Old Filth - Jane Gardam [76]
“Thirty-six.”
“You are intemperate. I wouldn’t have thought it.”
“They’re miniature bananas. They’re nothing.”
“They’re very over-ripe. Where did you get them?”
“Off a heap. Under a tree. Any objection?”
Loss watched him.
“No. I am glad you have some powers of enjoyment. D’you want a game of Patience?”
“It’s about a hundred and five degrees. I want a beer.”
Eddie stumbled up the beach, to a stall under the trees where a massive lady in orange appeared to be in a trance but took his English money into her pink palm.
“You’ve left your watch lying on the sand,” called Loss.
“Look after it,” Eddie shouted. “D’you want a beer?”
“Certainly not. Not that stuff. And don’t touch the bottled water. I’ve been here before.”
Eddie lay back in the sand and went to sleep.
Waking he felt about him, sat up and began to swig from a dark bottle. His head began to swim deliciously. He lifted his legs in the air. Loss observed him.
“You are behaving quite out of character,” he said. “I have known you six weeks, but I know this to be out of character.”
“I like this character.”
“I am amazed. You have a rational mind.”
“I’ve slept with a woman,” said Eddie. “Yippee.”
Loss chose not to comment.
After a pause for thought Eddie said, “Have you been here before?”
“Somewhere like it. Down the coast.”
“Oh, I’ve been somewhere like it. Plenty of this. Worse.”
“When?”
“When I was five. When I came over to England with a missionary. Auntie May, she was called. To live in England on my own.”
“On your own?”
“No. With a woman called Ma Didds. Professional foster mother. Me and two vague cousins I’d never heard of. It wasn’t safe for Raj brats to stay in Malaya. We died off after five. And before five in hundreds. I felt pretty well in the East but I hadn’t a say in the matter. ‘Terrible for the parents,’ everyone says but I hadn’t a mother and my father lived in a world of his own. Anyway, all Raj Orphans forgot their parents. Some of them attached themselves to the foster parents for life.”
“Not you?”
“No.”
“Where did you go?”
“Wales. It was Wales or Norfolk. Wales was cheaper.”
Suddenly he knew that it must have been his aunts who had chosen it. “What about you, Loss?”
“Something of a mystery, my parents. They didn’t send me to England until I was ten. And they didn’t call it ‘Home.’ They weren’t Raj.”
“What did you do in the holidays?”
“Oh, I always went to Singapore.”
“You couldn’t have done. There wasn’t time.”
Loss continued to play Patience with a cloth over his head.
“Well,” he said vaguely. “I got humped about. I am a natural traveller. We are of Hakkar stock.”
“So you keep telling me. Were there many Hakkars going to Eton?”
“I beseech you, Feathers. You may have found your tongue at last and it is all very interesting, but do not drink any more of the beer. And leave off the bananas.”
“Why?”
“I shall have to look after you. I can see the fruit moving. It will be a humiliation.”
“For me or for you?” shouted Eddie, tight as a tick, flat on his back, feet in the air, peeling a thirty-seventh banana.
“Both of us,” said Loss. “Here. Cover yourself. Here is your shirt. You are calling attention to us.”
“Not true,” yelled Eddie. “They’re all drunk here. Look at the beer cans everywhere. Or they’re drugged—look at them all just standing staring. All des-o-late. All the best ones dead. We’re going to lose this War so we may as well drink and die.”
Another flying boat split the air with sound. “Bundle of spare parts,” shouted Eddie. “Won’t make it back. Torpedo boats bang bang—down. England won’t last six months against Germany. Churchill’s a buffoon. Ham actor. Country’s finished. Europe’s finished. Thank God I’m going away.”
Someone from the Red Cross hut came down the beach and took him off, Loss walking thoughtfully behind.
Eddie, put to bed, raved for three days. Loss moved into the Missions to Seamen and watched a scorpion hanging from a rafter, ate mangoes and played cards with anyone who would give him a game.
The Missions to Seamen medical man was troubled by Eddie. “How old is he?” he asked Loss. “Your