Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘Mm, you found us all right,’ said Wilfrid, with a twitch of a smile but not meeting his eye. Paul thought he saw that his visit was quite an occasion.

‘Well, just about…’ he said meaninglessly and handed over his coat and scarf. The hall was tiny, with other glass-panelled doors opening off it – a look of sixties brightness that had already become obscurely depressing. ‘And how is your mother?’ For a moment he felt a kind of awe, repressed till now, at being about to see her, the survivor, the friend of the long dead. And a twinge of something like envy at the thought of the friendship they might have had themselves if he hadn’t been a biographer.

‘Oh, she’s…’ – Wilfrid shook his head and grinned; Paul remembered his hesitations, like a suppressed stammer, in the middle of sentences, but this time the rest of the statement wasn’t forthcoming.

The sitting-room was stifling from a two-bar electric fire – a great thing like a fire-basket, with glowing fake coals showing dimly in the sunlight. There was a strong smell of burnt dust. Paul came in with a cheerful ‘Hello, Mrs Jacobs,’ determined not to show his shock at the state of the room. She was sitting almost with her back to him, in a wing-chair covered in shabby pink chintz. All around her was an astounding chaos of junk, so extreme that he knew he must simply ignore it. There was a worrying sense of the temporary grown permanent, piled-up objects adapting into furniture, covered by tablecloths and tipsily topped with lamps and vases and figurines.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, half-turning her head, but not looking at him, ‘Wilfrid’s put me right about you.’

‘Oh, yes…?’ – he laughed cautiously: so she was tackling the question of his review straight off.

‘You’re not the pianist.’

‘No, I’m not – you’re quite right,’ said Paul.

‘I have an excellent memory, Mummy, as you know,’ said Wilfrid, as if still contradicting her. ‘The pianist was a big… handsome fellow.’

‘Oh, what was he called? that charming young man… so talented…’

Paul groped round this for a moment, almost as if struggling to remember himself. ‘Peter Rowe, do you mean?’

‘Peter – you see, I rather liked him.’

‘Oh, yes, well…’ murmured Paul, coming round in front of her; she didn’t seem interested in shaking hands. She was wearing a thick grey skirt and a blouse under a shabby sleeveless cardigan. She gave him a calculating look, perhaps only the result of her not seeing him properly. After the first awkward moments, he absorbed this as a likely hazard of the hours ahead.

‘What became of him, I wonder?’

‘Peter? Oh, he’s doing all right, I think,’ said Paul blandly. He was standing in the small area between the fire and a low coffee-table heaped with books and newspapers, it was almost like a childish dare as the back of his calves got hotter and hotter.

‘Of course he taught at Corley Court – he was extremely interested in that house, you know.’

‘Oh he was,’ said Wilfrid, with a shake of the head.

‘Extremely interested. He wanted to put back all the jelly-mould ceilings and what-have-you that Dudley did away with.’

‘During your time, of course,’ said Paul encouragingly, as if the interview had already started. He moved round towards the armchair facing hers, and got out the tape-recorder from his briefcase in a slightly furtive way.

‘You see, he’s the one I might have expected to be writing about Cecil,’ she said. ‘He was extremely interested in him, as well.’

‘What wasn’t he interested in!’ said Paul.

Daphne said, ‘I’m having a certain amount of trouble with my eyes,’ reaching on the little table beside her with its lamp and books. Could she still read, Paul wondered? He half-expected to see his own letters there.

‘Yes, so I gathered from Robin ,’ he said, with a fond tone towards this mutual friend.

‘You didn’t block the drive, did you?’ said Daphne.

‘Oh… no – I got a taxi at Worcester station.’

‘Oh, you got a Cathedral. Aren’t they expensive?’ said Daphne, with a hint of satisfaction. ‘Can you find somewhere to sit? One day quite soon Wilfrid’s going to sort this room out, but until that day I fear we live in chaos and disorder. It’s funny to think I once lived in a house with thirty-five servants.’

‘Goodness…!’ said Paul, lifting a leather Radio Times folder and a heap of thick woollen socks, perhaps waiting to be darned, from the armchair. In her book he was sure she’d said twenty-five servants. He rigged up the microphone on top of the books on the coffee-table between them. ‘Why is this house called Olga, I wonder?’ he said, just to test the levels.

‘Ah! You see, Lady Caroline had it built for her old housekeeper,’ said Wilfrid in a pious tone, ‘whose name was Olga. She retired here… out of sight but not quite… out of reach.’

‘And now Lady Caroline lets it to you,’ said Paul, watching the bobbing red finger which dropped, as if by gravity, when no one spoke.

‘Well, we hardly pay a thing…’

Daphne chuckled narrowly. ‘What have you got there?’ she said.

‘I hope you don’t mind if I tape our conversation…’ Paul clicked the button and rewound.

‘Perhaps as well to get it right,’ said Daphne uncertainly. It was the tape-recorder’s odd insinuations of flattery and mistrust. Some people glanced at it as an awkward third person in the room, others were calmed by the just-detectable turning of the spool, some, like old Joan Valance, a second cousin of Cecil’s whom he’d tracked down in Sidmouth, were moved to gabbling relief at having so impartial and receptive an audience. Daphne fidgeted with her cushions. ‘I’ll have to be careful what I say.’

‘Oh, I hope not,’ with his ear to the idiotic tone of the playback.

‘Very careful.’

‘If you want to tell me anything off the record, you can: just say, and I’ll stop the tape.’

‘No, I don’t think I’ll be doing that,’ said Daphne, with a quick smile. ‘Aren’t we having any refreshments, Wilfrid?’

‘Well, if you care to ask for them…’

They both said coffee. ‘Bring us a couple of coffees, Wilfrid, and then find something useful to do. You could make a start on clearing up those things in the garage.’

‘Oh, that’s a very big job, Mummy,’ said Wilfrid, as if not so easily fooled.

When he had gone out of the room, she said, ‘It’s only a very big job because he will keep putting it off. Oh, he’s so… disorganized,’ and she shifted her cushion again, flinched and half-turned, the powder-and-smoke-smudged discs of her glasses blank for a second in the light. This irritable nervousness might be hard to deal with. Paul wanted to remind her of their old connections, but he was wary of mentioning Corinna. He said, just while they waited,

‘I was wondering, do you see much of John, and Julian, and Jenny?’ They sounded like characters in a children’s book.

‘We’re a bit cut off here, to be perfectly frank,’ she said. He saw she wouldn’t want to admit to feeling neglected.

‘What are they doing now?’ – with a glance at the red needle.

‘Well…’ She was slow to warm to the question. ‘Well, they’re all extremely busy, and successful, as you might expect. Jennifer’s a doctor – I mean, not an actual doctor, obviously. She’s teaching at Edinburgh, I think it’s Edinburgh. Wilfrid will put me right if it’s not.’

‘Teaching French literature?’

‘Yes… and John of course has his very successful wine business.’

‘He takes after his grandfather,’ said Paul, almost fondly.

‘His grandfather doesn’t have a wine business.’