Old Filth - Jane Gardam [36]
Eddie ran from the penumbrous house to the nearest public phone box, on the corner of the playing fields, and dialled Trunks for a long-distance call. He asked for the High House number and was told by the operator to expect a long wait. “Will you be ready when a line comes free? Maybe twenty or thirty minutes, dear, and you must have the right money. One shilling and a sixpence and two pennies.”
“I haven’t got thirty minutes.”
“Try later, dear. And it’s cheaper.” She cut him off.
He ran back to his House and began a letter to Mrs. Ingoldby, but the words were senseless. I can’t write formalities, I can’t. I’m the family. She’ll want to hear my voice. She’ll be expecting to hear it. They’ll have been trying to get me and nobody’s told me. He sat, thinking, then wrote:
Dear Mrs. Ingoldby,
I am thinking of you all the time,
your loving Eddie.
Have I the right to be their loving Eddie?
The voids of his ignorance opened before him. I’m still the foreigner. To them. And to myself, here. I’ve no background. I’ve been peeled off my background. I’ve been attached to another background like a cut-out. I’m only someone they’ve been kind to for eight years because Pat was a loner till I came along. I’m socially a bit dubious, because they know my father went barmy. And because of living in the heart of darkness and something funny going on in Wales. And the stammer.
He signed himself
Sincerely yours, E. J. Feathers
He stuck a penny-ha’penny stamp on the letter and took it to the postbox as the evening Prep bell rang. It was his night to invigilate the little boys in the House but he doubled back to the San.
The windy restless afternoon was done and clouds covered the moon. It was damp but not viciously raining now. At the top of the San’s staircase he looked into Matron’s room where her coal fire blazed and the ghastly scarf lay abandoned. There was the smell of her meaty supper and a clink from her kitchen. Coals crashed, then blazed up in the grate. He walked on along the corridor expecting the San to be rows of beds, blanket-rolls, empty lockers with open doors, the smell of Detto! But there was Pat in a small lone room with a blanket over his head.
“Hey—Pat?”
Pat sat up. His head rose out of the blanket, its folds draped around his shoulders.
“Where are you, Fevvers? Put the light on.”
“How are you? They wouldn’t let me in.”
“Fine. I’m going home tomorrow. I’m ravenous. But, listen—”
Noises as of torn cats on a roof top issued from Pat’s chest.
“Good God!”
“It’s the Banshee. They’re giving me some new weird drug. It’s going to cost Pa something. I can make it sound like distant machine guns, listen.”
“They’ll fix it,” said Eddie, considerably frightened. “I’ve just written to your mother.”
“Well, keep it cool. There’s a scare on. Jack’s missing.”
“I—don’t know anything—”
“Yes, you do. If I’ve heard in here, you’ll have heard it out there. If he’s. . .”
Silence.
“. . . if he’s gone, well then, he’s gone. It’s what he believed in.”
A poker was being rattled about in the grate next door.
“You’d better go, Fevvers. She’ll have an orgasm if she finds you. ‘This is a CLEAN school.’” He began wheezing.
I’ll . . . Shouldn’t I ring High House?”
Pat’s black eyes became blacker. A certain hauteur. “Nope. Leave them alone. I’ll be home tomorrow. There’s nothing you can do. It’s family stuff.”
Eddie turned for the door, amazed at how cold he felt.
“Oh, and hey—Ed?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t join the RAF. You couldn’t handle it. And don’t join the Navy—you’ve done the sea.”
“I can’t see myself in the Army, not any more. I couldn’t kill someone I was looking at. I mean, at his face. The point is, you can’t join the RAF. Not now. I mean, God—for your parents’ sake.”
“Oh yes I can,” said Ingoldby. “They’ll survive even if I don’t. My parents. I’ve told you—they don’t really