Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

Quite hidden by Mr Hethersedge was a little old lady, Miss M. A. Lane, whose hand trembled and who seemed distraught by the business of cashing a cheque for £2. She peeped at Paul through the scrap of coarse veil on the front of her hat. He liked old people, and enjoyed her anxious respect and even slight fear of him as a quick-witted official. Then there was Tommy Hobday, the chemist from next door, who was in and out all the time and knew his name; and then the little shock of contact and novelty began to dull, and his own fear, of error or exposure, subsided slowly into the routine of a very busy day. Inside the front door was a shallow lobby with a further glass door that had a tightly sprung closer – the snap and swallow of the closer announced the incessant unrhythmical coming and going of the customers.

Just before lunch Paul heard a voice in the Public Space, and sensed a small commotion with it – now Miss Cobb had appeared and was speaking in a strange delighted tone like someone at a party: then the voice again, sharply gracious, Mrs Keeping, of course, ‘No, no, no, absolutely ,’ pretending not to demand attention, people glancing round. Paul’s customer went, leaving him with a clear view of her, in a pale blue frock with a white handbag and looking quite like someone at a party herself. She had picked up the Financial Times and was scanning the headlines, her hard black eyebrows raised. Paul watched her nervously, from his ambiguous position, both invisible and on show. She looked up over the page, ran her eye abstractedly across the room, but gave no sign at all of seeing him. He let the smile fade from his face as if preoccupied by something else, his heart quickening for a minute in a muddle of protest and shame. When the lobby door opened she turned slightly and nodded. In a moment Paul saw Mrs Jacobs, with her heavy tread and humorous questing look, come into view, peer across at him and then approach, ‘Now then…’ dumping her tapestry bag on the counter between them.

‘Good morning, madam,’ Paul said almost humorously, unsure if he should use her name.

‘Good morning,’ said Mrs Jacobs, genial, rummaging, perhaps herself unaware who he was. Out on to the counter came glasses case, head-scarf, twenty Peter Stuyvesants, a paper bag from Hobday’s with the rattle of tablets, an orange paperback upside-down, a novel… Paul couldn’t quite see… at last a cheque-book. Then the changing of the glasses, the puzzled reach for the pen. She wrote her cheque in a raffish, off-hand way, keeping up a vague air of absurdity, as if money were an amusing mystery to her. Paul smiled patiently back, scanned and stamped the cheque, which was for £25, and asked her how she would like it. It was only then, with a brief stare, that she took in who he was. ‘Oh, you’re you!’ she said, in a jolly tone but none the less placing him, as the funny little man of the night before, whose name she had probably forgotten. Paul smiled as he leant over the cash drawer by his left knee, freed a bundle of clean green oners from its paper wrapper. Rather lovely, it seemed to him, the fine mechanical sameness of the Queen’s face under his counting fingers. He counted them out again for her, at a pace she could follow – ‘There you are, Mrs Jacobs.’

‘And your hand, yes,’ she said, confirming it was him. Paul raised it to show the dressing, and wiggled his fingers to show it was working.

‘Good for you,’ said Mrs Jacobs, finding her purse, and cramming the notes into it – again as if she found money somewhat unmanageable. ‘It’s our young man,’ she murmured to her daughter as she rejoined her; but she herself was now murmuring to Mr Keeping, who had emerged from his office, with his trilby in his hand and his raincoat over his arm, despite the cloudless splendour of the sky as seen through the clear upper halves of the bank windows. Paul supposed they were going to walk him home.

Today he had a late lunch-break, which he preferred – he had the staff-room to himself and read his Angus Wilson over his sandwich without anyone asking questions; and when he got back, it was only an hour to closing time. In the afternoons he felt more confined, on his high stool, swivelling fractionally between the deep cash drawer by his left knee and the wooden bowls of pins, paper-clips and rubber-bands on the counter to the right. Where he’d felt purposeful and efficient in the morning he now felt stiff and disenchanted. The cash drawer boxed him in. His knees were raised, the balls of his feet taut against the metal foot-rest, his thighs spread as he leant forwards; he jiggled his knees for relief from the numbness in his upper thighs and buttocks. The low curved back to the stool nodded forward if it wasn’t leant on; though it turned upwards nicely when he pressed and arched against it. He got a faint tingling, an odd compound of numbness and arousal, in the hidden zone between the legs. Queues formed in front of him, with their shuffle of private faces – vacant, amiable, accusing, resigned – glimpsed only by him, and half the time he had a half-erection, seen by no one, caused by no one, under the counter.

Just before closing he came back to his seat from the chief clerk’s desk, and found that he had no customers – he glanced out, saw Heather cross the Public Space to stand by the door, and sensed already the little shift of perspective that would come about when she locked it shut, and the team were left alone again. Perhaps it was just a new boy’s self-consciousness, but he felt a mood of solidarity settled on the staff when the public had gone. They barely showed it, of course – ‘No, you’re just in time!’ said Heather, with a grudging laugh, and Paul saw a large young man scoot in past her, smiling keenly, though in fact it was 3.28, he was within his rights, and the smile expressed confidence more than apology. He was feeling in his breast pocket, his smile now slightly mischievous as he homed in on Geoff’s position, where a customer was already waiting. Paul had an impression of quirky liveliness and scruffiness, such as you didn’t see much in a town like this, something artistic and a little preoccupied, more like a person from London or it could be Oxford, only fifteen miles away. He could well be an Oxford type, with his pale linen jacket curling at the lapels and his blue knitted tie. A pen had made a red ink stain, not far from his heart. His dark curly hair half-covered his ears, there was something witty and attractive in his expression, though he wasn’t exactly handsome. Paul leant forward and for a few expanded, trance-like seconds watched him gazing at Geoff, over the shoulder of the man in front of him. His head was on one side, with the vacantly calculating frown of impatience, the tip of his tongue on his lower lip; and then, just for a moment, his face stiffened, his eyes widened as if to fill themselves with Geoff, and then narrowed into a slow blink of amused indulgence; and of course Paul knew, and his heart thumped with feelings he couldn’t disentangle, of curiosity, envy and alarm. ‘Can I help you?’ he said, and his own voice sounded loud and almost mocking.

The man looked at him without moving his head, and then with a widening smile, as if he knew he’d been caught out. He came over. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘you’re new!’

‘Yes, I’m the new boy,’ said Paul, pleasantly, and feeling a bit silly.

The man looked at him appreciatively as he felt in his breast pocket. ‘Well, me too,’ he said, his voice quick and deep, with a curl of humour in it.

‘Oh, yes?’ said Paul, wary of being too familiar, but laughing a little.

‘Well, new master, but it’s much the same. Now I’ve got to pay this in for the Colonel.’ He had a paying-in book, the slip all made out, and a cheque for £94: Corley Court School, General Account . Paul saw, in the moment he stamped it, an image of the school, teeming and condensed, wealthy and famous, he was sure, though he had never heard of it.