Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘I wonder how you’ll get on.’ Cecil closed his eyes languidly as he smiled, so that she had a further sense of screened-off mysteries. ‘Perhaps tomorrow you could tip me out of bed too.’

‘Do you think your mother would approve?’

‘Oh, she won’t mind.’

‘Well, we’ll see.’

‘I could show you all kinds of things.’ She felt the grass with her hand before sitting down beside Cecil’s chair. ‘I can’t believe George showed you the whole of “Two Acres”.’

‘Well, possibly not…’ said Cecil, with a quick snigger.

Daphne peered encouragingly at the view – the neat parched lawn, the little tor of the rockery, the line of dark firs that hid the Cosgroves’ potting-shed and motor-garage. To her the ‘Two’ in her house’s name had always been reassuring, a quietly emphatic boast to schoolfriends who lived in a town or a terrace, the proof of a generous over-provision. But in Cecil’s presence she felt the first shimmer of uncertainty. Sitting side by side, she hoped to make him share her view, but wondered if she hadn’t started sharing his instead. She said, ‘You know, the rockery was my father’s contribution.’

‘He must have put a good deal of work into it,’ said Cecil.

‘Yes, he worked terribly hard at it. Those large red stones came all the way from Devon – which of course he did!’

‘They will be a strange geological conundrum to later ages,’ said Cecil.

‘Yes, I suppose they will.’

‘They will be like the monoliths of Stonehenge.’

‘Mm,’ said Daphne, sensing teasing where she’d hoped for something better. She pressed on, ‘My father wasn’t artistic like my mother, but she gave him a free hand with the rockery. In a way it’s his monument.’

Cecil stared at it with a chastened expression. ‘I suppose you don’t really remember your father,’ he said. ‘You must have been too young.’

‘Oh, I remember him quite well.’ She nodded up at him. ‘He used to come home from work, and have his Old Smuggler while I was in the bath.’

‘You mean he drank whisky in the bathroom?’

‘Yes, while he was telling me a story. We had a nanny of course, who used to bath me. Frankly, I think we had rather more money then, than we have now.’

Cecil gave her the fleeting wince of merely abstract sympathy that she’d noticed already when it came to money or servants. ‘I can’t imagine my father doing that,’ he said.

‘Well, your father doesn’t go to work, does he.’

‘That’s true,’ said Cecil, and giggled attractively.

‘Of course Huey works very hard. My mother says one of us needs to get married.’

‘Well, I’ve no doubt you will,’ said Cecil, his dark eyes holding hers and his eyebrow rising slightly for emphasis and a hint of amusement, so that her heart thumped and she hurried on,

‘One day, we’ll see. I dare say we all will.’ She wanted to say she had overheard them last night, and to tell him they were wrong, he and George: Hubert wasn’t a womanizer at all, he was really intensely respectable. But she was frightened by this unknown subject, and worried that she might have misunderstood.

‘I don’t think George has a particular girlfriend?’ said Cecil, after a minute.

‘We all thought you would know,’ she said, and then regretted the suggestion that they’d been talking about him. Something in Cecil of course demanded to be talked about. She tore up a few blades of grass, and glanced at him, feeling still the great novelty and interest of his presence. He shifted in the deckchair, crossed his right ankle on his left knee, a glimpse of brown calf. He was wearing white canvas shoes, scuffed at the heel. It would be amusing if they could explain George to each other behind his back. She said, ‘We all thought there might be someone when he started getting letters; but of course they were from you!’

Cecil looked both pleased and embarrassed by this, and glanced over his shoulder at the house. ‘But what about your mother, do you think?’ he said, in a sudden sensitive tone. ‘She’s still quite young, and really most attractive. She might marry again herself. She must have many admirers…?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so!’ Daphne frowned and blushed at the question. It was one thing to talk about poor George’s prospects, quite another to ask about those of a middle-aged lady whom he hardly knew. It was most inappropriate; and besides, the last thing she wanted was a stepfather. She pictured Harry Hewitt standing on her father’s rockery – worse, ordering its demolition. Though actually, almost certainly, they would all have to move to Mattocks, with its peculiar pictures and statues. She sat looking at Cecil’s white shoes, and thinking rather hard. He didn’t press her for an answer. She saw it was a new kind of talk, that she wasn’t quite ready for, like certain books, which were in English obviously, but too grown-up for her to understand. He said,

‘I didn’t mean to pry. You know how Georgie and I and all our lot are devils for speaking candidly.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said.

‘Tell me it’s none of my business.’

‘Well, there’s a man who’s coming to dinner tonight that I think likes my mother a lot,’ she said, and a sense of betrayal discoloured the following seconds.

‘Is this Harry?’

‘Yes, it is,’ she said, feeling her shame still more.

‘The man who gave you the gramophone.’

‘Oh, yes, well he’s given us all kinds of things. He’s given Hubert a gun, and… lots of things. The Complete Works of Sheridan.’

‘I imagine Huey might appreciate some of these gifts rather more than others,’ said Cecil, again familiar and casual.

‘Well… He gave me a dressing set, with a scent bottle, which I’m not old enough for, and silver-backed brushes.’

‘He sounds like Father Christmas,’ said Cecil; and with a hint of boredom, looking round, ‘What a jolly fellow.’

‘Hmm. He’s very generous, I suppose, but he’s not a bit jolly. You’ll see.’ She glanced up at him, still strangely indignant both with him and with Harry, but he was gazing at the top of the spinney, where they’d met last night, as if at something much more intriguing. ‘He goes to Germany a great deal, he does import-export, you know. He brings us back things.’

‘And you think all these presents are his way of… paying court to your mamma,’ said Cecil.

‘I fear so.’

Cecil’s splendid profile, the autocratic nose and slightly bulbous eye, seemed poised for judgement; but when he turned and smiled she felt the sudden return of his attention and kindness. ‘But, my dear child, you’ve no need to fear unless you think she returns his feelings.’

‘Oh, I don’t know…!’ She was flustered, by having come so far, and by this unexpected word child , which was what her mother herself called her, quite naturally, though often with a hint of criticism. She had got it last night, once or twice, when she was trying to make Cecil feel at home and asking him questions. He must have heard her say it. Now she felt some not quite nice rhetorical advantage had been taken of her – he’d humbled her at the very moment he was meant to be cheering her up.

Cecil smiled. ‘I tell you what. I’ll have a good look at him, as a total outsider, and let you know what I think.’

‘All right…’ said Daphne, not at all sure about this compromise.

‘Ah!’ said Cecil, sitting forward in his chair. George was coming across the lawn, his jacket hooked over his shoulder, and whistling cheerily. Then he stood looking down at them, with a question hidden somewhere in his smile.

‘What is that thing you’re always whistling?’ said Daphne.