Pearls beyond price by Stevie Davies
Once a Raj orphan, always a Raj orphan. In Jane Gardam’s superb new novel, Sir Edward Feathers, an antediluvian retired judge, enters extreme age carrying his secret wound coiled inside him like a baby. Born in Malaya to a mother who immediately dies and a father whose heart has been petrified by the first world war, Eddie is expelled to the loveless mother-country. He is alone, with the Raj orphan’s stiff-upper-lipped anguish as to where “home” is. Shuttlecocked to and fro between institutions and colonies, Eddie’s odyssey is a sad mock epic version of the wanderings of the children of the British empire, partly based on the early life of Rudyard Kipling.
Sir Edward is “said to have invented Filth – Failed in London Try Hong Kong”, as the Benchers in the Inner Temple muse, having spotted “the old coelocanth” lunching in their midst. A bit of a mystery, they agree, such a magnificent chap, benevolent, popular, and just that one rancorous dispute “with Veneering” that doesn’t add up. So who is “Old Filth”? All we have is an empty chair. He has just left. We begin where we end by pondering Filth’s absence.