Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘I don’t know if Trevor was unfaithful,’ said Daphne, and shivered herself at the closeness of the subject. They paced on, in apparent amity, whilst Eva perhaps worked out what to say. Her evening bag, like a tiny satchel slung down to the hip, nudged against her with each step, and evidence about her underclothes, which had puzzled Daphne a good deal, could obscurely be deduced in the warm pressure of Eva’s side against her upper arm. She must wear no more than a camisole, no need really for any kind of brassière… She seemed unexpectedly vulnerable, slight and slippery in her thin stuffs.

‘Can I tempt you?’ said Eva, her hand dropping for a second against Daphne’s hip. The nacreous curve of her cigarette case gleamed like treasure in the moonlight.

‘Oh…! hmm… well, all right…’

Up flashed the oily flame of her lighter. ‘I like to see you smoking,’ said Eva, as the tobacco crackled and glowed.

‘I’m starting to like it myself,’ said Daphne.

‘There you are,’ said Eva; and as they strolled on, their pace imposed by the darkness more than anything else, she slid her arm companionably round Daphne’s waist.

‘Let’s try not to fall into the fishpond,’ Daphne said, moving slightly apart.

‘I wish you’d let me make you something lovely,’ said Eva.

‘What, to wear, you mean?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh, you’re very kind, but I wouldn’t hear of it,’ said Daphne. Having her redesign her house was one thing, but her person quite another. She imagined her absurdity, coming down to dinner, kitted out in one of Eva’s little tunics.

‘I don’t know where you get your things mainly now, dear?’

Daphne laughed rather curtly through her cigarette-smoke. ‘Elliston and Cavell’s, for the most part.’

And Eva laughed too. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and snuggled against her again cajolingly. ‘I don’t think you know how enchanting you could look.’ Now they had stopped, and Eva was assessing her, through the fairy medium of the moonlight, one hand on Daphne’s hip, the other, with its glowing cigarette, running up her forearm to her shoulder, where the smoke slipped sideways into her eyes. She pinched the soft stuff of her dress at the waist, where Daphne had felt her eyes rest calculatingly before. In a hesitant but almost careless tone Eva said, ‘I wish you’d let me make you happy.’

Daphne said, ‘We simply must get back,’ a tight stifling feeling, quite apart from the smoke, in her throat. ‘I’m really rather cold, I’m most frightfully sorry.’ She jerked herself away, dropping her cigarette on the path and stamping on it. The lights from the house threw the hedges and other intervening obstacles into muddled silhouette, but it was hard to retreat with complete dignity; nor was the moonlight as friendly as she’d thought. She cut across the grass, found her heels sinking in loam, stumbled back and around an oddly placed border. It was like a further extension of being tight, a funny nocturnal pretence of knowing where she was going. She felt Eva might be pursuing her, but when she looked over her shoulder she was nowhere to be seen – well, she must be there somewhere, lingering, plotting, blowing thin streams of smoke into the night. Daphne reached the firm flags of the path by the house, and in the second she noticed the dark form curled sideways on the bench beside her, her hand was grasped at – ‘Don’t go in…’

‘Oh, my god! – who’s that? Oh, Tilda…’

‘Sorry, darling, sorry…’

‘You frightened the life out of me…’ Tilda wasn’t letting her hand go.

‘Isn’t it a lovely night?’ she said brightly. ‘How are you?’ And then, ‘I’m just rather worried about Arthur.’

For a moment Daphne couldn’t think who she was talking about. ‘Oh, Stinker, yes… why, Tilda?’ She found herself sitting very temporarily on the bench, on its edge. As if with a child, she put away the unmentionable matter of Mrs Riley. She found Tilda was staring at her, her white little face had forgotten the gaiety of the earlier evening. Had the drink turned on her? In her anxiety she seemed to invest Daphne with unusual powers.

‘Have you seen him?’ she said.

Daphne said, ‘Who…? Oh, Stinker… isn’t he wandering around, I’m sure he’s all right… darling,’ which wasn’t what she usually called her, any more than Stinker was Arthur. She’d always thought of Tilda as a youngish aunt, perhaps, silly, harmless, hers for life.

‘He’s so strange these days, don’t you think?’

‘Is he…?’ In so far as Daphne could be bothered to think about it, she wished he was a good deal stranger.

‘Am I mad? You don’t think, do you, he might be seeing another woman?’

‘Stinker? Oh, surely not, Tilda!’ It was easy and allowable to smile. ‘No, I really don’t think so.’

‘Oh! – oh good’ – Tilda seemed half-relieved. ‘I felt you’d know.’ She flinched, and peered at her again. ‘Why not?’ she said.

Daphne controlled her laugh and said, ‘But it’s obvious Stinker adores you, Tilda.’ And then perhaps thoughtlessly, ‘And anyway, who could it be?’

Tilda half-laughed but hesitated. ‘I suppose I thought perhaps because we haven’t, you know…’And just then Daphne saw Revel step out through the french window and frown along the path to where he evidently heard their voices. She knew Tilda meant because they didn’t have children.

‘Come along,’ said Daphne, getting up, but now in turn grasping Tilda’s hand, to conceal her own brusqueness. Any more on this subject would be unbearable.

‘Well, I’m just going to sit here and wait for him,’ Tilda said, not seeing what was happening, still adrift in drink and her own worry.

‘All right, darling,’ said Daphne, feeling fortune free her and claim her at the same moment. She almost ran along the path.

‘Oh, Duffel, darling,’ said Revel, touching her arm as they came back in together, and taking a smiling five seconds to continue his sentence, ‘do let’s pop up and look at the children sleeping.’

‘Oh,’ said Daphne, ‘of course ’, as if it were hopeless of her not to have offered this entertainment already. She gazed at him and her giggle was slightly rueful. She didn’t think she herself could have slept, even two floors up, through the ‘Hickory-Dickory Rag’. And then the earlier horror, at the real piano, came back to her – it was wonderful, a blessing, that she’d forgotten it for a while.

‘Dudley’s gone to bed,’ said Revel, plainly and pleasantly.

‘I see.’ After the garden the drawing-room was a dazzle; and in their absence, it had been perfectly tidied – everything was always tidied. ‘Now, have you got a drink?’ she said.

‘I’ve got a port in every one,’ said Revel, a bit cryptically.

‘I think I’ve had enough,’ said Daphne, looking down on the tray of bottles, some friendly, some perhaps over-familiar, one or two to be avoided. She sloshed herself out another glass of claret. ‘Oh, Tilda’s outside!’ she explained to Stinker, who had just come in, stumbling on the sill of the french window. ‘You’ve just missed her.’ He leant on a table and gazed at her, but found nothing immediate to say.

She led the way down the cow-passage and up the east back-stairs, Revel touching her at each half-landing very lightly between the shoulders. His face when she glanced at it was considerate, with inward glints of anticipated pleasure. She was excited almost to the point of talking nonsense. ‘All rather back-stairs, as Mrs Riley would say,’ she said.

‘I don’t think this is quite what she had in mind, do you,’ said Revel coolly, so that a leap had been taken, several unsayable matters all at once in the air. Daphne’s heart was beating and she felt herself gripped at the same time by a strange gliding languor, as if to counter and conceal the speed of her pulse. She said,