Read Online Old Filth by Jane Gardam - Free Book Online Page B

I was never allowed to be ill. She was what is known as a Christian Scientist. Influenza in 1919 was tiresome. Everyone was dying. When my father turned up one day, a footman answered the morning-room door if you please (Aunt Rose had never opened a door in her life), and she just said, ‘Oh, there you are, Gaspard. You must be tired. Here is your little girl.’ D’you know, he burst into tears and fled. I can’t think why. Oh, how lucky I was to meet the Colonel.”
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    Walking across the fields with Pat, Eddie made about the only comment on anyone’s life he had ever made.
    â€œYour mother seems to feel the same about everybody. Why is she always happy?”
    â€œGod—I don’t know.”
    â€œShe’s not bitter at all. Nobody liked her. Her parents sound awful if you don’t mind my saying so.”
    â€œYou’ve had Aunt Rose and the footman? They were all barmy, if you ask me. Raj loonies.”
    â€œShe seems to feel—well, to like everybody, though.”
    â€œOh, no, she doesn’t. They were brought up like that. Most of them learned never to like anyone, ever, their whole lives. But they didn’t moan because they had this safety net. The Empire. Wherever you went you wore the Crown, and wherever you went you could find your own kind. A club. There are still thousands round the world thinking they own it. It’s vaguely mixed up with Christian duty. Even now. Even here, at Home. Every house of our sort you go into, Liverpool to the Isle of Wight—there’s big game on the wall and tiger skins on the floor and tables made of Benares brass trays and a photograph of the Great Durbar. Nowadays you can even fake it, with plenty of servants. It wasn’t like that in my grandfather’s generation. They were better people. Better educated, Bible-readers, not showy. Got on with the job. There was a job for everyone and they did it and often died in it.”
    â€œI think my father will die in his. He thinks of nothing else. Sweats and slogs. Sick with malaria. And lost his family.”
    Pat, who was unconcerned about individuals, slashed at the flower-heads. “I’ll be an historian. That’s what I’m going to do. It’s the only hope—learning how we got to be what we are. Primates, I mean. Surges of aggression. Today’ll be history tomorrow. The empire is on the wane. Draining away. There will be chaos when it’s gone and we’ll be none the better people. When empires end, there’s often a dazzling finale—then—? Germany’s looming again, Goths versus Visigoths.”
    â€œBut you’d fight for the Empire, wouldn’t you? I mean you’d fight for all this?” Eddie nodded over the green land.
    â€œFor the carpet factory? Yes, I would. I will.”
    â€œYou will . Fight then?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo will I,” said Eddie.
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    Wandering about that last peacetime summer with the Ingoldbys, Pat now seventeen, Eddie sixteen, the days were like weeks, endless as summers in childhood. They walked for miles—and at the end of each day of sun and smouldering cloud and shining Lancashire rain—stopped at the avenue. In the soft valley, more certain than sunset, the factory workers set off for home after the five o’clock hooter, moving in strings up The Goit and through the woods on paved paths worn into saucers and polished by generations of clogs. Sometimes on the high avenue, with the wind right, you could hear the horse-shoe metal of the clogs on the sandstone clinking like castanets.
    Wandering on, the two of them would watch the Colonel in a black veil puffing smoke from a funnel stuffed with hay, and swearing at his bees. “If he’d only be quieter with them,” said Pat. “Want any help, Pa?”
    â€œNo. Get away, you’ll be killed. They’re on the rampage.”
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    â€œOh—tea,” said Mrs. Ingoldby.