Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

Exactly as yesterday, but with determined new warmth, Paul said to Wilfrid in the hall, ‘And how is your mother?’

‘I fear she didn’t sleep at all well,’ said Wilfrid, not meeting his eye; ‘you might keep it… pretty short today.’ Paul went into the sitting-room and set up the mike and looked over his notes with a clear sense they were blaming him for her bad night. But in fact when Daphne came through she seemed if anything rather more spry than yesterday. She made her way among the helpful obstacles of the room with the inward smile of an elderly person who knows they’re not done yet. He felt something had happened in the interim; of course she would have been thinking, reassessing her position as she lay awake, and he would have to find out as he went along if the spryness was a sign of compliance or resistance.

‘Rather a lovely day,’ she said as she sat down; and then cocking her head to check Wilfrid was still in the kitchen making coffee, ‘Has he been telling you about his popsy?’

‘Oh – well, I gathered…’ Paul smiled distractedly as he checked the tape-recorder.

‘I mean, he’s sixty! He can’t look after a lively young woman – he can hardly look after me!’

‘Perhaps she would look after him.’

But she gave a rather earthy chuckle at this. ‘He’s not a bad person, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, or even a flea probably, but he’s totally impractical. I mean look at this house! It’s a miracle I haven’t tripped over something and broken my leg; or my wrist; or my neck!’

‘Does she live locally?’

‘Thank god, no – she lives in Norway.’

‘Oh, I see…’

‘Birgit. She’s a pen-pal, didn’t he tell you that?’

‘Well, Norway’s a long way away.’

‘That’s not what Birgit thinks. Well, she’s got designs on him.’

‘Do you think?’

Daphne was quietly candid. ‘She wants to be the next Lady Valance. Ah, tea, Wilfie, how splendid!’

‘Coffee, you said, Mummy.’ She took it cautiously from the tray. ‘Shall I go over to Smiths’ for those things, then?’

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘stay and talk with us – it will be more fun for Mr Bryant, and you can help me out – I forget so much!’

‘Do call me Paul,’ said Paul, with a glare of a smile at Wilfrid – if he stayed it was certain Daphne would say nothing remotely interesting; he needed to be sent off on some sort of errand, but it was hard for Paul to know what.

‘Well, of course I’m very interested in… Paul’s great project.’

‘Well, I know you are.’ She sipped. ‘Mm, delicious.’

Paul wondered how to cope with this. As always he had plans, which as often proved impossible to follow, and he had never been good at improvising: he clung to the discarded plan still when he could. He reminded her about Corley Court, and the times he’d visited the house, and how he was hoping to go again, he’d written to the Headmaster; but she couldn’t be got to show any interest in the topic at all. ‘Do you have much from those days, I wonder?’ Paul said. Perhaps under the tablecloths and blankets in this room there were Valance heirlooms, little dusty things that Cecil might have owned and handled. The sense of the whole unexamined terrain of Cecil’s life lying so close and yet so stubbornly out of view came over him at times in waves of dreamlike opportunity and bafflement.

‘I didn’t get much. I got the Raphael.’

‘Oh, well…?’ – Paul narrowed his eyes at her tone.

‘You probably saw it in the loo.’

‘Oh… oh, the picture of the man, do you mean… Goodness… Well, that must be worth quite a lot!’ Paul hated his own snigger – he really had no idea.

‘Well, so one had hoped. Unfortunately it’s a copy, done when was it, Wilfie?’

‘About 1840, I believe,’ said Wilfrid, sportingly, but with a certain pride too.

‘But you didn’t know that at the time?’

‘Well, I think… you know. And what else?’ – she gazed around as if against a bright glare.

‘The ashtray,’ said Wilfrid.

‘Oh, yes – I got the ashtray.’ On the little table, beside her coffee cup, was a small silver bowl, with a scalloped edge. ‘Have a look.’ She lifted it and Paul got up to take it from her. It was just the sort of thing people used to keep in old suitcases in the strong-room at the bank, but tarnished and scratched by the protracted attentions of a heavy smoker.

‘Look on the bottom,’ said Wilfrid.

‘Oh, I see…’

‘I suppose Dudley had a sort of complex or something about property. He had that done to all sorts of valuable things, no doubt greatly reducing their value in the process.’ In flowing letters, like some more conventional inscription stamped in the silver, were the words Stolen from Corley Court . He handed it back, with a blush at the naming of this particular vice.

‘I was wondering about the picture behind you,’ he said, to distract her. Somehow the nightmare of the room was yielding small treasures, consolation prizes for the talk that Daphne was trying to prevent from happening.

‘Oh, well, that’s Revel, of course,’ said Daphne, as though now referring to an undisputed master.

‘And it’s obviously… you!’ said Paul.

‘I’m very attached to that drawing, aren’t I, Wilfie.’

‘Yes… you are,’ Wilfrid agreed.

‘So when was it done?’ Paul got up, and edged around between the back of Daphne’s chair and the standard-lamp to have a closer look. It struck him that the Victorian ‘thicket’ of furniture and stuff at Corley had been recreated here by Daphne willy-nilly. Perhaps clutter always won in the end.

‘It’s a very fine picture,’ said Daphne. It showed a round-faced young woman with dark hair in bunches on either side of her head. A light scarf was tied loosely in the open neck of her blouse. She leant forward, lips parted, as if waiting for the punchline of a joke. It was done in what Paul thought was red chalk, and signed For Daphne – RR April 1926 . ‘We both had the most appalling hangovers at the time, but I don’t believe you can tell with either of us.’

Paul giggled, but didn’t hazard a view. When he thought about the date, it began to seem significant. ‘I’d like to see more of his pictures,’ he said, sad to hear himself surrender to a further diversion from the subject of Cecil, but with a feeling she could still be brought back to it.

‘Would you, really?’ Daphne sounded surprised, but was ready to oblige. ‘What have we got? Well, have a look at Revel’s albums, I suppose. You know where they are, Wilfie.’

‘Yes… now then…’ said Wilfrid, nodding his head from side to side as he fetched them out from a chest of drawers behind his chair. Paul began to suspect Wilfrid’s years-long failure to tidy the house was really a cover for a highly personal but efficient system of his own. ‘Well, there’s this one anyway.’ And Paul was shown, more hastily than he would have liked, a large black-covered sketchbook of Revel Ralph’s; it was laid open across Daphne’s knee, and Paul and Wilfrid flanked her, craning down politely while she peered from odd ingenious angles and quickly turned the pages, as if regretting showing them after all. There were pages of Georgian-looking houses, whether real or invented Paul had no idea, pretty but rather boring, which Wilfrid then said were designs for The School for Scandal ; some sketches of another woman in a dark hat, which Daphne said were studies for a portrait of Lady somebody, ‘a very trying woman’; and then a rapid and much more inspired-looking series of drawings, over ten or twelve pages, of a naked young man, lying, sitting, standing, in a range of ideal but natural-looking positions, everything about him wonderfully brought out, except his cock and balls which were consigned to the imagination by a swoop of the pencil, ostentatiously discreet, pretending it wasn’t the point. Daphne seemed to sense Paul’s interest – ‘What’s that?’ pushing the book away so she could see it – ‘Oh, you remember him, Wilfie, the Scotch boy at Corley. Revel was awfully taken with him – he did a lot of drawings of him – I remember they became great friends.’