Old Filth - Jane Gardam [103]
“You have come to me asking for absolution?” asked Father Tansy. “You repent?”
Eddie Feathers, Old Filth, the judge, Fevvers, a Master of the Inner Temple, Teddy—pillar of justice, arbitrator of truth said nothing.
“No,” he said at last. “I don’t. I can’t.”
“No, I don’t either,” said Babs. “And I know Claire doesn’t.”
“Did Cumberledge survive? Is he sane?”
“Very much so,” said Filth. “I next met him in the dark in Oxford. During the War when I was lost in the snow. I didn’t realise who it was. Between eight and eighteen we all change utterly. Yet years later I somehow realised. He was coming out of a blacked-out church. He had a calmness and a kindness. He was Army. He wrote when Betty died. His essence was unharmed.”
“He became a grandee,” said Babs. “He’s retired to Cambridge. A grandee.”
“There are those who are given Grace,” said Tansy. “But you yourself wanted to make some sort of confession, Sir Edward?”
“I wanted to express my pity,” said Filth. “My pity for her. For Ma Didds. I’ve tried hundreds of Cases, many more wicked than anything here. Some I still cannot bear to think about. I don’t mean I cannot bear to think about my judgements—you have to be thick-skinned about that—I cannot bear to think about the cruelty at the core of this foul world. Or the vengeance dormant even in children. All there, ready, waiting for use. Without love. Cumberledge was given Grace. That’s all I can say. We were not.”
They still sat on.
The dog stretched on the bed and yawned and jumped down, bent over and rested its head on Babs’s knobbly knee.
“We’ll say the General Confession,” said Tansy. “Together.”
They did, Filth remembering it being hammered into him by Sir.
Tansy then said, “Let us pray. Remember these Thy children, oh merciful Lord. Heal them and keep them in Thine everlasting arms.”
THE REVELATION
His house was clean and polished, his garden neat. A note on the kitchen table said, Butter, cheese, milk in fridge. Eggs. Bread in crock. Bacon, etc. Welcome home. Kate. Through the windows, looking towards the Downs, he saw movement in his apple tree and a next-door child dropped out of it, eating fruit, and wandered nonchalantly over the lawn as if he owned it. The hedge must have a hole in it, he thought. It might as well stay. His mail had been neatly stacked on his desk, the fire laid ready to light. She’d stuck some shop flowers in a vase.
It had been a good drive home. Most enjoyable. Christmas coming.
Very pleasant seeing poor Babs again. And the parson chap. Holiday full of events. And tomorrow he must see the doctor.
His ankle was very much better, and he had no trace of trouble with his heart—or digestion. All that was the matter with him now was the onset of winter aches and pains. His arthritis was remarkably mild for his age, they always said, especially considering the age of his damp old house.
“I am about to make another journey,” he said the next day after his visit to the surgery in Shaftesbury. “Good morning, Mrs. Kate. How very good to see you. Thank you for the provisions. The house looks very well. I’ve brought you a keepsake from Gloucester. Where’s Garbutt?”
“Garbutt,” he said. “Good morning. Did I imagine it? Yes, of course I did. You didn’t by any chance visit me in wherever it was I’ve been? I had some sort of dream. There were some very odd doctors. They thought I’d had a heart attack. Perfect nonsense.”
“Thanks for the postcard,” said Garbutt.
“Now then, you haven’t got rid of me yet, either of you. I’ve made a decision. I’m flying to the East for the New Year.”
“You’d never get the Insurance,” said Kate.
“You’ve not flown in years. It’s knees on your nose now,” said Garbutt.
“I shall be flying First. I always did. I always shall. I can afford it. Judge Veneering left me his set of Law Reports and I shall sell them for six thousand pounds.”
“You won’t get Insurance.”
“You can’t go alone.”
The two of them were closing on him like assassins.
“I have never felt so well. My little holiday has set me right. The doctor