Free Last Friends (Old Filth Trilogy) by Jane Gardam Page A

and we have most of them. Boys tend to do this more than girls. We give them
porridge
just in case. Wonderful in the intestines—.’
    Florrie seized the child in her arms as his mouth opened for more porridge. He looked at his mother and began to cry again.
    ‘There are worse things we have to face than glass.’ Mr. Harold Fondle strode by, his arms spiky with rockets, towards the bonfire.
    ‘Well, he’s coming home with me now,’ said Florrie. ‘I’ve had enough.’
     
    * * *
     
    ‘But however did she
know
?’ Veronica Fondle called across to her husband that night in their avant-garde twin-bedded room. Outside, the bonfire was dowsed and ashy, the straw man a few fragments of rags and dust. ‘She must have been watching through the window. Crept into the garden. Peeping in at us!’
    ‘Perhaps we should have invited her in to the party,’ said Fondle. ‘He’s very young.’
    ‘Oh, I think not. There are limits.’
    ‘I have my reasons you know for keeping an eye on that boy. He could become one of my stars.’
    ‘So you say. Look, he’s perfectly all right. He’d eaten an enormous tea before that orange juice. He wasn’t worried when his mother came barging in.’
    ‘Well, his mother was. Very worried.’
    They laughed as they turned off their individual bedside lights, like people in a dance routine. Click, then click.
    ‘Oh, and darling,’ she said in the dark. ‘The
hat
!’
    ‘Do you know,’ he said from the other bed, ‘I thought the hat was rather fine.’

PART THREE
Last Friends
     
     
     

CHAPTER 10
    When Fiscal-Smith’s train reached Waterloo after the dreadful morning in Dorset he found himself reluctant for some reason to continue his journey to King’s Cross and then on to the North.
    He was, for one thing, not exactly expected at home. He had intimated that he had been invited to stay for some time with old friends. And, also, he was now feeling distinctly unwell.
    Already it had been a long morning for a man of his advanced years: up at 5 A.M. in the Dorset rain to examine a building half a mile away, said to be burnt out and which had turned out to be in perfect condition. Then that idiocy with Dulcie, locked alone with her inside the parish church and having to ring the bells for rescue. And so on.
    And then Dulcie herself. Distinctly unwelcoming. And the awful daughter. And the glaring grandson. Sometimes, he thought, one should take a long, hard look at old friends. Like old clothes in a cupboard, there comes the moment to examine for moth. Perhaps throw them out and forget them. Yes.
    But he had been able to make his mark with the delightful, new village family who had bought Veneering’s pile, his frightful Gormenghast on the hill. Fiscal-Smith would rather like to keep his oar in there. He would be pleased to have an open invitation to sleep in Veneering’s old house, tell these new people about their predecessor. Though maybe not everything about him.
    Not that Veneering himself had ever once invited him there. Not even after that ridiculous lunch of Dulcie’s years ago, where all the guests were senile except himself and that boy and that desolate Carer. Like lunch in a care-home. Turned out in the rain. Had had to walk to the station on that occasion. Walk! Couldn’t do it now. Taxi would have cost three pounds even then. God knows how much now.
    But there wouldn’t be much chance of making his mark with the new people either. Very casual manners these days. And Dulcie had taken against him. She’d always been a funny fish. Probably never see her again. Probably never see any of them again. Oh, well. End of it all.
     
    At Waterloo he burrowed for his old man’s bus-pass and stood for a bus that crossed the bridge and turned towards the Temple. Taxi fares prohibitive and the drivers not pleasant any more. Mostly Polish immigrants. Very haughty. One had told him lately how the Poles had saved us in the War and then added, ‘Now we’re saving you for the