Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘A mad one and a slow one,’ announced the lead guitarist of the Locomotives, the words heavy and resonant in the high roof of the hall. ‘Then it’s goodnight.’

‘Let’s stay a bit longer,’ said Paul, ‘now we’re here.’

The final dance, the watch showing five past twelve, and the two policemen standing genially by the open door in the bright light there, talking to the woman that took the coats. They looked in, across the floor, now sparsely occupied by the dancers who felt the lonely space expanding about them, the night air flowing in, Jenny and Julian locked together in a stiff experimental way, his chin heavy on her shoulder, Paul and Peter now leaning by the wall, swaying in time but a few feet apart, their faces in fixed smiles of uncertain pleasure, and out in the middle, Wilfrid and his new friend, who’d adjusted herself imaginatively to her partner’s rhythms and was making up a kind of military twostep with him to the tune of ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’.

Peter roared along Oxford Street, so very different from its famous namesake, the few shops here with their blinds down in the early torpor of the summer evening, and just before he came into the square he wondered with disconcerting coolness if he did fancy Paul, and what he would feel when he saw him again. He wasn’t exactly sure what he looked like. In the days since he’d kissed him at the Keepings’ party his face had become a blur of glimpses, pallor and blushes, eyes… grey, surely, hair with red in it under the light, a strange little person to be so excited by, young for his age, slight but hard and smooth under his shirt, in fact rather fierce, though extremely drunk of course on that occasion – well, there he was, standing by the market-hall, oh yes, that’s right… Peter thought it would be all right. He saw him in strange close focus against the insubstantial background, the person waiting who is also the person you are waiting for. Peter was a little late – in the four or five seconds as the car slowed and neared he saw Paul glance at the watch on his inside wrist, and then up at the Midland Bank opposite, as if he was keen to get away from it, then saw him take in the car and with a little shiver pretend he hadn’t, and then, as Peter came alongside, his jump of surprise. He’d changed after work into clean snug jeans, a red pullover slung round his shoulders; the attempt to look nice was more touching than sexy. Peter stopped and jumped out, grinning – he wanted to kiss him at once, but of course all that would have to keep. ‘Your Imp awaits!’ he said, and tugged open the passenger door, which made a terrible squawking sound. He saw perhaps he could have tidied the car up a bit more; he shifted a pile of papers off the floor, half-obstructed Paul with his tidying hands as he got in. Paul was one of those lean young men with a bum as fetchingly round and hard as a cyclist’s. Peter got in himself, and when he put the car in gear he let his hand rest on Paul’s knee for two seconds, and felt it shiver with tension and the instant desire to disguise it. ‘Ready for Cecil?’ he said, since this was the pretext for the visit. It seemed Cecil had already become their codeword.

‘Mm, I’ve never been to a boarding-school before,’ said Paul, as if this were his main worry.

‘Oh, really?’ said Peter. ‘Well, I hope you’ll like it,’ and they swept off round the square, the car making its unavoidable coarse noise. It was something a bit comic about a rear-engined car, the departing fart, not the advancing roar.

‘So how was your day?’ said Peter, as they went back up Oxford Street. It was three miles to Corley, and he felt Paul’s self-consciousness threatening him too as he smiled ahead over the wheel. It was something he would have to override from the start.

‘Oh, fine,’ said Paul. ‘We’ve got the inspectors in, so everyone’s a bit jumpy.’

‘Oh my dear. Do they ever catch you out?’

‘I don’t think they have yet,’ said Paul, rather circumspectly; and then, ‘Actually I was a bit distracted today because of tonight, you know.’

‘Oh, I know,’ said Peter, pleased by this and glancing at Paul, who was half-turned away from him, as if abashed by his own remark.

‘I’ll be interested to see the tomb.’

‘Oh, well, of course, that too,’ said Peter.

Outside the town a dusty breeze blew off the wheat-fields through the open windows, and mixed with the smell that he knew was slightly sickening of hot plastic and motor oil. In the noisy bluster of air perhaps they didn’t need to say very much; he explained about the imminent Open Day, the cricket match and the new Museum, but without feeling Paul took it in; and then: ‘Well, here we are’ – the line of woods was approaching, and he hoped Paul saw, far back from the main road, the flèche on the chapel sticking up among the trees. Here was the lodge-house, a diminutive foretaste of the mansion itself, a cluster of red gables, with a corner turret and a spirelet of its own. The huge wrought-iron gates stood perpetually open. And what Peter always thought a lovely thing happened. As he slowed and changed down and turned off into the chestnut-shadowed drive they seemed to slip the noose of the world, they entered a peculiar secret – in the rear-view mirror, quickly dwindling, the cars and lorries still rushed past the gateway; in a moment they could no longer be heard. There was a magical mood, made out of privilege and play-acting, laid over some truer childhood memory, the involuntary dread of returning to school – Peter tested and even heightened his own feelings by peeping for them in the face of this new friend he barely knew, and yet suspected he knew better than anyone had before. On their right, through the wide strip of woodland, the playing-fields could be glimpsed, the thatched black shed of the cricket pavilion. ‘These woods are out of bounds, by the way,’ he said. ‘If you spot a boy in there you can give him the hairbrush.’

‘The hairbrush…’

‘On the BTM.’

‘Oh,’ said Paul after a moment. ‘Oh, I see. Well, let’s have a look for one later,’ and blushed again at the surprise of what he’d said. Peter laughed and glanced at him, and thought he had never met a grown man so easily and transparently embarrassed by anything remotely risqué. He was a hot little bundle of repressed emotions and ideas – perhaps this was what made the thought of sex with him (which he planned to have in the next hour or two) almost experimentally exciting. Though what colour he would turn then… ‘Now, here we are.’ There had been some talk about Corley at Corinna’s party, but Peter hadn’t told him what to expect. He slowed again at the second set of gate-piers, and there suddenly it was. ‘Voilà!’

Some form of stifling good manners, or perhaps mere self-absorption, seemed to keep Paul from seeing the house at all. Peter let his own smile fade as they trundled across the gravel sweep and came to a halt outside the Fourth Form windows, the sashes up and down to let in air, and the curious heads of boys doing prep turning to look out. The indescribable atmosphere of school routine and all the furtive energies beneath it seemed to hang in the air, in the jar and scrape of a chair on the floor, the inaudible question, the raised voice telling them all to get on with their work.

In the front hall Peter said quietly, ‘I’m sure you’re dying for a drink.’ In his room he had plenty of gin and an unopened bottle of Noilly Prat.

‘Oh… thank you,’ said Paul, but wandered off round the hall table to gaze with unexpected interest at the Honours Boards. On the two black panels scholarships and exhibitions to obscure public schools were recorded in gold capitals. There were annoying variations in the size and angle of the lettering.