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

precautions.’
    Father Griesepert said that he would call. He said that, actually, he had already been thinking about it.
     
    ‘Name?’ Father Griesepert shouted.
    Nobody had actually asked the Cossack’s name. The Catholic priest bullied the sick man in a loud voice. He tried a bit of German (on account of his own strange name which was one of the reasons for his isolation here).
    ‘Address? Home address?’
    The man looked scornful.
    ‘Name of circus?’
    Silence. Then ‘Piccadilly’ and a great laugh.
    Suddenly, in good English, the Cossack said, ‘My name is Anton’ (‘Anton,’ whispered Florence, listening to it).
    ‘Very unlikely he’s a Cossack. I’d guess he comes from Odessa,’ said the priest. He rubbed his hands over his face as if he were washing it. ‘This woman,’ he said in loud English to the man, ‘Is with child.’
    Anton understood.
    ‘You must be married before the birth.’
    Anton looked at Florence as if he had never seen her before.
    Florence went to get the priest his whisky.
    They all said prayers together then, and Griesepert named the wedding date. ‘We must, of course, inform the authorities.’ He was met by two pairs of staring eyes.
    ‘You are a Catholic, Florrie Benson.’ She seemed uncertain. ‘Your parents were lapsed. But I remember baptising you as a child. That child has now to have her own child and it must be brought up as a Catholic. It must go to a Catholic school. You must bring it to the church. And your marriage must be preceded by a purification.’
    ‘A
purification
, Father?’
    ‘Have you no concept of your faith?’
    ‘You never gave me any.’
    She stretched out her rough hand in a gesture which was—for her—hesitant, towards the Cossack’s hand and together they both glared at the priest. Then, between them in assorted words, from God knows where, they made a stab at the Catechism, Anton’s face rigid with contempt.
    Florrie’s face was alight with joy. The baby in the womb stirred.
     
    * * *
     
    Anton tried. When Florrie was in the ninth month and couldn’t walk far he began to limp about the town looking for work.
    There was almost no money left by now from the wills of Florrie’s parents and so he became a caretaker at a private school at the end of the town. When they found that he spoke several languages he began to teach classes there. His English improved so quickly that it almost seemed that it had always been there, beneath the other languages. He began to meet educated people in the good houses across the Park towards Linthorpe. The new great families, the iron-masters. Some of them German Jews. In these houses he behaved with a grave, alien formality: but with a seductive gleam in his eye. It seemed that he was a gentleman. It was confusing.
    Soon he was being invited to dinner—always, of course, without Florrie—by the headmaster of a local private school and his artistic wife while, in Muriel Street, Florence suckled the child over the kitchen range. She sang to it, made clothes for it, wished her mother were alive to see it. Wished she had been kinder to her mother.
    Her husband, seated at the headmaster Harold Fondle’s great mahogany dining table with its lace mats and good crystal, spoke in improving English and fluent French of Plato and Descartes. His English was without accent, he looked distinguished and he appreciated the wine. When anybody broached the question of his past life or his future, or his allegiances he would raise his glass and say, ‘To England’.
    He grew strong again, and after the child was weaned decided to go into business as a coal merchant. He carved and then painted the gold and green sign in the slaughter-house alley. The butcher thought little of it (‘You don’t start a business by mekkin a painting of it’). When Anton’s back gave out for the second time, Florrie found him twisted, lying in the alley under a sack of coal, the thin horse munching into its nose-bag.
    She hauled him