The Stranger's Child Part 11

'Oh, really?' said Daphne, rather heavily.

'Fair, balding, wire-framed gla.s.ses . . . ?'

'That sounds like Madeleine . . .'

'But nice-looking,' said Revel, with the little giggle she loved. 'Madeleine more severe. Heavy tread, awful hat. If I may say so.'

'Oh, say what you like,' said Daphne. 'Everyone does here.'

'Is Uncle George here?' said Wilfrid.

'He is,' said Revel. 'I think they were going up to the High Ground.'

'How perfectly obstreperous of him,' said Corinna.

'Don't be an idiot,' said Daphne.

'How entirely preposterous,' said Corinna.

'Well, perhaps we should join them,' Daphne said. And taking charge, she went out under the further rose arch, with the children eventually following, and Revel ambling between them and Daphne, speaking in the pointed way one did with other people's children, to amuse them and amuse the listening parent in a different way. 'Certainly I don't think any brontosauruses have been spotted in Berks.h.i.+re for several years now,' he said. 'But I'm told there are other wild beasts, some of them fiendishly disguised in smart white trousers . . .' Daphne felt the magnetic disturbance of his presence just behind her, at the corner of her eye as she led them up the steps and pa.s.sed through the white gate under the arch. You were wonderfully safe of course with a man like Revel; but then the safety itself had something elastic about it. There were George and Madeleine so odd that they'd set straight off on a walk. Perhaps just so as to be doing something, since Madeleine was unable to relax; or possibly to put off seeing Dudley for as long as they decently could.

The High Ground was an immense lawn beyond the formal gardens, from which, though the climb to it seemed slight, you got 'a remarkable view of nothing', as Dudley put it: the house itself, of course, and the slowly dropping expanse of farmland towards the villages of Bampton and Brize Norton. It was an easy uncalculating view, with no undue excitement, small woods of beech and poplar greening up across the pasture-land. Somewhere a few miles off flowed the Thames, already wideish and winding, though from here you would never have guessed it. Today the High Ground was being mown, the first time of the year, the donkey in its queer rubber overshoes pulling the clattering mower, steered from behind by one of the men, who took off his cap to them as he approached. Really you didn't mow at weekends, but Dudley had ordered it, doubtless so as to annoy his guests. George and Madeleine were strolling on the far side, avoiding the mowing, heads down in talk, perhaps enjoying themselves in their own way.

The children hastened, at a ragged march, towards their uncle and aunt and seemed unsure themselves how much of their delight was real, how much good manners; Corinna by now took delight in good manners for their own sake. George stood his ground, in his dark suit and large brown shoes, and then squatted down with a wary cackle to inspect them for a moment on their own level. Madeleine, wrapped in a long mackintosh, held back, with a thin fixed smile, in which various doubts and questions were tightly hidden.

'Aunt Madeleine, I've learned a new piece to play for you,' said Corinna straight away.

'Oh,' said Madeleine, 'what is it?'

'It's called "The Happy Wallaby".'

'Well, my dear,' said Madeleine, as if seeing something faintly compromising in this, 'we'll have to see.'

'She's been practising, haven't you, Corinna,' said Daphne, and saw her glance at Wilfrid.

'And Wilfie's going to do his dance,' Corinna said.

'Oh, that will be capital,' said George. 'When will you do it? I don't want to miss that,' making up for his wife's lack of warmth.

'After nursery tea,' said Daphne. 'They're allowed down.' The thing about seeing George with Madeleine was that it made you fonder of George; he stood up, and they kissed with a noisy firmness that amused them both. 'How's Brum?' said Daphne.

'Brum's all right,' said George.

'It's a great deal of work,' said Madeleine; 'you don't see us at our best, I fear!'

'I don't think you've met Revel Ralph, Madeleine . . . Revel, my brother George Sawle.'

George looked keenly at Revel as he shook his hand. 'Madeleine and I have been reading a lot about your show . . . congratulations! Your designs sound marvellous.'

'Oh, yes,' said Madeleine uncertainly.

'I wonder if we'll get down,' said George, now smiling rather anxiously at Revel. 'I'd love to see it.'

'Well, let me know, won't you,' said Revel.

'You've been, Daph, of course?' said George.

'I'd have to stay with someone, wouldn't I,' said Daphne.

'You ought to have a little place in Town,' said Revel.

'Well, we did have that very nice flat in Marylebone, but of course Louisa sold it,' said Daphne, and changed the subject before it got going 'Watch out . . .' The donkey was plodding rapidly towards them, and they set off to the mown side of the lawn, damp gra.s.s cuttings clinging to their shoes. 'G.o.d knows why they're mowing today,' she said, though she took a kind of pleasure in it too, different from her husband's it was something to do with labour, and running a place with twenty servants.

'How is Dudley?' said George.

'I think all right,' said Daphne, with a quick glance at the children.

'Book coming on?'

'Oh, I find it best not to ask.'

George gave her a strange look. 'You've not seen any of it?'

'No, no.' She took a bright, hard tone: 'You know he's very excited about boxing things in.'

'Oh, yes, I want to see this,' said George, with his taste for controversy as much as for design. 'How far is he taking it?'

'Oh, quite far.'

'But you don't mind,' with a sideways smile at her.

'Well, there are some things. You'll see.'

'What do you think, Ralph?' said George. 'For or against the egregious grotesqueries of the Victorians?' And now Daphne saw they were back in common-room mode, after a brief spontaneous holiday. The children smirked.

Revel thought and said, 'Can I be somewhere in between?' with an appealing wriggle in his voice.

'I'd want to know why. Or rather where.'

'I suppose what I feel,' said Revel, after a minute, 'well, the grotesqueries are what I like best, really, and the more egregious the better.'

'What? Not St Pancras?' said George. 'Not Keble College?'

'Oh, when I first saw St Pancras,' said Revel, 'I thought it was the most beautiful building on earth.'

'And you didn't change your mind when you'd seen the Parthenon.'

Revel blushed slightly Daphne thought perhaps he had yet to see the Parthenon. 'Well, I feel there's room in the world for more than one kind of beauty,' he said, 'put it that way,' firmly but graciously.

George took this in, seemed even to blush a little himself. He stopped and looked away towards the house: turrets and gables, the glaring plate gla.s.s in Gothic windows, the unrestful patterns of red, white and black brick. Creeper spread like doubt around the openings at the western end. Daphne felt she wouldn't have chosen it, felt it had in a way chosen her, and now she would be sick at heart to lose it. She turned to Madeleine. 'I remember when George first came to stay here, Madeleine,' she said: 'we thought we'd never hear the end of the splendours of Corley Court. Oh, the jelly-mould domes in the dining-room!' But such comical alliances with her sister-in-law rarely stuck Madeleine smiled for a second, but her allegiance to George's intellect was the firmer. 'No grotesqueries then!' insisted Daphne.

George clearly thought it wise to laugh at himself for a moment: 'Cecil liked them, and one didn't argue with Cecil.' It seemed not to bother him that he was mocking his sister's home.

'I see,' said Revel, with that mixture of dryness and forgiveness that was so unlike Dudley's humour. 'So you know the house quite well.'

'Oh, quite . . .' said George absently, the question of why he so rarely came to Corley perhaps embarra.s.sing him. 'You're too young to have known Cecil,' he said.

'I'm afraid so,' said Revel solemnly, and with the faintest smile, since his youth was generally thought to be in his favour, it was what all the articles in the magazines dwelt on his being so brilliant so young.

'But you've been over Corley before,' said George, now a touch proprietary.

'Oh, heaps of times,' said Revel; and a strange sort of tension, of rivalry and regret, seemed for a moment to flicker in the two men's different smiles.

'Anyway, you'll meet Mrs Riley,' said Daphne, 'she's staying for the weekend.'

'Oh, is she . . .' said Revel, as if seeing a disadvantage after all in his visit.

'She hung around for ages, you know, measuring things up or whatever she does and dropping ash on the carpet; and then Dud for some reason asked her to stay. And would you believe it, she had all her evening clothes in the boot of her car.'

'Why did she?' said Wilfrid.

'She'll have been on the way to someone else's house, old chap,' said George.

'Well, she designs clothes,' said Corinna. 'She's got tons of skirts and dresses in the car. She's going to make one for me, green velvet, with a low waist and no particular bust.'

'No particular bust!' said Daphne. And then, 'Is she indeed!'

'Is she all right?' said Revel. 'I dare say she is we come at things from different ends.'

Daphne was a little unsure about the turn she'd given the talk. 'I'm sure she's a genius,' she said. 'I'm just not awfully good with very fas.h.i.+onable people.' And she thought, and where is she now? in a scurry of anxiety which she quickly brought to heel.

'I don't expect she comes cheap,' said Revel.

'No. In fact she's quite violently expensive,' said Daphne, in a way that suggested a more than reasonable cause of annoyance.

They strolled back, their group still tentative and self-conscious, towards the white gate under the stone arch, and the broad path back to the house. Freda and Clara had come out for some air, and were moving at their own peculiar pace among the spring beds and low hedges of the formal garden. Daphne saw the man that Revel had mentioned, in a brown trilby, lope across and engage them in talk they seemed confused, earnestly helpful, and then somewhat defensive. Clara raised one stick, and pointed it, as if sending him off. He had a camera-case slung round his neck, but didn't seem interested in using the camera on them. 'Go on, my darlings, rescue Granny Sawle,' said Daphne. But just then the man, backing away and glancing round, saw Dudley himself emerge through the garden door, with the look of tricky geniality that he put on for the press, and with Sebby just behind him, jammed in the doorway by the excitable dog, and clearly more reluctant to be seen.

'Here we are,' said Dudley, as they all came up, shaking hands with George, shaking hands, rather pointedly, with Madeleine, though grinning at her fiercely as he did so. 'And Revel, my dear, you've made it.' He turned with a lurch to embrace the whole group in his grin. 'What a lovely reunion!' Daphne glanced at her mother, who she felt was the one most vulnerable to Dudley's performance, but she was too caught up in her own reunion with George to notice it.

'h.e.l.lo, George!' said Freda, with a brave little quiver, the tone of someone not quite sure of being remembered. And perhaps this tiny glimpse touched George as well he enveloped his mother in a firm hug, sweetly, and guiltily, protracted.

'Maddy, dear,' he said, and Madeleine too held Freda's shoulder and angled in for a kiss under the tilting brims of their hats.

'Now, I'm sorry to say, ladies and gentlemen,' said Dudley, 'that our little weekend idyll has been infiltrated by one of the tireless and pitiless agents of Fleet Street. What's your name?'

'Oh, I'm Goldblatt, Sir Dudley,' said the photographer, swallowing Dudley's harsh tone, 'Jerry Goldblatt,' lifting his trilby an inch as he looked over the group.

'Jerry Goldblatt,' said Dudley, and paused unpleasantly, 'is just going to take a few snapshots for the Sketch.'

'I prefer to say portraits,' said Goldblatt, 'portrait groups.'

'So if you wouldn't mind awfully doing what he says for ten minutes, then we can get the d.a.m.n fellow out of here.'

'Much obliged,' said Goldblatt, 'well, ladies and gentlemen '

But they saw very quickly that it was Dudley who'd be telling them what to do. A trying hour or more of sittings ensued, different groupings around various stone seats, or posed, with a hint of awkward clowning, under the raised arms and bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s of bronze and marble statues. The Scottish boy made himself useful, and quickly set up the croquet lawn, where they started a pretend game which immediately got serious, and was abandoned with bad grace for work at another location. Really there were three of them the photographer wanted, Dudley, Sebby and Revel, with Daphne and the children as decorative extras. Dudley of course knew this, but in a complicated rigmarole brought in all the others, and nearly pretended not to want to be involved himself at all.

Dudley said: 'But look here, Goldblatt, you must have a snapshot of our friend Frau Kalbeck. You know, she's one of the original Valkyries of Stanmore Hill.'

'Oh, yes, Sir Dudley?' said the photographer warily.

'No, no, please . . . !' said Clara, tickled but mortified at the same time. She seemed ready to tuck her sticks out of sight. Daphne said, 'But not if you don't want to, dear,' and indeed thought it quite impossible that they'd use such a photograph, which would make it, in the longer view, even sadder for her.

'Perhaps not, I think,' said Clara, and hid her tiny disappointment in a histrionic call 'But where is dear Mrs Riley?' It was unexpected, but she seemed to have taken a s.h.i.+ne to Eva.

'Dudley dear, where's Mrs Riley?' said Daphne coolly.

'Oh lord . . .' said Dudley, the mad glint showing for a second through his puzzled tone. 'Robbie, run and look for Mrs Riley' and as Robbie went swiftly away, 'She may be just too busy . . .'

'Is that Mrs Eva Riley, sir?' said Jerry Goldblatt, with a cunning glance at the house. 'The interior decorator?'

'Yes, yes,' said Dudley, 'Mrs Riley, the famous interior decorator of the Carousel Restaurant,' as if writing the copy for the Sketch as well.

'That is a stroke of luck, Sir Dudley,' said Goldblatt.

Daphne saw that Dudley had got almost everything he wanted; he'd rescued a stylish, amusing and important party from the jaws of the other one that bored him to madness, and posed it, for as long as the camera's flashes lasted, for the world to see. Sebby Stokes in fact declined to join in, suspecting that he shouldn't be seen playing croquet while the nation stood on the brink of a general strike; he shrewdly told Goldblatt he would be 'working on Cabinet papers in the library'. George, quite new to the world of publicity, acted up determinedly, followed Revel's instructions for new poses, and whisked the children along in a hectic and rather touching show of affection. He seemed to like Revel perhaps the little friction in their views on St Pancras Station had excited him. Madeleine, with the unhappy solidarity of the shy, had perched beside Clara, and in effect opted out of the photographs. As for Revel himself, Daphne saw that she needn't have worried, in fact there was almost some further friction in his eagerness to direct arrangements himself. 'Well . . . yes . . .' said Dudley, frowning, 'no, no, my dear, you're the designer!' shaking his head none the less in slight bafflement, while Jerry Goldblatt pleaded, 'If I could just have Lady Valance and the kiddies?' Then Eva Riley arrived, her long legs white in sheeny stockings, almost laughably fas.h.i.+onable, a pearl-coloured cloche hat pulled down tight on her black bob. 'Do you really need me?' she wailed, and Jerry Goldblatt called back that he certainly did.

Revel and Daphne had their picture taken together, back by the fishpond. They stood on either side of a rose arch, each with one arm raised like a dancer to gesture at the view beyond it. Daphne laughed to show she was not an actress, not certainly a dancer, and looked across at Revel, who kept a straighter face. She felt her laughter had a touch of panic to it. She had an apprehensive image of next week's Sketch on the morning-room table, and their silly faces vying for attention with the antics of Bonzo the Dog.

5.

At the end of lunch George slipped out from the dining-room and set off for a distant lavatory, treasuring the prospect of four or five minutes alone. He felt stifled already by the subject of Cecil, and by the thought of a further twenty-four hours devoted to his brilliance, bravery and charm. What things they all found themselves saying. Perhaps in certain monasteries, or in finis.h.i.+ng schools, the conversation at meals was as strictly prescribed. The General threw up a topic, and the rest of them batted it gingerly to and fro, with Sebastian Stokes as umpire; even Dudley's sneering had been edgily reined in. George had met Stokes once before, in Cambridge, when they'd all gone out in a punt, Cecil clearly exciting his guest by his lordly thrust and toss of the pole and intermittent recital of sonnets. Stokes seemed not to remember that George had been of the party, and George didn't remind him, when the talk turned to their Cambridge days. He felt undeniably uneasy, and drank several gla.s.ses of champagne, in the hope they would relax him, but they had only made him hot and giddy, while the dining-room itself, with its gaudy decor, its mirrors and gilding, had appeared to him more ghastly than ever, like some funereal fairground. Of course one indulged the dead, wrote off their debts; one forgave them as one lamented them; and Cecil had been mightily clever and fearless, no doubt, and had broken many hearts in his short life. But surely no one but Louisa could want a new memorial to him, ten years after his pa.s.sing? Here they all were, submissively clutching their contributions. A dispiriting odour, of false piety and dutiful suppression, seemed to rise from the table and hang like cabbage-smells in the jelly-mould domes of the ceiling.

As he crossed the hall, the door under the stairs was shoved open by Wilkes, with the surprising look, for just a second, of a man who has a life of his own.

'Ah, sir . . . !' said Wilkes, turning to catch the door, the age-old benignity back at once like a faint blush.

'Thanks so much, Wilkes,' said George. And since he had him there, 'I hope you're well.'

'Very well, thank you, sir, very well indeed,' as if made even fitter by George's solicitude.