Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘Don’t I detect Miss Sawle’s cigar?’ said Cecil facetiously.

‘That would never happen,’ said Daphne.

But she was really very happy after all, standing there, peering somewhat speculatively into the smoky darkness. ‘Is ginger brandy considered a strong drink?’ she was saying. It must be the drink that gave this lovely spontaneity to things, so that she spoke or moved without deciding to do so.

‘Oh dear, Daph,’ said George. And before she knew what she’d done, she was heaving herself, gasping and laughing, onto the near end of the hammock, where the boys’ feet were.

‘Mind out!’ said George. ‘That’s my foot…’

‘You’ll break the blasted thing,’ said Cecil.

‘For God’s sake…!’ said George, tilting sideways in the effort to leap out, and in a second she was jolted on to the ground, Cecil was tumbling, his foot caught her, rather hard, between the ribs.

‘Ow!’ she said, and then ‘ow…’ but she despised the shock and fright; she was laughing again as the boys reached awkwardly for each other, and then she let herself be pulled up. She knew she had heard her shawl tearing as she fell, and that this was one part of the escapade she would not get away with; but again she didn’t terribly care.

‘Perhaps we should go in,’ said Cecil, ‘before something truly scandalous happens.’

They shepherded each other out on to the lawn, with little pats and murmurs. George spent a moment tucking his shirt in and getting his trousers straight. ‘At Corley, of course, you have a smoking-room,’ he said. ‘This sort of thing could never happen.’

‘Indeed,’ said Cecil solemnly. Emmy Destinn had finished, and in her place Daphne saw the figure of her mother coming to the lighted window and peering vainly out.

‘We’re all here!’ Daphne shouted. And in the darkness, under the millions of stars, with the boys on either side of her, she felt she could speak for them all; there was a hilarious safety that seemed a renewal of the pact they had made without speaking when Cecil arrived.

‘Well, hurry in,’ her mother said, in a hectic, ingenious tone. ‘I want Cecil to read to us.’

‘There you are,’ murmured Cecil, straightening his bow-tie. Daphne glanced up at him. George went responsibly ahead on the path, and as they followed behind him Cecil slipped his large hot hand around her, and left it there, just where he’d kicked her, until they reached the open french windows.

After breakfast next morning she found Cecil in a deckchair on the lawn, writing in a small brown book. She sat down too, on a nearby wall, keen to observe a poet at work, and just close enough to put him off; in a minute he turned and smiled and shut his book with the pencil in it. ‘What have you got there?’ he said.

She was holding a small book of her own, an autograph album bound in mauve silk. ‘I don’t know if you can be prevailed upon,’ she said.

‘May I see?’

‘If you like you can just put your name. Though obviously…’

Cecil’s long arm and blue-veined hand seemed to pull her to him. She presented the book with a blush and mixed feelings of pride and inadequacy. She said, ‘I’ve only been keeping it a year.’

‘So whom have you got?’

‘I’ve got Arthur Nikisch. I suppose he’s the best.’

‘Right-oh!’ said Cecil, with the delighted firmness that conceals a measure of uncertainty. She leant over the back of the deckchair to guide him to the page. He was like an uncle this morning, confidential without the least hint of intimacy. Last night’s rough-house, apparently, had never happened. She noticed again that smell he had, as if he’d always just got back from one of his rambles, or scrambles, which she pictured as fairly boisterous affairs. Oh, it was so typical of boys, they got on their dignity, they kept closing the door on some interesting scene they had let you witness a moment before. Though perhaps it was meant as a reproach to her, for last night’s foolery.

‘I got him when we went to The Rhinegold .’

‘Ah yes… He’s quite a big shot, isn’t he?’

‘Herr Nikisch? Well, he’s the conductor!’

‘No, I’ve heard of him,’ said Cecil. ‘You may as well know that I have a tin ear, by the way.’

‘Oh…’ said Daphne, and looked for a moment at Cecil’s left ear, which was brown and sunburnt on top. She said, ‘I should have thought a poet had a good ear,’ with a frown at the unexpected cleverness of her own words.

‘I can hear poems,’ said Cecil. ‘But all the Valances are tone-deaf, I’m afraid. The General’s almost queer about it. She went to The Gondoliers once, but she said never again. She thought it was never going to end.’

‘Well, she certainly wouldn’t like Wagner, in that case,’ said Daphne, rescuing a kindly superiority from her initial sense of disappointment. And still not quite sure she had got to the bottom of it, ‘Though you said you liked the gramophone last night.’

‘Oh, I don’t hate it, it’s just rather lost on me. I was enjoying the company.’ His ear coloured slightly at this, and she saw that perhaps she’d been given a compliment, and blushed a little herself. He said, ‘Did you care for the opera when you went?’

‘They had a new swimming apparatus for the Rhine-maidens, but I didn’t find it very convincing.’

‘It must be hard work swimming and singing at the same time,’ said Cecil, turning the page. ‘Now who’s this Byzantine fellow?’

‘That’s Mr Barstow.’

‘Should I know him?’

‘He’s the curate in Stanmore,’ said Daphne, unsure if they were both admiring the elaborate penwork.

‘I see… And now: Olive Watkins, you could read that at twenty paces.’

‘I didn’t really want to have her, as it’s supposed to be only adults, but she got me for hers.’ Underneath her signature Olive had written, with great force, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’, the indentations of the pen being readable on the following pages. ‘She has the best collection, certainly that I know,’ said Daphne. ‘She has Winston Churchill.’

‘My word…’ said Cecil respectfully.

‘I know.’

Cecil turned a page or two. ‘But you’ve got Jebland, look. That’s special in another way.’

‘He’s my other best,’ Daphne admitted. ‘He only sent it me the week before his propeller broke. I’ve learned that you can’t wait with airmen. They’re not like other autographs. That’s how Olive lost Stefanelli.’

‘And does Olive have Jebland?’

‘No, she does not,’ said Daphne, trying to subdue the note of triumph to one of respect for the dead aviator.

‘I see it’s rather morbid,’ said Cecil. ‘You make me feel a little anxious.’

‘Oh, everyone else in it is still alive!’

Cecil closed the book. ‘Well, leave it with me, and I promise I’ll think something up before I go.’

‘Do feel free to write some occasional verse.’ She came round the chair and stood looking at him full-face. He was fingering his own book again as he squinted up at her, smiling tensely against the light. She felt the momentary advantage she had over him, and gazed with a novel kind of licence at his parted lips and his strong brown neck where it emerged from his soft blue shirt. He was surely writing a poem now, the pencil was waiting in the cruck of the notebook. She felt she couldn’t ask about it. But nor could she let him alone. She said, ‘Have you seen over the garden?’

‘D’you know, I have. I rambled right round it with Georgie, first thing.’

‘Oh…’

‘Oh, long before you were up. I went and tipped him out of bed.’

‘I see…’

‘I’m a pagan, you see, and I worship the dawn. I’m trying to instil the cult in your brother.’