The Man in the Wooden Hat Read online

  So she went. They stayed in an hotel near Delft and Edward was driven from there to The Hague and back each day, so she saw nothing of the Court.

  And the tulip fields were in their glory and she booked for all the tours to see them, sometimes staying overnight, and each time ordering quantities of bulbs for Dorset, to be delivered in October. She talked ceaselessly to other gardeners on the coach tours and on the canal boats, and forgot all else.

  She shopped. She bought a broadsword from an antique shop because it reminded her of Rembrandt’s warrior. She bought a blue and white Delft knife with a black blade and broken handle because it might once have cut up fruit in Vermeer’s kitchen. She bought three seventeenth-century tiles for Dulcie—a boy flying a kite, a fat windmill, a boat with square sails gliding through fields—and, for Amy, a heavy copper pot, trying not to think of the postage. She bought a print of a triptych for Mrs. Baxter. She walked for miles—the presents were always delivered back to the hotel—down cobbled streets between tall houses and a central canal. From windows, faces looked out and nodded. These must be homes for the elderly, she thought. What shining, broad faces. They wore round white caps with flaps. She expected Frans Hals at any moment to come flaunting down the street. All just out of sight.

  On the fourth Saturday morning, the day Filth usually flew home for the weekend, he had to take documents back to the Arbitration room.

  He brought his locked briefcase to the breakfast table and set it at his feet and she said, “Edward, aren’t you rather overdoing it? We could just drop the papers off on the way to the airport.”

  “No, I may have to talk to the other two. They’ll be there.”

  He was wearing his dark Court suit of striped trousers and black jacket, a sober tie, a starched shirt and Victorian silk handkerchief.

  “I’m sure the others won’t go dressed like that,” she said.

  “I dare say not, but it’s correct. I’m carrying papers.” Filth and Betty agreed to meet back at the hotel after lunch.

  She took a taxi to a gallery she hadn’t been to before where there were some seventeenth-century flower paintings, and walked round and round the sunlit rooms, empty because it was not yet the Easter holidays and there were no tourists. She felt embarrassed at the clatter of her feet in the silence and tried to tiptoe from one room to the next, the sun throwing gold stripes across the polished floors. Doors stood open between the galleries, the sun illuminating other distances, withdrawing itself from foregrounds, changing direction, splashing across a distant window or open door. Inside the building, everywhere was silent and, outside, the canal was black and still. She looked for a chair and found one standing by itself and sat down. But the gallery was disappointing. She sat looking at paintings of dead hares with congealed blood on their mouths, swags of grapes, pomegranates, feathered game collapsed sightless on slate slabs. In a corner of the room was a wooden carving, the head and shoulders of a man on a plinth, the wood so black it must have lain untouched for centuries in some bog, the cracked wood perfect for the seamed and ancient face, heavy with all the miseries of the world.

  But it was the hat that informed the man. It was clearly the hat that had inspired the carving. It had a tight round crown and a cartwheel of an oak brim, biscuit-thin, spread out much wider than the stooped shoulders. The hat of a religious? A pilgrim? A wandering poet? Had it all been carved from one piece of wood? Was the hat separate? Did it lift off? She became hypnotised by the hat. She had to touch it.

  She heard footsteps and a gallery attendant stood in the doorway, then passed on, his careful, slow feet squeaking.

  Then she heard in an adjoining gallery two voices.

  “Well, what about me? What am I to do?”

  “Go back to lunch at the hotel. Or a restaurant. Go and rest. We’ll be off at four o’clock.”

  “I want to go to Beirut for the weekend.”

  “Beirut! It’s across the world! And it’s nightclubs and narcotics. Whatever . . . ?”

  “I want to go for a massage. Get my hair cut.”

  “Beirut!”

  “Yes. I’m bored. It’s the place now. I’m going to Beirut.”

  An overweight figure passed sloppily across an open doorway into a further gallery and it was Elsie Veneering. Another shadow followed and Elisabeth heard their voices on a staircase. “But what shall I do all the afternoon? Where shall I go? I can’t sit having lunch alone.” Elisabeth heard a taxi drive away. She closed her eyes and listened, and very soon heard him coming back up the stairs.

  He said from a distance, “I saw you as we came in. She’s gone,” and she opened her eyes on a small seedy man without much hair, feeling in his pockets for a cigarette.

  She said, “You can’t smoke in here,” and he said, “No, I suppose not.”

  He was wearing blue jeans and a brown shirt. He didn’t look much.

  She was wearing a new long tight-fitting coat with a round fur collar and a trimming of the same fur down the front, disguising the buttons, and then circling the hem. It gave her a young waist and legs. Her hair had been cut in Amsterdam. He said, “You are much more beautiful now. But I loved your looks then, too.”

  They sat in silence, he across the room on the only other chair. They looked at one another, and his smile and his eyes were as they had always been.

  He said, “This bugger in the hat, he’s like that dwarf who, history relates, nicked Filth’s watch when they were kids and sold it,” and he got up and whispered in the man’s oak ear, “Albertross—I gotcher!” and lifted the wide oak brim and shouted out, “Eureka! It’s a separate entity!”

  And dropped it. She screamed.

  He said, picking it up, “It’s O.K. It’s bog oak. Seventeenth century, harder than iron. Oh, and the bloke’s name is Geoffrey. It says so in the label: Bought at Harrods.” He crammed the hat back on the head and the attendant came back and stared as Veneering bent to the oak ear, disarranging the hat, and said, “Hush, be still.” He crossed to the attendant and shook hands with him. “It’s my grandfather. He was a hatter. Rather a mad one. Nothing’s broken,” and the man went quickly away.

  “No, I’m not laughing. I’m not,” she said, “I’m not. I’m not.”

  And he took her hands and said, “When did you last laugh like this, Elisabeth? Never—that’s right, isn’t it? We’ve messed our lives. Elisabeth, come away with me. You’re bored out of your head. You know it. I know it. And I’m in hell. It’s our last chance. I’ll leave her. It was always only a matter of time.”

  But she got up and walked out and down the circular staircase, the water from the canal flashing across the yellow walls. He leaned over the rail above, watching her, and when she was nearly down she stopped and stood still, not looking up.

  “You’re not wearing the pearls.”

  She said, “Goodbye, Terry. I’ll never leave him. I told you.”

  “But I’m still with you. I’ll never leave you. We’ll never forget each other.”

  On the last step of the staircase she said, “Yes. I know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  All that summer Elisabeth gave herself to the garden. Dexters as a house was now perfect. Its terrace had been built to sit out and eat on in warm weather. The warmth of autumn and winter was beginning to be talked about, and the fact that there was no need now to escape to winters abroad. Filth sat for hours watching Elisabeth toil.

  “I sit here and bask,” he said, “I am shameless. But she won’t let me anywhere near, you know. If I pull out a weed she screams and says she’d been keeping it for the Chelsea Flower Show. All I do is wash up and pour out drinks. Oh, and I can occasionally hold a hosepipe.”

  Filth’s last Case, the dam at The Hague, had groaned its way to a close. The judging was over and done, and the terrace was now his stage. He worked at Hudson on Building Contracts, sat reading long and hard, mostly biographies of heroes of empire, and bird books. He kept binoculars at his elbow though he seldom picked them up. Each mo
rning he read the Daily Telegraph wondering which political party he belonged to and hating them all. He wished Betty would discuss it with him. Or anything with him. In the evenings she sat yawning over seed catalogues and he often had to wake her up to go to bed. On Fridays they drove in to Salisbury to the supermarket and ate a modest lunch at the hotel. Every second month a crate of wine was delivered to Dexters by Berry Brothers of St. James’s. On Sundays at half past ten was church. They never missed and never discussed why. “We are hedonists,” he told friends. “The last of our kind. No chores. We are rich, idle, boring expatriates and fewer and fewer people come to see us. Have a glass of Chablis.”

  The year passed. The Handover took place in Hong Kong and they watched every minute of it on television. They discussed the Governor and his three beautiful daughters as if they were their own family, and when the daughters were seen to weep, Betty and Filth wept too. They watched the Union Jack come down for the last time.

  “We’re getting a bit senile,” he said and she went out to the garden and began to turn the compost with a fork.

  She stayed outside for hours and Filth had a try at preparing supper and broke one of the Delft dishes. They had a wakeful night in their separate bedrooms and were only just asleep when the rooks started up at dawn.

  “I’m going up to London next week,” he said. “There is a Bench Table at the Inn. I can stay overnight with someone or other.” (They had long since given up the flat.) “Or we could go together. Stay at an hotel. See a show.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so . . .”

  “You’re getting stuck, Betty.”

  “No, I’m making a garden. We’ll open for Charity next year.”

  “I don’t know what you think about hour after hour. Day after day. Gardening.”

  “I think about gardening,” she said.

  “Well,” he told Dulcie in the lane, “I suppose this is being old. “All passion spent”—Shakespeare, isn’t it?” and Dulcie pouted her pink lips and said, “Maybe.”

  After Filth had set off to London, Dulcie went round and found Betty, brown as a Gypsy, busy with the first pruning of the new apple trees.

  “Does that gardener do nothing?”

  “He does all the rough.”

  They sat over mugs of coffee on the terrace, staring down the wandering lawn towards the new orchard and out to the horizon and Whin Green. Dulcie said, “Are you sure you’re well, Betty?”

  “Fine, except for blood pressure and I’ve always had that.”

  “You don’t say much, any more. You seem far away.”

  “Yes, I’m a bit obsessive. I’ll be going on gardening outings in coaches before long with all the other village bores. Look, I must get on. I’m working ahead of frost.”

  “Who are those people in the garden?”

  “What people?”

  “I saw some children. A boy and a girl. And a man.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s a garden full of surprises.”

  One day, deep beyond the meadow grass, beyond the orchard and the apple hedges, on her knees and planting broad beans, she saw two feet standing near her hands. They were Harry Veneering’s.

  “Harry!”

  He was delighted when she shrieked.

  “I’ve found you, Mrs. Waterproof! I heard Filth was up in London. Thought you might be lonely.”

  They had lunch at the kitchen table and he drank a whole bottle of wine (Filth would wonder!) and made her laugh at nothing. As ever. He mentioned his father.

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  “No. I’m a grown-up. I’m going bald. Anyway, we’re not getting on too well, the old showman and I.”

  “Oh? That’s new.”

  “No. It isn’t. He thinks I’m rubbish. He’s thought so for years.” He took a flower from a jar on the table and began to pull it to bits. He kicked out at a stool.

  “Harry! You may be losing your oriental hair but you’re still eight. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m supposed to be a gambler.”

  “And are you?”

  “Well, yes, in my own small way. He’s always bailed me out. Now he says he won’t. Not any more.”

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Never mind. I didn’t come for that.”

  “Of course not,” she said, watching him. Now he was picking at a pink daisy.

  “Stop that!”

  “Oh, sorry. Well, I’d better be going.”

  “How much do you want?”

  “Betty, I have not asked. I’d never ask.”

  “How much do you owe?”

  He slammed away from the table and looked down the garden. “Ten thousand pounds.”

  Then he pushed past her out of the back door and disappeared.

  In time she went and found him smoking in the dark alley where she had first arrived at the house, leaning against the great chimney breast. He was in tears.

  “Here’s a cheque,” she said.

  “Of course I couldn’t!”

  “I have a lot of my own money. It’s not Filth’s. I spend most of it on the garden. If I’d had children it would all have been for them. I’ve not had a child to give it to.”

  He hugged and hugged her. “Oh, how I love you, Mrs. Raincoat. How I love you.”

  “Come. You must go home now. You’re a long way from London and it’s a nasty road. I’ll walk with you to the car.”

  “No, it’s all right. Oh, thank you, so very, very much! Oh, how I . . .”

  “I’ll just get a coat.”

  “Don’t. I’m fine.”

  But she insisted and they walked together down the drive and up the hill towards the church.

  “I’m just round this corner,” he said, “and I’m going to hug you again and say goodbye. I’ll write, of course. At once.”

  “I’d like to wave you off.”

  Very hesitantly he walked beside her round the side of the churchyard to where his car was parked. It was a Porsche.

  “You don’t get a thing for one of these second-hand,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  When the Porsche was gone she turned for the house, stopping quite often and staring at the familiar things in the lane. Loitering gravely, she nodded at the old Traveller in the hedge, busy with his flail. (He must be a hundred years old.) He stopped hacking at the sharp branches and watched her pass and go towards the front door.

  Inside it on the mat lay a letter which must have been wrongly delivered somewhere else first because it was grubby and someone—the Traveller?—had scrawled Sorry across the envelope. It had come from Singapore to her, care of Edward’s Chambers. Though she had scarcely seen his handwriting—once on the card with the pearls so many years ago—she knew that it was from Veneering.

  There was a half-sheet of old-fashioned flimsy airmail paper inside signed THV and the words: If Harry comes to see you do not give him money. I’m finished with him. She threw it into the wood-burning stove. Then she went into the garden and began clearing round the new fruit trees, toiling and bashing until it was dark.

  “Hello?” Filth stood on the terrace.

  “You’re back! Already. There’s not much for supper.”

  “Doesn’t matter. London’s all eating. Come in. You can’t do much more in the dark.”

  “I’ve made a vow today,” he said. “I’ll never work in London again. I can do Hudson just as well at home, with a bit of planning of references. I am tired of London which means, they tell me, that I am tired of life.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Which makes me think that you and I ought to be making our Wills. I’ll dig them out and revise them and then we’ll make a last trip to London, to Bantry Street, and do the signing.”

  “All right.”

  “Could we go up and back on the same day, d’you think? Too much for you?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  And he began to make meticulous revisions to his Will and appendices of wishes. Did she want to read it? Or
should he look over hers?

  “No, mine’s all straightforward. Most of it to you and Amy. If you die first it will all go to Amy’s children.”

  “Really? Good gracious! Right, we’ll get on with it then. Take three weeks—getting the appointment and so on, I’d think. We want everything foolproof.”

  So the appointment was made for 3.30 P.M., on a November afternoon, which was rather late in the day for the two-hour journeys, one up and one down. The new young woman at the firm was excellent and therefore very busy. Never mind.

  But getting ready on the day took longer now, even though shoes were polished and all their London clothes laid out the night before. Betty had seen to it that their debit cards and banknotes, rail cards, miniature bottle of brandy (for her dizziness) and the tiny crucifix left to her by Mrs. Baxter were all in her handbag, along with the pills for both of them (in separate dosset boxes) in case for any reason they should need to stay overnight.

  Filth was still upstairs, fighting with cufflinks, Betty, ready in the hall, sitting in the red chair, and the hall table beside her was piled up with tulip bulbs in green nets. They had smothered the telephone and Filth’s bowler hat. There’d be a roar about that in a minute. (“Where the hell—?”) She fingered the tulip bulbs through their netting, thinking how sexy they felt, when the telephone began to ring. She burrowed about under the bulbs to find the receiver and said, “Yes? Betty here,” knowing it would be from a nervy sort of woman at her Reading Group that afternoon. Betty had of course sent apologies weeks ago.

  “Yes? Chloë?”

  “Betty?” It was a man.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m in Orange Tree Road. Where are you?”

  “Well, here.”

  “Exactly where?”

  “Sitting in the hall by the phone. On the satin throne.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “Wearing?”

  “I need to see you.”

  “But you’re in Hong Kong.”

  “No. Singapore. I need to see your face. I’ve lost it. I have to be able to see you. In the red chair.”