Old Filth - Jane Gardam [43]
“Is it all right to sit here?”
He sat, and looked around him to see what was on offer in the way of breakfast.
“I’ve not had breakfast,” he said. “I’m up here for my entrance exams. I suddenly wanted to go home, so I skipped breakfast. Now I’m hungry.”
“Which college?”
“Christ Church.”
“You’d have been given a good free breakfast there. Even in the vacation. Quails’ eggs and flagons of porter I shouldn’t wonder. Small talk about the Christ Church Beagles. It won’t survive the War, you know, Christ Church. Thank God. You don’t look exactly Christ Church. I’ll say that for you.”
“I don’t know a thing about it. I was told to apply. It could have been St. Karl Marx’s College for all I know about it.”
“I’ll bet your father was there.”
“Yes, he was. Actually. I can’t help that.”
She leaned forward to the ashtray, looking at him carefully, and he looked back into bright hazel eyes which were somehow familiar. He remembered the giant who had also been familiar.
I’m over-tired, he thought. Over-excited. “I’ve not seen my father in ten years,” he told the girl. “He’s a very hard-working civil servant. Out East.”
“I’ve not seen mine for years, either,” she said. “He’s still bashing away in India. And I know you, you’re Teddy Feathers.”
The eyes became at once the ten-year-old eyes of his cousin Babs—eyes that he had last seen pouring out tears by the fuchsia bushes in Ma Didds’s garden. The long, tapping finger over the ashtray became little Babs’s fierce claw which could pick out any tune without thought on the chapel harmonium. Just out of sight somewhere was the watchful pink and gold of their six-year-old cousin, Claire.
“Babs?”
“Teddy.”
Eddie ordered them both some milky bottled coffee and a Marie biscuit and Babs lit another cigarette.
“So. You live in Oxford? I’d no idea, Babs.”
“No. I’m up. At Somerville. I’m packing it in, though. It’s no time to be here. I’m volunteering for the Navy. I’ll be gone by next week.”
“Where’s Claire?”
“Oh, I don’t know. She’s married. Straight from school. Didn’t you hear? She’s in East Anglia somewhere among all the airfields. As far away from us as possible. Well, she would be, wouldn’t she?”
“I don’t see why.”
“She was very passive always. And they made sure we were never to meet up again—or they tried to. Wanted us to drop each other dead. So—what’s been happening to you, old Teddy-bear?”
“Did they? Try to stop us?”
“Well, you had some sort of crack-up, so I heard. Began to chatter like a monkey. A Welsh monkey.”
“I never cracked up. Do I stammer now?”
“No. You talk proper. You’ll do for Christ Church.” When she smiled, she dazzled. There were smoker’s lines already etched on her face but sunlight was still behind them.
“I’ve got myself into one hell of a bigger mess now,” Eddie said. “I’ve nobody to tell me the answers. I find I don’t know how to—proceed.”
“Proceed,” she said, and leaning forward stroked his wrist. “I always loved your words. I suppose it was books. Your father sent you so many books at Didds’s.”
“Did he? Nobody told me. What? Were the books from him?”
“You weren’t wanting to hear anything good about your father then. Proceed,” she said. “Maybe you’ll be a lawyer? A Barrister, but it’d be a pity to cover that hair. Proceed—look, you proceed by yourself now. You don’t need Claire or me or Auntie May. Get on with life! You can take decisions,” she said, “if anyone can.”
They both looked down at the insides of their coffee cups.
“You were bloody wonderful,” she said, “that day. Braver than any of us and eight years old.”
“I’ve not made a decision since,” he said. “That must have been my one decisive moment.”
“Where did you go in the holidays all these years? You can’t have been alone?” she asked him.
“School friend. Sort of second family to me.”
“Can’t they help