Old Filth Read Online Free PDF

time. And you will by then have paid for him in advance.”
    Alistair Feathers’s eyes stared. Outside, the madhouse noises of the jungle. Inside, the servant padding about, taking plates, setting down others, offering fruit.
    â€œHe seems well and happy,” he said. “I have never seen the need for him to go Home. It’s not the law.”
    â€œYou know perfectly well that it is the custom. Because of the risk of childhood illnesses out here. You went Home yourself.”
    â€œI did,” said Alistair. “So help me God.”
    Auntie May on the whole agreed with him. She’d seen great damage. Some children forgot their parents, clung to their adoptive families who later often forgot them. There were bad tales. Others grew to say they’d had a much better time in England away from their parents, whom they did not care for. There were children who worked hard at growing stolid and boring, and made marriages only in order to have roots of their own at last. They never told anything. And Auntie May had never been sure about the ferocity of Eastern childhood diseases. But in this case there was no mother.
    â€œYou’ve had no leave in ten years, Alistair. It isn’t safe. Nobody knows better than you what happens out here to District Officers who work too hard. They drink and go native.”
    Alistair fastidiously poured another whiskey and said, “At least I still change for dinner.”
    He was in dinner jacket and black tie that would have been acceptable at the Ritz. Not a bead of sweat. Auntie May in sarong and sandals, her chin a little more whiskery, her arms resting almost to her elbows on the table a little more muscular, had put on weight and felt hot. She looked at Alistair and had to admire. She wanted to take his hand. Her hardest task now as she grew older in the Ministry was to deal with her longing to be touched—hugged, stroked by anyone, any human being—a friend, a lover, a child or even (and here she scented danger) a servant. Of either sex. She prayed about it, asking that God’s encircling arms would bring comfort. They did not.
    â€œAlistair, you have no choice. You have a son who has no mother. At Home there will be your sisters, both unmarried. They will love a little nephew. They don’t answer any of my letters but you say you’ve been making arrangements, telling them? You have to take leave and accompany the boy home. It’s what his mother would have done.”
    Alistair rose and limped about, his crooked shadow every- where. Outside in the steaming night there was an upsurge of voices across the compound and the crowing of a cock. A drum began to beat.
    â€œIt’s the festival. They’re sacrificing a cockerel.”
    â€œYou don’t need to tell me, Auntie May.”
    â€œYour son is watching. Do you think this is the right way of life for a Christian child?”
    â€œHe isn’t a Christian child.”
    â€œYes, he is. I saw to that. He was baptised at birth. His mother held him. It’s not the Baptist way but she asked for it. In case he didn’t survive the river boat. He is baptised in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who have nothing to do with the slitting of a cock’s gullet at the full moon.”
    â€œThey are calling on their god,” said Alistair. “There is no God but God. I’m nearer to their gods than yours ever was to me in 1914. Can the child not go on as he is?”
    â€œNo,” she said and left it at that.
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    The next day she went looking for Edward and found him in the river shallows where Ada on the bank was rubbing at coloured cloths, the pair of them calling and laughing. Other children stood in the water sending showers of it over each other and Edward and Ada, with their round dark hands. Edward began to do the same and kicked more of it about with his long white feet. Ada, pretending to be furious, dropped her cloths and ran in