The Stranger's Child Part 16

The rest of dinner pa.s.sed in the blur of three successive wines, but Dudley, though drunker, was making a better effort not to be rattled. Daphne had decided she must ration the number of times she looked pointedly at Revel, and she soon felt he had come to a similar agreement with himself it was amusing, and then threatened to become awkward. Sebby naturally was questioned a certain amount about the miners and his answers gave them all the feeling they were at the heart of the crisis without anything much being revealed at all. Mark was more provoked by this than the others, and had clearly taken against Sebby altogether. He talked a good deal of unnecessary rot, or sense that sounded like rot, about his experience growing up behind a butcher's shop in Reading, until Dudley, who was the only person who could, said, 'You really must learn, Mark dear, not to look down on those who have grown up without your own disadvantages,' and a big licensed laugh ran round the table. To Daphne it was hauntingly like the early days of their marriage, the trance of pleasure and purely happy expectation that Dudley could cast her into. He gleamed in the candlelight and the certainty of his own handsomeness. Then she found her reawakened longing focused on Revel's thin artistic fingers lying loosely spread on the tablecloth, as though waiting for someone to pick them up. And then already it was time for the ladies to withdraw the easy but decisive initiative in which she still felt, on a night like this, a callow usurper of her mother-in-law.

When the men came through, Colonel Fountain's driver was fetched out from the servants' dining-room they were setting off straight away to Aldershot. Daphne saw him off from the front doorstep, feeling terribly squiffy and incoherent. She shook the Colonel's hand between both her own, but could think of nothing to say. Though the old boy had been a bit of a disappointment she felt incoherently that they had also let him down.

Back in the drawing-room she found there was talk of a game. Those who were keen half-smothered their interest, and those who weren't pretended blandly that they didn't mind. Louisa, who hated to waste time, was hemming a handkerchief for the British Legion sale. 'Wotsit?' she said, squinting down her nose as she tied off the thread.

'Well, I wonder,' said George, with a look that Daphne had known since childhood, the concealed excitement, the cool smile that warned them that, should he condescend to play, he would certainly win.

'Before the War,' Louisa explained to Sebby Stokes, 'we played Wotsit for hours at a time. Dudley and Cecil went at it like rabbits. Of course Cecil knew far more.'

'Cecil was so terribly clever, Mamma,' said Dudley. 'I'm not sure rabbits are specially known for their General Knowledge, are they . . . ?'

'Or what about the adverb game,' said Eva, 'that's always a riot.'

'Ah yes, adverbs,' said Louisa, as if recalling an unsatisfactory encounter with them in the past.

'Which ones are they?' said Tilda.

'You know, darling, like quickly or . . . or winsomely,' said Eva.

'You have to do something in the manner of the word,' said Madeleine, unenthusiastically.

'It can be rather fun,' said Revel, giving Daphne a sweet but uncertain smile: 'it's about how you do things.'

'Oh I see . . .' said Tilda.

Daphne felt she didn't mind playing, but she knew that Louisa wouldn't like anything boisterous or dependent on a sense of humour for its success. They had played the adverb game once with the children, Louisa baffling them all by picking seldom. And in fact she said now, 'I don't want to be a wet blanket, but I hope you'll forgive me if I bid you all goodnight.' The men leapt to their feet, there was a warm overlapping chorus of goodnights, light-hearted protests; amid which Sebby said quietly that he had papers to read, and Freda too, with a sadly cringing smile at Dudley, announced that she had had a lovely day. Daphne went out with them as far as the foot of the stairs, with a certain apologetic air of her own; though she was grateful of course to see them clamber off to bed.

They all had another drink, the idea of a game still hanging in the air. Madeleine started prattling, in a painful attempt to ward off the threat. Tilda asked if anyone knew the rules for Strip Jack Naked. Then Dudley rang for Wilkes and told him to get the pianola out; they were going to have some dancing. 'Oh, what fun,' said Eva, with a hard smile through her cigarette-smoke.

'I'm going to play for my guests,' said Dudley. 'It's only right.'

'And the carpet . . .' murmured Daphne, with a shrug, as though she didn't really care, which was the only way to get Dudley to do so.

'Yes, remember my carpet!' said Eva.

'In the hall, Wilkes,' said Dudley.

'As you wish, Sir Dudley,' said Wilkes, managing to convey, beneath his rosy pleasure at the prospect of the guests enjoying themselves, a flicker of apprehension.

The pianola was kept in the cow-pa.s.sage. In a minute Dudley came out into the hall to watch Robbie and another of the men wheel it roaringly across the wide oak floor. He went down the pa.s.sage himself, and came back with an awkward armful of the rolls: he had a wild look, mockery mixed up with genuine excitement. It was the moment when Daphne knew she had lost what frail control of the evening she might ever have had she gave it up in a familiar mixture of misery and relief.

Some of the rolls were just well-known numbers, foxtrots and the like; one or two were the special ones made by Paderewski, of short pieces by Chopin, which were supposed to sound like him playing it himself. Dudley only ever played these to send them up with his absurd imitation of a wild-haired virtuoso. Now he threaded a roll in, drunkenly concentrating, smiling to himself at the treat he was preparing for them, smiling at the machine itself, which he had a childish reverence for. Then he sat down, flung his head back, and started pedalling out came the foxtrot they'd had a hundred times, and which Daphne knew she would have on the brain if something bigger and better couldn't be made to replace it. The keys going up and down under invisible hands had something almost menacing about them.

Mark, who was as tight as Dudley, immediately seized hold of Daphne, and they shimmied off at a lively stagger across the hall; she felt Mark's warm but undiscriminating interest in her as a member of the opposite s.e.x, they were both breathless with laughter and then Mark b.u.mped quite hard into the table and almost fell over, still holding on to her. She freed herself, and looked around at the others, Madeleine virtually in hiding, doubled up behind the pianola, as if looking for something she'd dropped, and George pretending to praise Dudley's playing with a keen facetious grin, entirely ignored by Dudley himself. Of course she wanted to dance with Revel, but he, quite reasonably, she supposed, had presented his hand to Flo, and moved off with her very confidently, steering as if by magic past the various hazards of hall chairs, plant-stands and the grandfather clock. Daphne only half-followed them, then she saw Revel smiling at her over Flo's shoulder in a perfectly open way from which, none the less, she felt allowed to draw something quite private. The roll came to an end, and Dudley jumped up to choose a replacement, which turned out to be the other foxtrot he always played. He had no ear for music, but was obsessively attached to these two numbers, or at least to playing them, with a staring pretence that anyone who really did care for music would love them too. So Daphne took hold of Stinker, with a certain mischievous determination, and he b.u.mped along beside her and somewhat on top of her, gasping, 'Oh, my dear girl, you're too fast for me . . .' In a moment Dudley started singing raucously as he pedalled, 'Oh, the lights of home! . . . the lights of home! and a place I can call my own!'

'What's that?' shouted Stinker over his shoulder, trying boldly to wriggle out of dancing.

'What? You can't be so Philistine. It's a lovely song by my brother Cecil' and he pounded on, jamming the words in to the rhythm nonsensically, and soon with tears of laughter running down his cheeks. Above him the large unapprehending cows in 'The Loch of Galber' gazed on. The roll came to an end.

'Goodness, I'm hot after all that,' said Stinker, and murmuring extravagantly about what tremendous fun it all was he steered his way back into the drawing-room. Cautious clinking and crashing could be heard and the hoa.r.s.e gasp of the gazogene; then the pianola started up again. 'Come on, Stinker!' shouted Dudley, 'it's the "Hickory-d.i.c.kory Rag" your favourite!'

'Come on, Stinker!' cried Tilda, with exceptional high spirits, so that people laughed at her a little, but then immediately joined her, 'Come on, we're starting!' Flo was darting around already, and Eva, taking the man's part, seized her shoulders and trotted her briskly down the room, head jerking up and down like a hen in a new kind of move she seemed to have designed herself. The women's beads could just be heard, rattling against each other. 'Oh!' said Tilda, 'oh, my golly!' She followed them with a wide-eyed smile that Daphne had never seen before, something touching and comical in her pleasure, gazing at each of the others to see if they shared it; she peered almost cunningly at George, whose own smile was broad but slightly strained, and suddenly she had hooked his arm round her somehow, and they were moving off together, Tilda doing some intent little back-kicks and George, with shouts of 'Whoops!' and 'Oh, my word!' randomly trying something similar. 'Oh, do come on, Stinker!' shouted Dudley again, rocking from side to side like a cyclist on a steep hill as he worked at the treadles, something mad and relentless in his grin. 'Stinker!' shouted Mark, 'Stinker-winker!' But Stinker resisted all these calls, and a minute later Daphne saw him wander past the window with a tumbler in his hand, and disappear into the relative safety of the garden. There was a large moon tonight, and he seemed to be peering around for it.

When the dancing stopped, Flo said, 'Let's all go outside and get some air.' Daphne glanced at Revel, who said, 'Oh, good idea,' with a sweeping smile which lingered for a moment on her before dropping thoughtfully aside. There was a rush to the front door, even shoving and protesting, then Mark, already out on the drive, singing l.u.s.tily, to the tune of 'Auld Lang Syne', 'We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here', which seemed to Daphne rather rude, though preferable no doubt to many of the other army songs that he and Dudley sang when they were drunk, such as 'Christmas Day in the Workhouse', which he started to sing next.

'Tell Mark to stop singing,' said Daphne to Flo, who seemed to get the point. On a still night every word would be audible in Louisa's bedroom.

'You coming out, Dud?' said George, still panting a bit, and letting his high spirits run on over his brother-in-law.

'Eh . . . ? Oh no, no,' said Dudley, swivelling round on the stool, and then back again to reach for his drink. 'No, no you all go out. I'm going to stop in and read.'

'Oh . . .' said Tilda, still breathless and delighted. Dudley stood up with a fixed but already absent smile, shuffled sideways and dropped back on to the edge of the stool, which shot away across the bare floor he lunged for the edge of the keyboard as he fell, George jumped from the flying cut-gla.s.s tumbler, and Daphne started forward but merely s.n.a.t.c.hed his elbow as he thumped heavily backwards, with a furious shout of 'Watch out!' as if someone else was behaving dangerously. 'Oh!' said Tilda again. He lay there for several seconds, then sat up like the Dying Gaul, leaning on one hand, staring at the floor as though only just containing his patience, then raised his other hand, whether for help or to ward help off it was hard to tell. Daphne found herself gasping with alarm and pity and almost giggling with childish hilarity.

'No, I'm perfectly all right,' said Dudley, and sprang up quite smartly, in the soldier-like way he still had, though unsteady for a moment as he gained his feet. A wince of pain was covered by a sarcastic laugh at the whole situation. His shirt-front and lapel were wet with whisky.

'Are you sure, old man?' said George. Dudley didn't answer or even look at him, but crossed the hall with uncertain dignity, flung open the door and disappeared into the cow-pa.s.sage, the door swinging loudly shut behind him.

'You go on out,' said Daphne to the others. With a familiar resolve she went after Dudley, but with a newer sense looming beyond it that it wasn't just repet.i.tion, it was getting much worse.

She found him in the washroom, and his dripping face as he raised it from the basin was alarmingly red. The veins in his temples stood out as if he'd been throttled. But when he had dried himself and sleeked back his hair the colour receded and he looked almost normal. Daphne thought of various futile reproaches and suggestions. She watched him dab at his lapel with the damp towel and then throw it on the floor, as he always did. Then she found he was smiling at her in the mirror, just a moment of doubt as he hooked her glance, the old trick he did without thinking. 'Oh my G.o.d, Duff' he turned and lurched into her, his teeth moist and gleaming, his arms went heavily round her shoulders not her waist, he was kissing her and kissing her, squashing and probing as though to get at something; she didn't know what if anything she gave: all she got from it herself was a compounded sequence of discomforts, the sour flare of drink and cigars into her face. He hadn't done this for ages, it was like a violent little visit from the days when they still made love. He stood back, shaking her lightly, encouragingly, like a good old friend, then he was limping off, head down, head up, with the oblivious sense of a new mission, the unspoken agreements of the demented and the drunk. 'Come on, Duffel,' he called over his shoulder as he opened the door into the hall. She stood where she was, and watched the door swing closed again behind him.

'Oh, my dear, isn't Dudley joining us?' said Eva, when she got out on to the flagged path.

'No, he can't,' said Daphne, with some satisfaction, pulling her wrap round her. 'You know, he doesn't go out at night.'

'What, not at all?' said Eva. 'How very funny of him . . .' She sounded archly suspicious, and then Daphne wondered if Eva had in fact been out at night with Dudley, though she could hardly think when.

'You know, he doesn't talk about it, but it's one of his things.'

'Oh, is it one of his things.'

'Dud not coming out?' said Mark, suddenly behind them, and now with a hand round her waist round both their waists.

'He doesn't, darling, as you know,' said Daphne; and then she explained, for Eva's benefit, and trying to ignore Mark's quite purposeful grasp for a moment: 'It's a thing from the War, as a matter of fact. I probably shouldn't say . . .' and on the hard path, finding her way in the long spills of light from the drawing-room windows, which only deepened the shadows, she made a little mime of her hesitation. 'You know, it was a great friend of his who was killed in the War. Shot dead by a sniper right beside him. They'd seen him in the moonlight, you see, and that's why he can never bear moonlight.'

'Oh Lord,' said Eva.

Daphne stopped. 'He heard the shot and he saw the black flower open on the boy's brow, and he was dead, right beside him.' She'd rather m.u.f.fed the story, which Dudley told, on very rare occasions, with a shaking hand and choked throat, and which wasn't really hers to tell. She felt the horror as well as the rather striking poetry of it all so keenly that she hardly knew if she was Dudley's protector or betrayer she seemed inextricably to be both. 'And then of course Cecil, you know . . .'

'Oh, was he killed in the moonlight too?' said Eva.

'Well, no, but a sniper, it all connects up,' said Daphne. In truth, other people's traumas were hard to bear steadily in mind.

In a minute Mark left them she saw him running at a crouch behind the low hedges to ambush Tilda and Flo, who were walking together between the moonlit chains of clematis. She didn't much want to be alone with Eva; she looked around for Revel, whom she could hear laughing with George nearby . . . still, it presented an opportunity. 'I was never sure,' she murmured, 'well you've never said, you know, but about Mr Riley.'

'Oh, my dear . . .' said Eva, with a quiet smoky laugh, amused as well as embarra.s.sed.

'I don't mean to pry.'

'About old Trev . . . ? There's not a very great deal to say.'

'I mean, is he not still alive?'

'Oh yes, good lord . . . though he's, you know, a fair age.'

'I see,' said Daphne. Of course no one knew how old Eva was herself. 'I thought perhaps he'd been killed in the War.'

'Not a bit,' said Eva. She sounded cagey but somehow excited. Bare-bosomed nymphs raised their arms above them as they turned, by some silent consensus, into the path towards the fishpond. There was no colour, but the garden seemed more and more on the brink of it in the moonlight, as if dim reds and purples might shyly reveal themselves amongst the grey. Daphne turned and looked back at the house, which appeared at its most romantic. The moon burned and slid from window to window as they walked.

'So: Trevor . . .' she said, after a minute. 'And you're not divorced or anything.' It was slyly amusing to stick at the question, and after quite a lot of drinks you didn't care so much about good manners.

'Not actually,' said Eva, 'no.' Daphne supposed she must have married him for money. She saw Trevor Riley as a man who owned a small factory of some kind. Maybe the War, far from killing him, had made him a fortune. She found Eva slipping her arm through hers, and with her other hand giving the long-fringed scarf she was wearing a further twist round her neck she felt the silky fringe brush her cheek as it whisked round. Eva shivered slightly, and pulled Daphne against her. 'I do think marriage is often a fearful nuisance, don't you?' she said.

'Well . . . ! I really don't know.'

'Mm?' said Eva.

'Well, it's something that sometimes has to be endured, I dare say.'

'Indeed,' said Eva, with a throb of grim humour.

'I don't know if Trevor was unfaithful,' said Daphne, and shivered herself at the closeness of the subject. They paced on, in apparent amity, whilst Eva perhaps worked out what to say. Her evening bag, like a tiny satchel slung down to the hip, nudged against her with each step, and evidence about her underclothes, which had puzzled Daphne a good deal, could obscurely be deduced in the warm pressure of Eva's side against her upper arm. She must wear no more than a camisole, no need really for any kind of bra.s.siere . . . She seemed unexpectedly vulnerable, slight and slippery in her thin stuffs.

'Can I tempt you?' said Eva, her hand dropping for a second against Daphne's hip. The nacreous curve of her cigarette case gleamed like treasure in the moonlight.

'Oh . . . ! hmm . . . well, all right . . .'

Up flashed the oily flame of her lighter. 'I like to see you smoking,' said Eva, as the tobacco crackled and glowed.

'I'm starting to like it myself,' said Daphne.

'There you are,' said Eva; and as they strolled on, their pace imposed by the darkness more than anything else, she slid her arm companionably round Daphne's waist.

'Let's try not to fall into the fishpond,' Daphne said, moving slightly apart.

'I wish you'd let me make you something lovely,' said Eva.

'What, to wear, you mean?'

'Of course.'

'Oh, you're very kind, but I wouldn't hear of it,' said Daphne. Having her redesign her house was one thing, but her person quite another. She imagined her absurdity, coming down to dinner, kitted out in one of Eva's little tunics.

'I don't know where you get your things mainly now, dear?'

Daphne laughed rather curtly through her cigarette-smoke. 'Elliston and Cavell's, for the most part.'

And Eva laughed too. 'I'm sorry,' she said, and snuggled against her again cajolingly. 'I don't think you know how enchanting you could look.' Now they had stopped, and Eva was a.s.sessing her, through the fairy medium of the moonlight, one hand on Daphne's hip, the other, with its glowing cigarette, running up her forearm to her shoulder, where the smoke slipped sideways into her eyes. She pinched the soft stuff of her dress at the waist, where Daphne had felt her eyes rest calculatingly before. In a hesitant but almost careless tone Eva said, 'I wish you'd let me make you happy.'

Daphne said, 'We simply must get back,' a tight stifling feeling, quite apart from the smoke, in her throat. 'I'm really rather cold, I'm most frightfully sorry.' She jerked herself away, dropping her cigarette on the path and stamping on it. The lights from the house threw the hedges and other intervening obstacles into muddled silhouette, but it was hard to retreat with complete dignity; nor was the moonlight as friendly as she'd thought. She cut across the gra.s.s, found her heels sinking in loam, stumbled back and around an oddly placed border. It was like a further extension of being tight, a funny nocturnal pretence of knowing where she was going. She felt Eva might be pursuing her, but when she looked over her shoulder she was nowhere to be seen well, she must be there somewhere, lingering, plotting, blowing thin streams of smoke into the night. Daphne reached the firm flags of the path by the house, and in the second she noticed the dark form curled sideways on the bench beside her, her hand was grasped at 'Don't go in . . .'

'Oh, my G.o.d! who's that? Oh, Tilda . . .'

'Sorry, darling, sorry . . .'

'You frightened the life out of me . . .' Tilda wasn't letting her hand go.

'Isn't it a lovely night?' she said brightly. 'How are you?' And then, 'I'm just rather worried about Arthur.'

For a moment Daphne couldn't think who she was talking about. 'Oh, Stinker, yes . . . why, Tilda?' She found herself sitting very temporarily on the bench, on its edge. As if with a child, she put away the unmentionable matter of Mrs Riley. She found Tilda was staring at her, her white little face had forgotten the gaiety of the earlier evening. Had the drink turned on her? In her anxiety she seemed to invest Daphne with unusual powers.

'Have you seen him?' she said.

Daphne said, 'Who . . . ? Oh, Stinker . . . isn't he wandering around, I'm sure he's all right . . . darling,' which wasn't what she usually called her, any more than Stinker was Arthur. She'd always thought of Tilda as a youngish aunt, perhaps, silly, harmless, hers for life.

'He's so strange these days, don't you think?'

'Is he . . . ?' In so far as Daphne could be bothered to think about it, she wished he was a good deal stranger.

'Am I mad? You don't think, do you, he might be seeing another woman?'

'Stinker? Oh, surely not, Tilda!' It was easy and allowable to smile. 'No, I really don't think so.'

'Oh! oh good' Tilda seemed half-relieved. 'I felt you'd know.' She flinched, and peered at her again. 'Why not?' she said.

Daphne controlled her laugh and said, 'But it's obvious Stinker adores you, Tilda.' And then perhaps thoughtlessly, 'And anyway, who could it be?'

Tilda half-laughed but hesitated. 'I suppose I thought perhaps because we haven't, you know . . .'And just then Daphne saw Revel step out through the french window and frown along the path to where he evidently heard their voices. She knew Tilda meant because they didn't have children.

'Come along,' said Daphne, getting up, but now in turn grasping Tilda's hand, to conceal her own brusqueness. Any more on this subject would be unbearable.

'Well, I'm just going to sit here and wait for him,' Tilda said, not seeing what was happening, still adrift in drink and her own worry.

'All right, darling,' said Daphne, feeling fortune free her and claim her at the same moment. She almost ran along the path.

'Oh, Duffel, darling,' said Revel, touching her arm as they came back in together, and taking a smiling five seconds to continue his sentence, 'do let's pop up and look at the children sleeping.'

'Oh,' said Daphne, 'of course', as if it were hopeless of her not to have offered this entertainment already. She gazed at him and her giggle was slightly rueful. She didn't think she herself could have slept, even two floors up, through the 'Hickory-d.i.c.kory Rag'. And then the earlier horror, at the real piano, came back to her it was wonderful, a blessing, that she'd forgotten it for a while.

'Dudley's gone to bed,' said Revel, plainly and pleasantly.

'I see.' After the garden the drawing-room was a dazzle; and in their absence, it had been perfectly tidied everything was always tidied. 'Now, have you got a drink?' she said.

'I've got a port in every one,' said Revel, a bit cryptically.

'I think I've had enough,' said Daphne, looking down on the tray of bottles, some friendly, some perhaps over-familiar, one or two to be avoided. She sloshed herself out another gla.s.s of claret. 'Oh, Tilda's outside!' she explained to Stinker, who had just come in, stumbling on the sill of the french window. 'You've just missed her.' He leant on a table and gazed at her, but found nothing immediate to say.

She led the way down the cow-pa.s.sage and up the east back-stairs, Revel touching her at each half-landing very lightly between the shoulders. His face when she glanced at it was considerate, with inward glints of antic.i.p.ated pleasure. She was excited almost to the point of talking nonsense. 'All rather back-stairs, as Mrs Riley would say,' she said.