Old Filth - Jane Gardam [71]
He set off on foot back to the railway station; slept the rest of the night on a bench along the wall of the waiting room with its empty grate; reached his aunts’ warm house by the following lunchtime.
There was no car outside it and so “Les Girls,” as they liked to be known, were not at home, but Eddie had his key and planted his bag and his icy feet on the rug in the hall. He stood.
He heard Alice, the midget maid, creeping up from the kitchen. She gave a chirp of surprise, touching her fingers to her lips, and Eddie remembered he’d slept in his clothes, wet through since Oxford, and was unshaven. He found—with the old terror—that he couldn’t speak.
“Mr. Eddie. Come, come, come,” she said and led him down to her kitchen and gave him tea and porridge which he could not eat. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” she said. “Have you failed your exams?” She had been sitting beneath her calendar of the King and Queen and the photograph of Mr. Churchill in his siren-suit, making more paper spills for the upstairs fireplace. Vegetables were prepared on the draining-board, the kitchen clean, alive and shining. “Oh dear, oh dear. I expect you have heard the news.”
“Yes. I read it in the paper.”
She seemed puzzled, and he remembered that nobody in this house cared a fig about the Ingoldbys.
“I’m meaning their news, Mr. Eddie. Miss Hilda’s and Miss Muriel’s. I don’t know what’s to become of us all now. Or this house. Or you and me, Mr. Eddie. Mind, I’d seen it coming. There’s been talk for years. They think I’m deaf. They never told me a thing, never warned me. I’ve been here nearly twenty years. It was little to expect.”
“They’ve never sacked you, Alice?”
“In a sense, yes, Mr. Eddie.”
The slam of the front door above. The clash of the vestibule glass. The shriek of Hilda spotting the bag in the hail. “He’s back. See? Now for it—Eddie? Where are you?”
“Yes. I’m back.” His head rose up from Alice’s cellar rabbit- hole, and he saw that the eyes of the girls were particularly wild. He thought: They must have won a cup. “Have you been on the course?” Then he saw they were wearing Air Force blue with several stripes. Not golf.
“We have some news for you,” said Muriel. “Better get it over and tell you right off. We’re getting married.”
For a dizzy moment Eddie thought they were marrying each other.
“You’ll easily guess who,” said Hilda, and mentioned two names from among the red faces at the golf club.
“Married!”
He thought: Whatever for? Old women. Over forty. And this great house full of their stuff. And Alice.
“Go and wash, Eddie dear. Then come and have some champagne. It’s been on the cards for years but of course we couldn’t split up and leave you until we’d got you off our hands.”
He looked at their untouchable hands.
“But you mean you’ll be living apart now?”
“Oh, quite near each other. And near Royal St. Andrews. In Scotland. All four of us.”
“Does my father know?”
“We’ve written. He’s known for several years that we—well, we put off our plans. For you. That’s why he’s been so generous to us while you’ve been living here all these years.”
“Living here?”
“Yes. Ever since you were a tiny.”
When he came downstairs again Alice was anxiously laying up the dining-table. The silver and glasses shone. When she saw him she scuttled out of sight.
“What about Alice?”
“Oh, she’s much too old to move in with either of us. Someone else will probably take her. She’s got her Girls’ Friendly Society. And she’s over seventy and pretty well” (Hilda whispered like a whistle) “past it. She ought to retire. So it all fits in.”
“Fits in?”
“Alice retiring. You going out to Alistair as an evacuee. And this tragedy of the Ingoldbys.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know. I saw it in the Times. I’m surprised you did. Or that you even remembered—their name.” (Tears, tears, stop. And, bugger it, my voice is going.)
“Of course we remembered. They used to have you over there. Very kind to help us out. Anyway, someone rang up.”