Read Online Old Filth by Jane Gardam - Free Book Online

walk to Bantry Street, thought Betty; his taxi might overtake me. And she struck out into the crowd. In her Agatha-Christie country clothes and pearls and polished shoes, she strode among an elbowing, slovenly riff-raff who looked at her as if she was someone out of a play. Pain and dislike, bewilderment and fear, she thought, in every face. Nobody at peace except the corpses in the doorways, the bundles with rags and bottles; and you can’t call that peace. She dropped money into hats and boxes as she would never have done in Dacca or Shanghai, and would have been prosecuted for doing in Singapore. Beggars again in the streets of London, she thought. My world’s over. Like Terry’s.
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    Her heart was beating much too fast and she slowed down at Bantry Street and felt in her handbag for a pill. But all was well. Here was Filth, grave and tall, being helped out of a taxi.
    â€œWell, good timing,” he called. “Excellent. Nice lunch? Anybody there?”
    â€œNo one I knew.”
    â€œSame here. Only old has-beens.”

THE OUTFIT
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    I ngoldby—Feathers,” Sir had said outside the Prep school in the Lake District mountains. Ingoldby that day became not only Eddie Feathers’s first friend but a part of him. They sat down that evening side by side for the sausage supper. From the next morning they shared one of the ten double desks, with tip-up seats and a single inkwell. Listening to Pat Ingoldby’s endless talk, Eddie, at first painfully and hesitantly, began to talk, too. Ingoldby waited patiently when the clock had trouble ticking, never breaking in. Over four years the stammer healed.
    Despite Sir’s strictness about no best friends and daily cold showers, nothing could be done about the oneness of Ingoldby and Feathers. They read the same tattered books from the library—Henty, Ballantyne and Kipling; picked each other for teams. They discussed the same heroes. Ingoldby was dark and slight, Eddie Feathers four inches taller and chestnut-haired, but they began to walk with the same gait. A funny pair. And they made a funny pair in the school skiff on the lake but almost always won. Ingoldby’s wit and logic expunged the nightmares of Eddie’s past. They were balm and blessing to Eddie who had met none previously. He never once mentioned the years before he arrived at Sir’s Outfit and Pat never enquired about them or volunteered information about himself. The past, unless very pleasant, is not much discussed among children.
    On Sports Day, Colonel Ingoldby arrived and Feathers was introduced to him and soon Feathers was visiting the Ingoldbys in the school holidays. Sir wrote to Malaya describing the excellence of the Ingoldbys and saying that they would like to have Eddie with them for every holiday. A handsome cheque came from Kotakinakulu to Mrs. Ingoldby and was graciously received (though there had been no accompanying letter).
    At fourteen both boys were to move on to the same Public school in the Midlands and Mrs. Ingoldby asked Eddie how he felt about continuing the arrangements. Would his aunts— whom he had only once seen—be jealous? Insulted? “We’ve become so used to you, Eddie. Jack is so much older than Pat. They’re too far apart to be close as brothers. I think Pat is lonely, to tell you the truth. Would you be very bored to become part of the family? Now, do say so if you would.”
    â€œOf course I’d love to be.”
    â€œI’ll write to your father.”
    From Malaya, there was silence, except for another cheque. Nor was anything heard from the aunts. Mrs. Ingoldby said nothing about the money except, “How very kind and how quite unnecessary,” and Eddie was absorbed into the Ingoldbys’ life in their large house on a Lancashire hilltop where the Colonel kept bees and Mrs. Ingoldby wandered vaguely and happily about, smiling at people. When Pat won an award to their next school, Colonel