The Man in the Wooden Hat Read online

  “No, thank you,” and she sat staring at the closed door asking God for the operation to be the long one. The long, exhausting, difficult, delicate one that would ensure that he would live for more than eighteen months.

  “If I come to speak to you within the first hour,” he had said, “that will be bad news.”

  Dear God. Please do not let me hear him coming within the first hour. Please let me wait all night long before I hear the sound of his feet. Tell me then how to bear the waiting. She listened and in minutes heard the sound of his feet.

  It was at that moment, very early morning in Kai Tak, that Amy woke up and began thinking about Elisabeth. She should now be safely in London, resting from the journey before going into the hospital on Wednesday.

  Should she ring? All of three pounds? And it might upset Bets if she thought that Amy was nervous about her. Amy the strong? Or it might wake her up just as she’d got to sleep after a long flight.

  But yes. Amy would ring.

  In Ebury Street, opposite Mozart Electrics, the phone rang and rang and was not answered. Well, then, Amy would ring Edward before he left the Peninsular Hotel for the Arbitration and send love, and hope that all was well. Edward said: Yes, all was perfectly well. He had spoken to Betty just after she arrived home and she was going to be resting all day and tomorrow. Perhaps it would be best not to bother her, for she had sounded perfectly normal. Yes—a very good journey. Thank you, Amy!

  Hmmh!

  Then Isobel Ingoldby rang Amy in Kai Tak. Isobel was in Singapore but she knew all about Elisabeth. She’d been trying to telephone her in London, but no reply. Had Amy any news?

  “No. And it’s odd she doesn’t answer,” said Amy who had tried again. “What about the neighbour? Shall I ring her? She’s called Da-lilah Dexter, if you can believe. I could get her through International Enquiries.”

  “I have her number,” said Isobel. “If I don’t ring you back it means that all’s well.”

  In half an hour Isobel rang Amy back. “The Dexter saw her leaving the house just after she arrived home. She had an overnight bag with her and got into a taxi. She didn’t say goodbye to anyone and she left the front door wide open. No, she isn’t at the Westminster Hospital. I rang it. She’s expected there tomorrow. Look, I shouldn’t worry. She’ll be staying with a friend or something.”

  “I might just ring Edward again. I could go round to the Arbitration,” said Amy. “Or I could try to speak to the solicitor, the demon dwarf. He knows everything. Albert Ross. He’s probably sitting in the Arbitration rooms.”

  Isobel said, “Well, be careful. He doesn’t like Betty. He’s bonded to Teddy with hoops of steel. He’s frightening.”

  “To hell with that,” said Amy and left a message at the Arbitration for Albert Ross to ring her at lunchtime. Ross did not ring.

  She rang again and said that she was unhappy about her friend—her school-friend—Mrs. Feathers—who seemed to have disappeared from her London address. Ross did not call back.

  At last she lost patience, phoned Nick to come home from work, left all the children except the baby with Mrs. Baxter, and turned up outside the conference room of the hotel where the Arbitration was being held and marched in.

  The room was empty.

  She sat down for a minute in the cigarette smoke. There were ashtrays and a few scattered pens, and a disquiet in the air. Then she flung off again to the hotel’s reception desk.

  “They have adjourned,” said the concierge. “The Counsel for the contractors has had to fly suddenly to London. Illness. A child.”

  “Good heavens! Mr. Feathers? But I spoke to him today.”

  “No, Mr. Feathers is for the architects. This is Mr. Veneering. Would you like to speak to Mr. Feathers’s instructing solicitor? He could tell you more. He is somewhere about.”

  “No. Thank you. It’s rather confusing. This is all to do with Mrs. Feathers. It’s nothing to do with Mr. Ross.”

  “Ah, but it is,” said Ross behind them, and she turned and saw that he was seated in the foyer, his legs stuck out before him showing the soles of his tiny feet, his great head a sort of centrepiece to the mound of orchids and potted palms arranged on the marble floor. His hat lay beside him.

  Ross did not look up from his playing cards as she walked across to him, the baby on her hip, and, still without looking at her, he said, “Mrs. Feathers has gone off with Mr. Veneering. Mr. Feathers does not know. I know, but no one else knows. I shall see that the matter is resolved. Mr. Feathers will never know, and if you or Miss Isobel Ingoldby ever let him know, I will break you. Is that clear? I will break you both.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  If I come to speak to you within the first hour of the operation,” the surgeon had said, “That will be to bring bad news. I have to make this clear. You do understand?”

  “Yes.”

  It was hardly half an hour since they had brought her tea and told her that the operation had begun when she heard the swing doors slam-bang at the end of the corridor and feet running.

  Of course the feet need not be his. Harry could not be the only patient in this silent little hospital. The feet were running. It could be anyone. But the feet stopped outside her door. And at the same moment she realised that the feet had been running. Nobody runs to break bad news. The feet had been running!

  She stood up and a man opened the door clumsily, pushing it with his shoulder. He had a turban of dark green cloth round his head and a green apron tied about with tapes. He was holding up his hands and arms at right-angles from the elbow as if he were a priest at votive offering. Or maybe a janitor. There was a smell of disinfectant.

  The eyes, however, were the surgeon’s eyes, very bright. He said, “Mrs. Veneering, all is well. All will be perfectly well,” and was gone.

  All she could think was: Now he will have to take all that off and scrub up again before he can go back to do the chips of bone. And she sat down again and looked at the closed door.

  She sat on and on until someone suggested she changed into night things and went to bed. “I shan’t sleep,” she said, but slept almost at once.

  When she woke she was in familiar trouble, gathering her towel and sponge bag and clothes, finding a bathroom. Returning, two solid young nurses were looking down at her sheets with amazement. In shame—she could not say one word to them—she went along to the duty nurse outside, and the duty nurse smiled at her.

  It was the toothy nurse. “I can see into theatre from my little room,” she said. “The lights were on all night. It must have been nine hours! I thought, “Oh, that poor boy, he’s still in there. But he’s alive. They’ll get him back.”’

  “It’s not, after all, cancer, nurse. Did you know?”

  “Oh, we all know. Word went round. All round the hospital. We’ve all been thinking of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Mr. Veneering’s just arrived. They’re telling him the good news downstairs.”

  “Then,” said Elisabeth, “I’ll go. I’m not Harry’s mother, nurse, but I know his father very well. They’ll both be all right now. They won’t need me.”

  At the entrance to the hospital she asked the desk to get her a taxi and kindly ring the Westminster Hospital—she gave them the correct extension—to say that she was coming in this morning, at once.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Her hysterectomy, the nurses told her the next day, had been “very necessary.” ‘There were pre-cancerous cells,” said the surgeon. “They were in one ovary and the womb is gone too, but we have left you with the other ovary so that you won’t suffer a premature menopause.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’re really delighted that you came to us so quickly. And just in time. You are young and strong, Mrs. Feathers. Is your husband about the hospital today?”

  “He’s about his work on the other side of the world.”

  “Brave girl. Brave girl.”

  (Oh, shut up, she thought. Meet Amy.)
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  “And he will soon be coming back? You are going to need a lot of care. Have you any children who could help?”

  “No. I am not yet thirty.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as I am.”

  Yesterday when they returned her to the ward after the operation she had partly woken and found that she had changed sex and century. She was a man, a soldier being tipped into some sort of mass grave. She smelled the wet earth of France. When she woke much later there was sunlight all round her body, which was neatly arranged under a thick white sheet. Bouquets and clumps of flowers were all around her. I am on my catafalque. And I have woken up. How embarrassing for them. I will sit up very slowly in the middle of the service as they sing me out. Someone pushed her down against a pillow and, when she woke next, Filth was sitting by the bed, reading The Times. He glanced across, saw her open eyes and smiled, stretching to her hands and kissing her fingers and wrists.

  “You came,” she said.

  And he said, “Of course. I’m going back on Monday. Short adjournment.”

  “You’ll kill yourself. Jet lag—” and dropped asleep.

  When she next woke he was asleep in the chair and she watched his peaceful face.

  “He is open as the day.”

  “What?” he said. “What?”

  “You are as open as the day.”

  “Why should a day be open? I’ve often wondered. Some days are sealed off, thanks be. I don’t want to open up the day of your operation again.”

  “I thought of you. Now and then.”

  “Needless to say, the other side was to have been Veneering, but he bunked off back to London. Left his junior, a useless fellow, and I ran him into the earth in double quick time. I got here for breakfast. Saw two moons rise.”

  “Shall you see two more rise, going back?”

  “I didn’t come here to look at moons.” He rested his head against their clasped hands on the bed sheet.

  She said, “I’m sorry, Edward. No children now,” and slept.

  She woke again and he said, “D’you know, I never really wanted any children. Only you.”

  When she woke next he had gone, and when she left the hospital two full weeks later it was with Isobel Ingoldby.

  She had found Isobel standing at the foot of the bed, tall as a camel and eating a pear.

  “Home,” she said. “I’m taking you.”

  “Oh, Lizzie. Lizzie-Izz.”

  “Wrap yourself up. It’s turning towards autumn. Get this on over your sweater.” It was a brown and gold pashmina, warm and light and smelling of spices.

  The nurses were kind, full of congratulations about how well she had done. They settled her into a taxi and into the world again.

  “But we’re not going towards Pimlico! Lizzie, we’ve missed the roundabout.”

  “Yes.”

  “Izz, why aren’t we going to Ebury Street?”

  “Because we’re going to the Temple.”

  “That’s wrong. That’s Eddie’s Chambers. It’s wrong. We have this flimsy lovely house in Ebury Street.”

  “Talk later,” said Isobel. “I just do what I’m told. Here’s the Embankment and we drive under the gateway and—my goodness! Teddy’s certainly made his mark. The Inner Temple! Here’s your new apartment. Gor-blimey, first floor looking at the river.”

  “But where’s all our . . . Where’s my house? Our white carpet? Wedding presents? What’s Eddie been up to? The black chair?”

  “I’ve no idea. There seems to be plenty still to unpack. There’s a huge red chair, none too clean. Superb rooms! However did he get them? Rooms in the Temple are like gold. Oh, well, I suppose he is made of gold now. Mr. Midas.”

  Elisabeth walked to the window and looked across the river at the rising post-war blocks of cement.

  She said, “What’s happened to them? They’ll have got bread and milk in for me, and ordered the papers. They’ll worry.”

  “Hush. Too soon.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No. Well, oh, all right. Ebury Street is being pulled down. The hospital knew but didn’t want to tell you. You said it was fragile. All the bombing . . .”

  “Pulled down! No! Not in three weeks.”

  “No. Not yet. But they’ve started demolition at the Victoria end. They said—your pals—“Don’t let her come back.” They’ve mostly been rehoused already.”

  “What about Mozart Electrics? Across the road?”

  “Someone told me—I went round there—that he’s gone into a home. Very crippled.”

  “And Delilah? And the butler? And the greengrocer?”

  “The greengrocer’s gone to Lowestoft. I found the building firm. Teddy had organised the furniture to come here to the Temple and they gave me a key to have a look around. I collected your post off the floor.”

  Elisabeth stood watching the river for some silent minutes and said, “Well, he’s taken everything from me now.”

  “Oh,” said Isobel. “No! Poor Teddy! And working like hell.”

  “He could have told me.”

  “He was told not to upset you. The Chambers know. They’ll be coming. He arranged everything, except me. He doesn’t know we know each other—remember?”

  “Yes. But I forget why.”

  “Don’t think too hard. Listen, you’re going to have help here—shopping and ironing and so on.”

  “You are crowing!”

  “Why? Crowing? Me?”

  “Because I shouldn’t have married him. You said so.”

  “God’s truth!” shouted Isobel. “I traipse round builders, I look up neighbours, I get your post, I fetch you home . . .”

  Elisabeth turned back to the river and said, “Had they started the demolition?”

  “Yes. The bank on the corner has closed and the little paper shop, and there’s scaffolding up. At the back in those gardens . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “They were chopping down the trees. Listen, get Teddy home and stop crying. You’re menopausal.”

  “I can’t. I’m not. I’m rational and sad,” she said.

  “Then go off with bloody Veneering! I can’t do more,” and Isobel slammed away.

  Elisabeth walked to another window in the new lodgings, to try to see Lizzie cross the Temple yard towards the alley to the Strand and the Law Courts. It was very quiet in the new apartment that was presumably now her home. She saw that there were flowers in cellophane with cards pinned to them, a pile of letters on a desk. She looked in the one small bedroom with two single beds, fitted end to end. A midget kitchen and a bathroom made for giants, with a bath on feet. And silence. Silence from the corridor outside and the scene below, and from the uncaring river.

  She thought: I’m on an island in an empty sea. I’m cast away. Her legs felt shaky and she sat down trying to remember that being alone was what most of the world found usual. She thought that in childhood she’d been in crowded Tiensin, a crowd of Chinese servants day and night. In the Shanghai Camp, people and people, a slot in a seething tent; my hand always held by my mother, or riding on my father’s back. The crowded ship to England, the crowded London school, the crowds of students at her all-women Oxford college, the return to Hong Kong and the infrastructure of Edward’s world. Now this solitude. Double-glazed silence. I suppose I must just wait. It’s the anaesthetic still inside me. I have memory so I must still be here. I have nobody, but I have memory. There was a knock on the door.

  But the door of the apartment seemed a mile away and she could not move. She stared at the door and willed it to open of its own accord and after a moment it did, and Albert Ross walked in.

  “No! Get out! Go away!”

  He took off the broad brown hat and sat down on the red chair and looked at her from across the room.

  “Go away. I hate you.”

  He twirled his shoes, regarded them and, without looking at her, said, “I’ve come to apologise. I dealt you the Five of Clubs. It wa
s a mistake. I seldom make a mistake and I have never apologised for anything before, being of a proud nature.”

  She watched him.

  “The Five of Clubs means ‘a prudent marriage not for love.’”

  She watched him.

  “I am very much attached to your husband. I saw only your faithlessness. It affected the pack. I was wrong.”

  “You were always wrong. You stole his watch once.”

  He became purple in the face with rage and said, “Never! He gave it to me when I had nothing. It was all he possessed. He trusted me. It was to save my life.”

  “You are cruel!”

  “Here is a telephone number you must ring. It will be to your advantage.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  He sighed and put out a hand to his hat and she thought, He may have a knife. He could kill me. He is a troll from a stinking pit.

  But he brought out of the hat only the pack of cards, looked at it, then put it away.

  “This is a transition time for you. You still don’t see your way. This telephone number is from someone who cares about you. Her name is Dexter,” and he put a visiting card on the table and was gone.

  A dream, she thought.

  She did not move, but slept for a minute or perhaps an hour, then crossed to the table where there was no visiting card. She searched everywhere, under the table, even along the passage outside the door. Nothing.

  Then the telephone rang and a voice said, “Might I have the honour of addressing Mrs. Edward Feathers?”

  “Delilah!”

  “Aha,” said the familiar phantom voice. “Seek and ye shall find! I am speaking from the West Country. From Dorsetshire. England.”

  “Dorset?”

  “You will remember that we have our country estate in Dorset? Well, it is, by some, designated ‘country cottage.’ Now that we have been cast out of our London home we have taken refuge in it.”

  “But where exactly, Delilah?”

  “Well, we are not exactly on the estate, but some fifty miles away in the fine city of Bath where mercifully Dexter has been granted God’s gift of The Admirable Crichton.”