Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘No,’ he said, ‘we had to learn “Soldiers Dreaming” by heart.’

‘I beg your pardon…?’

‘The poem by Valance.’

‘Okay…’ said Jenny.

‘ “Some stroll through farms and vales unmarked by war, / Not knowing in their dreams / They are at war for just such tranquil fields, / Such fleet-foot streams.” ’

‘I see…’ said Jenny. ‘By the way, you know there’s a dance at the Corn Hall tonight.’

‘Yes, I know – well, I know someone who’s going.’

‘Oh really… do you want to go later?’

‘Would you be allowed?’ Geoff had been talking about it, he was taking Sandra, and Paul felt suddenly heavy with the idea – then saw in a second that he couldn’t possibly take Jenny.

‘It’s the Locomotives, a group from Swindon… Too thrilling. Actually don’t say anything about it,’ said Jenny, turning round to smile at young John Keeping, who was crossing the drive, also with a tumbler in his hand. He had changed into a dark double-breasted suit, with a red silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, and looked immediately like a successful businessman. ‘My grandmother thought you might care for a drop of the fruit-cup,’ he said. He brought a heavy irony to being, for a moment, a waiter.

‘How kind of her,’ said Paul, taking the glass, not sure what fruit-cup was.

Jenny made a sharp little face. ‘I just caught Granny tipping in another half-bottle of gin, so I should be a bit careful, if I were you.’

‘Oh lord, well, watch out,’ said John, with a lazy guffaw.

Paul blushed as he took a sip. ‘Mm, not bad actually,’ he said, trying not to cough as the gin cut through the momentary illusion of something like orange squash. He took another sip.

John looked at him narrowly, then swivelled on his heel to take in the view down the lane, the half-circle of the drive. He said, ‘When my grandfather gets here, do you know? Sir Dudley Valance?’

‘Oh, yes…’ said Paul.

‘Can we save a spot for him by the front door. He won’t appreciate being made to walk.’

‘Right…’

‘He has a war-wound, you know,’ said John, with some satisfaction. ‘Well, here you are,’ he said, nodding at an approaching Austin Princess, and set off back over the gravel to find a drink of his own.

‘He can walk perfectly well,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s just that everyone’s frightened of him.’

‘Why’s that?’ said Paul.

‘Oh…’ – Jenny puffed, and shook her head, as if it was all too tedious to explain to him. ‘Oh, god, it’s Uncle George,’ she said. ‘Here, let me take your drink.’ She put it down on a flat stone by the gate-post and shouted, ‘Hello, Uncle George!’ and with a kind of weary cheerfulness, ‘Aunt Madeleine…’

Paul leaned a hand on the sun-baked edge of the roof and smiled in through the open window. Uncle George, in the passenger seat, was a man in his seventies, perhaps, with a sunburnt pate and neat white beard. Craning past him was a strong-jawed woman with crimped grey hair and oddly gaudy make-up and ear-rings. Uncle George himself wore a deep red shirt with a floral green bow-tie. He squinted up at Paul as if determined to solve a puzzle without help. ‘Now which one are you?’ he said.

‘Um…’ said Paul.

‘He isn’t any of them,’ said Aunt Madeleine sharply, ‘are you?’

‘You’re not one of Corinna’s boys?’

‘No, sir, I’m… I’m just a colleague, a friend – ’

‘You remember Corinna’s boys, surely,’ said Madeleine.

‘Forgive me, I thought you might be Julian.’

‘No,’ said Paul, with a gasp, and a muddled sense of protest at being taken for a schoolboy, however pretty and charming.

‘So who’s he?’ said Paul, once he’d sent them on towards the field.

‘Uncle George? He’s Granny’s brother; well, there were two brothers, in fact, but one was killed in the War – in the First World War, I mean: he was called Uncle Hubert. You should ask her about it, if you’re interested in the First World War. Uncle George and Aunt Madeleine used to be history professors. They wrote quite a well-known book together called An Everyday History of England ,’ said Jenny, almost yawning with casual pride.

‘Oh – not G. F. Sawle?’

‘That’s right, yes…’

‘What, G. F. Sawle and Madeleine Sawle! – we had it at school.’

‘There you are then.’

Paul pictured the title-page on which he had boxed the names G. F. SAWLE and MADELEINE SAWLE in a complex Elizabethan doodle. ‘Is everyone in your family a famous writer?’

Jenny giggled. ‘And you know Granny’s writing her memoirs…’

‘Yes, I know, she told me.’

‘She’s been writing them for yonks, actually. We all rather wonder if they’ll ever see the light of day.’

Paul took another swig of fruit-cup, already feeling weirdly giddy in the evening sunshine. He said, ‘I hope you won’t mind me saying but I find your family a bit complicated to work out.’

‘Mm, I did warn you.’

‘I don’t know, for instance, is there a Mr Jacobs?’

‘Dead, I’m afraid. Granny’s always had bad luck, in a way,’ said Jenny, as if she’d been there at the time. ‘First she married Dudley, who was probably very exciting but a bit unhinged by the War and he was beastly to her; so she ran away with… my grandfather – ’ she took a swig of whatever she was drinking -

‘Whatsisname… Ralph…’

‘Revel Ralph, the artist, who everyone thought was queer, you know, but anyway they somehow managed to have… my father… and in due course…’

‘ Really? ’ said Paul, as if amused and delighted, moving away, his face burning at this sudden eruption of queer , the word and the fact, and going a few yards down the lane… such a casual eruption, too, as if no one much cared. Everyone thought he was queer . Thank god, here was a car, at least, which he prayed was coming to Carraveen. He looked at it fondly, full of hospitable feelings, ignoring his blush in the fervent hope it would go away. A pea-green Hillman Imp, sounding rough in a low gear, windscreen white with dust, perhaps a farmer’s car, the visor flipped down against the glare full in the driver’s face. Paul watched almost impatiently as it approached, looked with odd camaraderie at the large hands on the wheel, the wrinkled nose, the involuntary grin of the man perhaps barely able to see him waiting, in silhouette, then saw, with a reeling adjustment of memory to the re-encountered fact, that it was Peter Rowe. Something providential in the drink brought him smiling to the open window.

‘Oh, hello,’ said Peter Rowe, ‘it’s you!’

‘Hello!’ said Paul, looking at his actual face, which seemed unaccountably both plainer and more lovable than he’d remembered, while his sense of the evening ahead seemed to shift around and beneath him, like stage scenery. The inside of the car smelt headily of oil and hot plastic. On the passenger seat lay a clutch of sheet music – ‘W. A. Mozart,’ he read, ‘Duetti’. He felt whimsical. ‘You’re not frail or elderly, are you?’ he said.

‘Absolutely not,’ said Peter Rowe, with a warm affronted tone and a sly smile.

‘Then I’m afraid you’ll need to park in the field over there,’ said Paul; and stayed smiling into the car without thinking of what to say next.

Peter Rowe gave the gear-knob a struggling thrust into first. ‘Well, I’ll see you in a minute,’ he said, ‘what fun…!’ Paul felt the hot car slip away under his fingers, which left a long scuffled trace in the dirt on the roof. ‘Watch your footing!’ he called out, over the popping roar of the engine, which for some reason in a Hillman Imp was at the back, where the boot should be; and the word footing , odd from the start, sounded now quite surreal and hilarious to him. He watched the car nose up through the gate and into the field, while the reek of its exhaust sank sweetly into the mild scent of grass.