Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child

‘I’m so looking forward to your husband’s talk tomorrow, Lady Valance.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said, and he almost laughed, and then saw it was merely a general term of assent. She meant, what she then said, ‘It’s a great coup for you all to have got him here.’

‘I think everyone thinks the same,’ said Paul, then went on quickly, ‘I’m hoping he’ll be saying something about his brother.’

Linette’s head went back a little. It was as if she’d only vaguely heard that he had a brother. ‘Oh, good lord, no,’ she said, with a little shake. ‘No, no – he’ll be discussing his own work.’ And a new suspicion floated in her eyes, in the quick pinch of her lips and angling of the head. ‘I don’t think I caught your name.’

‘Oh – Paul Bryant.’ It semed absurd to be skulking around the truth, but he was glad to be able to say, ‘I’m covering the conference for the TLS .’

‘For the…?’ – she turned an ear.

‘ The Times …’

‘Oh, really?’ And with a slightly awkward hesitation, ‘Did you write to my husband?’

Paul looked puzzled. ‘Oh, about Cecil, you mean? Yes, I did, as it happens…’

She glanced approvingly at Dudley. ‘I’m afraid all requests such as yours fall on very stony ground.’

‘Well, I don’t want to be any trouble to him…’ Paul seemed to glimpse the barren hillsides of Andalusia. ‘So you’ve had others…’

‘Oh, every few years, you know, someone wants to poke about in Cecil’s papers, and one just knows from the start that it would be a disaster, so it’s best simply to say no.’ She was rather jolly about it. ‘I mean, his letters were published – I don’t know if you saw those?’

‘Well, of course!’ said Paul, unable to tell if anything here was in his favour. She seemed to be inviting him to agree he was a disaster in the making.

‘And you’ve read my husband’s books?’

‘I certainly have.’ It was time to be sternly flattering. ‘ Black Flowers , obviously, is a classic – ’

‘Then I’m sorry to tell you you’ve really read everything he has to say about old… um… Cecil.’

Paul smiled as if at the great bonus of what Dudley had already given them; but did go on, ‘There are still one or two things…’

Linette was distracted. But she turned back to him after five seconds, again with her look of haughty humour, which made him unsure if she was mocking him or inviting him to share in her mockery of something else. ‘There’s been some extraordinary nonsense written.’

‘Has there…?’ Paul rather wanted to know what it was.

She made an oh-crikey face: ‘Extraordinary nonsense!’

‘Lady Valance? I don’t know if this would be a good moment?’ The elderly don had come back. ‘Forgive my breaking in…’

‘Oh, for the… um…?’

‘Indeed, if you’d like to see…’ The smiling old man left just enough sense of a chore in his voice to make it clear he was doing her a favour which she couldn’t decline.

‘I don’t know if my husband…’ But her husband seemed perfectly happy. And by a miracle the old chap took her off, out of the room, the slight flirty wobble of her high heels glimpsed beneath the raised wing of his gown, leaving Paul free at last to approach his prize.

In fact it was Martin who brought him in – ‘Sir Dudley, I’m not sure if you’ve met – ’

‘Well, no, we haven’t yet,’ said Paul, bending to shake hands, which seemed to irritate Dudley, and went on cheerfully, before anyone could say his name, ‘I’m writing up the conference for the TLS .’ Martin of course knew about the Cecil job, but probably not about Dudley’s resistance to it.

‘Ah, yes, the TLS ,’ said Dudley, as Paul further found himself being offered the low armchair at right-angles to him at the end of the sofa. He was in the presence, with a need no doubt to say his piece. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with the TLS ,’ Dudley went on, with a narrow smile that wasn’t exactly humorous.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Paul, his clutched brandy glass seeming to impose a new way of performing on him, a sort of simmering joviality. But Dudley’s smile remained fixed on his next remark:

‘They once gave me a very poor review.’

‘Oh, I’m surprised… what was that for?’

‘Eh? A book of mine called The Long Gallery .’

The mock-modesty of the formulation made this less amusing, though a man on the other side laughed and said, ‘That would be what, sixty years ago?’

‘Mm, a bit before my time,’ Paul said, and put his head back rather steeply to get at the brandy in the bottom of his glass. He found Dudley disconcerting, in his sharpness and odd passive disregard for things around him, as if conserving his energy, perhaps just a question of age. He seemed to show he had fairly low expectations of the present company and the larger event they were part of, whilst no doubt thinking his own part in it quite important. Paul wanted to bring the talk round to Cecil before Linette got back, but without disclosing his plans. Then he heard an American graduate he’d met briefly earlier say, ‘I don’t know how you would rate your brother’s work, sir?’

‘Oh…’ Dudley slumped slightly; but he was courteous enough, perhaps liked to be asked for a bad opinion. ‘Well, you know… it looks very much of its time now, doesn’t it? Some pretty phrases – but it didn’t ever amount to anything very much. When I looked at “Two Acres” again a few years ago I thought it had really needed the War to make its point – it seems hopelessly sentimental now.’

‘Oh, I grew up on it,’ said another man, half-laughing, not exactly disagreeing.

‘Mm, so did I…’ said Paul quietly over his balloon.

‘It always rather amused me,’ said Dudley, ‘that my brother, who was heir to three thousand acres, should be best known for his ode to a mere two.’ This was exactly the joke that he had made in Black Flowers , and it didn’t go down very well in the Balliol SCR – there was a little sycophantic laughter, most prominently from Paul himself. ‘Ah…!’ General Colthorpe had come back in, and even in a civilian context there was an uneasy movement among a number of them to stand up.

‘Whom are you discussing?’ he said.

‘My brother Sizzle, General,’ Dudley seemed to say.

‘Ah, indeed,’ said the General, declining an offered space on the sofa but fetching a hard chair as he came round and making a square circle of the group, which took on a suddenly strategic air. ‘Yes, a tragic case. And a very promising writer.’

‘Yes…’ – Dudley was more cautious now.

‘Wavell had several of them by heart, you know. It’s “Soldiers Dreaming”, isn’t it, he puts in Other Men’s Flowers , but he had a great deal of time for “The Old Company”.’

‘Oh, well, yes,’ said Dudley.

‘I’ll be saying something about it tomorrow. He used to quote it’ – the General batted his eyelids – ‘ “It’s the old company, all right, / But without the old companions” – one of the truest things said about the experience of many young officers.’ He looked around – ‘They came back and they came back, do you see, if they came through at all, and the company was completely changed, they’d all been killed. There was always a company tradition, keenly maintained, but the only people who remembered the old soldiers were soon dead themselves – no one remembered the rememberers. No, a great poem in its way.’ He shook his head in candid submission. Paul sensed there were demurrers in the group, but the General’s claim for the poem’s truth made them hesitate.

‘It’s a subject, of course, I wrote about myself,’ said Dudley, in a strange airy tone.