Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘I’ve got to tell you about the oddest scene just now, with old Mrs Riley. I’m absolutely certain she was making love to me.’

Revel gave a careless laugh. ‘So she does have good taste, after all.’

Daphne thought this rather glib, though charming of course. ‘ Well …’

‘You see I thought she’d set her sights on Flo, who has a bit of a look of all that, doesn’t she.’

‘You see I thought…’ – but it was too much to explain, and now a housemaid was coming along the top landing with a baby, no, a hot-water bottle wrapped in a shawl. ‘You’re so sweet to the children,’ Daphne said loudly, ‘they’ll be thrilled to see you,’ giving the servant an absent-minded nod as she came past and thinking all would be explained by this, her virtue as a mother touchingly asserted after the frightful racket from downstairs. ‘If they’re not asleep, of course, I mean!’ She kissed her raised forefinger and pushed open the door with preposterous caution. Then she had the drama of the light behind her for a minute, before they both came in and Revel closed the door with a muffled snap. Now a sallow night-light glowed from the table and heaped large shadows on the beds and up the walls. ‘No, Wilfie darling, you go back to sleep,’ she said. She peered down at him uncertainly in the stuffy gloom – he had stirred and groaned but was not perhaps awake… then across at Corinna, by the window, who looked less than lovely, flat on her back, head arched back on the pillow and snoring reedily. ‘If only she could see herself,’ murmured Daphne, in wistful mockery of her ceremonious child.

‘If only we could see ourselves…’ said Revel. ‘I mean, I expect if you saw me…’

‘Mm,’ said Daphne, leaning back, almost feeling with her shoulders to where he was, feeling his left hand slip lightly round her waist, confident but courteous and staying only a moment. ‘Mm… well, there you have them!’ – stepping aside in a way that felt dance-like, a promise to return. She muttered into her wineglass as she swigged. ‘Not a terribly pretty picture, I’m afraid.’ She felt a run of trivial apology opening up in front of her, the children perhaps not pleasing to Revel. He must be aware of the smell of the chamber-pot, she seemed to see Wilfie’s yellow tinkle. ‘Of course their father never looks at them – when they’re asleep, I mean – well, as little as possible at other times – when they’re awake! – they can’t contrive to be picturesque at all times of the day and night – ’ she shook her head and sipped again, turned back to Revel. Revel was picking up Roger, Wilfie’s brown bear, and frowning at the creature in the pleasant quizzical way of a family doctor: then he looked at her with the same snuffly smile, as if it didn’t matter what she said. Her own mention of Dudley hung oddly in the half-light of the top-floor room.

She went round to the far side of Wilfrid’s little bed, set her glass down on the bedside table, peered down at him, then perched heavily on the side of the bed. His wide face, like a soft little caricature of his father, all mouth and eyes. She thought of Dudley kissing her just now, in the cow-passage, all her knowledge of him that had to be kept from a child, their child, facing blankly upwards, one cheek in shadow, the other in the gleam of the night-light. She didn’t want to think of her husband at all, but his kiss was still there, in her lips, bothering away at her. She gently straightened and smoothed and straightened again the turned-over top of Wilfrid’s sheet. Dudley had a way of trapping you, he stalked your conscience, his maddest moments were also oddly tactical. And then of course he was pitiable, wounded, haunted – all that. Wilfrid’s head twitched, his eyelids opened and closed and he turned his whole body in a sudden convulsion to the right, then in a second or two he thumped back again, murmured furiously and lay the other way. He had bad dreams that were sometimes spooled out for her, formless descriptions, comically earnest, too boring to do more than pretend to listen to. He claimed to dream about Sergeant Bronson, which Daphne deplored and felt very slightly jealous of. She leant over him and straddled him with her arm, as if to keep him to herself, to say he was spoken for. ‘Uncle Revel,’ said Wilfrid sociably.

‘Hello, old chap!’ whispered Revel, smiling down at him, setting Roger down safely by the pillow. ‘We didn’t mean to wake you up.’

Wilfrid gave him a look of unquestioning approval and then his eyes closed and he swallowed and pursed his lips. As they both watched him, the happy look slowly faded from his face, until it was again a soft witless mask.

‘You see how he adores you,’ said Daphne, almost with a note of complaint, a breathless laugh. She gave him a long stare over the child’s head. Revel’s smiling coolness made her wonder for a moment more soberly if she was being played with. He went to the table and pulled out the diminutive child’s chair and sat down with his knees raised. He pretended drolly that life was always lived on this scale. She watched him, vaguely amused. The night-light made a study of his face as he worked quickly at a drawing. It seemed the very last moment of a smile lingered there in his teasing concentration. He used the children’s crayons as though they were all an artist could desire, and he was the master of them. Then with a louder snort Corinna had woken herself up and sat up and coughed uninhibitedly.

‘Mother, what is it?’ she said.

‘Go back to sleep, my duck,’ said Daphne, with a little shushing moue, affectionate but slightly impatient with her. The child’s hair was tousled and damp.

‘No, Mother, what’s the matter?’ she said. It was hard to tell if she was angry or merely confused, waking up to these unexpected figures in her room.

‘Shush, darling, nothing,’ said Daphne. ‘Uncle Revel and I came up to say goodnight.’

‘He’s not Uncle Revel actually,’ said Corinna; though Daphne felt this was not the only matter on which she might put her in the wrong. The child had a fearfully censorious vein; what she really meant was that her mother was drunk.

Revel looked over his shoulder, half-turned on the little chair. ‘We were wondering if we might still see that dance, if we asked very nicely,’ he said, which actually wasn’t a very good idea.

‘Oh, it’s too late for that,’ said Corinna, ‘far too late,’ as if they were the children pleading with her for some special concession. And getting out of bed she thumped across the room and went out to the lavatory. Daphne slightly dreaded her coming back and making more of a scene, allowing herself to say what she thought. If they all said what they thought… And now Wilfrid had woken again at the noise, with a furtive look, like an adult pretending not to have slept. She watched Revel finishing his drawing. There was the clank and torrent of the cistern, suddenly louder as the door was opened. But now Corinna seemed more balanced, more awake perhaps. She got back into bed with the little twitch of propriety that was part of her daylight character.

‘Shall I just read you something, darling, and then you both go back to sleep,’ Daphne said.

‘Yes, please,’ said Corinna, lying down and turning on her side, ready for both the reading and the sleeping.

Daphne looked by Wilfrid’s bed, then got up to see what books Corinna had. It was rather a bore, but they would be asleep again in a moment. ‘Are you reading The Silver Charger – how I adored that book… though I think I was a good deal older…’

‘There you are, little one,’ said Revel, getting up from the desk and holding his picture in front of Wilfrid to catch the light. The child pondered it, with a conditional sort of smile, against the pull of sleep. ‘I’ll put it over here, shall I?’