Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘I was too young to remember him,’ said Wilfrid, and looking at Paul over Daphne’s head, ‘I was only seven when we… er, moved to London.’

Even so, Paul wondered whether Wilfrid wasn’t abashed by looking at these sketches, all the bolder for being private things, the little studies of the Scotch boy’s thighs, buttocks and nipples, in the presence of his mother; and what on earth Daphne herself thought, having married a man who produced such work. ‘I remember he came to several of our parties at the studio,’ she said, as if in fact recommending her husband’s roving eye. Paul thought for a moment she might be teasing him.

‘These ought to be in a museum,’ he said awkwardly.

‘And soon I dare say they will be. But I like having them around, so for now I’m hanging on to them, thanks very much’ – and she shut the book halfway through as if to say she’d indulged him quite enough.

‘Actually I wanted to ask if you have any pictures of “Two Acres”?’ – something told him it was cleverer to ask for pictures of the house than pictures of people: it sounded more disinterested, and no doubt both kinds of photo would be mounted in the same album. Once more Wilfrid obliged. ‘This was Granny Sawle’s album,’ he said.

‘It was a dear house,’ said Daphne, again holding the album down by her left knee and raising her eyebrows suspiciously. ‘That’s the view from the lane, isn’t it, yes, that was the dining-room window, and there were the four cherry-trees in front of it, of course.’

‘A cloud of snow at Eastertide!’ said Paul (it wasn’t Cecil’s most original line).

‘Aha!’ said Wilfrid from the far side of the room.

‘There you are…’ said Daphne. ‘And the rockery, look. Goodness, how it all comes back.’

‘Well, I’m glad,’ said Paul, with a frank laugh.

‘Now who’s that? Wilfie, is it Granny?’

‘Oh…’ said Paul. It was the stout old German woman again, that George had told him about, but of course he didn’t know her name. Already Paul felt annoyed by her, a figure of no interest who kept demanding attention. He remembered George had said she was a great bore. She sat in light-absorbing black in a deckchair from which it was hard to see how she would ever get up.

‘What?’ said Wilfrid, coming over. ‘I don’t know who everyone is, I wasn’t even born yet, remember? Oh, good grief – no, no, that’s not Granny. No, no.’ He laughed breathily. ‘Granny was a really a rather – lovely woman, with lovely auburn hair.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say it was auburn,’ said Daphne. ‘She was a dark blonde. She was very proud of her hair.’ It probably wasn’t something Daphne would say of herself. Paul looked to Wilfrid, and said,

‘She was the German woman, wasn’t she?’

‘That’s right…’ said Wilfrid, already abstracted, leaning forward quickly to turn the page. ‘I haven’t seen these for a long time,’ he said.

‘I wonder what’s become of the house,’ said Daphne.

‘It probably doesn’t even exist any more, Mother,’ said Wilfrid. It was one of those little moments when Paul found it in his power to inform and perhaps upset the person he had himself come to for information.

‘Oh, it does, actually,’ he said.

‘You’ve seen it, I suppose, have you,’ Daphne said, in an irritable tone.

Paul pursed his lips regretfully, ‘Well, I’m not sure you’d recognize the old place.’

‘Oh, really?’ she said, lightly but grimly.

‘Well, no – you would,’ said Paul, ‘of course you would’ – and he thought, ‘but you never will go there, you’ll never see the place again.’ He had a feeling she was blaming him already for the changes, the years of flats, the sold-off garden, blaming him for knowing what he knew and what she had hoped never to know.

‘Actually don’t tell me,’ she said.

‘Anyway, we’ve got the poem, haven’t we,’ said Wilfrid.

‘Well, of course,’ said Daphne, ‘there’s always the poem.’

There were no photos of Cecil in the album, which since he’d only spent six nights of his life at ‘Two Acres’ was hardly surprising, but of course disappointing. Paul looked closely at George whenever he appeared, from sailor-suited six-year-old to boatered Cambridge man, and with less and less doubt that whatever warmth this cold fish had felt had been directed at other young men. He asked Daphne if she would let him reproduce two photos of the house and garden, and she said she didn’t see why not, but she fidgeted until she was sure that Wilfrid had returned the album to its hiding-place. When they were all sitting down again, Paul cleared his throat and looked at her more narrowly than before, and with a greater cumulative sense that it didn’t matter how he looked at her, she wasn’t going to see him. He said airily, ‘There’s one thing-’ just as Daphne, with a little chuckle, almost grinning, as if at some great mutual satisfaction, said, ‘Well! I’m sorry to say that I’ve promised to be at my friend Caroline’s by four o’clock, so alas we’ll have to bring the meeting to a conclusion, with a vote of thanks to Wilfrid Valance for the refreshments!’

Paul’s face reddened and stiffened, but he wasn’t going to be outdone. He made a thing of nodding regretfully at his watch. ‘Well, if I’m to catch the 5.10,’ he said.

‘Oh, well, there you are, perfect,’ said Daphne smoothly.

It wasn’t clear if Wilfrid would want to drive him again; Paul was ready to phone for a Cathedral. He stood up, and started putting the tape-recorder and his papers into his briefcase with as little discomfiture as possible, in fact with a few delaying and normalizing remarks. ‘I’m so grateful to you,’ he said.

‘Well, I don’t suppose I’ve been much help to you,’ she said.

‘You’ve been very kind!’ said Paul, in a full embrace of untruth. He took out his copy of The Short Gallery : ‘I wonder – would you sign this for me?’ – it was the copy he had had for review. He hoped she was no longer up to reading the pencilled marginalia, even if she thought to look.

‘What’s that…?’

‘Oh, Paul wants you to sign your book for him, Mummy,’ said Wilfrid, clearly pleased by the request.

‘Oh, well, if you like’ – and after a scrabble for a biro and with an awkward squint at the title page, Daphne wrote something, in her large loping hand – Paul didn’t look but it took him back in a complex moment to the night she had written down her address for him at Paddington, and then much further to the morning at Foxleigh long before when he’d seen her make out a cheque with a comic precautionary air of not knowing what she was doing. There was something about her writing, with its big squareish loops and above-normal scale, that seemed to show her to him as a girl, something unguarded and almost unaltered by time, the same swelling D s and crook-like p s she would have signed in letters to Cecil Valance before the First World War, and that now she was signing for him. She closed the book and handed it back; then stood up too, with the uncertain look of having come through something without too much harm. He clipped his briefcase shut.

‘Well! I’ll be in touch,’ he said. He wasn’t at all sure he would ever see her again. ‘And as I say, I’ll let you know about the book-launch, whenever it happens. You have to be there!’ She was completely impassive at this, and Paul moved forward with a quick amiable gasp and touched her upper arm – she hadn’t seen it coming: it was only after he’d planted the first kiss and was already committed to the second that her resistance showed, a little bewildered grunt and recoil, as if from the sheer scale of his misunderstanding.