Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘Well, I’m sure… But I felt quite alarmed!’ said Freda. And she started, with a faint sense of panic, on the bit of the story she knew best, knew word for word from her earlier tellings: ‘It was a tall old man, even then he was taller than Frank, though I believe he was eighty. I can see him now, he had a cloak on over his clothes and – ’ here she always made large swooping gestures above her head – ‘an extraordinary, very wide hat, and from behind-’

‘A wide-awake hat,’ said George.

‘Yes… and from behind you saw his – ’ – she always dropped her voice – ‘ filthy -looking hair. I can see him now. My first thought was he was bothering Frank, you see, I mean that he was a beggar or something! Imagine!’

‘The Poet Laureate of England!’ said Hubert.

‘Well, you know they talked for some time. Apparently the captain had told him we were newly-weds.’ She had another drink of wine, looking at Harry over the glass. Her heart was beating absurdly.

‘And what did they talk about, darling?’ prompted George, with a rather tight smile.

‘Oh, I forget…’

‘Oh dear!’ said Cecil, slumping back as if he’d paid good money for nothing, but also, surprisingly, as if he knew her well enough now to tease her. She laughed at herself and again put her hand for a moment on his sleeve.

‘Lord Tennyson said – I shouldn’t really say.’ She felt a knot of incoherence in her chest.

‘We won’t tell,’ said Elspeth, kindly, but as if to a slightly trying child.

Daphne said loudly, in a gruff and approximately regional voice, ‘He said, “We need more bloody, young man.” ’

‘Really, child…’ said Freda, laughing and flushing.

‘ “Less awfully, young man, more bloody!” ’ boomed Daphne.

‘I can tell you, he was very down-to-earth!’ said Freda.

Cecil laughed now, in his brief, loud way, and mild amusement and relief spread round the table, the laugh in part at the girl’s absurd bit of play-acting.

‘So that was all they got out of that great poet,’ Daphne explained in her normal voice. ‘No occasional verse, just – ’ and here she tucked in her chin again – ‘ “More bloody, young man!” ’

‘Enough, child…!’ said Freda.

‘I suppose one sees what he meant,’ said Harry.

‘He was fed up with fine words by that stage,’ said Hubert, clearly quite proud of this family anecdote, and seeing the interest in it.

‘Poor Frank was a little disconcerted,’ said Freda, feeling uncertainly for the ebbing hilarity, and realizing she’d missed out what Tennyson had said about honeymoons. That too was a little disconcerting, and she thought it best to let it go.

‘No, he could be very blunt,’ said Cecil, splintering a brazil nut in the silver jaws of the nutcracker.

‘Bloody blunt, you might say,’ said George, smirking round.

‘If you can’t be blunt at eighty…’ said Daphne.

‘He could be very blunt indeed,’ said Cecil again, through a mouthful of nut, and a sudden uncouth appearance of being quite drunk. ‘I remember my grandfather saying so – he knew him pretty well, of course.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Freda – it was almost a wail.

‘Oh, Lord, yes,’ said Cecil, his loud emphasis followed by a total loss of interest; his face went blank and heavy and he turned away.

When the ladies withdrew for coffee the dining-room door was firmly closed, but the louder sounds carried across the hall – Cecil’s yap, and now and again the awkward note of Huey’s laughter. One never knew what went on, as they pushed the decanter round; whatever it was, it stayed in the room. All they ever brought in with them afterwards was a sporting sense of solidarity and the comfortable stink of cigars. The women’s team, by contrast, was plainly unfocused and without a strategy.

‘Oh, my dear, goodness…’ said Freda, vaguely motioning Elspeth to a chair.

‘I’ll stand for a while,’ said Elspeth, taking up her coffee cup, declining a liqueur with a tiny shudder, and walking to the end of the room on a brisk inspection of ornaments and pictures. At Mattocks, of course, there was quite an advanced collection of pictures, strange symbolic works of various Continental schools. One glanced around with a degree of apprehension.

‘And you, child?’ said Freda. ‘A little ginger brandy, perhaps?’

‘No, thank you, Mother.’

‘No, indeed!’ said Elspeth.

‘Oh, well,’ said Daphne, ‘perhaps just a small one, Mother, thank you so very much.’

Elspeth was combative, but not easily rattled. She came back across the room and perched on the edge of the window-seat. Straight-backed, smartly but staidly dressed in shades of grey, she had something of Harry’s sharp-eyed handsomeness and, it had to be admitted, coolness. ‘I think your young poet so striking,’ she said.

‘Yes, isn’t he striking,’ said Freda, sipping off the top from a perilously full glass of Cointreau. She sat down carefully. ‘He’s made quite an impression here.’

‘He has charm,’ said Elspeth, ‘but not too much of it.’

‘I find him most charming,’ said Daphne.

Freda glanced at her daughter, who looked flushed and slightly reckless as though she’d already had her drink. She said, with a vague desire to annoy, ‘Daphne finds him charming, but she thinks he speaks too loud.’

‘Oh, Mother!’ said Daphne. ‘That was before I knew him.’

‘He only arrived here last night, my lamb,’ said Freda. ‘None of us knows him at all well, as yet.’

‘Well, I feel I know him,’ said Daphne.

‘One can see that George is very attached to him,’ said Elspeth, ‘in the Cambridge way.’

‘Of course George is devoted to him,’ said Freda. ‘Cecil has done so much for him. Helped him up and, you know, what have you…’

Elspeth took a quick sip of coffee. ‘A touch of hero-worship on George’s part, I would say, wouldn’t you!’

This seemed to put George in a rather foolish light. ‘Oh, George is no fool!’ said Freda. She saw something pleasurable dawn in Daphne’s face, the way, over and over, a child slyly seizes on a new phrase, a new conception.

Daphne said, ‘Oh, I think he does hero-worship him,’ with a frank little shake of the head. A great collective laugh was heard from across the hall, which rather showed up the ladies’ thin attempts at enjoying themselves. ‘I wonder what they’re talking about,’ Daphne said.

‘Best we never know, I think, don’t you,’ said Freda.

‘What would it be, though, that isn’t thought fit for our ears?’ said Daphne.

‘I think that’s a lot of nonsense,’ said Elspeth.

‘What is, dear?’

‘You know,’ said Elspeth.

‘Do you mean they talk about women?’ said Daphne.

‘They must know some very amusing women, in that case,’ said Freda, as another burst of laughter was heard. She had a disquieting sense of Harry, who was always so solemn with her, taking quite another character when the ladies were absent. She said, ‘Frank always said the secret was they didn’t want to bore us, but didn’t mind boring themselves. He always hurried them through. He wanted to get back to the women.’ The thought was intensely poignant.

Daphne said, with a pretence of indifference, ‘Do you have many dinner parties of your own, Miss Hewitt?’

‘At Mattocks? Oh, not a great many, no,’ said Elspeth. ‘Poor Harry is so extremely busy, and of course he’s often away.’

‘So you dine in solitary splendour, poor thing!’ said Freda. ‘In that palace…’

‘I can’t say I mind,’ said Elspeth drily.

‘Among all your marvellous pictures,’ said Daphne, slightly overdoing it, Freda felt. She said,