Old Filth Read Free Page A

that had fallen off the roof and had sounded like a slithering car. “I’m a bloody old fool,” he said.
    From the gate he looked out upon the road. It was a gleaming sheet of snow in both directions. Nothing had disturbed it for many hours. All was silent, as death. Filth turned and looked up Veneering’s drive.
    That too was pristine silk, unmarked by birds, unpocked by fallen berries. Snow and snow. Falling and falling. Thick, wet, ice cold. His thinning hair ice cold. Snow had gathered inside his collar, his cardigan, his slippers. All ice cold. His knobbly hands were freezing as he grasped first one yew branch and then the next. Hand over hand he made his way up Veneering’s drive.
    He’ll be with the son, thought Old Filth. That or there’ll be some ghastly house party going on. Golfers. Old cobwebs from the Temple. Smart solicitors. Gin.
    But the house when it came in view was dark and seemed empty. Abandoned for years.
    Old Filth rang the bell and stood on the porch. The bell tinkled somewhere far away inside, like Betty’s at the rosewood dining-table in the Mid Levels.
    And what the hell do I do now? He’s probably gone to that oaf Christopher and they are carousing in the Peninsular Hotel. It’ll be—what? Late night now. They’ll have reached the brandy and cigars—the cigars presented in a huge shallow box, the maître d’ bowing like a priest before the sacrament. The vulgarity. Probably kill the pair of them. Hullo?
    A light had been switched on inside the house and a face peered from behind a curtain in a side window. Then the front door was opened slightly by a bent old man with a strand or two of blond hair.
    â€œFilth? Come in.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œNo coat?”
    â€œI just stepped across. I was looking out for my taxi. For the White Hart. Christmas luncheon. Just hanging about. I thought I’d call and . . .”
    â€œMerry Christmas. Good of you.”
    They stood in the drear, unhollied hall.
    â€œI’ll get you a towel. Better take off your cardigan. I’ll find you another. Whiskey?”
    In the brown and freezing sitting-room a jigsaw puzzle only one-eighth completed was laid out over a huge table. Table and jigsaw were both white with dust. The venture looked hopeless.
    â€œToo much damned sky,” said Veneering as they stood contemplating it. “I’ll put another bar on. I don’t often sit in here. You must be cold. Maybe we’ll hear your car from here, but I doubt it. I’d guess it won’t get through.”
    â€œI wonder if I might use your phone? Mine seemed to be defunct.”
    â€œMine too, I’d guess, if yours is,” said Veneering. “By all means try.”
    The phone was dead.
    They sat before two small, red wire-worms stretched across the front of an electric fire. Some sort of antique, thought Filth. Haven’t seen one like that in sixty years. Chambers in the years of the Great Fog.
    In a display case on the chimney-piece he saw a pair of exotic chandelier earrings. The fire, the earrings, the whiskey, the jigsaw, the silence, the eerily-falling snow made him all at once want to weep.
    â€œI was sorry to hear about Betty,” said Veneering.
    â€œI was sorry about Elsie,” said Filth, remembering her name and her still and beautiful—and unhappy—Chinese face. “Your son—?”
    â€œDead,” said Veneering. “Killed. Army.”
    â€œI am most terribly sorry. So dreadfully sorry. I hadn’t heard.”
    â€œWe don’t hear much these days,” said Veneering. “Maybe we don’t want to. We had too many Hearings.”
    Filth watched the arthritic stooped old figure shamble across the room to the decanter.
    â€œNot good for the bones, this climate,” said Veneering, shambling back.
    â€œDid you think of staying on?”
    â€œGood God, no.”
    â€œIt suited you so well.” Then