Fiction: One man's long life is summed up by his legal colleagues as being easy and undemanding. On the surface, Sir Edward Feathers QC, former Master of the Inner Temple, a wealthy international lawyer, accompanied by a popular wife and no children, appears to have sailed through the years, writes Eileen Battersby.
But the real story is not quite as bland. Eddie or Teddy, most commonly known by his nasty nickname, Old Filth (smart lawyer-speak, allegedly of his invention, meaning Failed in London - Try Hong Kong), was marked from birth.
Born in Malaya, part of a wider place described by the British Raj as "the Far East", Old Filth had been the only child of a remote soldier father destroyed by war and a mother who died unexpectedly and quickly.
His early childhood was spent in the company of Ada, his maid, which left him happily speaking Malay and barely aware of his widower father who, in turn, has no interest in him. At the age of eight, however, Auntie May steps in and young Teddy is despatched "home" to Britain, a foreign land.
Jane Gardam is one of the finest living exponents of the classic traditional British novel; Old Filth, her eleventh novel, is told with style, grace, discreet humour, flawless tone and immense sympathy.
There is also a sense of purpose. She is acknowledging an entire class of displaced - and misplaced - children who were born of colonial stock, based in exotic settings and then sent off to the Mother Country as so many discarded souvenirs, denied parental love, a normal childhood or any concept of home. These drifters merely acquire the right accent, attend the "right" schools, marry similar kinds of people and, if sensible, return to Asia or Africa.
Early in the subtle, atmospheric narrative which slips back and forth in time, Old Filth's wife, practical Betty, who was sufficiently shrewd to secure an emotional life for herself, ponders the mounting numbers of dead around them, as friends and rivals die off, and thinks to herself: "Filth and I are going to live forever. Pointlessly. Keeping the old flag flying for a country I no longer recognise or love."
Betty and Filth are not so much survivors as outsiders doomed to live. They don't seem to speak to each other. Old Filth, now ancient, remains immaculate and handsome, dressed to perfection. He is a legend in legal circles, less for any case he ever won, than for merely being himself.
If initially it seems Gardam wants to expose the hypocrisies of the legal profession, with its array of pathetic rituals, she quickly makes it clear she has no interest in score-settling. Nor is this novel a pleasant variation of John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey tales.
Her intention is far more precise. She is examining the darker aspects of a life that appears to be dull, blameless and successful.
Old Filth, Feathers, has become a ghost surrounded by ghosts. His self-absorption is the only thing that has sustained him. He is a man who, never having been loved, does not seem to know what love is.
As the narrative shifts from the boy to the youth to the elderly legend and back again, chapters of his life are looked at and considered. He remembers, yet is careful neither to judge nor regret. Gardam allows the memories to flicker. It is an effective device: the reader keeps time with the old man's memory. Information is released according to his thoughts.
Sent to an unloving foster home, young Teddy or Eddie develops a stammer, and joins in a violent pact that colours his life. Escape from there brings him to a school run by the eccentric "Sir", in a sequence which demonstrates exactly how fine a comic touch Gardam possesses. Sir's self-styled "outfit" proves the making of Teddy, because it is there that he meets Pat Ingoldby, the only friend he will ever have and through whom he learns a sense of belonging and, eventually, the weight of loss.
When he does meet up with a person he takes to be a friend, Teddy is again disappointed. "Loss's defection," writes Gardam, "was the metaphor for Eddie's life. It was Eddie's fate always to be left. Always to be left and forgotten. Everyone gone, now. Out of his reach."
Late in the narrative, and near the end of his long life, Old Filth, ever reserved, ever discreet, announces to a concerned priest: ". . . From my early childhood, I have been left, or dumped, or separated by death, from everyone I loved or who cared for me. I want to know why." Comfort proves empty when he is told in reply, "You are a hero in your profession."
Still beautifully turned out, yet old and alone, Old Filth the man is a fascinating study of loneliness in old age, following a lonely life. This is a poised, intelligent performance echoing the best of traditional English fiction, as does Julian Barnes's recently published Arthur & George.
Jane Gardam's distinguished, graceful art lies in a consummate understanding of characterisation and a flair for knowing the power of never saying too much. Inspired nuance can make a great story, it certainly has this time.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
Old Filth. by Jane Gardam Chatto & Windus, 260pp. £15.99