The Man in the Wooden Hat Read online

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” said Elisabeth.

  “I was going to telephone you.”

  “It’s supposed to be bad luck,” she said.

  “No, it’s bad luck for me to see you before the church. I was thinking of—er—saying, well—well, how to get there—well, don’t get the time wrong. Will those missionaries get you there? Willy could fetch you.”

  “I’ll be there, Edward.”

  “All set, then?”

  “All set, Edward. Edward, are you O.K.? Are you happy?”

  “Don’t forget your passport. Tell them to throw your suitcase in the back. Oh, and don’t forget . . .”

  “What?”

  A long silence and he watched the seabirds leaning this way and that over the harbour.

  “Don’t forget . . . Elisabeth. Dear Betty. Even now—are you sure?”

  There was the longest pause perhaps in the whole of Edward Feathers’s professional life.

  And then he heard her voice in mid-sentence, saying, “It could be cold in the evenings. Have you packed a jersey?”

  “My breakfast hasn’t arrived yet. Then I have to pay the bill here. Are you dressed? I mean in all your finery?”

  “No. I’ve a baby on my knee and Amy and everyone are shouting. But, Eddie, if you like we can still forget it.”

  “I’ll be there,” he said. Silence again for an aeon. “I love you, Betty. Don’t leave me.”

  “Well, mind you turn up,” she said briskly. Too brightly. And put down the phone.

  He had no recollection in the Donhead lanes after Betty’s death of any of this except his own immaculate figure standing at the window.

  “I am not going,” said Bets, hand still on the phone. “It’s off.”

  Amy planted a glass of brandy beside the bride’s cornflakes. “Come on. Get dressed. I’ve done the children. What’s the matter?”

  “What in hell am I doing?”

  “The best thing you ever did in your life. Looking ahead at last. Here, I’ll do your hair.”

  Edward’s luggage had already gone ahead to the airport. He paid his bill at the desk, the management far from effusive, since they’d expected him there for another two months. But they knew he would be back, and he tipped everyone correctly and shook hands all round. They walked with him to the glass doors and bowed and smiled, nobody saying a thing about his stiff collar and tailcoat so early in the morning. “You don’t need a car, sir? For the airport?” “No, no. I’m going across to church first.” “Ah—church. Ah.” The gardenia in his buttonhole could have been laminated plastic.

  He set out to his wedding alone.

  Briefly he thought of Albert Ross. Ross had vanished. Eddie had no best man.

  Oh, well, you can marry without a best man. No one else he’d want. It was a glorious morning. He remembered his prep-school headmaster, Sir, reading Dickens aloud, and the effete Lord Verisoft walking sadly to his death in a duel on Wimbledon Common with all the birds singing and the sunlight in the trees.

  “I am alone, too,” he said in his mind to Sir. “I haven’t even a Second to chat to on the way.”

  He thought of the old friends missing. War. Distance. Amnesia. Family demands. “I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come.” Oxford friends. Army friends. Pupils in his Chambers. Not one. Not one. Oh my God!

  Walking towards the exquisite figure of Edward Feathers—well, not so much walking as shambling—was Fiscal-Smith.

  From Paper Buildings, London EC4!

  They both stopped walking.

  Then Fiscal-Smith came rambling up, talking while still out of earshot. “Good heavens! Old Filth! This hour in the morning! Gardenia! Haven’t you been to bed? I’m just off the plane. Great Scot—what a surprise! Where are you going?”

  “Just going to church.”

  “Case settled, I hear. Bad luck. I’m here for the Reclamation North-east Mining Co. It hasn’t a hope. Oh, well, excellent! Thought you’d be on the way Home.”

  “No, not—not just at once.”

  “Church you said? I’d no idea it was Sunday. Jet lag. I’ll walk there with you.”

  “No, that’s all right, Fiscal-Smith.”

  “Glad to. Nothing to do. Need to walk after the plane. Should really have shaved and changed. I always travel now in these new T-shirt things. Feathers, you do look particularly smart.”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . .”

  “Ah. Oh, yes. Of course. You’ve just got Silk. All-night party. Well done. You look pretty spry, though.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well, very spry. Good God, Feathers, you look like The Importance of Being Earnest. Nine o’clock in the morning. What’s going on?”

  Eddie stopped and turned his back on St. James’s church. At that moment, from the belfry a merry bell began to ring. “Private matter,” he said and held out his hand. “Goodbye, old chap. See you again.”

  “There’s a clergyman waving at you,” said Fiscal-Smith. “Several people in bright dresses are round the church door. Smart hats. The padré—he’s coming over. He looks anxious—”

  “Goodbye, Fiscal-Smith.”

  “Hello!” cried out the parson. “We were getting worried. Organist’s on “Sheep May Safely” third time. You are looking very fine, my dear fellow, if I may say so. Now then—best man? Delighted. At the risk of sounding less than original I have to ask if you have the ring?”

  “Ring?”

  “Wedding ring? Let me see it. Best man—by the way my name is Yo. Yo Kong. I am to officiate. And you are?”

  “Well, I’m called Fiscal-Smith. I’ve just arrived.”

  “Well done, well done. Right on time. The ring.”

  Fiscal-Smith stood in unaccustomed reverence, and Feathers gave one of his nervous roars and took a small box from his pocket.

  “Very good. Splendid. Very good indeed. Now if you will accompany me, both of you, to the front pew on the right. The bride should be here in five minutes.”

  “Bride?” said Fiscal-Smith out of a tight mouth.

  “Yes,” said Eddie, staring up at the east window.

  “Who the hell is she?”

  “Betty Macintosh.”

  “Who?”

  “Decided to get on with it. Case settled. No time to contact a friend.”

  “Friend?”

  “Best man. Quite in order to go it alone.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind. If you’d told me I’d have shaved. And I dare say you’ll be giving me a present. Usual thing.”

  “Of course. And you won’t mind giving presents to the bridesmaids?”

  “What?”

  “I take it they all want the same. A string of pearls,” and Eddie was suddenly transported with boyish joy and began to boom with laughter, just as the organ left off safely grazing sheep and thundered out “The Wedding March.”

  The two men were hustled to their feet and arranged alongside the front pew. Fiscal-Smith was handed the ring box and dropped it, and began to crawl about looking down gratings. Edward’s old headmaster, Sir, used to say, “You don’t find many things funny, Feathers. The sense of humour in some boys needs nourishment.” But this, on the wedding day that he had greeted as if going to his death, Eddie suddenly saw as deliriously dotty. He guffawed.

  A rustle and a flurry and a gasp, and the bride stood alongside the groom who looked down with a cheerful face maybe to wink at good old Betty and say, “Hello—so you’re here.” Instead his face froze in wonder. A girl he had never seen stood beside him in a cloud of lace and smelling of orchids. She carried lilies. She did not turn to look at him. The face, invisible under the veil, was in shadow.

  He could sense the delight of the small congregation—must be Amy and her husband, and Mrs. Baxter and some children and, oh yes, of course, Judge Pastry Willy and his wife Dulcie. Willy was “giving Betty away.” How they were all singing! Singing their heads off: From Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strand. (A paean to the Empir
e, he had always thought. Whoever had chosen it?)

  Someone had put hymn books into the hands of the bride and groom and the best man in his coloured T-shirt, who was singing louder than anyone with the book upside down. (You wouldn’t have expected Fiscal-Smith to know any hymns by heart.) The bride was trilling away, too, reading the hymn book through the veil.

  I don’t know this girl, Eddie thought. I suppose it’s Betty. It could be anyone. She’s singing in tune rather well. I didn’t know that Betty could sing. I don’t really know anything about her. I wonder if some other men—other man—does? I don’t know her tastes. I only know that terrible green dress. I don’t know the colour of her eyes. Oh!

  The bride had been told to lift her veil to make the promises and there to his relief was Betty in his pearls, and her eyes were bright hazel. And she was standing with her right foot on his left foot, and quite hurting him. They made the tremendous promises to each other, like automata, and he was told that he might now kiss her.

  Tears in his eyes, he leaned towards Betty who leaned towards his ear after the small, obligatory kiss. “Who on earth is the best man?” just as Fiscal-Smith dropped the now empty ring box for the second time and turned to check how many un-necklaced bridesmaids there were. And, for the first time that day, Fiscal-Smith smiled, on finding that there were none.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Honeymoon Letters

  Letter one: A letter from the bride to her friend Isobel Ingoldby, of no fixed address.

  Dear Lizzie,

  I’m writing with no real idea yet of where to send it. Perhaps to the Old Col, in case you left a forwarding address. Are you east or west? Back in Oz, forward to Notting Hill, or in pursuit of some passion in the Everglades or one of the Poles?

  I’ve done it. Wore ancient veil belonging to old bird. A Missionary Bird once in Dacca all butterflies and flowers to cover my homely face and a new dress that was a present from her too, and shoes from Amy and flowers from Uncle Pastry who walked me down the aisle and handed me over. Antique idea but rather amazing. Eddie gave a sort of hiccup as I drew up alongside. I gleamed at him through the lace and I could see that he was worried that I might be someone else. He likes all evidence to be in the open. When I came to lift the veil—as does God at death—he looked startled, then breathed out thankfully. I’d made an effort with the face and had my hair cut where the grandee expats used to go, one of them looking down at me from a benign photograph on the wall. Must be long dead, but somehow I know her. Could have been part of my childhood. Friend of Ma, I guess. Red nails, shiny lips like a geisha girl with kind eyes. She’s going to be my icon. I shall grow old like her, commanding people and being a perfick lady, opening bazaars. I’ll live in the past and try to improve it. You’ll know me by my hat and gloves, and hymn book too, like the mission-ary who got eaten by the cassa-wary in Tim-buk-tu . . . something something hymn book too.

  Well, I suppose I got eaten in HK at the church but I’m not unhappy, being digested, just a little shaken. I don’t know if Eddie’s happy—who does know about him?—but I’d say he isn’t shaken at all. The only thing that worried him apart from my heavy disguise under the antique tablecloth was his best man. You’d think Eddie would have been ashamed of Fiscal-Smith but he’s loyal to friends. And he has some funny friends, like the Dwarf—who was nowhere to be seen—and now this battered scarecrow. He thinks my friends are funny too, citing the excellent Mrs. Baxter who does nothing but cry.

  And if he knew I know you, what then! Don’t worry, ducky. I’m not jealous of his memories or that you were in flagrante delicto (more jargon) once upon a time. “Let it be our secret that I know you,” as your lesbian pals undoubtedly bleat.

  I don’t think you and Eddie’d have much to say to each other now, Lizzie, whatever you both got up to in the school hols before the war.

  And I find I have everything to say to him morning, noon and night. Old Filth, as he is so charmingly called—I can’t care for it—is full of surprises. And I do enjoy the way people defer to him. I am but a hole in the air but they run after him, bowing. And why I like this so much, Lizzie, is that he doesn’t notice it. And he doesn’t think it odd to have friends like Fiscal-Smith and the seven dwarfs. Well, only one dwarf to date but you never know who will turn up next.

  And he trusts me utterly, Lizzie. Never suspected a thing about you-know-what. And I’ve put it out of my mind. It was some sort of hypnosis. Terrifying! No, I never think about it. Of course, Eddie’s a bit of an enigma himself and it makes me pleased with our Enigma years at Bletchley Park. You and I know about silence. Not one of us spilled a bean, did we? And the fact that I’ll never really crack Eddie in a way gives me a freedom, Lizzie. Oh, not to misbehave again, oh dear me, no, but to have an unassailable privacy within my own life equal to his. This must be how to make marriage work. I have been married three full days. I know.

  We’re in Shangri-La, Lizzie. It’s called Bhutan, and way round the back of Everest. He organised it all between the Case settling and marrying me. That’s what he was doing the two days he vanished in Hong Kong. First he fixed a plane to Delhi—no, first the wedding breakfast at the Restaurant Le Trou Normand where Amy tried to breastfeed at the table and Eddie and Fiscal-Smith looked up at the ceiling that was all hung with fishing nets with fake starfish trapped in them, like Brittany, and the manager removed her to an annexe.

  “Off to Delhi now,” says groom to bride and “Delhi? We’re not going to Delhi. Not Agra? Not the Taj Mahal with all the tours?” says bride to groom: “I’ve not seen the Taj Mahal, as it happens,” he says, “but no, it’s a stopover. I couldn’t get much of a hotel, though.”

  Nor was it. The tarts paraded the corridors and used our room when we were down at dinner (British Restaurant wartime standard) and Edward inspected the bedcovers and roared, and we slept in chairs and next day he refused to pay and confetti fell out of my pockets and the manager smirked. Bad start.

  But then I experienced the superhuman power of the Great Man’s fury. Heathcliff stand back. Result: somehow comes along an Embassy car and chauffeur to take us to the airport, no Taj Mahal but a silent journey with Eddie like Jove on his cloud. And the cloud gave way to mountains and the mountains were the Himalayas and then the mountains started to change and soften and a pale-green, misty valley country began. Its architecture of wood and stone and bright paint is like a pure and unworldly Vienna. Tall, huge blocks of apartments like palaces. Cotton prayer flags blow in clusters from every hilltop and street corner and everyone—children and grandpas and cripples and monks—give each prayer wheel a little shove as they pass.

  And now we have reached a rest-house high above a valley where a green river thunders, foaming along between forests standing in the sky and luminous terraces of rice. At a meeting of waters stands a stupa. Even from up here its whiteness and purity hurt the eyes. High up here we listen to the thunderous waters and then, high above us again, are monasteries hidden in the peaks, and eagles.

  We arrived yesterday on a country bus and we passed this stupa far below at the meeting of the rivers. It is like the huge snow-white breast of a giantess lying prone with a tower on top, like a tall white nipple. Reclining by the roadside on a wooden bridge was a human-sized creature examining its fingernails like a courtesan, not interested in us. Bus stops still. Driver cries, “Look, look! It is a langur, the rare animal you see on our postage stamps!” and the langur langur-ously yawns, putting a paw over its mouth—I swear—and vanishes.

  I’d like to be a langur

  Sitting by a stupa

  Eating chips and bang-ur

  Wouldn’t it be supa?

  Now, in this Bhutanese rest-house, I am completely happy and I hope Eddie is. He spends hours sweeping the view with his binoculars and peace on his face. The walls of the rest-house are made of crimson felt hung inside heavy skins. The red felt flaps and groans in the wind. It is damp to the touch. Monks and monkish people shuffle about. The appearance of the management pu
ts the Savoy Hotel to shame. They wear deep-blue woollen coats, the Scottish kilt, long woollen socks knitted in diamond patterns like the Highland Games and dazzle-white cuffs turned back over blue sleeves. The cuffs are a foot deep. There’s a whiff of Bluecoat Boys and of Oliver Cromwell. Puritan? No. There must be a lot of sex about, for the villages team with children and (wait for it) all the government offices are painted with murals several storeys high, with giant phalluses (or phalli?) on which Eddie sometimes lets his binoculars rest and even faintly smiles.

  So, it’s all O.K., Lizzie-Izz.

  Love you. Love you for not being at the wedding. If Eddie knew I knew you and was writing he’d send his love, but I’d rather he didn’t. I must keep hold of his love all to myself at least at first, until I understand it.

  Dinner is served. Looks like langur fritters.

  Your old school chum

  Bets

  (Letter stamped by Old Colonial Hotel, Hong Kong “To await arrival” and eventually thrown away.)

  Two: A letter from the bride to her friend Amy of Kai Tak.

  Amy, my duck, I’m writing from Dacca in East Pakistan but when I write to The Baxter (next one) I’ll call it Bengal and I have to say that Bengal suits it better, even sans Lancers. The climate remains the same. Every other change political and historical is on the surface. I can’t remember if you and Nick worked here? Actually you can’t see much surface for most of it is water. It is hardly “a land” but part of the globe where the sea is shallow and the sinuous silky people are almost fish but with great white smiling teeth. The “lone and level land” stretches far away and the crowds blacken it like dust drifting. Nowhere in the world more different than the last place, i.e. the first call in our Honeymoon Progress which is becoming global and all arranged in secret and string-pulling by Eddie.

  First, Bhutan. We were dizzy there, not with releasing passions, but with altitude sickness. We were level with the eagles. There was also a bit of food poisoning. I managed not to buy the goat’s cheese they sell on the mountainside like dollops of soft cream snowballs set on leaves. “You would last one hour,” says my lord. In the rest houses the food came before us on silver dishes and looked ceremoniously beautiful: mounds of rice with little coloured bits of meat and fish and vegetables in it, warmish and wet, and only after a terrible day and night did we realise that anything left over is mixed in with the new stuff next day. Tourists are few. Probably mostly dead. The king hates tourists and you usually have to wait a year. Eddie was at Oxford with him after the war and I was all for dropping in our cards in the hope of getting some Oxford marmalade and Christ Church claret. Eddie said no. Eddie is . . . but later.