Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘Where do you live?’

‘Mm? – in Blackheath. Right on the other side. We could perfectly well have had the party there, rather than dragging everyone down into darkest Berkshire.’

‘But you couldn’t?’ said Peter.

‘Corinna wanted it here, and what Corinna wants… Sorry, I’m Daphne’s step-daughter,’ she said to Paul. ‘She married my father.’ She made this sound rather a regrettable turn of events.

‘Ah, yes!’ said Paul, laughing nervously, and not sure where Blackheath was – he pictured something like the New Forest. He saw that just behind them in the edge of the flower-bed, the broken trough was sitting, its end apparently cemented back on and hidden by some quickly arranged nasturtiums; on his hand too the graze had scabbed and been picked back to pink. He said to Peter, ‘Jenny says you’re playing tonight.’ It was magical as well as completely straightforward having him just a foot away. He had a commonplace smell of smoke mixed with some unusual aftershave that made Paul confusedly imagine being held by him and kissed on the top of his head.

‘I could have done with a run-through too, god knows,’ Peter said. ‘We bashed through it at school, but she’s ten times as good as me.’

‘I shouldn’t smoke if I’m singing,’ said Sue, opening her little evening bag.

Peter squashed his own cigarette under foot before getting out his lighter for her. ‘I don’t know the Bliss songs,’ he said.

‘I’m only doing the Valance,’ said Sue. ‘Mm, thanks… It’s Five Songs opus something, but we’re just doing the one, thank god.’

‘Aha…! Which poem, I wonder?’

‘I expect you’ll know – it’s about a hammock. He’s supposed to have written it for Daphne… apparently!’

‘I must ask her about Cecil Valance,’ said Peter. ‘I’ve just been doing him with my Fifth Form.’

‘Well, you should. She seems to think he wrote pretty well everything for her.’

‘Do you think she’d come and talk to the boys?’

‘She might, I suppose. I don’t know if she’s ever been back to Corley, has she? It will all be in the famous memoirs, of course.’

‘Oh, is she writing them?’ said Peter, putting his hand on Paul’s arm for a long moment, as if not to lose him, with talk about strangers, and surely conveying something rather more. In fact, Paul said,

‘She’s been writing them for yonks.’

‘Oh, you know about it,’ said Sue.

‘Well, a bit…’ – and then: ‘Isn’t it the poem that starts, “A larch tree at your head, and at your feet / A weeping willow”?’

‘You do know,’ said Sue again, sounding slightly put out.

‘I’d better get you to talk to the Fifth Form!’ said Peter, the hint of mockery in his tone dissolving in his long, brown-eyed gaze, as if he too felt excitements teeming softly around and ahead of them. It was a look of a kind Paul had never had before, and in his happiness and alarm he found he had completely finished his drink.

‘Well, supper, perhaps,’ said Sue, in a way that made Paul think she’d become aware of something.

‘May we join you, sir?’ said Peter.

George Sawle’s sunburnt face settled into a vague smile as he gestured at the chairs. In the shade, or by now the midge-haunted shadow, of the weeping beech, it was the most secluded of the supper-tables. The old boy seemed almost to be hiding. ‘I’m Daphne’s brother,’ he said.

‘Oh, I know who you are,’ said Peter, with his suggestive chuckle, putting down his plate next to him. ‘I’m Peter Rowe. I teach at Corley Court.’

‘Oh, goodness…!’ said old Sawle, in a tone that suggested there was a lot to be said on the subject, if one were ever to get round to it. Paul grinned but didn’t know if it would be right to say what an honour it was to meet him. He’d sometimes seen John Betjeman in Wantage but had never actually met an author before. The Everyday History , with its old-fashioned pictures of strip-farming and horse-drawn transport, had come out some time before the War. It was slightly magical that G. F. Sawle and Madeleine Sawle should even be alive, much less battering round the country in an Austin Princess. Paul sat down next to Peter – it seemed this was what they were doing, it was so absurdly new and easy, and he was trying to keep his head as they sallied around together. This large glass of white wine was clearly going to help. ‘We met earlier – I’m Paul Bryant.’ The chair lurched and sank slightly under him in the rough grass.

‘Yes, indeed…’ said Sawle, nodding and then pulling a little shyly at the longer white tufts of beard under his chin. He quizzed the salmon and new potatoes on their plates through his thick-lensed spectacles.

‘Are you not eating, Professor?’ said Peter.

‘Ah, my wife, I believe…’ said Sawle, and after a moment looked round. ‘Here she comes…!’ There seemed to be some fleeting invitation to find them comical as a couple, in their devotion or their eccentricity.

Paul looked out and saw Madeleine Sawle stepping warily across the patio with a plate in each hand, and then working towards them among the white-clothed tables where other guests were bagging seats and saying, ‘My dear, of course you may…!’ to the people they had just been trying to avoid. The whole social tone was new to him, the top notes of the upper class above a more general mix, with one or two loud local voices, and he was glad to be hidden away here, under the raised flounce of the old beech-tree. He felt the evening’s quickening swell of good luck, and with it the usual suspicion that it was all a mistake – surely any minute Mrs Keeping would send him back to stand by the gate.

‘We’re tucked under this obliging tree, dear, just as you suggested,’ said George Sawle, very clearly, as Madeleine set down the plates with a flicker of a frown, and opened her bag to take out the cutlery she’d transported in it. Paul was struck again by the bold oddity of the red ear-rings flanking her square mannish face. ‘You’ve met, um…’

Paul and Peter introduced themselves – Peter smiled and said ‘Peter Rowe’, warmly and almost forgivingly, as if it were a delightful fact Mrs Sawle might perhaps have been expected to know. ‘I’m Paul Bryant,’ said Paul, and felt he made a slenderer claim. She tilted her head – of course she was rather deaf.

‘ Peter … and Paul ,’ she said, with amiable sternness. Paul was pleased at the coupling, though he felt like a school-child under her gaze. He wondered if the Sawles themselves had children. She seemed very much the helpmeet of the Everyday History , something industrious and educational about her. Paul saw them toiling together in an oak-beamed interior, with perhaps a hand-loom of their own in the background. Otherwise he knew nothing about who she was or what she had done. He thought it was a bit odd that the Sawles were hiding away here, and not joining the rest of the family for dinner. ‘Are you old friends?’

‘Oh, we are,’ said Peter, ‘we met about fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Well, a couple of weeks…’ Paul said, laughing, slightly put out.

‘Of Daphne’s, I mean?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry – not yet,’ said Peter, ‘though of course I’m hoping to be.’ He smiled his way broadly through these bits of silliness, and Paul found his admiration for him wrapped up with just a tinge of embarrassment. ‘I like her enormously’ – and at the same moment, as he sat forward to start eating, Paul felt Peter’s knee push roughly against his own and stay there, almost as though he thought it was a strut of the table. His heart was beating as he edged his knee away, just an inch. Peter’s moved with it, he shifted forwards a bit in his chair to keep the contact more easily. His smile showed he was enjoying that as well as everything else. The warmth transfused from leg to leg and quickly travelled on up to lovely but confusing effect – Paul hunched forward himself and spread his napkin in his lap. He felt a hollow ache, a kind of stored and treasured hunger, in his chest and down his thighs. He found his hand was shaking, and he had another big gulp from his glass, smiling thinly as if in a trance of respectful pleasure at the company and the occasion.