The Stranger's Child Part 3

'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.'

'I wonder how you'll get on.' Cecil closed his eyes languidly as he smiled, so that she had a further sense of screened-off mysteries. 'Perhaps tomorrow you could tip me out of bed too.'

'Do you think your mother would approve?'

'Oh, she won't mind.'

'Well, we'll see.'

'I could show you all kinds of things.' She felt the gra.s.s with her hand before sitting down beside Cecil's chair. 'I can't believe George showed you the whole of "Two Acres".'

'Well, possibly not . . .' said Cecil, with a quick sn.i.g.g.e.r.

Daphne peered encouragingly at the view the neat parched lawn, the little tor of the rockery, the line of dark firs that hid the Cosgroves' potting-shed and motor-garage. To her the 'Two' in her house's name had always been rea.s.suring, a quietly emphatic boast to schoolfriends who lived in a town or a terrace, the proof of a generous over-provision. But in Cecil's presence she felt the first shimmer of uncertainty. Sitting side by side, she hoped to make him share her view, but wondered if she hadn't started sharing his instead. She said, 'You know, the rockery was my father's contribution.'

'He must have put a good deal of work into it,' said Cecil.

'Yes, he worked terribly hard at it. Those large red stones came all the way from Devon which of course he did!'

'They will be a strange geological conundrum to later ages,' said Cecil.

'Yes, I suppose they will.'

'They will be like the monoliths of Stonehenge.'

'Mm,' said Daphne, sensing teasing where she'd hoped for something better. She pressed on, 'My father wasn't artistic like my mother, but she gave him a free hand with the rockery. In a way it's his monument.'

Cecil stared at it with a chastened expression. 'I suppose you don't really remember your father,' he said. 'You must have been too young.'

'Oh, I remember him quite well.' She nodded up at him. 'He used to come home from work, and have his Old Smuggler while I was in the bath.'

'You mean he drank whisky in the bathroom?'

'Yes, while he was telling me a story. We had a nanny of course, who used to bath me. Frankly, I think we had rather more money then, than we have now.'

Cecil gave her the fleeting wince of merely abstract sympathy that she'd noticed already when it came to money or servants. 'I can't imagine my father doing that,' he said.

'Well, your father doesn't go to work, does he.'

'That's true,' said Cecil, and giggled attractively.

'Of course Huey works very hard. My mother says one of us needs to get married.'

'Well, I've no doubt you will,' said Cecil, his dark eyes holding hers and his eyebrow rising slightly for emphasis and a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt, so that her heart thumped and she hurried on, 'One day, we'll see. I dare say we all will.' She wanted to say she had overheard them last night, and to tell him they were wrong, he and George: Hubert wasn't a womanizer at all, he was really intensely respectable. But she was frightened by this unknown subject, and worried that she might have misunderstood.

'I don't think George has a particular girlfriend?' said Cecil, after a minute.

'We all thought you would know,' she said, and then regretted the suggestion that they'd been talking about him. Something in Cecil of course demanded to be talked about. She tore up a few blades of gra.s.s, and glanced at him, feeling still the great novelty and interest of his presence. He shifted in the deckchair, crossed his right ankle on his left knee, a glimpse of brown calf. He was wearing white canvas shoes, scuffed at the heel. It would be amusing if they could explain George to each other behind his back. She said, 'We all thought there might be someone when he started getting letters; but of course they were from you!'

Cecil looked both pleased and embarra.s.sed by this, and glanced over his shoulder at the house. 'But what about your mother, do you think?' he said, in a sudden sensitive tone. 'She's still quite young, and really most attractive. She might marry again herself. She must have many admirers . . . ?'

'Oh, I don't think so!' Daphne frowned and blushed at the question. It was one thing to talk about poor George's prospects, quite another to ask about those of a middle-aged lady whom he hardly knew. It was most inappropriate; and besides, the last thing she wanted was a stepfather. She pictured Harry Hewitt standing on her father's rockery worse, ordering its demolition. Though actually, almost certainly, they would all have to move to Mattocks, with its peculiar pictures and statues. She sat looking at Cecil's white shoes, and thinking rather hard. He didn't press her for an answer. She saw it was a new kind of talk, that she wasn't quite ready for, like certain books, which were in English obviously, but too grown-up for her to understand. He said, 'I didn't mean to pry. You know how Georgie and I and all our lot are devils for speaking candidly.'

'That's all right,' she said.

'Tell me it's none of my business.'

'Well, there's a man who's coming to dinner tonight that I think likes my mother a lot,' she said, and a sense of betrayal discoloured the following seconds.

'Is this Harry?'

'Yes, it is,' she said, feeling her shame still more.

'The man who gave you the gramophone.'

'Oh, yes, well he's given us all kinds of things. He's given Hubert a gun, and . . . lots of things. The Complete Works of Sheridan.'

'I imagine Huey might appreciate some of these gifts rather more than others,' said Cecil, again familiar and casual.

'Well . . . He gave me a dressing set, with a scent bottle, which I'm not old enough for, and silver-backed brushes.'

'He sounds like Father Christmas,' said Cecil; and with a hint of boredom, looking round, 'What a jolly fellow.'

'Hmm. He's very generous, I suppose, but he's not a bit jolly. You'll see.' She glanced up at him, still strangely indignant both with him and with Harry, but he was gazing at the top of the spinney, where they'd met last night, as if at something much more intriguing. 'He goes to Germany a great deal, he does import-export, you know. He brings us back things.'

'And you think all these presents are his way of . . . paying court to your mamma,' said Cecil.

'I fear so.'

Cecil's splendid profile, the autocratic nose and slightly bulbous eye, seemed poised for judgement; but when he turned and smiled she felt the sudden return of his attention and kindness. 'But, my dear child, you've no need to fear unless you think she returns his feelings.'

'Oh, I don't know . . . !' She was fl.u.s.tered, by having come so far, and by this unexpected word child, which was what her mother herself called her, quite naturally, though often with a hint of criticism. She had got it last night, once or twice, when she was trying to make Cecil feel at home and asking him questions. He must have heard her say it. Now she felt some not quite nice rhetorical advantage had been taken of her he'd humbled her at the very moment he was meant to be cheering her up.

Cecil smiled. 'I tell you what. I'll have a good look at him, as a total outsider, and let you know what I think.'

'All right . . .' said Daphne, not at all sure about this compromise.

'Ah!' said Cecil, sitting forward in his chair. George was coming across the lawn, his jacket hooked over his shoulder, and whistling cheerily. Then he stood looking down at them, with a question hidden somewhere in his smile.

'What is that thing you're always whistling?' said Daphne.

'I don't know,' said George. 'It's a song my gyp sings, "When I sees you, my heart goes boomps-a-daisy".'

'Really . . . ! I'd have thought if you had to whistle, you'd have chosen something nice,' and seeing a chance to bring them all back to the subject of last night 'such as The Flying Dutchman, for instance.'

George pressed his hand to his heart and started on the lovely part of Senta's Ballad, staring at her with his eyebrows raised and slowly shaking his head, as if to throw his own self-consciousness over to her. He had a sweet high swooping whistle, but he put in so much vibrato he made the song sound rather silly, and soon he couldn't keep his lips together and the whistle became a breathy laugh.

'Hah . . .' muttered Cecil, seeming slightly uncomfortable, standing up and slipping his notebook into his jacket pocket. Then, with a cold smile, 'No . . . I can't whistle, I'm afraid.'

'Well, with your tin ear!' said Daphne.

'I'm just going to take this precious book inside,' he said, holding up Daphne's little alb.u.m. And they watched him cross the lawn and go in by the garden door.

'So what were you talking about to Cess?' said George, looking down at her again with his funny smile.

She picked over the gra.s.s in front of her, in a teasing delay. Her first thought, surprisingly strong, was that her own relations with Cecil, going on quite independently of George's, if not entirely satisfactorily, must be kept as secret as possible. She felt there was something there, which mustn't be exposed to reason or mockery. 'We were talking about you, of course,' she said.

'Oh,' said George, 'that must have been interesting.'

Daphne gave a soft snort at this. 'If you must know, Cecil was asking if you had any particular girlfriends.'

'Oh,' said George, more airily this time, 'and what did you say?' he had started blushing, and turned away in a vain attempt to conceal the fact. Now he was gazing off down the garden, as if he'd just noticed something interesting. It was quite unexpected, and it even took Daphne, with her sisterly intuition, a few moments to understand, and then shout out, 'Oh, George, you have!'

'What . . . ? Oh nonsense . . .' George said. 'Be quiet!'

'You have, you have!' said Daphne, feeling at once how the joy of discovery was shadowed by the sense of being left behind.

8.

Once the gentlemen had gone out, Jonah set off upstairs, and was almost at the top when he found he'd forgotten Mr Cecil's shoes, and turned back to get them. But just then he heard voices in the hall below. They must have gone into the study for a minute, to the right of the front door: now they were by the hall-stand, getting their hats. Jonah stood where he was, not hiding, but in the shadows, on the turn of the stair.

'Is this one yours?' Cecil said.

'Oh, you a.s.s,' said George. 'Come on, let's get out. I'll bring this, I think, just in case.'

'Good idea . . . How do I look?'

'You look quite decent, for once. Jonah must be doing all right for you.'

'Oh, Jonah's a dream,' said Cecil. 'Did I tell you, I'm taking him back to Corley with me.'

'Oh no, you don't!' There was a little tussle that Jonah couldn't see, giggling and gasping, voices under their breath, '. . . ow! . . . for G.o.d's sake, Cecil . . .' and then the noise of the front door opening. Jonah went up three steps and peeped out of the little window. Cecil vaulted the garden gate, and George seemed to think about it, just for a moment, and then opened it and went out. Cecil was already some way down the lane.

Jonah waited a minute longer where he was, looking up the last three stairs and across the landing towards the spare-room door. Jonah's a dream what a way they talked . . . though it must mean things were going all right, he was doing it all convincingly. He didn't think Mrs Sawle would let Cecil take him away, and he certainly didn't want to leave home. He'd been into Harrow, of course, many times, and Edgware, and once to the Alexandra Palace to hear the organ . . . He went on up. The landing was dark, with its oak panelling and thick Turkey carpet, but the bedrooms were flung open so as to air and were full of light. He could hear Veronica, the housemaid, in Mr Hubert's room, her grunts as she shook and thumped the pillows; she talked to herself, in a pleasant, businesslike mutter, '. . . there you are . . . up we go . . . thank you very much . . .'. Jonah felt he had understood something, they had decided he was ready. He looked forward to straightening the room and taking his time with Cecil's things, examining the b.u.t.tons and pockets in more detail. He would never have said it to anyone downstairs, but he thought if he learned valeting it could be a job for him, in a year or two's time. One day, perhaps, he would let Mr Cecil, or someone very like him, take him away after all.

Then he pushed open the door, and saw at once he knew nothing, they'd told him nothing about what went on between bedtime and breakfast. It was like stepping into another house. Or else, he felt, as he took two or three short steps into the room, or else this Mr Cecil Valance was a lunatic; and at this thought he gave a sort of staring giggle. Well, he would have to wait for Veronica. The bed was all over the floor as if a fight had taken place in it. He looked at the shaving-water cold and sc.u.mmy in the basin, the shaving-brush lying in a wet ring on top of the bookcase. He frowned at the clothes strewn over the floor and across the little armchair with a new and painful feeling that he'd known them in an earlier and happier time, when things were still going convincingly. And the roses were as good as dead yes, Cecil must have knocked them over and then jammed the stems just anyhow into the vase with no water. Their heads had dropped after a few hours of neglect, and a patch on the patterned rug was dark and damp to the back of the hand. On the dressing-table the scribbled sheets of paper were more what Jonah had expected. 'When you were there, and I away,' Jonah read, 'But scenting in the Alpine air the roses of an English May.' Then he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the shaving-brush and stared at the oily pool it had made.

Jonah went over to the waste-paper basket, as if routinely tidying a barely occupied room, and took out the handful of bits of paper. He saw one of them was written by George, and felt embarra.s.sed on his behalf that his guest should have made such a mess. It was hard to read . . . 'Veins', it seemed to say, if that was how you spelt it: 'Viens.' The poetry notebook, that Jonah had been told never to touch, still lay within reach, on the bedside table. Later, he thought, he almost certainly would have a look at it.

'I see he's made himself at home,' said Veronica from the door, and her competent tone cheered Jonah up. 'Yes, Cook said he'll make a mess but he'll give you ten shillings could be a guinea if you're lucky.'

'I expect so,' said Jonah, as though used to such treatment, stuffing the bits of paper awkwardly into his trouser pocket. Then he couldn't help smiling. 'Cook said that?'

Veronica plucked the pillows off the bed. 'Well, he's an aristocrat,' she said, with the air of someone who'd seen a few. 'If they make a mess they can pay for it.' She pulled the rucked bottom sheet tight and looked at it with a raised eyebrow and a strange twist of the mouth. 'Well, Jonah, look what I see.'

'Oh yes . . .' said Jonah.

'Your gentleman's had a mission.'

'Oh,' said Jonah, with the same look of suppressed confusion.

Veronica glanced at him shrewdly but not unkindly. 'You don't know what that is, do you? A nocturnal mission, they call it. It's something the young gentlemen are very much p.r.o.ne to.' She tugged off the sheet with surprising strength, the mattress shuddering as it came free. 'There you are, smell it, you can always tell.'

'No, I won't!' said Jonah, feeling this wasn't right, and colouring up at the sudden connection it made with a worry of his own.

'Well, you'll know all about it soon enough, my dear,' said Veronica, who had just taken on in Jonah's mind the character of someone alarmingly older and rather wicked. 'Ah! Don't you worry. You should see Mr Hubert's. Have to change his sheets two or three times a week. Mrs S. knows I mean, she didn't say anything exactly, she just said, "Any marks or stains, Veronica, kindly change the boys' sheets." It's a fact of nature, my dear, I'm afraid.'

Jonah busied himself picking up and folding clothes, unsure if the items that had been worn should be put back in the wardrobe or politely hidden somewhere else until Cecil left and they could be packed again; he couldn't ask Veronica anything while her upsetting little speech was still burning his ears. Here was the cast-off dress-shirt from last night, a grey smear across its stiff white front, cigar ash perhaps, and the beautiful singlet and drawers, fine as ladies' wear, now thoughtlessly stained in ways he wouldn't be able to look into until later, when he was by himself. He took the wash-basin out of the room and across the landing and emptied it carefully into the lavatory. A thousand tiny bristles in a sc.u.m of soap still clung to the curved surface, and he stared at them, as he did at everything of Cecil's, with an awful mixture of worry and pride.

Later he went out to the privy, and in the grey light through the frosted-gla.s.s square in the door he took out the rubbish from his pocket and sat turning it over, turning it round and reading the crossed-out words on it. He had a clear sense of giving way to 'idle curiosity', which was something Cook was very censorious about. The ripe collective stink beneath him, thinly smothered with c.o.ke ash from the kitchen, made his actions feel more furtive and wicked. He wasn't quite sure even why he was doing it. The gentlemen's talk was different from normal talk, and George was different too, now his friend was here . . . 'A hammock in the shade', Jonah made out. 'A larch tree at your head and at your feet a p.u.s.s.y willow.' He was slow to make the connection with anything he knew, and it was only when he'd read a bit more that the uneasy recognition dawned on him. Mr Cecil was writing about their own hammock, which Jonah himself had helped Mr Hubert to sling up at the start of the summer. He wondered what he was going to say about it. 'A birch tree at your feet, And overhead a weeping willow' he couldn't make up his mind! Then written up the edge of the page, 'As wood-lice chew willows, So do mites bite pillows!' this was crossed out, with a wavy line. The muddled worry that he was saying something shocking, that there might be mites in the bedding here, in Mrs Sawle's best goose pillows, took a moment to rise and fade. He remembered it was poetry, but wasn't sure if that made it more or less likely to be true. Another piece of paper had been torn in half, and he held the two edges together, wondering if Wilkes ever did anything like this, when he emptied his master's waste-paper basket.