Old Filth (22 page)

“Do you think you will enjoy soldiering?” asked the Queen, looking hard at him.

He blushed and began to stammer.

“Ah yes. I see. You'll get over it. I know a boy like you.”

 

He walked in the park with her through the next hard winter. The ground was black, the trees sticks of opaline ice.

“We shall just walk up and down,” said Queen Mary. “For an hour or so. We must get exercise at all costs. D'you see how the wretched ivy is coming back?”

“Did you walk like this, Ma'am, before you came here?”

“I've always tried to walk a great deal. You see my family runs to fat. They eat too much. My dear mother would eat half a bird and then a great sirloin for dinner, and she loved cream. And the Duchess—I used to walk in Teck but only round and round the box-beds. Sandringham was the place to walk, but somehow one didn't. One went about in little carts to watch them shooting. And one didn't walk in London of course. I luckily have magnificent Guelph health.”

“I have never been to London.”

She stood still with amazement. “You have never been to London? Everybody has been to London.”

“Most of Badminton village has never been to London.”

“Oh, I don't mean the village. I mean that a gentleman, surely, has always been to London?”

“No, Ma'am. I've been in Wales and in the North—”

“You haven't seen the galleries? The museums? The theatre?”

“No, Ma'am.”

 

“That is a personable young man,” she said that evening, hard at work arranging family photographs in an album before getting down to the red despatch boxes the King sent her daily. She read them in private, and nobody was quite sure how many, but probably all.

“Very good-looking indeed,” said Mary Beaufort. “He'll be useful at dinner parties.”

“We don't give dinner parties,” said the Queen. “It would be out of kilter with the War effort. But we could ask a few of the Subalterns.”

“We could.”

“In fact it seems quite ridiculous that a boy like that should be billeted down in the stables. Why can't he come and live in the house, Mary? Do you know, he has never been to London?”

 

Eddie refused to live in Badminton House. He said he must stay with his platoon. He began to find the tea parties rather trying. The mud-coloured wool had been overtaken by a cloud of unravelled powder-blue which clung to his uniform in tufts. He let it be known that he had to work hard, and he settled to his Law in the stables.

But the tall shadow would fall across his book and he would have to find a garden chair and she would sit with him among the dying dahlias in the remains of the cutting garden—every foot of land, she had instructed, to be used for vegetables. The Duchess fumed, and one day came thumping down to look for Eddie and complain.

“She brought fifty-five servants,” she said. “She's stopped them wearing livery because of the War and Churchill in that awful siren-suit. Six of them are leaving. They've worn scarlet since they were under-footmen and they're old and say they can't change. Can you do nothing with her?”

“What—me? No, your Grace. Couldn't; c-c-couldn't.”

“Well, you'll have to think of something. Distract her.”

“I've stopped the tree. Well, I hope s-s-so.”

“Oh, good boy. But listen, she's determined to take you to London. Her chauffeur, old Humphries, is half-blind and not safe. Once he lost Her Majesty for over an hour in Ashdown Forest. She won't sack him. And she makes him stop and pick up any member of the forces walking on the road. Once she picked up a couple who were walking the other way and once it was an onion seller. She'll be murdered, and then we'll all be blamed.”

 

“Eddie,” said the Queen, a little later. “I am determined to get you to London. When I first came here I went back every week, you know, on the train. Then it became painful because of the bombing. The Guildhall. The City churches. All gone. And of course the antique shops are all closed or gone to Bath (you and I might perhaps go to Bath one day). But I have a great desire to see London again. It might not be patriotic to insist that the Royal coach be put back on the train, but I have plenty of my petrol ration untouched, and you could do the driving, on the main roads, Eddie, if it is too much for Humphries. We shall of course need two outriders.”

“I'm sorry, but I can't drive, Ma'am.”

 

The expedition was put off until Eddie had learned to drive, instruction being given in a tank on the estate.

“I can only drive a tank, Ma'am,” he said when a London visit was again suggested.

“The principle must be the same,” said the Queen.

“We must clear it with Security.”

She looked imperious. The ex-Empress of India. “Well, we'll go out wooding, Eddie. Get my bodyguards and my axe. No, I'll keep my hat on. I'm determined to take you to London.”

 

It was fixed at last that Queen Mary should make the journey to London by the train, the Royal coach still being rested in a siding near Gloucester. Some of the Badminton staff were sent to wash it down and the stationmaster of Badminton railway station had to look out for the white gloves he had worn to haul the Queen aboard the 6.15
a.m.
in 1939 at the beginning of her evacuee life.

“Good luck, Ma'am.”

The lady-in-waiting followed her in, and Eddie and a couple of Other Ranks with rifles took up their posts.

“Hope you don't meet Jerry, Ma'am,” said the stationmaster. “Everyone stand back from the lawns.”

“Oh, the bombing is totally over,” said Queen Mary. “I shall go to the Palace and have a look at the ruins of Marlborough House. And there is a little shopping—”

He blew the whistle and waved the flag. The Queen's progress had cheered him up. She'd be back on the 5.15 from Paddington. She wasn't dead yet.

“She's got some spirit,” he told the empty platform. Even at Badminton there were no porters. “We're better off than Poland. Or Stalingrad.”

 

Just before Paddington, Eddie in a different side-carriage alone, the Queen sent for him and handed him a slip of paper.

“Here are the things you ought to see. I haven't given you too many. It is not only a first visit but you will find it confusing without signposts, and all the bomb-damage. You ought to have time for the Abbey and take a glance at St. James's Park and No.10. And Big Ben. Here we are. It's a pity you don't know anyone who could show you about. Have a splendid time. Now, lunch—I really don't know what to suggest.”

“I'll miss lunch, Ma'am. It's going to be a tight schedule.”

She stepped from the train. There was a bit of rather old red carpet down for her and she stood in silver grey with doves' feathers in her toque, grey kid gloves, ebony stick. A whisper began—“It's Queen Mary. Hey look—Queen Mary”—and a crowd gathered up like blown leaves. There were feeble hurrahs and some clapping, growing stronger, and the little crowd closed round Her Majesty and the lady-in-waiting. The two bodyguards melted away.

Eddie, all alone, made at once for the taxi-rank and the bedsit in Kensington of Isobel Ingoldby.

 

“I'm not sure how far it is,” he told the taxi-driver, after waiting in a long queue, tapping his leg with his military stick. His uniform helped him not at all for everyone seemed to be in uniform. “It's Kensington. Off Church Street.”

“Twenty minutes,” he said, “unless we're unlucky.”

“You mean an air raid?” Eddie was looking round the Paddington streets disappointedly. This was London: sandbags, shuffling people, greyness, walls hanging in space.

“Nah—air raids ain't a trouble now. We've licked all that. We have him on the run, unless he starts with his secret weapon, he talks about. Not that we believe he's got one.”

(They really do talk like the films, Eddie thought.)

“You're here. D'you want to borrer a tin 'at?”

He was set down at the end of a narrow curving street of shabby cottages with gardens. There was no paint anywhere and grime everywhere. Nobody much about, and most windows boarded up. Isobel Ingoldby's number must almost certainly be a mistake for it had Walt Disney lattice windows, and a shaggy evergreen plant trailing over it which would have sent Queen Mary into action before she'd even knocked at the front door. There was a squirrel made of plaster on the doorstep and a tin case full of empty milk bottles with a note saying
None today. Do not ring
.

It's somebody's who's out. This couldn't be hers, he thought, at the gate, as the door opened and she was standing there.

 

His first thought was a blankness.

She was ordinary.

She was big and ordinary and bored.

She had a cigarette in her hand and leaned back against the door saying, “Come on in then,” as if he had come to read a gas meter.

Her hair was untidy and too long. Her feet were bare and she wore a shapeless sort of dressing-gown.

“Ciao,” she said, closing the door behind him. He saw how tired she was, and sad.

And maybe disillusioned? Was she disillusioned about him, too? She'd last seen him in hospital, pale and almost dying, the centre of attention. But she had made no effort of any kind though she'd known he'd be coming. He'd written a fortnight ago. She looked as if she'd just turned out of bed. She was even yawning.

“You're tired?” he said.

“No. Well, yes. I'm always tired. Ghastly job.”

“I thought you were some sort of egghead hush-hush type?”

“I am. Of a cryptic variety.”

“What d'you mean?”

“Secret. D'you want—?”

She vaguely gestured towards the kitchen.

“Tea or something? A wee?”

“No. I thought of taking you out to lunch. To the Savoy, or somewhere?” He'd heard of the Savoy. He looked anxiously at her night clothes.

“I was there yesterday.”

“Isobel—what is it?”

“What's what?”

“What have I done? Have I changed or something? You said to come.”

She put out the cigarette on the hall table ashtray, caught sight of herself in the mirror and said, “Oh my God! I forgot to comb my hair.” She turned to him and grinned and it was as if the sun had come out. The sloped cat's eyes were alive again. Her long arms went up behind her head to gather up her hair into a bundle and she pinned it there. A piece of it fell down, a lion-coloured tress. Slowly, she pinned it back again, her fingers long, and lovely, and her fingernails painted the most unflinching vermilion. The dressing-gown fell open when she dropped her hands and stretched them out to him.

“Oh Eddie. You are golden brown like a field of corn.”

Her fingertips were at his collar. When he took off his British warm, then his officer's jacket, he saw that she had loosened and then removed his tie. She draped it over a wall-light and then was in his arms.

On the kitchen floor, naked, he thought the taxi must still be outside. He had got out of it only a minute ago. Then he forgot all that; where he had come from, where in the world he had landed, which was upon a kitchen floor, the filthy lino torn and stuck up with some sort of thick paper tape. There was an old fridge on tall legs. It was gas. Lying on the floor beside her, then above her, he could see the fridge's blue flame. It must be the oldest fridge in the world—oh, my God, Isobel. Isobel.

Later, oh much, much later, they rolled apart.

“I don't like this lino,” he said. “It's disgusting.”

“You're spoiled. Living in palaces.”

“I was not living in palaces when you last saw me.”

“You were hardly living at all.”

They had moved on to a tiny sitting-room which was in darkness. It smelled of booze and dust. They felt their way to a divan that stank of nicotine.

“Why is there no light?”

“Do we need it?”

“Oh, Isobel.”

“It's blacked-out. Permanently. Convenient. We've never taken down the shutters since the Blitz.”

“
We
?”

“The other girl and I.”

“Is she likely to come in?” His head was on her stomach. His tongue licked her skin. She was warm and alive and smelled of sweat and spice and he went mad for her again.

Later, “Who is she?”

“No one you know. She's Bletchley Park. Like me.”

“It's a man, isn't it?”

“No. No, certainly not. Shall we go upstairs?”

The bedroom was lighter. It had a sloping ceiling and the windows looked country as if there had once been fields outside. It had the feel of a country place; a cottage. So here's London.

“It is a cottage,” she said. “London's full of cottages. And of villages. This bed is a country bed. We found it here.”

The bed was high and made of loops of metal. Its springs creaked and groaned beneath them.

“Please never get rid of it. Keep it forever.”

The hours passed. Wrapped, coiled, melded together they slept. They woke. Eddie laughed, stretched out to her again.

“You are like a jungle creature,” he said. “In an undiscovered country.”

“Eddie,” she said at last, winding herself into the sheets, “I have something very important to say. How much time have we got? When's your train?”

“Five-fifteen.”

“It's nearly five o'clock already.”

He fled the bed, he ran for the stairs, he limped and hopped into scattered garments, he yelled with terror.

She laughed and laughed.

He found one shoe, but the other was gone.

“This will finish me,” he said. “This will be the end of the Army for me.”

She howled with laughter from the bedroom; came laughing down the stairs wrapped in the sheet, lighting a new cigarette.