The Man in the Wooden Hat Read Free Page A

haven’t slept with her then?”
    A steward looked away but went on listening.
    “No,” cried Filth, loud and unaware. “No, of course not. She’s a lady. And I want to marry her.”
    “How young?”
    “I’ve never asked. She’s a young girl. Well, she can’t technically be a girl. She grew up in the war. Japanese internment camp in Shanghai. Lost both parents. Doesn’t speak about it.”
    “Have you ever asked her about it?”
    “One doesn’t intrude.”
    “Edward, what does she know about you ? That you ought to tell her? What have you talked about? Will she stay with you?”
    “She’s good at birds and plants. So am I. My prep school. She’s very lively. Infectiously happy. Very bright eyes. Strong. Rather—muscular. I feel safe with her.” Filth looked at the throbbing structure of the plane. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I would die for her.”
     
    “Yes, I will,” the girl was saying in the shabby hotel in the back street, and street music playing against the racket of the mah-jong players on every open stone balcony. The overhead fan was limp and fly-spotted. On the beds were 1920s scarlet satin counterpanes with ugly yellow flowers done in stem stitch. They must have survived the war. Old wooden shutters clattered. There was the smell of the rotting lilies heaped in a yard below. Betty was alone, her friend Lizzie out somewhere, thank goodness. Betty would have hated not to be alone when she read Edward’s letter. What lovely handwriting. Rather a shame he’d used his Chambers writing paper. She wondered how many rough drafts he’d made first. Transcripts. He was wedded to transcripts. This was meant to be kept.
    And she would. She’d keep it for ever. Their grandchildren would leave it to a museum as a memento of the jolly old dead.
    Eddie Feathers? Crikey! He does sound a bit quaint. ( Would you consider our being married, Elisabeth ?) Not exactly Romeo. More like Mr. Knightley, though Mr. Knightley had a question mark about him. Forty-ish and always off to London alone. Don’t tell me that Emma was his first. I’m wandering. I do rather wish Eddie wasn’t so perfect. But of course I’ll marry him. I can’t think of a reason not to.
    She kissed the letter and put it down her shirt.
     
    Over the South China Sea Albert Ross was saying, “Do you know anything about this girl? Do you think she knows a bloody thing about you?”
    “I’d say I was pretty straightforward.”
    “Would you! Would you?”
    The plane lurched sideways and down. Then again sideways and down. It tilted its wings like a bird that had suddenly lost concentration and fallen asleep in the dark. Though, thought Filth, the prep-school-trained ornithologist, they never do.
    “Elisabeth,” he said, “makes me think of a kingfisher. She glitters and shines. Or a glass of water.”
    “Oh?”
    “A glass of clear water in a Scottish burn rushing through heather.”
    “Good God.”
    “Yes.”
    “Has she ever seen heather? Born in Tiensin? Is she beautiful?”
    Filth looked shocked. “No, no! My goodness, no. Not at all. Not glamorous .”
    “I see.”
    “Her—presence—is beautiful.” (It must be the glass of champagne that had been served with breakfast.) “Her soul is right.”
    Ross picked up the cards. “You are not a great connoisseur of women, Edward.”
    “How do you know, Coleridge? We didn’t talk about women on the Breath o’Dunoon .”
    “So what about the Belfast tart?”
    “I never told you that!”
    “The shilling on the mantelpiece. You talked of nothing else when you were delirious with poisoned bananas.”
    Filth in his magnificence pondered.
    “You’d better tell Miss Macintosh the outcome.”
    “How did you hear the outcome?”
    “Oh, I know people.”
    “Look here, I’m cured. I have a certificate. ‘VD’ they called it. Peccadilloes up there on the frontier. Old as soldiers. Old as man. Mostly curable.”
    “You weren’t on the frontier. You went to bed with an