Old Filth - Jane Gardam [29]
“They didn’t seem to. Oh, well, OK, then. I’ll tell them.” And he fled.
“She says she doesn’t like eating round a polished table.”
“Oh, God,” said Pat.
“That’s her mother,” said the Colonel.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have a difficult time with her in the Wastwater Hotel,” said Mrs. Ingoldby.
“Maybe the table won’t be polished,” said Pat. “Anyway, why take her? Jack’s abroad.”
His mother gave him what in any other woman would have been a searching look. “I am her godmother,” she said, “and her mother has gone off with a Moroccan drummer.”
“I don’t blame her,” said Pat. “Fevvers’ mother went off, and he doesn’t go eating in the trees.”
“Oh, Teddy! I didn’t know! I thought your mother only died.”
“She did only die,” said Eddie. “She died when I was two days old.”
“She must have caught sight of you,” said Pat.
“That will do,” said his mother, and “Damn bad luck,” said his father, “don’t suppose there were many Moroccans in Malaya.”
“There were a lot of drummers,” said Eddie and began to squeal and cackle. The Colonel and his wife looked baffled and embarrassed.
Pat had given Eddie some sort of sudden freedom. Eddie’s ideal mother, whom he had always thought of as an Auntie May sort of person, became a houri, off to bed and that with a Moroccan drummer! Pat had given him confidence. Right from the very start. And crikey, he needed it, now, after that thing that had happened to him in the trees. He wondered whether to mention it to Pat; then knew that it was the first thing ever that he couldn’t discuss with him.
Pat was watching him.
“Shall we go out on bikes?”
“Yes, great. Yes, please.”
“OK, Ma?”
“Yes. But what are we to do about Isobel?”
“It’s out of our hands to do anything about Isobel.”
And the leopardish girl went prowling past the windows, haversack in place and reading a map.
“She’s a fine looker, I’ll say that,” said the Colonel.
“Jack thinks so, too,” said Pat.
The two of them trudged up a hill, pushing their bikes, wishing for modern three-speeds and not these childhood toys with baskets. “And you—hein?”
Eddie said nothing.
At supper Isobel appeared and sat down at the Colonel’s right hand. She leaned back in her chair and glittered her eyes. “What a pretty dress,” said her godmother. “Were you thinking of taking it to Spain? I’m sure it has to be dry-cleaned. It will be difficult at the frontier.”
Isobel messed with her food.
“Oh, dear. I’m afraid you’ve stopped liking fish-pie. You used to love . . .”
“It’s fine,” said Isobel, scraping it about with the tips of the prongs of her fork. She had picked out all the prawns and now leaned her sun-burnt shoulders towards Eddie and began to pick prawns off his plate.
“Yummie,” she said, and Eddie found himself in trouble again beneath the tablecloth. He blushed purple and Pat exploded in his glass of water.
“I think she’s after you,” Pat said after dinner, playing tennis with Eddie in the dark. “Go easy. She’s a cannibal. It’s going to rain. We’ll have to go in. Get the net down. She’ll be out there somewhere, gleaming in the bushes. Aren’t you going to laugh?”
But Eddie, busy catching up tennis balls, winding up the net, said nothing. On the way back to the house he slashed at vegetation for all he was worth.
“Sorry I spoke,” said Pat. “Only joking.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Eddie. “I can’t stand your cousin. OK? Sorry.”
But they stopped at the bench for the view from the hill. “Can’t see much, but we could maybe hear the nightingale. Then we could send a card to Sir,” said Pat.
“It’s too late for the nightingale. And too far north.”
“D’you want a weed?” Pat lit up a cigarette.
“No fear.”
“It turns on the girls. Not that you seem to feel the need.”
“It’s disgusting. It’s all disgusting,” Eddie yelled out and pushed Pat off the seat and sat on him. Pat flailed about and then began to sing:
“My friend Billy
Had a ten-foot. . .”
“Stop it!”
“He showed it to the boy next door.
Who thought it was a snake
And hit it with a rake
And now it’s only . . .”
And they rolled about, fighting as they had