Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘I don’t know,’ said George. ‘It’s a song my gyp sings, “When I sees you, my heart goes boomps-a-daisy”.’

‘Really…! I’d have thought if you had to whistle, you’d have chosen something nice,’ and seeing a chance to bring them all back to the subject of last night – ‘such as The Flying Dutchman , for instance.’

George pressed his hand to his heart and started on the lovely part of Senta’s Ballad, staring at her with his eyebrows raised and slowly shaking his head, as if to throw his own self-consciousness over to her. He had a sweet high swooping whistle, but he put in so much vibrato he made the song sound rather silly, and soon he couldn’t keep his lips together and the whistle became a breathy laugh.

‘Hah…’ muttered Cecil, seeming slightly uncomfortable, standing up and slipping his notebook into his jacket pocket. Then, with a cold smile, ‘No… I can’t whistle, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, with your tin ear!’ said Daphne.

‘I’m just going to take this precious book inside,’ he said, holding up Daphne’s little album. And they watched him cross the lawn and go in by the garden door.

‘So what were you talking about to Cess?’ said George, looking down at her again with his funny smile.

She picked over the grass in front of her, in a teasing delay. Her first thought, surprisingly strong, was that her own relations with Cecil, going on quite independently of George’s, if not entirely satisfactorily, must be kept as secret as possible. She felt there was something there, which mustn’t be exposed to reason or mockery. ‘We were talking about you, of course,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ said George, ‘that must have been interesting.’

Daphne gave a soft snort at this. ‘If you must know, Cecil was asking if you had any particular girlfriends.’

‘Oh,’ said George, more airily this time, ‘and what did you say?’ – he had started blushing, and turned away in a vain attempt to conceal the fact. Now he was gazing off down the garden, as if he’d just noticed something interesting. It was quite unexpected, and it even took Daphne, with her sisterly intuition, a few moments to understand, and then shout out,

‘Oh, George, you have!’

‘What…? Oh nonsense…’ George said. ‘Be quiet!’

‘You have, you have!’ said Daphne, feeling at once how the joy of discovery was shadowed by the sense of being left behind.

Once the gentlemen had gone out, Jonah set off upstairs, and was almost at the top when he found he’d forgotten Mr Cecil’s shoes, and turned back to get them. But just then he heard voices in the hall below. They must have gone into the study for a minute, to the right of the front door: now they were by the hall-stand, getting their hats. Jonah stood where he was, not hiding, but in the shadows, on the turn of the stair.

‘Is this one yours?’ Cecil said.

‘Oh, you ass,’ said George. ‘Come on, let’s get out. I’ll bring this, I think, just in case.’

‘Good idea… How do I look?’

‘You look quite decent, for once. Jonah must be doing all right for you.’

‘Oh, Jonah’s a dream,’ said Cecil. ‘Did I tell you, I’m taking him back to Corley with me.’

‘Oh no, you don’t!’ There was a little tussle that Jonah couldn’t see, giggling and gasping, voices under their breath, ‘… ow!… for God’s sake, Cecil…’ and then the noise of the front door opening. Jonah went up three steps and peeped out of the little window. Cecil vaulted the garden gate, and George seemed to think about it, just for a moment, and then opened it and went out. Cecil was already some way down the lane.

Jonah waited a minute longer where he was, looking up the last three stairs and across the landing towards the spare-room door. Jonah’s a dream – what a way they talked… though it must mean things were going all right, he was doing it all convincingly. He didn’t think Mrs Sawle would let Cecil take him away, and he certainly didn’t want to leave home. He’d been into Harrow, of course, many times, and Edgware, and once to the Alexandra Palace to hear the organ… He went on up. The landing was dark, with its oak panelling and thick Turkey carpet, but the bedrooms were flung open so as to air and were full of light. He could hear Veronica, the housemaid, in Mr Hubert’s room, her grunts as she shook and thumped the pillows; she talked to herself, in a pleasant, businesslike mutter, ‘… there you are… up we go… thank you very much…’. Jonah felt he had understood something, they had decided he was ready. He looked forward to straightening the room and taking his time with Cecil’s things, examining the buttons and pockets in more detail. He would never have said it to anyone downstairs, but he thought if he learned valeting it could be a job for him, in a year or two’s time. One day, perhaps, he would let Mr Cecil, or someone very like him, take him away after all.

Then he pushed open the door, and saw at once he knew nothing, they’d told him nothing about what went on between bedtime and breakfast. It was like stepping into another house. Or else, he felt, as he took two or three short steps into the room, or else this Mr Cecil Valance was a lunatic; and at this thought he gave a sort of staring giggle. Well, he would have to wait for Veronica. The bed was all over the floor as if a fight had taken place in it. He looked at the shaving-water cold and scummy in the basin, the shaving-brush lying in a wet ring on top of the bookcase. He frowned at the clothes strewn over the floor and across the little armchair with a new and painful feeling that he’d known them in an earlier and happier time, when things were still going convincingly. And the roses were as good as dead – yes, Cecil must have knocked them over and then jammed the stems just anyhow into the vase with no water. Their heads had dropped after a few hours of neglect, and a patch on the patterned rug was dark and damp to the back of the hand. On the dressing-table the scribbled sheets of paper were more what Jonah had expected. ‘When you were there, and I away,’ Jonah read, ‘But scenting in the Alpine air the roses of an English May.’ Then he snatched up the shaving-brush and stared at the oily pool it had made.

Jonah went over to the waste-paper basket, as if routinely tidying a barely occupied room, and took out the handful of bits of paper. He saw one of them was written by George, and felt embarrassed on his behalf that his guest should have made such a mess. It was hard to read… ‘Veins’, it seemed to say, if that was how you spelt it: ‘Viens.’ The poetry notebook, that Jonah had been told never to touch, still lay within reach, on the bedside table. Later, he thought, he almost certainly would have a look at it.

‘I see he’s made himself at home,’ said Veronica from the door, and her competent tone cheered Jonah up. ‘Yes, Cook said he’ll make a mess but he’ll give you ten shillings – could be a guinea if you’re lucky.’

‘I expect so,’ said Jonah, as though used to such treatment, stuffing the bits of paper awkwardly into his trouser pocket. Then he couldn’t help smiling. ‘Cook said that?’

Veronica plucked the pillows off the bed. ‘Well, he’s an aristocrat,’ she said, with the air of someone who’d seen a few. ‘If they make a mess they can pay for it.’ She pulled the rucked bottom sheet tight and looked at it with a raised eyebrow and a strange twist of the mouth. ‘Well, Jonah, look what I see.’

‘Oh yes…’ said Jonah.

‘Your gentleman’s had a mission.’

‘Oh,’ said Jonah, with the same look of suppressed confusion.

Veronica glanced at him shrewdly but not unkindly. ‘You don’t know what that is, do you? A nocturnal mission, they call it. It’s something the young gentlemen are very much prone to.’ She tugged off the sheet with surprising strength, the mattress shuddering as it came free. ‘There you are, smell it, you can always tell.’