Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

The Personals were the climax of his solitary ritual, the words themselves bulging and bending with outrageous meaning: ‘Undisciplined bachelor (32) would like to meet strong-minded person with modern outlook.’ ‘Motorcyclist, ex-Navy, seeks another for riding weekends.’ It was 6d a word, but some people went on as garrulously as any tapesponder: ‘Motorcyclist, 30, but still a novice, seeks further instruction and would also particularly like to contact a qualified watersports trainer. North London/Hertfordshire area preferred.’ Paul read all this with a beating pulse, smiling narrowly, in a sustained state of fascinated shock. Only one man seemed to have completely missed the point, and asked to meet a girl with an interest in gardening. Otherwise it was a world of ‘bachelors’, many of them with ‘flats’, and most of those flats in London. ‘Central London flat, large and comfortable. Young bachelor needed to share with another. No restrictions.’ Paul looked up at the floral curtains and the evening sky above the mirror. ‘Energetic bachelor (26), own flat, seeks others, similar interests’ – he hadn’t said what his interests were, it must be taken as read. ‘Interests cinema, theatre, etc’, said some, or just ‘interests varied’. ‘ Interests universal ’, said ‘bachelor, late forties’, leaving nothing, or was it everything, to chance.

Paul closed his eyes in a heavy-hearted dream of bachelor flats, his gaze slowly making out, among the pools of lamplight, the shared sofa, the muddled slippers, the advanced pictures, opening the door on to the bathroom, where he himself was shaving as Peter Rowe, now looking oddly like Geoff Viner, lolled in the bath, reading, smoking and washing his hair all at the same time, then opening, through a sort of purple vapour, the door of the bedroom, on to a shadowy scene more thrilling and scandalous than anything described in Films and Filming – in fact a scene that, as far as he knew, had never been described at all.

Peter sat in the Museum, writing up the labels with his four-coloured biro. ‘Whose is the sword, again?’

‘Oh, the sword, sir? Brookson’s, sir,’ said Milsom 1, coming over and watching intently for a moment.

‘He claims it was his grandfather’s, sir,’ said Dupont.

‘Admiral’s Dress Sword,’ Peter wrote, in black, and then, flicking to red, ‘Lent by Giles Brookson, Form 4’. He felt the boys themselves ought really to do the labels, but they had a thing about his handwriting. Already he saw his Greek e , his looped d , his big scrolly B , seeping through the school, infecting the print-like hand they had hitherto based on the Headmaster’s. It was funny, and flattering in a way, but of course habitual; ten years before, he had copied those B s from a favourite master of his own. ‘Voilà!’

‘Merci, monsieur!’ said Milsom, and took the card over to the display cabinet, where the more precious and dangerous exhibits were to be housed. There was a lovely set of Indian clay figures in the dress of different ranks and trades – military piper, water-seller, chokidar – very trustingly lent by Newman’s aunt. The shelf above was home to a hand-grenade, it was assumed unarmed, a flintlock pistol, Brookson’s grandfather’s sword, and a Gurkha kukri knife, which Dupont had taken down and was working on now with a wad of Duraglit. He and Milsom were talking about their favourite words.

‘I think I’d have to say,’ said Milsom, ‘that my favourite word is glorious .’

‘Not gorgeous ?’ said Dupont.

‘No, no, I far prefer glorious .’

‘Ah well…’ said Dupont.

‘All right, what’s yours? And don’t don’t don’t say, you know… sort of pig , or and … or, you know…’

Dupont merely raised an eyebrow at this. ‘At the moment,’ he said, ‘my favourite word would have to be Churrigueresque .’ Milsom gasped and shook his head and Dupont glanced at Peter for a second to judge the effect of his announcement. ‘But on the other hand,’ he went on airily, ‘perhaps it’s just something very simple like lithe .’

‘Lithe?’

‘Lithe,’ said Dupont, waving the kukri sinuously in the air. ‘Just one little syllable, but you’ll find it takes as long to say it as glorious, which has three. Lithe… lithe …’

‘For god’s sake be careful with that weapon, won’t you. It’s designed for chopping chaps’ heads off.’

‘I am being careful, sir,’ said Dupont, wounded into a blush. Since his removal from the music-room he’d been slightly wary of Peter, and seemed not to trust his own voice, with its weird octave leaps in the middle of a word. In a minute Peter came and looked over his shoulder at the wide blade: it was the angle in the middle that made the back of his thighs prickle.

‘It’s a vicious-looking thing, Nigel…’

‘Indeed it is, sir!’ said Dupont, with a grateful glance. Strictly speaking, only prefects were addressed by their first names. He turned the kukri over, one side gleaming steel, the other a still dimly shiny blue-black. His fingers themselves were black from the wadding. ‘It’s perfectly balanced, you see, sir.’ He held it tremblingly upright, one stained finger in the notch at the foot of the blade. It swung there, like a parrot on a perch.

There were a number of pictures to be hung, and Peter asked the boys where they should go. It was their Museum – surely Dupont’s idea, but loyally co-authored with Milsom 1; Peebles and one or two others were involved but had melted away once the hard work of cleaning out the stable and whitewashing the walls had begun. It was clear they just wanted to play with the exhibits. ‘Let’s hang the Headmaster’s mother,’ said Peter, and saw the boys giggle and look at each other. He held up a gloomy canvas in a shiny gilt frame. ‘Very generous of the Headmaster to lend this, I feel, don’t you?’ They all gazed at it in the state of comic uncertainty that Peter liked to create. A round-faced woman in a grey dress peered out as if in suppressed anxiety at having produced the Headmaster. ‘Where shall we put the late Mrs Watson?’ Horses had clearly been thought to need little light – just the half-door at the front, and one small window high up at the back. The overhead bulb in a tin shade left the upper walls in shadow. ‘Right up at the top, perhaps…?’

‘Does that mean she’s dead, sir?’ said Milsom.

‘Alas, yes,’ said Peter, with a certain firmness. There were some things they shouldn’t be encouraged to joke about – though her death was surely the reason she’d been unhooked at last from the Headmaster’s sitting-room wall.

‘We do need more lights, sir,’ said Dupont. He had ideas of using the Victorian oil-lamp lent by Hethersedge, but this was a hazard even Peter had drawn the line at.

‘I know we do – I’ll have a word with Mr Sands about it.’

‘I feel we should put her in a prominent position, sir,’ said Milsom.

Peter smiled down at him, with a moment’s conjecture about what lay ahead in life for such a respectful boy. ‘I feel you’re right,’ he said, and climbed up to fix the old girl on the wall above the weapons cabinet. It was a central spot, though it turned out the edge of the lampshade threw everything above her chin into deep shadow. ‘Ah, well,’ said Peter, rather imposing on the boys his own belief that it didn’t matter. They went to get on with their work, glancing up at her doubtfully from time to time.

Peter opened a cardboard box and picked out the framed photograph of Cecil Valance, huffed and then spat discreetly on the glass, and gave it a vigorous wipe with his handkerchief. Inside, between the glass and the mount, were many tiny black specks of harvesters, which had got in there and died perhaps decades ago. ‘Where shall we hang our handsome poet?’ he said. ‘Our very own bard…’