Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

Up in the spare bedroom, Jonah settled the first suitcase on the bed, and ran his hands over the smooth hard leather; in the centre of the lid the initials C. T. V. were stamped in faded gold. He shifted and sighed in his private quandary, alert to the sound of the guest in the house. They were making each other laugh, down below, and the noise came upstairs without the sense. He heard Cecil Valance’s laugh, like a dog shut in a room, and pictured him again in the hall, in his cream-coloured jacket with grass stains on the elbows. He had lively dark eyes and high colour, as though he’d been running. Mr George had called him Cess – Jonah said it in a noiseless whisper as he traced the C with the tip of his finger. Then he stood up straight, sprang the catches, and released the heady and authentic gentleman’s smell: toilet water, starch, and the slowly fading reek of leather.

As a rule, Jonah only came upstairs to carry cases or shift a bed; and last winter, his first at ‘Two Acres’, he had brought the coals up for the fires. He was fifteen, short for his age, but strong; he chopped wood, ran errands, went up and down to the station in Horner’s van. He was the boy, in all the useful senses of the word, but he had never ‘valeted’ before. George and Hubert seemed able to dress and undress by themselves, and Mustow, Mrs Sawle’s maid, took down all the laundry. This morning, however, George had called him in after breakfast and told him to look after his friend Valance, who he said was used to any number of servants. At Corley Court he had a marvellous man called Wilkes, who had looked after George as well when he stayed there, and given him some good advice without appearing to do so. Jonah asked what sort of advice it had been, but George laughed and said, ‘Just find out if he needs anything. Unpack his bags as soon as he comes, and, you know, arrange the contents convincingly.’ This was the word, enormous but elusive, that Jonah had had on his mind all day, sometimes displaced by some other task, then gripping him again with a subtle horror.

Now he unbuckled straps and lifted tissue-paper with hesitant fingers. Though he needed help, he was glad he was alone. The case had been packed by some expert servant, by Wilkes himself perhaps, and seemed to Jonah to call for some similar skill in the unpacking. There was an evening suit with two waistcoats, one black and one fancy, and then under the tissue-paper three dress-shirts and a round leather box for the collars. Jonah saw himself in the wardrobe mirror as he carried the clothes across the room, and saw his shadow, from the lamp on the bedside table, go rearing across the slope of the ceiling. George said Wilkes had done a particular thing, which was to take away all his loose change when he arrived and wash it for him. Jonah wondered how he was going to get the change off Cecil without asking for it or appearing to steal it. It occurred to him that George might possibly have been joking, but with George these days, as even Mrs Sawle had said, it was hard to tell.

In the second case there were clothes for cricket and swimming, and a number of soft, coloured shirts which Jonah thought were unusual. He spaced them out equally on the available shelves, like a display in a draper’s. Then there was the body linen, fine as a lady’s, the drawers ivory-coloured, vaguely shiny, catching on the roughness of his thumb before he stroked them flat again. He listened for a moment for the tone of the talk downstairs, then took the chance he had been given to unfold a pair and hold them up against his round young face so that the light glowed through them. The pulse of excitement beating under his anxiety made the blood rush into his head.

The lid of the case was heavy; it had two wide pockets in it, closed with press-studs, and holding books and papers. Jonah took these out with a little more confidence, knowing from George that his guest was a writing man. He himself could write neatly, and could read almost anything, given the time. The handwriting, in the first book Jonah opened, was very bad, and ran uphill at an angle, with the g s and y s tangling the lines together. This appeared to be a diary. Another book, rubbed at the corners like the cash-book in the kitchen, had what must be poems in it. ‘Oh do not smile on me if at the last’ Jonah made out, the words quite large, but then after a few lines, where the crossing-out began, getting smaller and scratchier, sloping away across the page until they were crowded and climbing over each other in the bottom right-hand corner. There were dog-eared bits of paper tucked in, and an envelope addressed to ‘Cecil Valance Esq re, King’s College’ in the careful writing which he knew at once to be George’s. He heard rapid steps on the stairs and Cecil calling out, ‘Hallo, which is my room?’

‘In here, sir,’ said Jonah, pushing the letter back and quickly squaring up the books on the table.

‘Aha, are you my man?’ said Cecil, suddenly possessing the room.

‘Yes, I am, sir,’ said Jonah, with a momentary sense of betrayal.

‘I shan’t need you much,’ Cecil said, ‘in fact you can leave me alone in the morning,’ taking off his jacket at once and passing it to Jonah, who hung it up in the wardrobe without touching on the stained elbows. He planned to come back later, when they were having dinner, and deal with the dirty clothes unseen. He was going to be very much involved with all Cecil’s things until Monday morning. ‘Now, what shall I call you?’ said Cecil, almost as if choosing from a list in his head.

‘I’m Jonah, sir.’

‘Jonah, eh…?’ The name sometimes led to remarks, and Jonah started rearranging the books on the table, unsure if they showed in some way that he’d looked inside them. After a moment Cecil said,‘Now those are my poetry notebooks. You must make sure you never touch them.’

‘Very well, sir,’ said Jonah. ‘Did you want them unpacked, then?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s all right,’ said Cecil fair-mindedly. He tugged his tie off, and started unbuttoning his shirt. ‘Been with the family long?’

‘Since last Christmas, sir.’

Cecil smiled vaguely, as if he’d forgotten the question by the time it was answered, and said, ‘Funny little room, isn’t it.’ Since Jonah didn’t answer, he added, ‘Rather charming, though, rather charming,’ with his yap of a laugh. Jonah had the strange feeling of being intimate with someone who was simultaneously unaware of him. In a way it was what you looked for, as a servant. But he had never been kept in talk in any of the other, smaller, bedrooms. He peered respectfully at the floor, feeling he mustn’t be caught looking at Cecil’s naked shoulders and chest. Now Cecil took out the change from his pocket and slapped it on the wash-stand; Jonah glanced at it and bit his cheek. ‘And will you run me a bath,’ said Cecil, undoing his belt and wriggling his hips to make his trousers fall down.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Jonah, ‘at once, sir,’ and slipped past him with a pang of relief.

Hubert forwent his bath that evening, and had what he felt was an unsatisfactory wash in his room. He wanted their guest to admire the house, and took some pleasure in hearing the tremendous splashes coming from next door; but he frowned as well, as he tied his tie in the mirror, at the virtual certainty that the sacrifice of his own half-hour in the tub would go unrecognized.

Having some time to spare, he went downstairs to the gloomy little room by the front door, which had been his father’s office, and where Hubert too liked to write his letters. In truth he had very little private correspondence, and was dimly aware of not having the knack of it. When there was a letter to write, he did it with businesslike promptness. Now he sat down at the oak desk, fished his new gift from his dinner-jacket pocket, and laid it on the blotter with faint unease.