Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

Bryant stepped back, gripped her forearm, stared as if he were being tricked, while some rushed but extremely complex calculation unfurled behind his eyes. Then, ‘Jenny, my dear, I don’t believe it!’

‘Well, here I am.’

‘Oh, Peter would have been thrilled,’ shaking his head in wonderment. Was it a fight or a reunion? He craned forward – ‘I can’t believe it!’ again; and kissed her.

She laughed, ‘Oh!’, coloured slightly and went on at once, ‘Well, Peter meant a lot to me, long ago.’

‘Oh, the dear old tart that he was…’ Bryant said, glancing narrowly at Rob, not knowing of course what role he might have played in Peter’s life. ‘No, a great man. Peter Rowe-my-dear you used to call him, do you remember?’ – he was sticking to the fondly proprietary view of the deceased, barbs in an indulgent tone of voice. ‘Andrea, this is Jenny Ralph – or was – I don’t know…?’

‘Still is,’ said Jenny firmly.

‘A very old friend. Andrea… who was Peter’s next-door neighbour, am I right?’

‘Rob,’ said Rob, nodding, not giving them much to go on, though Jennifer endorsed him, in a supportive murmur, ‘Yes, Rob…’

‘Rob… hello, and this is – where are you? – come here! – Bobby’ – to the patient Chinese man he’d turned his back on – ‘my partner.’

Rob shook hands with Bobby, and smiled at him through the knowing shimmer of gay introductions, the surprise and speculation. ‘Civil?’ he said.

Bryant said, ‘Hmm, well, some of the time,’ and Bobby, with a sweet but tired grin at him, said politely,

‘Yes, we’re civil partners.’

In a minute glasses of wine were raised, Bryant peeping over his a bit cautiously at Jennifer, who said, in her candid way, ‘Well, I read your book.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ he said, with a little shake of the head; then, ‘Which one?’

‘You know – Uncle Cecil…’

‘Oh, England Trembles , yes…’

‘You caused quite a stir with that one,’ said Jennifer.

‘Tell me about it!’ said Bryant. ‘Oh, the trouble I had with that book.’ He explained to Andrea, ‘It’s the book I mentioned in my speech just now, if you remember – the life of Cecil Valance. My first book, actually.’ He turned to Jennifer. ‘There were times I felt I’d bitten off more than I could chew.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Jennifer.

‘Didn’t he write “Two Acres”?’ said Andrea. ‘I had to learn that at school.’

‘Then you probably still know it,’ Jennifer assured her.

‘Something about the something path of love…’

‘It was written for my grandmother,’ said Jennifer.

‘Or, as I contend, for your great-uncle!’ said Bryant gamely.

‘That’s amazing.’ Andrea looked round. ‘I must introduce you to my husband, he’s really the poetry lover.’

Bryant chuckled uneasily. ‘It was your dear grandmother who gave me so much trouble.’

‘Well, you certainly reciprocated,’ said Jennifer, so that Rob thought perhaps it was a fight after all.

‘Was I awful? I just couldn’t get anything out of her.’

‘That could have been because she wanted to keep it to herself, I suppose.’

‘Mm, Jenny, I can tell you disapprove.’

‘Who was this?’ said Andrea.

‘My grandmother, Daphne Sawle,’ said Jennifer, as if this needed no further explanation.

‘I knew she’d never see it, of course, so…’

But Jennifer didn’t give ground on this, and Rob, who imagined they were both wrong in different ways, was not in the mood for a row. He said to Bobby, ‘So did you ever meet Peter?’ and drew him aside as he got a second glass of wine. He glanced round, thinking with a touch of relief of the two hundred other people here he could talk to if he wanted. He saw the blond man look over the shoulder of the man he was joking with and give him a frank saucy look, as though he thought Rob had picked Bobby up. Bobby had a wide smile, short shiny black hair, and a strong uncritical belief in his husband’s work. He dismissed his own work in IT – ‘Too boring!’ He told Rob they lived out in Streatham, and though Paul often worked in the British Library, Bobby rarely came into Town. They had been together for nine years. ‘And you?’ said Bobby. ‘Oh, I’m very much single,’ said Rob, and grinned, and felt Bobby was slightly sorry for him. He looked round and saw that Nigel Dupont was coming through towards the buffet. ‘That woman is being quite aggressive to Paul!’ said Bobby. ‘Yes, I know…’ said Rob. In fact Bryant himself had half-turned away from Jennifer.

‘About my present project? I can’t tell you,’ he was confessing to a woman in a black suit. ‘Oh, yes, another Life. Still rather hush-hush – I’m sure you’ll understand! – ah, Nigel…’ – with a clever little air of deflation.

‘Hello, Paul!’ said Dupont, warily genial, and rather oddly too, since they’d just been sharing a podium.

‘Oh, I loved what you said,’ said the woman. ‘Very moving.’

‘Thanks…’ said Dupont. ‘Thanks so much.’

‘Do you know Jenny Ralph?’ said Bryant.

‘Ah! nice to see you,’ said Dupont warmly, allowing the possibility they had met before.

‘Bobby you’ve met, and…’

‘Rob Salter.’

‘Rob… hi!’ – shaking his hand gratefully, and holding his eye.

Rob smiled back. ‘Interesting to hear about your school – and the Valance connection.’

‘That’s right… Old times…’

‘So here we have his editor -’

‘… in the red corner…!’ said Bryant -

‘hah – and his biographer!’

‘That’s right…’ said Dupont again.

‘No, we’re old friends,’ said Bryant, curving against him, as if he’d just been kidding. ‘It worked out quite well, didn’t it. We were both digging away like mad, from quite different angles.’ He tilted his head from side to side. ‘I’d get one thing, old Nigel would get another.’

‘It worked out fine,’ said Dupont, in a tone that showed he had a forgiving nature, and it had all been a long time ago. From here the Valance work seemed a distant prolegomenon to far more sensational achievements.

‘Of course I put you on to the Trickett MS,’ said Bryant, wagging his finger.

‘That’s right… If only you’d been able to track down the lost poems as well…’ said Dupont, with a playful shake of the head.

‘Oh, they’re gone, don’t you think? I’m sure Louisa burnt them – if they ever existed!’

‘What was the Trickett thing?’ said Rob, piqued by the talk of manuscripts and lost poems.

Dupont, whom Rob now found, with the sudden surrender of a prejudice, completely charming, even sexy, paused on the brink of a shift into academic talk – ‘Oh, it was an unpublished part of one of the poems, which turned out to be a sort of queer manifesto, except in tetrameter couplets…’

‘Really?’

‘Written in 1913, quite interesting…’

‘You know, I had to take issue with one thing you said,’ said Bryant.

‘Oh, lord,’ said Dupont, with a comical cringe.

‘Just now, I mean, when you said dear old Pete’s famous Imp was pea-green.’

‘Yes’ – Dupont looked nonplussed.

‘I could swear it was sort of beige.’ Bryant grinned and narrowed his eyes.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Dupont. ‘I went in that car a lot. In fact I even washed it once, before a group of us went to Windsor Castle in it, just in case we saw the Queen.’

‘Well, I won’t tell you what I did in it!’ said Bryant with a gasp – ‘no, but I’m sure you’re wrong.’

‘Maybe you’re colour-blind,’ said the woman in black.

‘Not at all,’ said Bryant. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter!’