Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘Do you know Peter Rowe?’ said Jenny.

‘Well, I’ve met him,’ said Paul, feeling strangely fortified, so that he could say, ‘I didn’t know he’d be here tonight, though – that’s great.’

‘No, well, he’s going to play duets with Aunt Corinna – it’s a surprise for Granny.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Paul. He thought this was a pretty tame kind of surprise; but then he wasn’t really musical. Music always struck him as a bit of a performance. Still, he started to see the scene, himself watching, admiring, possessive, even slightly resentful of Peter’s confidence and ability. As a contribution to the party it certainly beat telling people where to park.

‘ How do you know him?’ said Jenny, with a mischievous look.

‘Oh, he banks with us. I’ve cashed his cheques.’ Paul was blandness itself, just tinged with pink.

Jenny glanced over her shoulder, where Peter was now crossing the lane to go in by the other gate, with his music in his hand – he brandished it at them in a wave that was cheerful though suddenly not quite enough. Though perhaps he had to get ready, he had to practise. Paul watched him for these few seconds with a half-smile, an air, he hoped, of untroubled interest – a brisk, heavy walk, he found he knew it already. ‘He teaches at Corley Court as well,’ said Jenny; and dropping her voice, ‘We call him Peter Rowe-my-dear.’

‘Oh, yes…?’ said Paul, now a little critical of Jenny.

Again she gave him a droll look. ‘He’s rather full of himself,’ she said, in a plonking voice, so he saw that she was quoting someone – Aunt Corinna, very probably.

As the shadows shifted and lengthened and the church clock struck eight and then a quarter past, Paul’s happy excitement began to dim. In between cars he finished his drink, and the tipsy rush was followed by a less pleasant state of dry-mouthed impatience, as he found himself saying the same thing over and over. Jenny had gone in to find Julian and hadn’t come back – anyway they were only kids, even if Jenny treated Paul as somehow younger than herself. Roger wandered out for a sniff around the verge and pissed concisely at four different spots, but made no further sign of solidarity. The arrivals grew fewer. The dreaded Sir Dudley perhaps wasn’t coming – thus far Paul had let only one small car, which was virtually an invalid carriage, on to the drive itself. He thought of Peter’s smile, and the little throb in his voice as he said ‘Absolutely not!’ – there was a giddy sense of an understanding, like the kick and lift of the booze itself, undamaged, stronger in fact since their first meeting, that made Paul’s heart race again. It was almost as though Peter knew what he’d done in Paul’s daydreams, knew all about the bath and the bachelor flat. And now this vaguely headachy thirst, and a little doubt, like the cooling and quickening of the air, pushing among the hedge-tops in front of him and then leaving off. He could hear the cheery, faintly contentious noise of fifty or sixty people talking, on the big lawn at the back of the house, where tables and chairs had been set out. Peter was in there somewhere, among the family and friends, happily getting drunk, Peter Rowe-my-dear, rather full of himself. Certain things Paul didn’t quite like about him came dully to the light. Did he truly fancy him, now he’d seen him again? Could he really imagine getting undressed with that heavy-footed prep-school master? He thought of Geoff’s tight zip, and then of beautiful Dennis Flowers, at King Alfred’s in Wantage, Captain of Cricket, not a master but a boy. Paul stared in a kind of abstruse distress at the stretch of the lane by the gate, its chalky potholes, the parched grass and tough, half-pretty groundsel, knotty and yellow-flowered, that grew along its crown. Then the church clock struck 8.30, the two bright notes with their unusual interval that seemed to tell him, in their complete indifference, to get in to the house at once.

He stepped out with a racing heart on to the patio, where the drinks table was. They’d all met him, of course, but none of them knew who he was. He sensed nodding curiosity mixed with something cooler as he edged among these mainly grand and grey-haired people. Some women from the Bell had been brought in as waitresses, in black dresses with white aprons and caps – they ladled him out a fresh beaker of the fruit-cup, and there was something slightly comic about it, with the bits of orange and so on plopping in. ‘Do you want more bits, dear?’ said the woman. ‘No, just drink, please,’ said Paul, and they all laughed.

He saw Peter on the far side of the lawn, talking to a woman in a tight green dress – he was getting her to hold his glass while he fished out cigarettes from his pocket, there was a clumsy bit of business, and then she was raising her face to him, charmed as well as grateful for the light. Paul approached, heard the chuckling run of Peter’s voice, his impatient murmur as he lit his own cigarette, saw their shared smile and toss of the head as they blew out smoke – ‘What? in the second act, you mean,’ Peter said; now he was almost in front of them, with a tense tiny smile, but still eerily unseen, and abruptly not sure of a welcome – in a moment he had sidled off, his smile now wounded and preoccupied, round the edge of the chattering groups, looking round as if searching for someone else, till he found himself stuck, by himself, in a corner beside a high stand of pampas grass. He sipped repeatedly at his drink, which seemed much less toxic than his first helping. He was staggered by his own timidity, but he argued in a minute that his little scamper away had been so quick it could surely be reversed. The conversations close by were a blur of wilful absurdity. ‘I don’t think you ever will, with Geraldine,’ the woman nearest him was saying to a crumpled-looking man whose elbow virtually knocked Paul’s drink. He couldn’t stay here. Through a momentary opening among the shifting and swaying backs of the guests he saw Mrs Jacobs herself, in the middle of the lawn, in a blue dress and a dark-red necklace, her glasses gleaming as she turned, her face somehow spot-lit by the fact of this being her own party. ‘Now, we can’t have this…!’ – Corinna Keeping, in red and black, and all the more alarming in grinning high spirits, had found him out.

She took him, like some bashful hero, though also (she couldn’t help it) like a culprit who’d stupidly thought he could escape her, through the thick of the party to the far side of the lawn. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you!’ she said, unable fully to conceal her surprise at this, and in a moment she had delivered him to Peter Rowe – ‘And Sue Jacobs – well, you can introduce yourselves,’ though she stood there, with her defiant smile, to make sure they did. They shook hands, and Peter said quietly, ‘At last,’ as he blew out smoke.

‘I didn’t catch your name,’ said Sue Jacobs.

‘Oh, Paul Bryant ,’ said Paul, with the queer little effort of clarity and breathless laugh that always came with saying who he was. And Peter nodded, ‘Paul… yes’ – of course, he’d only just found out his name.

‘We’ll have supper in a minute,’ said Corinna, ‘and then bring everyone in for the concert.’ She rested a black-gloved hand on Sue Jacobs’s forearm. ‘Is that all right, love?’

‘Absolutely!’ said Sue, and grinned back, as if trying to match Corinna’s abnormal good humour.

‘Are you playing too?’ said Paul, not able to look at Peter yet.

‘I’m singing,’ said Sue, her smile vanishing as Corinna moved off. ‘I’d hoped for a run-through, but we had a hellish drive down.’ He saw that she was older than he’d thought, perhaps forty, but lean and energetic and somehow competitive.