Old Filth by Jane Gardam Page A

Betty, Harry’s dead. My boy.”
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    The line died as Filth came bounding down the stairs in a London suit and black shoes. He swirled himself into his overcoat and looked about for the bowler hat which he had resurrected. It lay among the tulips. He reflected upon it and then let it lie. Mustn’t be antique. The taxi was here.
    â€œPhone-call?”
    â€œNothing—cut off.”
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    They travelled first-class, though unintentionally as they both thought first-class was vulgar and only for expense-account people.
    The ticket-collector, weighing up their age and clothes, had thought differently, seeing Teddy’s rolled umbrella and Betty’s glorious pearls and the rubbish on the floor around their polished shoes.
    â€œYou can upgrade, sir, if you like.” (The wife looks very pale.) “Just the next compartment and four pounds extra if you’re seniors.”
    â€œPerfectly well here, thank you,” said Filth, but Betty smiled at the man’s black Tamil face, gathered up her bag and gloves and set off on her jaunty heels down the coach, tottering through the swaying connecting doors towards the firsts, away from what she still called “the thirds.”
    They paddled through the water spilling out from under the doors of the W.C.s and settled in a blue velvet six-seater compartment. Four of the seats were slashed down the back with the stuffing coming out. Graffiti covered the ceiling but the floor was cleaner. Filth thought of the train to Kuala Lumpur, the mahogany and the hot food handed in, and sat facing his wife in the two unslashed seats on the window side. The fields, woods, hedges, uplands of Wiltshire, white chalk shining through the grass, flickered by.
    Betty suddenly saw a hoopoe in a hedge. She looked at Filth to see if he had noticed it, but he was abstracted. The lines between his nose and mouth were sharp today, cruel as the slashes down the seats. Whatever had he to be bitter about?
    His boy is dead. His boy, Harry .
    The Tamil drew the door open.
    â€œBetter, sir?”
    â€œVery nice,” said Betty.
    â€œFour pounds? Is that each ?” asked Filth.
    â€œDon’t bother with it, sir. When you look at the seats . . . But it’s cleaner. Take my advice and get straight into first-class on the way home. You’ll be Day Returns?”
    â€œOh, yes. We don’t stay in London longer than we can help.” The man wondered why the lady’s eyes were so bright. Like it was tears. Real old. Could be his grandma. And yet—she was smiling at him.
    â€œWe’re going to London to sign our Wills.”
    â€œMa’am, I’m sure there’s plenty of time.”
    Filth blew his nose on a starched handkerchief and drew down his eyebrows as if in Court. “In your profession, I wouldn’t count on that.”
    â€œToo right,” said the man. “Takes our lives in our hands, we do on the railways. Safer flying. But that’s how I like it. When you gotta go, you gotta go? Right?”
    â€œRight,” said Betty.
    â€œQuite right,” said Filth. He was noticing Betty, her face tired through the make-up. He looked at her again as the train swayed insolently through Clapham junction. She must get her eyes seen to. They looked moist and strange. Old, he thought. She’s never looked old before.
    â€œLunch?” he asked.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhere are you having lunch? Shall we go somewhere together? Simpson’s?”
    â€œBut you’re going to the Inner Temple.”
    â€œI can change it. Nobody’s expecting me. Don’t know a soul there now.”
    She was silent.
    â€œThen we could get a taxi to the place—the solicitor together. Not arrive separately. Hanging about on pavements.” “No,” she said. “I’ve made arrangements at the Club.”
    â€œYou don’t have to go. There’s never anybody else there.”
    â€œThat’s why I go.