproof and galoshes! — Hey — look at my right thigh!” He stuck out his leg just in front of the approaching waitress, and there were shrieks and laughter.

“Harry—will you sit down. You’re no better than when you were nine.”

“I wish they served lobsters,” he said.

Shriek.

“And I wish I was under the table again, missing my plane back to school. I wish — I wish I’d never grown up.”

“Harry, how dare you! How can you? All we did!”

“Sorry. Yes. Look at my thigh. It’s twice the width of my left one, twice as strong. Whenever I have X-rays it makes them faint. Wonderful operation. Did you read in the papers? I climbed the Eiger.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Not that I’m the first.”

“No, you’re not. And how did it get in the papers?”

“I attract attention. Like my father.”

Pouring pale-gold tea she said, “And where is your father? And your mother? I thought they’d be here at the service.”

“Pa’s in Fiji doing an Arbitration. I suppose Ma’s at home in HK. I don’t hear much from her.”

“You hear from your father?”

“Oh, yes. But I’m in his black books at the moment.”

“Why?”

“Don’t go into it. Extravagance. I think he rather likes to boast about it really. Makes me seem a toff.”

“He’s been very good to you.”

“So have you, Miss Raincoat. You are my true and only love. Someone told me you were with me all night long before I nearly had my leg chopped off.”

A waiter came with the champagne.

“It’s true,” Harry said to him. “She was with me all night long. Out on the Russian steppes. She stopped them amputating my leg. Then things got out of hand and we were attacked by wolves. .”

“Will that be all, sir?”

“Oh, no!” said Harry. “Lots more to come.”

“Harry,” she said. “I must go back to the wake and look after Dulcie. She’s staying with me.”

“Where’s Hyperion?” he asked. “Can’t he look after her? — Filth, I mean. Sir Edward?”

“He’s abroad. He’s arbitrating, too. He’s retiring soon and then we’re going to live in Dorset, near Dulcie.”

But he was staring at the clock across the room. “Good God in heaven,” he said. “Good God! — The time! I have to go,” and he began to pat his pockets. “I’m dreadfully late. I — my wallet!”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m taking you out to tea. Next time you can give me dinner. At the Ritz.”

“I will! I’d love to. Mrs. Burberry, my angel of light,” and he was gone, flitting through the room and out of the foyer through the glass doors into the Strand.

She followed after paying the huge bill and walked back into the Temple and into the sombre celebration for her dear old friend. As she came into the room she seemed to see him somewhere in the crowd watching her and lovingly shaking his head.

“I haven’t a son,” she told the ghost. (“Oh, hello, Tony! Hello, Desmond!”) “I haven’t a child. I’ve no one else to be unwise with. I so love him.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Dexters was an immediate success. There was very little of the old cowman’s cottage left. All had been enlarged and the garden opened widely to the view. The entrance was no longer the breakneck business of Elisabeth’s first haunted visit and there was electricity, an Aga, a telephone, a splendid kitchen, two bathrooms, a dining room for the rosewood table and a hall wide enough for the red chair. And a terrace, facing the sunset for gin on summer evenings. The great stone chimney remained. Dexters was private and quiet but not so isolated that the two of them would one day become a threat to the social services when they became seriously old. There was a shop half a mile away, the paper and the groceries were delivered, as of yore, and the church stood up unchanging near Dulcie on Privilege Hill. There was a room for Filth to work in surrounded by his shelves of Law Reports, and a hidden garage for one modest car. The almost virgin — if there is such a thing — garden beckoned, and deliveries began of Betty’s plants. A gardener was found and a cleaner who also did laundry. There was the smell of leaves and dew when you opened the windows and the smell of the new wood floors within, and the wood-burning stove. Betty gathered lavender and scattered it in chests of drawers.

And so they settled. The curtains of lights and fireworks and the clamour and glamour and luxury and squalor of Hong Kong were over for them. The sun rose and set less hectically, less noticeably, but more birds sang. The rookery was still there, the nests, now huge and askew, weighing heavily in the branches, the birds — probably, said Filth, the same ones — still disputing and objecting and arbitrating and condemning, passing judgement and gathering further and better particulars. Filth said that so long as they were there he’d never miss his profession.

Memory changed for both Edward and Elisabeth. There were fewer people now to keep it alive. Christmas cards dwindled. Instead, Betty began in October to write letters to the best of those left. Not many. Amy and Isobel and a couple of dotty cousins of Edward. Just as she had rearranged herself into a copy of her dead mother on her marriage, now she began to work on being the wife of a distinguished old man. She took over the church — the vicar was nowhere — and set up committees. She joined a Book Club and found DVDs of glorious old films of their youth. She took up French again and had her finger- and toenails done in Salisbury, her hair quite often in London where she became a member of the University Women’s Club. She knew she still looked sexy. She still had disturbing erotic dreams.

She quite enjoyed the new role, and bought very expensive county clothes, and she wore Veneering’s pearls (Edward’s were in a safe) more and more boldly and with less and less guilt.

As ever, she kept Veneering’s diamond clasp round the back of her neck in the daytime and only risked it round the front at dinner parties where sometimes it was exclaimed over. Filth never seemed to notice.

One day Filth said, “Do you remember that I once took part in an Arbitration at The Hague?”

“The International Court of Justice? Of course I do. I didn’t see you for months. You said it was dreary.”

“That fellow was on the other side.”

“Veneering,” she said. “Yes.”

“We kept our distance. You didn’t come out.”

“I did, actually. Just for a night or two. I met a school-friend in a park. I don’t remember much. It was after we — we married.”

“Well,” he said, looking through his glass of red wine and tipping it about. “I’ve been asked there again.”

“What! It’s been years. .”

“It’s an engineering dispute about a dam in Syria. I’ve done a few dams in my time. The two sides have been rabbiting on, squandering millions. They want to bring in a couple of new arbitrators to sit above the present ones.”

“Could you? Do you want to? Aren’t you rusty?”

“I could. I’d like to. I don’t think so. Come too. The Hague’s a lovely place and there’s so much around it. There’s Delft and Leyden and Amsterdam and Bruges. Wonderful museums. Paintings. Oh, and good, clean food. Good, clean people. Good for you!”

“I’ll think. But you should do it.”

“Yes. I think so. I think so.”

“The International Court of Justice! At your age.”

“Yes.”

“But,” he said a week later, “it’s out of the question. Guess whom they want as the third replacement arbitrator?”

She licked her fingers. She was making marmalade.

“Easy,” she said. “Sir Terence Veneering QC, Learned in the Law.”

“Yes.”

“Does it matter? Isn’t it about time. .?”

“Well, I suppose so!” said Filth. “And he’s the only other one who knows as much as I do about dams. It would be a fair fight. I needn’t speak to him out of Court.”

“Is he ‘Dams’?”

“Yes. He got the Aswan Dam once. I’d have liked that one. However, I got the dam in Iran. D’you remember? It wouldn’t fill up. Very interesting. They’d moved half the population of the country out and drowned all their villages. I won that. I had death threats there, you know.”

“You always thought so. Will this dam be interesting?”

“All dams are interesting,” he said, shocked.

Later, eating the new marmalade at breakfast, she said, “But I don’t think I’ll come with you, Filth, my darling. If you don’t mind.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, well. It’s Easter. I’m needed at church. And so on.”

“Dulcie could do all that.”

“Well. No, I’m happy here, Eddie. I’m used to you being away, for goodness sake. It’s not like in East Pakistan with only three telephone lines.”

“Well, I’ll go. Actually”—he gave his crazy embarrassed roar—“I have actually accepted the job so I’ll go and I’ll come back at weekends. I can be back here every Friday night you know, until the Sunday night. And — you never know — you might change your mind and come out to me for a weekend? We could stay somewhere outside The Hague.”

So she was alone in the Donheads through the early spring. It was a bitter Lent, cold and lonely. When Eddie’s car dropped him off at Dexters each Friday night and she had dinner ready for him and news of village matters, he seemed far away and unconcerned.

“Are you enjoying the International Court of Justice?”

“Well, ‘enjoying?’ The creature is still poisonous. Still hates me. But I’m glad to be there. Betty, come out and join me. We can stay away from The Hague and all that. It’s such a chance for you. Buy bulbs.”

“Oh,” she said.

“You can order a million tulips there,” he said.

“Tulips,” she said.

“Well, think about it.”

“I love you, Filth. Oh, yes, well, yes. I’ll come!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

So she went. They stayed in an hotel near Delft and Edward was driven from there to The Hague and back each day, so she saw nothing of the Court.

And the tulip fields were in their glory and she booked for all the tours to see them, sometimes staying overnight, and each time ordering quantities of bulbs for Dorset, to be delivered in October. She talked ceaselessly to other gardeners on the coach tours and on the canal boats, and forgot all else.

She shopped. She bought a broadsword from an antique shop because it reminded her of Rembrandt’s warrior. She bought a blue and white Delft knife with a black blade and broken handle because it might once have cut up fruit in Vermeer’s kitchen. She bought three seventeenth-century tiles for Dulcie — a boy flying a kite, a fat windmill, a boat with square sails gliding through fields — and, for Amy, a heavy copper pot, trying not to think of the postage. She bought a print of a triptych for Mrs. Baxter. She walked for miles — the presents were always delivered back to the hotel — down cobbled streets between tall houses and a central canal. From windows, faces looked out and nodded. These must be homes for the elderly, she thought. What shining, broad faces. They wore round white caps with flaps. She expected Frans Hals at any moment to come flaunting down the street. All just out of sight.

On the fourth Saturday morning, the day Filth usually flew home for the weekend, he had to take documents back to the Arbitration room.

He brought his locked briefcase to the breakfast table and set it at his feet and she said, “Edward, aren’t you rather overdoing it? We could just drop the papers off on the way to the airport.”

“No, I may have to talk to the other two. They’ll be there.”

He was wearing his dark Court suit of striped trousers and black jacket, a sober tie, a starched shirt and Victorian silk handkerchief.

“I’m sure the others won’t go dressed like that,” she said.

“I dare say not, but it’s correct. I’m carrying papers.” Filth and Betty agreed to meet back at the hotel after lunch.

She took a taxi to a gallery she hadn’t been to before where there were some seventeenth-century flower paintings, and walked round and round the sunlit rooms, empty because it was not yet the Easter holidays and there were no tourists. She felt embarrassed at the clatter of her feet in the silence and tried to tiptoe from one room to the next, the sun throwing gold stripes across the polished floors. Doors stood open between the galleries, the sun illuminating other distances, withdrawing itself from foregrounds, changing direction, splashing across a distant window or open door. Inside the building, everywhere was silent and, outside, the canal was black and still. She looked for a chair and found one standing by itself and sat down. But the gallery was disappointing. She sat looking at paintings of dead hares with congealed blood on their mouths, swags of grapes, pomegranates, feathered game collapsed sightless on slate slabs. In a corner of the room was a wooden carving, the head and shoulders of a man on a plinth, the wood so black it must have lain untouched for centuries in some bog, the cracked wood perfect for the seamed and ancient face, heavy with all the miseries of the world.

But it was the hat that informed the man. It was clearly the hat that had inspired the carving. It had a tight round crown and a cartwheel of an oak brim, biscuit-thin, spread out much wider than the stooped shoulders. The hat of a religious? A pilgrim? A wandering poet? Had it all been carved from one piece of wood? Was the hat separate? Did it lift off? She became hypnotised by the hat. She had to touch it.

She heard footsteps and a gallery attendant stood in the doorway, then passed on, his careful, slow feet squeaking.

Then she heard in an adjoining gallery two voices.

“Well, what about me? What am I to do?”

“Go back to lunch at the hotel. Or a restaurant. Go and rest. We’ll be off at four o’clock.”

“I want to go to Beirut for the weekend.”

“Beirut! It’s across the world! And it’s nightclubs and narcotics. Whatever. .?”

“I want to go for a massage. Get my hair cut.”

“Beirut!”

“Yes. I’m bored. It’s the place now. I’m going to Beirut.”

An overweight figure passed sloppily across an open doorway into a further gallery and it was Elsie Veneering. Another shadow followed and Elisabeth heard their voices on a staircase. “But what shall I do all the afternoon? Where shall I go? I can’t sit having lunch alone.” Elisabeth heard a taxi drive away. She closed her eyes and listened, and very soon heard him coming back up the stairs.

He said from a distance, “I saw you as we came in. She’s gone,” and she opened her eyes on a small seedy man without much hair, feeling in his pockets for a cigarette.

She said, “You can’t smoke in here,” and he said, “No, I suppose not.”

He was wearing blue jeans and a brown shirt. He didn’t look much.

She was wearing a new long tight-fitting coat with a round fur collar and a trimming of the same fur down the front, disguising the buttons, and then circling the hem. It gave her a young waist and legs. Her hair had been cut in Amsterdam. He said, “You are much more beautiful now. But I loved your looks then, too.”

They sat in silence, he across the room on the only other chair. They looked at one another, and his smile and his eyes were as they had always been.

He said, “This bugger in the hat, he’s like that dwarf who, history relates, nicked Filth’s watch when they were kids and sold it,” and he got up and whispered in the man’s oak ear, “Albertross — I gotcher!” and lifted the wide oak brim and shouted out, “Eureka! It’s a separate entity!”

And dropped it. She screamed.

He said, picking it up, “It’s O.K. It’s bog oak. Seventeenth century, harder than iron. Oh, and the bloke’s name is Geoffrey. It says so in the label: Bought at Harrods.” He crammed the hat back on the head and the attendant came back and stared as Veneering bent to the oak ear, disarranging the hat, and said, “Hush, be still.” He crossed to the attendant and shook hands with him. “It’s my grandfather. He was a hatter. Rather a mad one. Nothing’s broken,” and the man went quickly away.

“No, I’m not laughing. I’m not,” she said, “I’m not. I’m not.”

And he took her hands and said, “When did you last laugh like this, Elisabeth? Never — that’s right, isn’t it? We’ve messed our lives. Elisabeth, come away with me. You’re bored out of your head. You know it. I know it. And I’m in hell. It’s our last chance. I’ll leave her. It was always only a matter of time.”

But she got up and walked out and down the circular staircase, the water from the canal flashing across the yellow walls. He leaned over the rail above, watching her, and when she was nearly down she stopped and stood still, not looking up.

“You’re not wearing the pearls.”

She said, “Goodbye, Terry. I’ll never leave him. I told you.”

“But I’m still with you. I’ll never leave you. We’ll never forget each other.”

On the last step of the staircase she said, “Yes. I know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

All that summer Elisabeth gave herself to the garden. Dexters as a house was now perfect. Its terrace had been built to sit out and eat on in warm weather. The warmth of autumn and winter was beginning to be talked about, and the fact that there was no need now to escape to winters abroad. Filth sat for hours watching Elisabeth toil.

“I sit here and bask,” he said, “I am shameless. But she won’t let me anywhere near, you know. If I pull out a weed she screams and says she’d been keeping it for the Chelsea Flower Show. All I do is wash up and pour out drinks. Oh, and I can occasionally hold a hosepipe.”

Filth’s last Case, the dam at The Hague, had groaned its way to a close. The judging was over and done, and the terrace was now his stage. He worked at Hudson on Building Contracts, sat reading long and hard, mostly biographies of heroes of empire, and bird books. He kept binoculars at his elbow though he seldom picked them up. Each morning he read the Daily Telegraph wondering which political party he belonged to and hating them all. He wished Betty would discuss it with him. Or anything with him. In the evenings she sat yawning over seed catalogues and he often had to wake her up to go to bed. On Fridays they drove in to Salisbury to the supermarket and ate a modest lunch at the hotel. Every second month a crate of wine was delivered to Dexters by Berry Brothers of St. James’s. On Sundays at half past ten was church. They never missed and never discussed why. “We are hedonists,” he told friends. “The last of our kind. No chores. We are rich, idle, boring expatriates and fewer and fewer people come to see us. Have a glass of Chablis.”

The year passed. The Handover took place in Hong Kong and they watched every minute of it on television. They discussed the Governor and his three beautiful daughters as if they were their own family, and when the daughters were seen to weep, Betty and Filth wept too. They watched the Union Jack come down for the last time.

“We’re getting a bit senile,” he said and she went out to the garden and began to turn the compost with a fork.

She stayed outside for hours and Filth had a try at preparing supper and broke one of the Delft dishes. They had a wakeful night in their separate bedrooms and were only just asleep when the rooks started up at dawn.

“I’m going up to London next week,” he said. “There is a Bench Table at the Inn. I can stay overnight with someone or other.” (They had long since given up the flat.) “Or we could go together. Stay at an hotel. See a show.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. .”

“You’re getting stuck, Betty.”

“No, I’m making a garden. We’ll open for Charity next year.”

“I don’t know what you think about hour after hour. Day after day. Gardening.”

“I think about gardening,” she said.

“Well,” he told Dulcie in the lane, “I suppose this is being old. “All passion spent”—Shakespeare, isn’t it?” and Dulcie pouted her pink lips and said, “Maybe.”

After Filth had set off to London, Dulcie went round and found Betty, brown as a Gypsy, busy with the first pruning of the new apple trees.

“Does that gardener do nothing?”

“He does all the rough.”

They sat over mugs of coffee on the terrace, staring down the wandering lawn towards the new orchard and out to the horizon and Whin Green. Dulcie said, “Are you sure you’re well, Betty?”

“Fine, except for blood pressure and I’ve always had that.”

“You don’t say much, any more. You seem far away.”

“Yes, I’m a bit obsessive. I’ll be going on gardening outings in coaches before long with all the other village bores. Look, I must get on. I’m working ahead of frost.”

“Who are those people in the garden?”

“What people?”

“I saw some children. A boy and a girl. And a man.”

“Oh, yes. It’s a garden full of surprises.”

One day, deep beyond the meadow grass, beyond the orchard and the apple hedges, on her knees and planting broad beans, she saw two feet standing near her hands. They were Harry Veneering’s.

“Harry!”

He was delighted when she shrieked.

“I’ve found you, Mrs. Waterproof! I heard Filth was up in London. Thought you might be lonely.”

They had lunch at the kitchen table and he drank a whole bottle of wine (Filth would wonder!) and made her laugh at nothing. As ever. He mentioned his father.

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No. I’m a grown-up. I’m going bald. Anyway, we’re not getting on too well, the old showman and I.”

“Oh? That’s new.”

“No. It isn’t. He thinks I’m rubbish. He’s thought so for years.” He took a flower from a jar on the table and began to pull it to bits. He kicked out at a stool.

“Harry! You may be losing your oriental hair but you’re still eight. What’s wrong?”

“I’m supposed to be a gambler.”

“And are you?”

“Well, yes, in my own small way. He’s always bailed me out. Now he says he won’t. Not any more.”

“How much?” she asked.

“Never mind. I didn’t come for that.”

“Of course not,” she said, watching him. Now he was picking at a pink daisy.

“Stop that!”

“Oh, sorry. Well, I’d better be going.”

“How much do you want?”

“Betty, I have not asked. I’d never ask.”

“How much do you owe?”

He slammed away from the table and looked down the garden. “Ten thousand pounds.”

Then he pushed past her out of the back door and disappeared.

In time she went and found him smoking in the dark alley where she had first arrived at the house, leaning against the great chimney breast. He was in tears.

“Here’s a cheque,” she said.

“Of course I couldn’t!”

“I have a lot of my own money. It’s not Filth’s. I spend most of it on the garden. If I’d had children it would all have been for them. I’ve not had a child to give it to.”

He hugged and hugged her. “Oh, how I love you, Mrs. Raincoat. How I love you.”

“Come. You must go home now. You’re a long way from London and it’s a nasty road. I’ll walk with you to the car.”

“No, it’s all right. Oh, thank you, so very, very much! Oh, how I. .”

“I’ll just get a coat.”

“Don’t. I’m fine.”

But she insisted and they walked together down the drive and up the hill towards the church.

“I’m just round this corner,” he said, “and I’m going to hug you again and say goodbye. I’ll write, of course. At once.”

“I’d like to wave you off.”

Very hesitantly he walked beside her round the side of the churchyard to where his car was parked. It was a Porsche.

“You don’t get a thing for one of these second-hand,” he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY

When the Porsche was gone she turned for the house, stopping quite often and staring at the familiar things in the lane. Loitering gravely, she nodded at the old Traveller in the hedge, busy with his flail. (He must be a hundred years old.) He stopped hacking at the sharp branches and watched her pass and go towards the front door.

Inside it on the mat lay a letter which must have been wrongly delivered somewhere else first because it was grubby and someone — the Traveller? — had scrawled Sorry across the envelope. It had come from Singapore to her, care of Edward’s Chambers. Though she had scarcely seen his handwriting — once on the card with the pearls so many years ago — she knew that it was from Veneering.

There was a half-sheet of old-fashioned flimsy airmail paper inside signed THV and the words: If Harry comes to see you do not give him money. I’m finished with him. She threw it into the wood-burning stove. Then she went into the garden and began clearing round the new fruit trees, toiling and bashing until it was dark.

“Hello?” Filth stood on the terrace.

“You’re back! Already. There’s not much for supper.”

“Doesn’t matter. London’s all eating. Come in. You can’t do much more in the dark.”

“I’ve made a vow today,” he said. “I’ll never work in London again. I can do Hudson just as well at home, with a bit of planning of references. I am tired of London which means, they tell me, that I am tired of life.”

“Possibly.”

“Which makes me think that you and I ought to be making our Wills. I’ll dig them out and revise them and then we’ll make a last trip to London, to Bantry Street, and do the signing.”

“All right.”

“Could we go up and back on the same day, d’you think? Too much for you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

And he began to make meticulous revisions to his Will and appendices of wishes. Did she want to read it? Or should he look over hers?

“No, mine’s all straightforward. Most of it to you and Amy. If you die first it will all go to Amy’s children.”

“Really? Good gracious! Right, we’ll get on with it then. Take three weeks — getting the appointment and so on, I’d think. We want everything foolproof.”

So the appointment was made for 3.30 P.M., on a November afternoon, which was rather late in the day for the two-hour journeys, one up and one down. The new young woman at the firm was excellent and therefore very busy. Never mind.

But getting ready on the day took longer now, even though shoes were polished and all their London clothes laid out the night before. Betty had seen to it that their debit cards and banknotes, rail cards, miniature bottle of brandy (for her dizziness) and the tiny crucifix left to her by Mrs. Baxter were all in her handbag, along with the pills for both of them (in separate dosset boxes) in case for any reason they should need to stay overnight.

Filth was still upstairs, fighting with cufflinks, Betty, ready in the hall, sitting in the red chair, and the hall table beside her was piled up with tulip bulbs in green nets. They had smothered the telephone and Filth’s bowler hat. There’d be a roar about that in a minute. (“Where the hell—?”) She fingered the tulip bulbs through their netting, thinking how sexy they felt, when the telephone began to ring. She burrowed about under the bulbs to find the receiver and said, “Yes? Betty here,” knowing it would be from a nervy sort of woman at her Reading Group that afternoon. Betty had of course sent apologies weeks ago.

“Yes? Chloë?”

“Betty?” It was a man.

“Yes?”

“I’m in Orange Tree Road. Where are you?”

“Well, here.”

“Exactly where?”

“Sitting in the hall by the phone. On the satin throne.”

“What are you wearing?”

“Wearing?”

“I need to see you.”

“But you’re in Hong Kong.”

“No. Singapore. I need to see your face. I’ve lost it. I have to be able to see you. In the red chair.”

“Well, I’m — we’re just setting off for London. Filth’s putting on his black shoes upstairs. He’ll be down in a minute, I’m dressed for London.”

“Are you wearing the pearls?”

“Yes.”

“Touch them. Are they warm? Are they mine? Or his? Would he know?”

“Yours. No, he wouldn’t notice. Are you drunk? It must be after dinner.”

“No. Well, yes. Maybe. Did you get my note?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t tell you in it that Harry was given a medal. Twice mentioned in despatches last year. ‘Exceptional bravery.’ Northern Ireland.”

“No!”

“Hush-hush stuff. Secret service. Underground sort of stuff.”

“Should you be telling me this?”

“No. He never told us at the time. Very, very brave. I want to make it absolutely clear.”

“I believe it. I hated your letter. I saw him about a month ago and he was miserable. He said you thought he was rubbish. He didn’t ask me for money. Terry? Terry, where’ve you gone?”

A silence.

“Nowhere. Nowhere to go. Betty, Harry’s dead. My boy.”

Filth came down the stairs, looking for his bowler hat.

In the London train Filth thought: She’s looking old. An old woman. The first time. Poor old Betty, old.

“You all right, Betty?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes seemed huge. Strange and swimmy. He thought, She must watch that blood-pressure.

He saw how she looked affectionately at the young Tamil ticket inspector who was intent on moving them to a cleaner carriage in the first class. She was thanking the boy very sweetly. “Perfectly all right here,” said Filth, but Betty was off down the aisle and into the next carriage. Silly woman. Could be her grandson. Still attractive. You could see the bloke liked her.

At Waterloo they parted, Filth to lunch in his Inn at the Temple, Betty he wasn’t sure where. The University Women’s Club right across towards Hyde Park? Whoever with? And why was she making off towards Waterloo Bridge? The solicitor’s office was in Holborn. He watched her almost running down the flight of steps, under the arches and over the maze of roads towards the National Theatre. Still has good legs, bless her. He stepped into a taxi.

Betty, at the National Theatre, made a pretence of eating lunch, pushing a tray along in a queue of people excited to have tickets for Electra in an hour’s time. She headed for the foyer (Harry is dead) and got the lift up to the open-air terrace where there were fire-eaters and mummers and people being statues and loud canned music played. (My boy Harry.) Beside her on the seat two young lovers sat mute, chewing on long bread rolls with flaps of ham and salad hanging out. When they had finished eating they wiped their hands on squares of paper and threw the paper down. Then in one simple movement they turned to face each other and merged into each other’s arms.

She decided to go at once to Bantry Street. If she walked all the way she would arrive just about on time. On Waterloo Bridge, once she had climbed the steep concrete stairs the crowds came down on her like the Battle itself. She kept near the bridge’s side, sometimes going almost hand over hand. People in London move so fast! (Harry is dead.) Some of them looked her over quickly as they passed, noticed her pearls, her matching coat and skirt. The silk blouse. The gloves. I’m antique. They think I’m out of Agatha Christie. (Is dead!) My hair is tidy and well cut, like the woman. . the woman in. . the woman like my mother in the hairdresser in Hong Kong. The day the crowds of shadows were to pass me in the night towards the house in the trees. He is dead.

At the Aldwych she felt dizzy and found a pill in her handbag and swallowed it, looking round to see if by any chance Filth was anywhere about. He’d be in a fury if he couldn’t find a taxi. He’d never get a bus. He wouldn’t much care to walk. No sign.

Oh, but why worry? He always could find taxis. He was so tall. Taller still when he brandished the rolled umbrella. He’d forgotten the bowler hat, thank goodness. It was still under the tulips. The last bowler hat in London and my boy is dead.

Here was Bantry Street and there, thank God, was Filth getting out of a taxi and smiling. The driver had got out and was holding open the door for him. Filth looked somebody. His delightful smile!

But it was the last smile of the day. On the next train back to Tisbury they sat opposite one another across a table in a determinedly second-class carriage. Betty was pale and Filth sat purple in choleric silence.

The solicitor had not been there! She had children ill at home and either had not remembered or the firm had forgotten to cancel the appointment. And at the reception desk — and the place looked like an hotel now, with palms in pots — they had not even seemed apologetic.

“Salisbury,” he said, after an hour. “We’ll take the damn things into Salisbury to sign. Perfectly good solicitors there and half the price.”

“I always said so.” Betty closed her eyes. (Harry.)

“It is a positive outrage. I shall write to the Law Society.”

(My boy, Harry.)

“We are, after all, no longer young.”

“No.”

“Nor are we exactly nobodies. They’ve been our solicitors for forty years, that firm.”

“Yes.”

She opened her eyes and watched Wiltshire going by. On the way out she had thought that she’d seen a hoopoe in a hedge. Filth would have been enchanted but she had not told him. Very brave. Despatches. Northern Ireland. Harry. No, no. He is not dead. My Harry.

And, seeing the first of the chalk in the rippling hills she knew that she would leave Filth. She had to go to Veneering.

Filth now closed his eyes and, opposite him, she examined his face. He looked like a fine portrait of himself, each line of his face magnificently drawn. Oh, such conceit! Such self-centredness! Such silliness and triviality! I’ll tell him when we get home. And a wonderful lightness of heart flooded over her, a squirm of ancient sexual pleasure.

It will probably kill him, she thought. But I shall go. I may tell him at once. Now.

The train had begun to slow down for Tisbury Station. It usually stopped just outside for several minutes, for the platform was short and they had to wait to let the fast London-to-Plymouth train through. Betty looked out of the window and on the tapering end of the platform, way beyond the signal and just as they were sliding to a halt, she saw Albert Ross. He was looking directly at her.

Filth was standing up, ready to get out. He came round to her and shook her shoulder. “Betty. Come along. We’re here. Whatever’s wrong now?”

“Nothing,” she said.

In the car that they had parked outside the station that morning but a thousand years ago, she said, “I saw Albert Ross. Standing on the platform. Waiting for the train from Plymouth to go through.”

Filth was negotiating Berrywood Lane — a tractor and two four-by-fours, two proud girls on horseback — and said, “You fell asleep.”

“No. He looked straight at me.”

There, on the hall table, lay the tulip bulbs.

I’ll wait till I’ve planted them, she decided. I can’t leave them to shrivel and rot, and she took off her shoes and climbed the stairs to bed. I’ll tell him tomorrow after lunch.

She was up early, not long after dawn, and ready in her gardening clothes. She would change later, after she had packed. It was a damp, warm day, perfect for planting and she arranged the bulbs in groups of twenty-five for lozenge-shaped designs each in a different colour along the foot of the red wall. The planting round the apple trees was finished already. With her favourite long dibble, she began to make a hole for each bulb. She liked to plant at least six inches down. Then you could put wallflowers on top of them to flower first, but this year she had left it a bit late for that. She humped herself about on the planting mat, put a little sharp sand in the bottom of each hole, laid a bulb ready beside each. How stiff and cumbersome her body was now. How ugly her old hands, in the enormous green gloves. A hectic sunlight washed across the garden and she went into the house for a mug of coffee. Edward was in the kitchen, silent in his own world.

“Bulbs finished yet?”

“Not quite.”

She went back to the garden and he followed her, carrying his stick and binoculars on to the terrace. She stood with her coffee, and all at once the rooks started a wild tumult in the ash trees: some dreadful disagreement, some palace revolution, some premonition of change. They began to swoop about above the branches and their ramshackle great nests, all over the sky, like smuts flying from a burning chimney. She was down the garden on her knees again now and saw that Veneering’s pearls were lying in the flower bed beside her. For the first time in her life she had forgotten to take off a necklace when she went to bed. Nor had she noticed them when she washed and dressed this morning. They must have slipped from her neck. She was eye to eye with them now, on her haunches, head down. She picked them off the soil and let them pour into one of the holes for the tulips.

My guilty pearls, she thought. I hope the sharp sand won’t hurt them.

She had rather seized up now. She was in a difficult position on hands and knees. If I can get on my elbows. . she thought. Goodness—! Here we go. Well, I never was exactly John Travolta. That’s better. Now the bottom half.

She rested, and from her lowly place noticed out on the lawn how the bindweed was piercing the turf, rising in green spirals, pirouetting quite high, seeking something on which to cling. The wild, returning to the garden.

She could see Filth, too, sitting on the terrace with his coffee, staring up at the rooks through his binoculars. Then he put down the binoculars and picked up his Airedale-headed walking stick and, quite oblivious of her, like a child, pointed it up at the rookery and shouted, “Bang, bang, bang.” Then he swung the stick about for a left and a right. “Bang, bang, bang.”

He’s quite potty, she thought. It’s too late. I can’t leave him now.

But then she did.

Filth, letting his binoculars swoop away from the rookery and down across the garden a minute later, saw her lying in the flower bed, particulary still.