Old Filth - Jane Gardam [104]
They muttered off, to confer.
“Flying’s not safe any more,” said Kate. “Not since the Twin Towers. New Year’s just the time for the next attack. And you’ll be flying to a Muslim country, like as not.”
He paid no attention but asked Garbutt if he would go up in the roof and look for the suitcase he and Lady Feathers had brought back from Bangladesh on their last trip.
Kate said, “Madeira’s nice. Why not settle for nearer?”
“No. Bangladesh. I must see Bangladesh—or maybe Lanka again. And I might just continue. On into Malaysia, then up to Borneo. Kotakinakulu. Where I was born.”
“Then I despair,” said Garbutt.
“Bangladesh is where the brasses come from.”
He had given Kate the beaten copper bowls of his heyday, after Betty died, to stop her from cleaning them twice a week at his expense.
She said, “If I understand the nine-o’clock news, Bangladesh is the place half the time under water and no good for arthritis. I’m sorry, but that doctor’s notorious. He’s never been beyond the golf course. He’s never even been to Grand Canary where we go—nice and near and no chance of Economy-class thrombosis.”
“He’s told you. He’s not going Economy-class,” said Garbutt. “He says it’s full of children joining their families out East for the school holidays. Makes him angry. Says in his day it took six weeks and you went once in five years. Says they’re all spoilt now, and playing music in their ears.”
“It’s the luggage that really bothers me,” said Garbutt.
The suitcase was immense. He got it out of the roof like a difficult birth. Its label called it a Revelation.
“Revelation was once the very best luggage,” said Filth. “They were ‘revelations’ because they expanded.”
“They were them heavy things that went out with porters,” said Kate. “Can’t we get you one borrowed? From that Chloe?”
“Absolutely not,” said Filth.
“No way,” said Garbutt.
“Get something on wheels with a handle, then,” she said; and “What’s this, there’s something written on it in brass studs?”
“Islam,” Filth said.
“Well that settles it. You can’t carry that. You’ll be thought a terrorist.”
“Islam was the name of a distinguished lawyer in Brunei. A friend. He gave me the suitcase to bring back our presents. We bought a great many—they have so little there. It was the least we could do. Buy and buy.”
“Let’s get it open then,” said Garbutt.
Inside were lurid hessian table mats, cross-stitched sacking table cloths, wilting saris and some indestructible straw matting. There was also a heavy little bundle of amethysts. He had sometimes suspected Betty of light-hearted smuggling. He sent all the other stuff to a church sale and asked Garbutt to scrub the case and polish it. It came up a treat.
“You can tell Class, I’ll say that,” said Kate. “But I wish you’d reconsider, Sir Edward. We’re hardly over your last.”
He stared her out.
And so into the Revelation went Filth’s impeccable underwear; his singlets and what he still called his knickers; his yellow cotton socks from Harrods, twenty years old; some silk pyjamas; two light-weight suits and a dinner jacket (because one can never be quite sure where one will be invited). He added two sponge (antique phrase) bags, one for shaving things and bars of coal-tar soap, the other for his pills. Separate pills for use on the journey would go into his passport case. There was ample room in the Revelation for more.
“You could get all your things in here, too,” he called out to Betty over his shoulder—then felt a pang in the upper chest. He was doing it again. Talking to her. And as if she would ever have dreamed of sharing his suitcase! So strange that, since his extraordinary peregrination to the West Country, Betty was back in his life again. Brief pains, real pains of longing for her now. Guilty pains. He had been neglecting her memory. Memory and desire—I must keep track of them. Mustn’t lose hold.
On Christmas Day he attended church at ten. He preferred the eight