Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘Aah…!’ said Sarah, who sounded nicer today. Wilfrid hated what Nanny said about his mother.

‘Well, my day off, dear, I don’t have to deal with them!’

‘Robbie says they were playing at sardines,’ said Sarah.

‘Sardines! Silly buggers, more likely…’ said Nanny, and the two women cackled and seemed to go away down the corridor. ‘I suppose you heard the music…’ Nanny was saying, as the door at the top of the stairs thumped shut. Well, they’d all heard the music, Wilfrid thought. His mother had been dancing with Uncle Revel in the hall, and he had the scene still bright in his head. Now he wanted to sleep; but in his heart and mind there was a muddled stirring of protest, at the abuse and disrespect to his mother but also at the restless and broken night she had given him. He was exhausted by dreams.

Almost at once, various things happened, perfectly normal but none the less oddly upsetting in their way of keeping on happening. Very early a message came up that Mr Stokes was leaving and her ladyship wanted the children down. Corinna was already practising the piano, and the maid brought Wilfrid down by himself. He felt lonely and reluctant, and frowned a good deal so as not to give way. In the hall the pianola still stood, with its keyboard closed, at an angle to the wall. He loved the pianola, and once or twice his father had worked the pedals for him and let him run his hands up and down over the dancing keys, while Corinna looked on in disdain. But today it seemed only a jangling reminder of the night before, a toy that others had played on without him. He wished intensely they would take it away. He went out to examine the Daimler. Even Robbie’s wink, as he brought out the luggage for Uncle Sebby, was displeasing and lacking in respect. Why did he always have to wink at him? ‘And how are you, Master Wilfrid?’ said Robbie.

‘Well, I’m very overwrought,’ said Wilfrid.

Robbie pondered this for a minute, with a tiny smile. ‘Overwrought, you say? Now, why would that be?’ He handed the bags to Sebby’s chauffeur, and Wilfrid came round to see them stowed in the boot. The great interest of the boot, with its unusual door and trench-like black interior, struggled feebly with his mood of discontent.

‘Well, I had a bad night, if you must know,’ said Wilfrid.

‘Ah,’ said Robbie, and nodded sympathetically, but still with an unsettling hint of amusement. ‘Kept you awake with their dancing, did they?’ At which Wilfrid could only look up at him and nod back.

Granny V came down to see Sebby off, and they talked interminably for two or three minutes while Wilfrid wandered round the Daimler, looking at the lamps and at his own reflection looming and folding in the dark grey bodywork. Then Sebby came over and shook his hand, and unexpectedly gave him a large coin before getting into the car, which took off up the drive in a sudden cloud of blue oil-smoke. Wilfrid smiled at the departing car, and at his grandmother, who was watching him keenly for the proper reactions, though in fact he felt bothered and slightly indignant. ‘Goodness!’ said Granny V, in a gloating but critical voice, ‘a crown!’ He put it in his trouser pocket but he felt it was Wilkes who should have been given it.

Then almost at once the trap was brought round, to take Corinna and both her grandmothers to church in Littlemore. Lady Valance herself would drive the mile and a half each way, and Corinna was bleating a promise extracted earlier, that she would be allowed to take the reins for some of the time. The pony could be heard through the open front door twitching its harness, the stable-boy talking to it. There was a flutter in the hall, gloves and hats being found. Granny V always wore the same sort of thing, which was black and took no time, but Corinna had a new dress and a new bonnet, which Granny Sawle was helping her to tie on firmly.

‘It seems such a shame not to use the chapel here,’ said Granny S, as Uncle George and Aunt Madeleine appeared.

‘Nowadays,’ said Granny V, with strange emphasis, ‘the use of the chapel is restricted to the major festivals’; and she went out into the drive.

‘ “Nowadays”,’ said George, ‘seems to have become Louisa’s favoured term of opprobrium.’ He looked comically at his mother. ‘You don’t have to go at all, darling,’ he said. ‘We never do, you know.’

She fussed with the bow under Corinna’s chin. ‘Louisa does seem to count on my going.’

‘Mm, but you needn’t be bullied,’ said George.

‘Oh, please come, Granny,’ said Corinna.

‘Oh, I’m coming, child, never fear,’ said her grandmother, holding her at arm’s length and looking at her rather sternly.

Wilfrid traipsed out again with his aunt and uncle to see the party leave. As Granny V settled herself on the bench the pony dropped a quick but heavy heap of dung on to the gravel. Wilfrid giggled, and Corinna held her nose up unhappily. The trap jolted and moved off at a brisk pace, as if nothing had happened, leaving the boy to bring a shovel. At the top of the drive Granny Sawle turned and waved. Wilfrid stood beside his aunt and uncle and waved back, half-heartedly, with the sun in his eyes. ‘Well, here we are, Wilfrid,’ said Aunt Madeleine, which he felt just about summed it up. She stood stiff above him, blocking his view of some much happier morning, in which he was sitting at a table with Uncle Revel, drawing pictures of birds and mammals. When they went back into the house his mother appeared from the morning-room with a strange fixed smile.

‘I hope you slept for a minute or two?’ she said.

‘Oh, far more,’ said Uncle George, ‘ten minutes at least.’

‘I had a full half-hour,’ said Aunt Madeleine, apparently not joking.

‘What a night,’ said George. ‘I feel bright green this morning. I don’t know how you take the pace, Daph.’

‘It requires some getting used to,’ she said. ‘One has to be broken in.’

Wilfrid stared at his uncle for signs of this exotic colouring. Actually, his mother and George both looked very pale.

‘And how are you, Mummy?’ he said.

‘Good morning, little one,’ his mother said.

‘Do you do this every weekend?’ said Madeleine.

‘No, sometimes we’re very quiet and good, aren’t we, my angel,’ said his mother, as he ran to her and she stooped and pulled him in. He felt a quick shudder go through her, and held her tighter. Then after a moment she stood, and he had more or less to let go. She reached for him vaguely again, but somehow she wasn’t there. He looked up into her face, and its utterly familiar roundness and fairness, the batting of the eyelashes, the tiny lines by her mouth when she smiled, beauties he had always known and never for a moment needed to describe, seemed to him for a few strange seconds the features of someone else. ‘Well, I must get on,’ she said.

‘No, Mummy…’ said Wilfrid.

‘Hardly the best moment,’ she explained to Madeleine, ‘but Revel has offered to draw my picture, which feels too good an offer to refuse, even with a hangover.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said George, and smiled at her very steadily. ‘No, that should be quite something.’

‘Oh, Mummy, can I come too, can I come and watch?’ cried Wilfrid.

And again his mother gave him a strange bland look in which something hurtfully humorous seemed also to lurk. ‘No, Wilfie, not a good idea. An artist has to concentrate, you know. You can see it when it’s done.’ It was all too much for him, and the tears rose up in a stifling wail. He longed for his mother, but he pushed her off, shouting and gulping, fending them all off, with the tears dripping down on to his jersey.

So after that he was left, for an undefined period, with Uncle George and Aunt Madeleine. They went into the library, where George leant by the empty fireplace and talked to him encouragingly. Wilfrid stood listlessly spinning the large coloured globe, with its well-known splodges of British pink, first one way, then the other. His hands smacked lightly on the bright varnished paper, and the world echoed faintly inside. As often after a great explosion of tears he felt abstracted and weak, and it took him a while to see the point of things again.