With tongue gently in cheek, Jane
Gardam begins Last Friends, the third
book of the Old Filth trilogy, in epic grand style:
“The Titans were gone. They had
clashed their last. Sir Edward Feathers, affectionately known as Old Filth
(Failed in London, Try Hong Kong) and Sir Terrence Veneering, the two greatest
exponents of English and International Law in the engineering and construction
industry and current experts upon the Ethics of Pollution, were dead…
How they had hated. For over half a
century they had been fetching up all over the world eye-ball to eye ball,
Hector and Achilles, usually on battlefields far from home, championing or
rubbishing, depending on the client, great broken bridges, mouldering
reservoirs, wild crumbling new roads across mountain ranges, sewage works, wind
farms, ocean barrages and the leaking swimming pools of moguls.”
How I have loved Gardam.
“Last Friends,” begins, after the summary introduction, with a
funeral and ends with …… a surprise.
The last of the central figures of
“Old Filth” and “The Man with the Wooden Hat,” – the venerable Edward Feathers, Old
Filth himself is mourned. Betty Feathers and Terry Veneering have already
passed. Edward Feathers’ secrets were spilled in in Filth; those of Betty in ‘Wooden
Hat.” The deceased Veneering’s will
be revealed in “Last Friends,” whose story is framed and partly told by those who
outlast them all.
The always-peripheral Fiscal-Smith,
“born to be a background figure,”
and Dulcie served as best man and matron of honor at the
Feathers’ wedding. They reunite at Filth’s funeral and provide occasion for the
rest of the tale. After the funeral
Fiscal-Smith, ever the freeloader finagles a stay at Dulcie’s. The following
evening the two return to the church and get locked in and spend a frigid night
wrapped in church vestments to stay warm. The funny awkwardness that ensues is
reminiscent of a cold snowy day near the beginning of “Filth”
when Feathers was locked out. He had to
seek refuge at the home of his archenemy Veneering.
Relationship havoc happens when
doors lock.
Gardam sandwiches Terry Veneering’s
exotic story between bookend-pieces of Fiscal-Smith and Dulcie’s tale in much
the same way she sandwiched Betty Feathers’ story inside the covers of Albert
Ross. Fiscal-Smith is the only one who knows of Veneering’s colorful past.
Florrie Benson fell for a disabled Russian circus performer and perhaps spy
named Veneski or Venski. Terry is the product of their love – and love’s
attachment (while Filth is the product of abandonment.)
Opponents Filth and Veneering are
in other ways opposites: Filth’s
exceptionally clean, tall, buttoned-down and handsome while Veneering’s
disheveled, rakish, blond and flashy.
However, their stories often parallel each other’s and intersect with
the same characters making small appearances in both stories.
Each is orphaned in a different
way. Each endures a childhood with trauma. Each has a benefactor. Filth had
Albert Ross providing opportunities and protecting him, Veneering has Peter Parable
Aspe, a solicitor who pressures Mr. Smith, the head of a private school, to
take young Terry on scholarship. War intervenes in both lives in similar ways.
The bombing of London that sent Edward Feathers away on a life-changing sea
voyage he endures, takes Terry on one he escapes. Who wouldn’t try to escape
the clutches of a prep school master and wife named Mr. and Mrs. Fondle?
Oh how perfectly Dickensian!
While references to Coleridge may
have been at the heart of “Wooden Hat,”
playful homage to Dickens – the author so many have compared Gardam to -- is central to Last Friends. Sir – the same Sir that changed Filth’s life at
boarding school renames Terry: “This is a very serious matter. Your name
henceforth will be Veneering. Yes. Delightful. Polished. In Dickens, Veneering
(look up Our Mutual Friend) is an
unpleasant character and you will have to redeem him.”
What an appropriate naming. Terry
is the mutual friend of both Feathers. For each, he represents something quite
different. For the venerable Edward, he’s a veneer – someone not quite
trustworthy, whose polish is but a thin layer. For Betty, he’s venereal,
meaning of or relating to sexual pleasure, erotic desire.
As if that
weren’t enough, Veneering’s early life is shaped by those who forage for coal
and at a pivotal point Veneering even makes a visit to Dickens’ home, shakes
hands with his ghost and finds his inheritance and true vocation. Dulcie’s
former husband Pastry Willy (much older, now deceased) has a hand in
redirecting him. (Pastry Willy was also Betty’s uncle and the judge who married
the Feathers).
Having learned what we can about
Veneering’s exotic origins, readers return to the Dulcie- Fiscal Smith story.
We get a glimpse of the home of the perennial bachelor and with characteristic
Gardam style, it warehouses objects we recognize such as a bicycle that played
an important role early in the story. Like other objects – a dress, two sets of
pearls, a rose chair, and a tree that looks like a hen from earlier parts of
the trilogy, Gardam has endowed the bicycle with a history so it too becomes
sentimental for the reader.
Aah. Such sentimentality and
nostalgia. Romance, too.
How I will miss these characters, who
have over the course of the three books become my dear old friends too.
While I won’t reveal the delightful
ending, suffice to say, in Last Friends
those who last become truly friends --at
last.
