Old Filth - Jane Gardam [101]
Babs scratched her leg in its thick grey stocking and looked out of the window. “Go on then, Teddy,” she said. “Spit it out.”
Father Tansy, no trace now of the prancing comic of his parish church, his Office completely dominating him, sat still, and nodded once.
When Filth was obviously unable to begin, Babs said, “Oh, I’ll do it, then.”
There was a silence.
“She hurt us,” Babs said. “She had that sort of smiling face, plump and round, that when you look closer is cruel. Nobody had noticed. Probably, when she first fostered children she was different. Pa Didds was a nice old man but he just sat about. Then he died. They’d had no children of their own. By the time the three of us arrived, she’d begun to hate children, but she had to keep on fostering because there was nothing else. They went on sending her children. From all over the Empire. When the children complained . . . Most never did, they thought she was normal. Anyway the children couldn’t complain until they’d got away, somewhere else. And there wasn’t anywhere else. We were all sent to her for four or five years. You know, longer than we’d been alive. The complaining ones were thought to be cowards. We had to copy the Spartans in those days. You should have seen the illustrations in children’s books of the Raj then. Pictures of children beating each other with canes at school. The prefectorial system. Now it would be thought porn. It was Cumberledge, of course, she hated most.”
“He was there when we arrived,” said Filth. “In bed. Not speaking. He was pale and fat and sobbing and he didn’t come down to tea. ‘What’s the matter with the other boy?’ Babs asked. ‘He’s wet his bed again,’ Ma Didds said, and she laid one of her long whips over the table. ‘And he’ll have to wash his own sheets.’”
“I shared a room with him,” said Filth, eventually. “He smelled and I hated him. He slept on the floor to save the sheets, but then he’d wet his pyjamas. He used to take them off and lie on the boards, but then she’d beat him a second time for removing his pyjamas. We had to watch.”
“How long did it last?”
“Years,” said Babs. “They merged, the years. It seemed our whole lives. We forgot there had been anything different. Anything before.”
“Not altogether,” said Filth. “Claire—by the way, she never hurt Claire—Claire was younger and very pretty and she used to sit her on her knee and comb her hair. Before Pa Didds went off into hospital and died, he used to be nice to me and Babs. There were several good moments.”
“He liked you,” said Babs. “Took you for walks. He never took me for walks. I used to sing hymns very, very loud. She hated my singing. She bandaged my mouth.”
“And the end of the story?” asked the priest.
“Claire decided on the end of the story one day while we were gathering the hens’ eggs in the hen-house. It was our job. We liked it—all the fluster and the commotion and the rooster crowing. It was a day when Cumberledge had been flogged and flung back to his bed and was crying again. It was almost as if Ma Didds loved Cumberledge in some horrible cruel way, especially after Pa Didds died. As if she hated herself. She used to sit rocking herself and holding her stomach after we’d all gone to bed. We peeped over the stairs and saw her. As if she had a baby inside her.”
“She shut me in cupboards,” said Filth. “I began to stammer even worse than I did already. Then she would shout at me to answer her politely, and when I couldn’t get any words out she’d bang my face against the wall or box my ears, and shout at me again to answer her.”
“She fed us well,” said Babs. “Great plates of food. Big stews and home-made bread. ‘You should see the food they eat,’ she told them at the chapel. ‘Fat as pigs.’ She stuffed us. Except for Claire. Claire left half of hers and smiled at Ma Didds like an angel. She never punished Claire.”
“Claire is the cleverest of us,” said Babs.
“And so—?” said Tansy.
“And so, this evening in the hen-house, Cumberledge indoors, inarticulate as ever, Claire,