Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

She took her letter into the hall, and stood for a moment by the massive oak table in the middle of the room. It seemed to her suddenly the emblem and essence of Corley. The children tore round it, the dog got under it, the housemaids polished it and polished it, like votaries of a cult. Functionless, unwieldy, an obstacle to anyone who crossed the room, the table had a firm place in Daphne’s happiness, from which she feared it was about to be prised by force. She saw again how imposing the hall was, with its gloomy panelling and Gothic windows, in which the Valance coat of arms was repeated insistently. Would those perhaps be allowed to stay? The fireplace was designed like a castle, with battlements instead of a mantelpiece and turrets on either side, each of which had a tiny window, with shutters that opened and closed. This had come in for particular sarcasm from Eva Riley – it was indeed hard to defend, except by saying foolishly that one loved it. Daphne went to the drawing-room door, put her fingers on the handle, and then flung it open as though hoping to surprise someone other than herself.

The off-white dazzle of it, on a bright April morning, was undeniably effective. It was like a room in some extremely expensive sanatorium. Comfortable modern chairs in grey loose covers had replaced the old clutter of cane and chintz and heavy-fringed velvet. The dark dadoed walls and the coffered ceiling, with its twelve inset panels depicting the months, had been smoothly boxed in, and on the new walls a few of the original pictures were hung beside very different work. There was old Sir Eustace, and his young wife Geraldine, two full-length portraits designed to glance tenderly at each other, but now divided by a large almost ‘abstract’ painting of a factory perhaps or a prison. Daphne turned and looked at Sir Edwin, more respectfully hung on the facing wall, beside the rather chilling portrait of her mother-in-law. This had been done a few years before the War, and showed her in a dark red dress, her hair drawn back, a shining absence of doubt in her large pale eyes. She was holding a closed fan, like a lacquered black baton. Here nothing came between the couple, but still a vague air of satire seemed to threaten them, in their carved and gilded frames. In the old drawing-room, where the curtains, even when roped back, had been so bulky that they kept out much of the light, Daphne had loved to sit and almost, in a way, to hide; but no such refuge was offered by the new one, and she decided to go upstairs and see if the children were ready.

‘Mummy!’ said Wilfrid, as soon as she went into the nursery. ‘Is Mrs Cow coming?’

‘Wilfrid’s afraid of Mrs Cow,’ said Corinna.

‘I am not,’ said Wilfrid.

‘Why would anyone be afraid of a dear old lady?’ said Nanny.

‘Yes, thank you, Nanny,’ said Daphne. ‘Now, my darlings, are you going to give Granny Sawle a special surprise?’

‘Will it be the same surprise as last time?’ said Corinna.

Daphne thought for a second and said, ‘This time it will be a double surprise.’ For Wilfrid these rituals, invented by his sister, were still sickeningly exciting, but Corinna herself was beginning to think them beneath her. ‘We must all be sweet to Mrs Cow,’ Daphne said. ‘She is not very well.’

‘Is she infectious?’ said Corinna, who had only just got over the measles.

‘Not that sort of unwell,’ said Daphne. ‘She has awful arthritis. I’m afraid she’s in a great deal of pain.’

‘Poor lady,’ said Wilfrid, visibly attempting a maturer view of her.

‘I know…’ said Daphne, ‘poor lady.’ She perched selfconsciously on the upholstered top of the high fender. ‘No fire today, then, Nanny?’ she said.

‘Well, my lady, we thought it was almost nice enough to do without.’

‘Are you warm enough, Corinna?’

‘Yes, just about, Mother,’ said Corinna, and glanced uneasily at Mrs Copeland.

‘I am rather cold,’ said Wilfrid, who tended to adopt a grievance once it had been pointed out to him.

‘Then let’s run downstairs and get warmed up,’ said Daphne, in happy contravention of Nanny’s number one rule, and getting up briskly.

‘No two-at-a-time, mind, Wilfrid!’ said Nanny.

‘You can be sure he will be all right with me,’ said Daphne.

When they were out in the top passage, Wilfrid said, ‘Is Mrs Cow stopping for the night?’

‘Wilfrid, of course ,’ said Corinna, as if at the end of her patience, ‘she’s coming on the train with Granny Sawle.’

‘Uncle George will take them home on Sunday, after lunch,’ said Daphne; and finding herself holding his hand, she said, ‘I thought it would be nice if you showed her up to her room.’

‘Then I will show Granny up to her room,’ said Corinna, making it harder for Wilfrid to get out of.

‘But what about Wilkes?’ said Wilfrid ingeniously.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Wilkes can put his feet up, and have a nice cup of tea, what do you think?’ said Daphne, and laughed delightedly until Wilfrid joined in on a more tentative note.

On the top stairs, they trotted down hand-in-hand, and in step, which did require a measure of discipline. Then from the window on the first-floor landing she saw the car arriving from the station. ‘They’re here… oh, darlings, run!’ she said, shaking off the children’s hands.

‘Oh, Mummy…’ said Wilfrid, transfixed with anxious excitement.

‘Come on!’ said Corinna; and they pelted down the three bright turns of polished oak, Wilfrid losing his footing on the last corner and bumping down very fast over several steps on his hip, his bottom. Daphne tensed herself, with a touch of annoyance, but now he was limping across the hall and round the table (looking just like his father), and by the time he started self-righteously to wail he was already distracted by the need to do the next thing.

Wilkes appeared, with the new Scottish boy, and Daphne let them go ahead and tackle the car for a minute while she watched from the porch. Awful to admit, but her pleasure at seeing her mother again was a touch defensive: she was thinking of the things her husband would say about her after she’d gone. Wilkes deferred to Freda very properly and smilingly, with his usual intuitive sense of what a guest might need. To Daphne herself she seemed an attractive figure, pretty, flushed, in a new blue dress well above the ankle and a fashionable little hat, with her own anxieties about the visit peeping out very touchingly. The handsome boy was helping Clara Kalbeck, a tactfully physical business: she came over the gravel slowly and determinedly, swathed in black, on two sticks, following Freda like her own old age.

Wilfrid glanced across at his sister, and then put his eye back to the chink between the shutters. His leg was burning, and his heart was thumping, but he still hoped to do it right. He saw Robbie come in to the house with the suitcases – he leant forward to watch him and nudged the door open with his cheek. ‘Not till I say,’ said Corinna. Robbie looked up and gave them a wink.

‘I know,’ muttered Wilfrid, and peered at her in the shadows with a mixture of awe and annoyance. The others seemed stuck in the porch, in endless adult talk. He could tell they were talking nonsense. He wanted to shout out at once, and he was also quite scared, as Corinna had said. The weekend loomed above him, with its shadowy guests and challenges. More people were coming tomorrow – Uncle George and Aunt Madeleine, he knew, and a man from London called Uncle Sebby. They would all be talking and talking, but at some point they would have to stop and Corinna would play the piano and Wilfrid would do his dance. He felt hollow with worry and excitement. When a fire was lit in the hall, this little cave-like passage was warm and stuffy, but today it smelt of cold stone. He was glad he had someone with him. At last Granny Sawle stepped in through the front door, and just for a second she glanced at the fireplace, with a dead look, so that Wilfrid knew she was expecting the surprise – though somehow this didn’t spoil it, in a way it made it better, and as soon as she’d dutifully turned her back he flung open his shutters and shouted, ‘Hello, Granny – ’