Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

There was a thick flower-border, colourful but weedy and overgrown, around the edge of the drive, and over the top of it he looked into the garden beside the house, which stretched away through mysterious shadows of two or three large trees to a bright mown lawn that must run across the back. The whole place, at this indefinable time of day – late afternoon, late June, work over but hours of sunlight still ahead – made a peculiar impression on him. The time, like the light, seemed somehow viscous. He studied the name ‘Carraveen’, a bit like caravan, a bit like carrageen, the stuff his mother used to set a blancmange, but clearly romantic too, Scottish perhaps, some now completely forgotten home or holiday place that someone had loved long ago. He felt seduced, and delicately stifled, by something he couldn’t yet explain. Through the left-hand bay-window he could see a grand piano in what appeared to be a dining-room, though the table in the centre was covered with books. The church clock struck the quarter-hour, and the silence afterwards seemed discreetly enhanced. Really all you could hear was the birds.

He heard a voice and looked again through the shadows to the bright back lawn, where he saw a woman in a wide straw hat with a red flower on the brim talking to someone out of view as she moved slowly towards the house. She was a largeish figure, in a shapeless blue dress, and carrying a large tapestry bag. Could this be the disdainful Mrs Keeping, mother of Julian and John? Surely too old. Mr Keeping’s own mother perhaps, a friend or relative who was visiting. She stopped for a moment, as if stumped by what she’d just been told, and gazed at the ground, and then unseeingly along the side of the house, where she did in fact see Paul. She said something to the person – now Paul heard another woman’s voice – and when she looked back he raised his head with a slight smile and then waved weakly, unsure if he wanted to announce himself or efface himself. There was another exchange, she nodded distantly, not exactly at Paul, and then strolled on out of view behind the house.

Paul went to the front door to call goodbye. He felt he’d been placed now as a low-level intruder, a peerer through other people’s windows. A middle-aged woman with a wide pale face and black hair that was swept up and set in a stiff, broad helmet was coming towards him. ‘Oh, hello,’ he said, ‘I’m Paul Bryant – from the bank…’

She gave him a practical look. ‘Did you want to see my husband?’

‘Well, actually I’ve just walked here with him,’ said Paul.

‘Oh…’ she said, with an air of momentary concession. She had strongly drawn black eyebrows which made her look hard to please. ‘Was there something else?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Paul; and feeling he shouldn’t be put in the wrong, ‘He just left me here.’

‘Ah…!’ said Mrs Keeping, and half-turning she called out, ‘Leslie!’ Mr Keeping appeared at the end of the hall. ‘This young man doesn’t know if he’s been dismissed or not’ – and she stared rather drolly at Paul, as if to say the joke was on everyone but her.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Keeping. ‘This is Paul Bryant. He’s just joined us from Wantage.’

‘From Wantage…!’ said Mrs Keeping, as if this were droller still.

‘We all have to come from somewhere, you know,’ said Mr Keeping.

Paul had grown up in the mild but untested belief that Wantage was a fine little town. ‘Well, sir, it was good enough for King Alfred,’ he said.

Mrs Keeping half-allowed the protest, and the joke. ‘Mmm, you’re going back a bit,’ she said. Though something else had occurred to her. She set her head on one side and frowned at his shoulders, his posture. ‘How strong are you?’ she said.

‘Well, reasonably,’ said Paul, confused by the scrutiny. ‘Yes, I suppose…’

‘Then I think I can use you. Come through,’ a tiny glow of cajolement now in her tone.

‘Paul may have other plans, darling,’ said Mr Keeping, but in easy surrender to his wife.

‘I shan’t need him for long.’

‘I’ve certainly got a couple of minutes,’ said Paul.

They went down the hall and into the room at the end. ‘I don’t want my husband risking his back,’ said Mrs Keeping. The sitting-room was densely furnished, large easy-chairs and sofas arm to arm on a thick gold carpet, nests of tables, standard-lamps, and a pair of surprising Victorian portraits, very large in the room, a woman in red and a man in black, looking out over the stereogram and the teak TV cabinet that flanked the fireplace. On top of the TV were several framed photos, in which Paul made out two boys, surely Julian and John, in yachting gear. They stepped out through the open french windows on to a wide patio. ‘This is Mr Bryant,’ said Mrs Keeping. ‘You can leave your briefcase there.’

‘Oh… right…’ said Paul, nodding at the two females who were sitting in deckchairs. They were identified as ‘My mother, Mrs Jacobs’ – this was the old lady in the straw hat, whom he’d already seen – and ‘Jenny Ralph… my niece, yes, my half -brother’s daughter!’ as if she’d just worked it out for the first time. Paul himself only pretended to do so, nodded again and murmured hello as he sidled past. Jenny Ralph was a frowning dark-haired girl a bit younger than he was, with a book and a notepad on her knee – he felt himself sidestepping some sulky challenge she seemed to throw out.

The problem was a stone trough on the far side of the lawn, which had somehow slipped or been pushed off one of the two squat blocks it sat on, earth strewn on the grass and a clump of disoriented wallflowers, orangey-black, leaning out and up. ‘I jolly well hope you can shift it,’ said Mrs Keeping, with a return of her unjolly tone, almost as though Paul had pushed it over himself. ‘I don’t want it falling on Roger,’ she said.

Paul stooped down and gave the trough a preliminary heave. The only effect of this was to rock it very slightly on the skewed axis of the other block. ‘You don’t want to bring the whole thing down,’ said Mrs Keeping. She stood several yards away, perhaps to be clear of any such accident.

‘No…’ said Paul; and then, ‘It’s quite heavy actually, isn’t it.’

‘You’d stand a better chance with your jacket off.’

Paul obeyed, and seeing that Mrs Keeping showed no intention of taking the jacket from him hung it on a lichenous garden seat nearby. Without the jacket he felt even less able, his skinny frame more exposed. ‘Right!’ he said, and laughed rather fatuously. His hostess, as he tried to think of her, gave him a provisional sort of smile. He worked his hands in under the near corner of the trough, where it lay on the grass, but after a couple of hefts in the shuddering manner of a caber-tosser he could only raise it an inch and let it down again heavily just where it had been. He shook his head, and glanced across at the figures on the patio thirty yards off. Mr Keeping had joined his mother-in-law and niece, and they were gazing generally in his direction as they talked but, perhaps from politeness, not showing any detailed interest. He felt simultaneously important and completely insignificant.

‘You’re going to have to empty it, you know,’ said Mrs Keeping, as though Paul had been actively refusing to do this.

He saw a certain stoical humour was going to be necessary – a smiling surrender of his time and plans. ‘Have you got a spade, please?’ he said.

‘You’ll need something to put the soil on, of course. And do be careful with my wallflowers, won’t you,’ she said, with a hint of graciousness now they’d come to such niceties. ‘Do you know, I’m going to get that girl involved.’

‘Oh, I think I can manage…’ said Paul.