Last Friends is the final novel in Jane Gardam’s great trilogy. The first, Old Filth (Failed in London, Try Hong Kong), gets its title from the nickname given to Judge Sir Edward Feathers QC (despite his fastidious cleanliness).
Born in Malaya, a child of the Raj, he goes to Oxford, the Bar, and thence to Hong Kong, where he succeeds with ‘ease, grasp, diligence and flair’.
He and his devoted wife Betty, now in their eighties, retire to St Ague, in secluded Dorset. When Betty dies, Eddie discovers, by a cruel twist of fate, that Veneering, his lifelong rival in love and law, has become his neighbour.
The Man with the Wooden Hat tells the same story from Betty’s viewpoint. Last Friends, the concluding chronicle, focuses on Veneering, with his unconventional, almost Dickensian, upbringing — his adopted name recalls Our Mutual Friend and he, like Pip, has Great Expectations: a legacy from a benefactor he knew in Teesside.
He is brought up by his mother, who delivered coal, and by his blond, handsome Cossack father, a crippled acrobat and dancer named Venitski, from whom he inherits a knack for languages.
When war comes he runs away from the City of Benares before she sets sail for Canada, drowning hundreds of children. He marries Elsie, beautiful, rich and Chinese, yet remains always ‘in thrall to Betty’. He and Feathers fetch ‘up all over the world, eyeball to eyeball’, both making their fortunes, not in politics, crime nor international highlights, but in construction law, engineering and the ethics of pollution.
A prodigious talent, Gardam gives us three interwoven, layered chronicles, set in the days of declining Empire — like slideshows of the time. She moves from East to West, back and forth in time, getting into the hearts and minds of her characters, their ambitions and dreams, with the gentle humour and the telling wit of a Jane Austen.
Jane Gardam will be talking about Last Friends on Saturday, September 21, as part of Blenheim Literary Festival. Tickets from The Feathers Hotel, Woodstock, or call 01993 812291 from 11am-2.30pm.
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