Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

It took five minutes to get a cab on the main road, and signal it round to where she was standing. Running back to her, seeing her expression, anxious but somehow inattentive, he knew he would go with her to Paddington, and on the way he would make an arrangement to see her again. He spoke to the driver, and then strode across with the brolly to bring her to the car. ‘The silly thing is,’ she said, ‘I’m not sure I’ve the fare for the cab.’

‘Ah!’ Paul said, almost sternly, ‘don’t worry,’ wondering if he could in fact afford this. ‘Anyway, I’m coming with you.’ And adopting a bland, unhearing expression he more or less pushed her into the taxi, and went round the other side to get in himself. He supposed they had fifteen minutes.

They settled, rather tensely, the cabby kept up talk through the partition about the diabolical weather, till Paul sat forward and shut the screen. He glanced at Mrs Jacobs for approval, though she seemed for a moment, in the underwater gloom of the cab, to be ignoring him. Her soft face was oddly haggard in the running shadows and gleams.

Paul said, ‘I can’t get over just bumping into you like that.’

‘I know…’ It was a struggle for her between being grateful, embarrassed and, he sensed, somewhat offended.

The cab had a food-like smell of earlier occupants, and the seat was still slippery from their wet clothes. He unbuttoned his coat, sat at an angle, with one leg drawn up, eager but casual. She had the transparent aura of old age, was notable and ignorable at the same time. She had her bag on her knee, both gloved hands on top of it. It wasn’t the same bag of twelve years earlier, but another, closely related, with the family trait of being shapelessly bulky – too bulky, really, to count as a handbag. It admitted as much in its helpless slump. He said, ‘So how have you been?’ – giving the question a solicitous, tentative note. He thought it was three years since Corinna’s death, and Leslie Keeping’s suicide.

‘Mm, very well, really. Considering, you know…!’ – a dry chuckle, quite like the old days, though her face retained its look of anxiety and preoccupation. She wiped the window beside her ineffectively and peered out, as if to check where they were going.

‘But you’re not living in London? I think the last time I saw you, you were in… Blackheath?’

‘Ah, yes. No, I’ve moved, I’ve moved back to the country.’

‘You don’t miss London?’ he said amiably. He wanted to find out where she lived, and sensed already a certain resistance to telling him. She merely sighed, peered at the blotted world outside, sat forward to push down the window a crack, though in a moment the throb of the engine shivered it shut. ‘I’ve been in London myself for three years now.’

She tucked in her chin. ‘Well you’re young, aren’t you. London’s fine when you’re young. I liked London fifty years ago.’

‘Well, I know,’ said Paul. In some absurd way her account in her book of living in Chelsea with Revel Ralph had coloured his own sense of what London life might offer: freedom, adventure, success. ‘I got out of the bank, you see. I think I always really wanted to be a writer.’

‘Ah, yes…’

‘It seems to be going quite well, I’m pleased to say.’

‘I’m so glad.’ She smiled anxiously. ‘We’re sure he is going to Paddington, aren’t we?’

Paul entered into it as a little joke, leaning forward. Through a wiped arc he saw for a moment a blurred corner pub, a hospital entrance, all unrecognizable. ‘We’re fine,’ he said. ‘No, I’ve been doing a bit of reviewing. You may have seen a piece of mine in the Telegraph a couple of months ago…’

‘I don’t see the Telegraph , as a rule,’ she said, with droll relief more than regret.

‘I know what you mean,’ Paul said, ‘but actually I think the books pages are as good as any.’ What he really wanted to know, but somehow couldn’t ask, was if she’d seen his review of The Short Gallery in the New Statesman , a paper he felt she was unlikely to take. He’d done it as a gesture of friendship, finding all that was best in the book, the tiny criticisms themselves clearly affectionate, the corrections of fact surely useful for any future edition. Whenever he reviewed a book he read all its other reviews as keenly as if he were the author of the book himself. Daphne’s memoir had been covered either by fellow survivors, some loyal, some sneering, or by youngsters with their own points to make; but a more or less open suggestion that she had made a good deal of it up hung over all of them. Paul blushed when he read about errors he had failed to spot, but drew a stubborn assurance of his own niceness from the fact of having been so gentle with her. His was much the best notice she had received. As he wrote it, he imagined her gratitude, phrased it for her in different ways and savoured it, and for weeks after the review appeared – rather cut, unfortunately, but its main drift still plain to see – he waited for her letter, thanking him, recalling their old friendship, and suggesting they meet up again, perhaps for lunch, which he pictured variously at a quiet hotel or in her own house in Blackheath, among the distracting memorabilia of her eighty-two years. In fact the only response had been a letter to the Editor from Sir Dudley Valance, pointing out a trifling error Paul had made in alluding to his novel The Long Gallery , on which Daphne’s title was a pawky in-joke. If even Sir Dudley, who lived abroad, saw the New Statesman , perhaps Daphne did too; or the publisher might have sent it on. Paul thought a certain well-bred reserve might have kept her from writing anything to a reviewer. She was pulling off her gloves. ‘You won’t mind if I have a cigarette?’

‘Not at all,’ said Paul; and when she’d found one in her bag he took the lighter from her and gently held her arm for a second as she leant to the flame. The smoke soured the fetid air almost pleasantly. And at once, with the little shake of her head as she exhaled, her face, even the uptilted gleam of her glasses, seemed restored to how they had been twelve years before. Encouraged, he said, ‘I’m very pleased to see you, because in fact I’m writing something about Cecil … Cecil Valance’ – with a gasp of a laugh, quickly deferential. He didn’t come out with the full scale of his plans. ‘Actually, I was about to write to you, and ask if I could come and see you.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, but quite nicely. She blew out smoke as if at something very distant. ‘I wrote a book myself, I don’t know if you saw that. I sort of put it all in there.’

‘Well, yes, of course!’ – he laughed again. ‘I reviewed it, in fact.’

‘Were you horrid?’ she said, with another touch of the droll tone he remembered.

‘No, I loved it. It was a rave.’

‘Some of them were stinkers.’

He paused sympathetically. ‘I just felt it would be very valuable to be able to speak to you – of course I don’t want to be a nuisance. If you like, I’ll just come for an hour when it suits you.’

She frowned and thought. ‘You know, I never pretended to be a wonderful writer, but I have known some very interesting people.’ Her quiet laugh now was slightly grim.

Paul made a vague noise of indignant dismissal of all her critics. ‘Of course I saw your interview in the Tatler , but I thought there might be a bit more to say!’

‘Ah, yes.’ Again she seemed both flattered and wary.

‘I don’t know if you’d prefer the morning or the afternoon.’

‘Mm?’ She didn’t commit herself to a time, or to anything really. ‘Who was that very nice young man at the party – I expect you know him? I can’t remember anyone’s name. He was asking me about Cecil.’ She seemed to take some slightly mischievous pleasure in this.