Old Filth - Jane Gardam [21]
Despite Sir’s strictness about no best friends and daily cold showers, nothing could be done about the oneness of Ingoldby and Feathers. They read the same tattered books from the library—Henty, Ballantyne and Kipling; picked each other for teams. They discussed the same heroes. Ingoldby was dark and slight, Eddie Feathers four inches taller and chestnut-haired, but they began to walk with the same gait. A funny pair. And they made a funny pair in the school skiff on the lake but almost always won. Ingoldby’s wit and logic expunged the nightmares of Eddie’s past. They were balm and blessing to Eddie who had met none previously. He never once mentioned the years before he arrived at Sir’s Outfit and Pat never enquired about them or volunteered information about himself. The past, unless very pleasant, is not much discussed among children.
On Sports Day, Colonel Ingoldby arrived and Feathers was introduced to him and soon Feathers was visiting the Ingoldbys in the school holidays. Sir wrote to Malaya describing the excellence of the Ingoldbys and saying that they would like to have Eddie with them for every holiday. A handsome cheque came from Kotakinakulu to Mrs. Ingoldby and was graciously received (though there had been no accompanying letter).
At fourteen both boys were to move on to the same Public school in the Midlands and Mrs. Ingoldby asked Eddie how he felt about continuing the arrangements. Would his aunts— whom he had only once seen—be jealous? Insulted? “We’ve become so used to you, Eddie. Jack is so much older than Pat. They’re too far apart to be close as brothers. I think Pat is lonely, to tell you the truth. Would you be very bored to become part of the family? Now, do say so if you would.”
“Of course I’d love to be.”
“I’ll write to your father.”
From Malaya, there was silence, except for another cheque. Nor was anything heard from the aunts. Mrs. Ingoldby said nothing about the money except, “How very kind and how quite unnecessary,” and Eddie was absorbed into the Ingoldbys’ life in their large house on a Lancashire hilltop where the Colonel kept bees and Mrs. Ingoldby wandered vaguely and happily about, smiling at people. When Pat won an award to their next school, Colonel Ingoldby opened a bottle of Valpolicella which he remembered having drunk (“Did we dear?”) on their honeymoon in Italy before the Great War. The following year Eddie won one, too, and there was the same ritual.
Mrs. Ingoldby was Eddie’s first English love. He had not known such an uncomplicated woman could exist. Calm and dreamy, often carrying somebody a cup of tea for no reason but love; entirely at the whim of a choleric husband, of whom she made no complaints. She was unfailingly delighted by the surprise of each new day.
The house was High House and stood at the end of a straight steep drive with an avenue of trees. Old and spare metal fences separated the avenue from the fields which in the Easter holidays of the wet Lancashire spring were the same dizzy green as the rice-paddies of South-East Asia. Far below the avenue to the West you could look down the chimneys of the family business which was a factory set in a deli. It was famous for making a particular kind of carpet, and was called The Goit, and through it, among the buildings of the purring carpet factory, ran a wide stream full of washed stones and little transparent fishes. “I am told our water is particularly pure,” said Mrs. Ingoldby to Eddie Feathers (“Such an interesting name”).
“I suppose it has to be, for washing the carpets,” said Eddie. “But what about all the dyes?”
“Oh, I’ve simply no idea.”
“Teddy” they called him, or “My dear chap” (the Colonel). Pat called