The Stranger's Child Part 7

'The Dom Juan of Moliere,' said Cecil, as if it was something they all knew well. Daphne knew enough to know what it was about a lady's man a womanizer, in fact! 'I'm taking Sganarelle rather a fine part, though of course a great deal to learn.'

'It's in French, you know,' said George, which if it was meant to put his sister off was fairly effective.

'I see,' said Daphne. 'I'm not sure I'd be able to follow a whole play in French.' She hardly thought it worth it just to watch Cecil prancing around, with a cloak and sword, probably. But at once she had a pang at the thought of missing it.

'How marvellous,' said her mother graciously, excusing herself as well.

A little later Cecil said to George, as if the others weren't there, 'I'll have to get ahead with my paper on Havelock this week,' so that Daphne had a clear sense that he had already left them, might even have preferred to go today, after lunch.

When supper was over, George was sent round to the Cosgroves' on some mission he clearly thought beneath him, Hubert claimed he had letters to write, and their mother, trailing into the drawing-room, paused, raised a finger, and went out again. Cecil and Daphne were left for a minute on the hearth-rug. Daphne saw this as the threshold to the grownup end of the evening, with social requirements she wasn't quite sure of.

'I don't suppose you want to hear the gramophone,' she said. She had a sense of opportunity, made more incoherent by her new fear of boring Cecil.

'Not specially,' he said, casually but kindly, with a smile she hadn't seen before, a candid gape that slightly startled her, and was probably a Cambridge thing: it was hard to work out, but at Cambridge it seemed it was almost a sign of respect to be disrespectful, to say just what you felt at any time. Well, candour was their watchword! Cecil was fingering in his waistcoat pocket, then brought out his little clipper. He said, 'I wonder if Miss Sawle would care to keep me company while I enjoy my cigar?'

'Oh, yes!' said Daphne. 'Oh, I'll get a coat,' and she ran to the cloakroom under the stairs. It was such an exciting idea that there were bound to be strenuous arguments against it. But that was part of Cecil's atmosphere and appeal. She came back, not with her own dull coat, but with one of George's old tweed jackets round her shoulders. She liked the air of improvisation, a man's jacket seemed to show she was up for a lark, and to carry some chivalrous hint of her need for protection. 'It's a little bit smelly,' she said; though she hardly imagined that would worry Cecil.

'Well, I'm going to make a smell too.'

'Well, quite.'

'I may be being too sensitive,' said Cecil, glancing towards the door. 'The General's so down on smoke, at home we all sneak off to the smoking-room. She's made it into quite a guilty pleasure.'

'No, no,' said Daphne.

Cecil drew out a cigar case from a surprising pocket. 'I've got two, if you're tempted to try again,' he said, and uncapped the stiff leather sheath to show her the tops of them. They made her think of soldiers, or the cartridges in Hubert's rifle. She saw it might be wittier not to answer, and he seemed amused by her condescending smile. She knew she should call to her mother, but sighed just to think of the objections, and followed Cecil out into the garden, leaving the french window ajar.

It was quite a bit colder than last night, though she was not going to mention it. She said, 'Cecil, I think I shall always a.s.sociate In Memoriam with you!'

'Well . . .' Cecil was fussing with a lighted match and making impatient appreciative noises as he drew on the cigar. Then the newly conjured smoke was all around them.

'Shall we sit here?'

'Let's walk on,' said Cecil, moving her along past the windows of the sitting-room. 'We'll see what the stars are up to, shall we?'

'All right,' said Daphne, and as he crooked his arm she reached up to slip her hand through it. As well as everything else, there was something entirely proper about Cecil; he perhaps wasn't even aware of her happy sense of play-acting, her toss of the head in the dark as she took his arm. Then George's jacket, merely slung round her shoulders, slipped off.

'Here, let me help you.' In the gloom on the edge of the lawn Cecil held the coat and patted her shoulders when she'd got it on.

'I must look like a tramp,' she said, her hands covered by the sleeves, silky linings cold for a moment on bare arms, the weight and smell of the thing hugged round her.

'Do it up,' said Cecil, his cigar between his teeth. And again his large hands seemed to take care of her, to be larger and more capable than ever. Then he offered his arm once more.

They went on a few leisurely paces, Daphne happily self-conscious, Cecil a touch reserved, though she wasn't sure of his face, and perhaps he was merely working out the stars. She wondered if he was thinking of the hammock again and was embarra.s.sed to think of it herself after what had happened. She knew he'd had three or four gla.s.ses of wine; decisions would come easily to him, though to a sober person they might seem whimsical and delayed. She looked up, above the silhouette of the tree-tops. 'I fear it's too cloudy tonight, Cecil,' she said.

Cecil huffed out another cloud of rich, sour smoke, and cackled vaguely. 'Were you in the woods for long this afternoon?' he said.

'This afternoon, oh, not really.'

'You didn't get much of a walk.'

'Well, when I met you I came home, of course.'

She felt him press her arm more tightly against his side, and the beautiful grown-up presence of Cecil, his height and his muscular warmth under evening dress, and even his voice, which she'd once thought so cutting and grand, slightly turned her head. 'It must have been someone else we saw earlier on. I said to Georgie, "Isn't that Daph?" but by the time he looked whoever it was had gone.'

'Well, it could have been. Did you call?'

'You know, I wasn't sure.'

'Lots of people do walk there.'

'Of course,' said Cecil. 'Anyway, you didn't see us.'

Daphne felt again she was missing something, but was carried along by the excitement of making conversation, and squeezed his arm rea.s.suringly. 'I would have said h.e.l.lo if I had.'

'I thought you would.'

'To be honest, it's George. He doesn't want me tagging along.'

Cecil made a low disparaging murmur, and they turned round. 'You can see a bit better now,' he said. 'There's the famous rockery!'

'I know . . .' She felt he was still rather mocking the rockery, and it emboldened her. 'Cecil,' she said, 'when may I come to Corley?'

'Mm . . . ? To Corley?' it was as though he'd never heard of such a place, and certainly had no memory of his earlier invitation. Then he laughed. 'My dear girl, whenever you like.'

'Oh . . . thank you.'

'Whenever you like . . .' he said again, expanding into his decision in a tone which seemed oddly to undermine it. 'I suppose it won't be till the Christmas vac now, will it, probably.'

This seemed as good as never to Daphne. 'No, I suppose.'

'Get Georgie to bring you over.'

They moved on, towards the dark outline of the rockery, which at night might truly have been taken for a greater and more distant outcrop. Daphne said, huskily casual, 'I imagine I could come by myself.'

'Would your mother allow that?'

'I am quite grown up, you know,' said Daphne.

Cecil said nothing. He pressed forward with his usual confidence; she thought she should say, 'There's a step there' she half-yelled it as he stumbled and lurched down hard on his right leg, caught himself but pulled her with him, and then lurched again to save her and grip her.

'Oh Christ, are you all right?'

'I'm fine . . . !' wincing where he'd trodden heavily on the edge of her foot.

'Whenever we go out, we seem to end up taking a tumble, don't we!'

'I know!'

'And now I've lost my dratted cigar.'

They were face to face, her heart still lively from the shock, and he put his arms round her waist and pulled her against him, so that she had to turn her cheek to his cold lapel. He moved a hand up and down on her back, over the warm tweed of George's jacket. 'Blasted steps . . .' he said.

'I'm all right,' said Daphne. She rather dreaded looking at her shoe, when they got in, but Cecil was at a disadvantage, and she knew at once that he could never be blamed for anything. She said quietly, 'I can't think how those steps got there;' then went one better, 'Those b.l.o.o.d.y steps!'

Cecil gave a sigh of a laugh across her hair. 'Oh child, child . . .' he said, with a softness and a sadness she had never heard before, even from her mother. 'What are we going to do?'

Daphne eased herself a fraction freer. She wanted to play her part, felt the privilege of Cecil's attention, it was awfully nice being held so tightly by him, but there was something in his tone that worried her. 'Well, I suppose you're going to have to pack.'

'Hah . . .' said Cecil, again with a strange despairing note, like his poetry voice.

'I think . . . shall we go back in?'

'Yes, yes,' he said. 'Can you keep a secret, Daph?'

'As a rule,' said Daphne.

'Let's keep this a secret.'

'All right.' She wasn't sure if she understood. Falling over a step wasn't much of a secret, but Cecil was clearly embarra.s.sed by it.

His hands relaxed slightly, and travelled down almost to her bottom as he smiled and murmured, 'You know, it's been splendid getting to know you.'

'Oh . . . well . . .' she said, somehow paralysed by his hands. 'That's what we're all saying about you. There's never been anything like it!'

He bent his head and kissed her on the forehead, like sending her to bed, but then the tip of his nose moved down her cheek and he kissed her beside her mouth, in his cigar breath, and then, completely without expression, on her lips. 'There,' he said.

'Cecil, don't be silly,' she said, 'you've been drinking,' and he tilted his face sideways and pushed his open mouth over hers, and worked his tongue against her teeth in a quite idiotic and unpleasant way. She pushed herself half-free of him; she was alarmed but kept her composure, even laughed rather sarcastically.

'You don't mind if I kiss you?' said Cecil dreamily.

'I don't call that kissing, Cecil!' she said.

'Mm . . . ?' said Cecil. 'What would you call kissing, then, Daphne?' his tone dopy and mocking, slightly annoyed, tugging her back into his grasp like a dancer with a mere flourish of his suddenly inescapable strength. 'More something like this?' and he started again, just darting his lips all over her face, like a tormenting game, allowing her to dodge and turn her head a little but holding her so tightly about the waist that she was quite hurt by the hard shape of the cigar case in his trouser pocket thrusting against her stomach. She found she was giggling, in quick shallow breaths, and before she could help it they'd turned into hot little sobs, and then a hushed wail of childlike surrender and failure.

'h.e.l.lo . . . ?' It was George, back from the Cosgroves', coming to look for them, surely? Childish timid relief mixed almost at once with pride. But no, it was Huey, in a funny voice, apologetic but actually rather cross. 'I say . . .'

Cecil loosened his grip, sighed acceptingly, though the little sn.i.g.g.e.r he gave her seemed to say he hadn't given up. He looked round, over the top of the bushes, to see who it was, perhaps he too thought it was George, and again she felt the special subject of her own secret with Cecil. They both had to be careful, she'd been frightened by him, but she still had a sense that he would know what to do. 'We're over here,' she said, her voice clotted with crying.

'Are you all right?'

'I fell down the blasted step,' said Cecil in a drawl. 'I seem to have trodden on your sister.'

Hubert stood there, in silhouette, conveying an indignant but undecided impression. 'Can you walk?' he said, very distinctly, as though speaking over the telephone.

'Of course I can walk, we're just coming in.'

'It's really a bit dark for rambling round,' Hubert said.

'That was the point,' said Cecil. 'We were studying the stars.'

Hubert peered upwards doubtfully. 'It's a bit cloudy for that,' he said, and turned back to the house.

Daphne lay first on one side, then on the other side, tired out by her thoughts and kept alert by them too. Her right foot throbbed impressively in evidence, and was already bruising.

Sometimes she drifted sideways into near-unconsciousness, but woke at once with a sprint of the heart at the thought of Cecil's closeness, his strength and his breath. His body was exceptionally hard, his breath warm, moist and bitter.

Cecil was drunk, of course, she'd seen two bottles of wine emptied at dinner, the hock it was, with the black German lettering. Daphne knew what drink did to people, and after Friday night, and her own tipsy episode with the ginger brandy, she knew something more about the strange freedoms of drinkers. They were intriguing, but unnecessary, and the truth was they were generally somewhat revolting. Afterwards one didn't talk about them, out of the vague sense of shame that attached to them. One sobered up. Cecil would surely have a headache in the morning, but he would get over it. Her mother was often absurd at bedtime, but perfectly sensible again by breakfast. It would probably be a mistake to make too much of it.

And yet the whole thing showed Cecil in a very poor light, or half-light . . . so much of their dealings had happened in the dark, and if she saw him at all it was by the glow of a cigar end or the faint glimmer of the suburban night. When he'd come he'd put them all on their mettle by his sheer distinction, his cutting voice, his cleverness and money. And now, as she rolled on to her other side in excited despair of ever sleeping, she wondered just what George would say if he were told the extraordinary unwholesome thing his friend had tried to do. And she went through it all in her mind again, in the order it had happened, to savour the shock of it properly.

Well, she wasn't naive, she knew perfectly well that the upper cla.s.ses could behave appallingly. Perhaps George should be told what his precious friend was really like. Though perhaps she would keep it to herself, with the choice then of bringing out the facts on some later occasion. It soon seemed more adult not to make a fuss. She started thinking about Lord Pettifer in The Silver Charger, and her mind chasing and confirming and losing the story in the vivid fragments of memory she wandered off through lighted rooms into the welcoming jabber of dreams but then almost grunted herself awake, and lurched at once into a seventh or eighth rehearsal of her own story, in the garden with Cecil Valance.

With each retelling, the story, with its kernel of scandal, made her heart race a fraction less, and its imagined impact on George, or her mother, or Olive Watkins, their fury and bewilderment, grew stronger in compensation. Daphne felt the warm flood of the story surge through her and grip her whole person; but each time the wave seemed a little weaker than the time before, and her reasonable relief at this gradual change was coloured with a tinge of indignation.

Or could that be what kissing was really about? It seemed more like some childish dare, to stick your tongue into someone else's mouth, and took a good deal of forbearance on their part, even if they liked you a lot. Alas there was no one she could ask. If she brought it up with her mother she would instantly grow suspicious. Could Hubert conceivably have kissed a woman like that? Maybe George, if he did have a girl, had had a go at it. She imagined asking him, and the secret fact of it having happened with his best friend made the idea slyly amusing.

What she was almost conscious of not thinking of was the way he had rubbed himself rhythmically against her. All her feelings were fixed on the easier, and after all rather comic, liberties of licking her mouth and feeling her bottom.

Later she found she had slept, and the dream she had just come out of kept its magic as she lay with open eyes in the deep grey dark. Then she thought she had been a silly child before. 'Child, child' he had called her, and that's what she was. She thought about what Cecil had actually said, how it had been so wonderful getting to know her, and she flopped on to her back and wondered quite coolly if he had fallen in love with her. She gazed at the shadowy zone of the ceiling, the first powdery gleam of light above the curtains, as a sort of image of her own innocence. What evidence was there? Cecil had a very particular way of looking at her, even when others were present, of holding her eye at moments in their talk, so that another unspoken conversation seemed also to be going on. She had never known such a thing before, the boldness and the absolute privateness as well. It was still rather awful that Cecil had gone behind George's back like that, but she felt a certain thrilled complacency at the choice he had secretly made. And of course he had to do it like this, his love had to be concealed, and it had to come out. There was something very touching as well as alarming in Cecil's pa.s.sion. Now she leapt forgivingly over the muddle in the garden, and thought of the life they would share together. Would he want to do that kind of thing again? Not when they were married, presumably. And another perspective of lighted s.p.a.ces opened before her: she saw herself sitting down to dinner beneath the jelly-mould domes, or anyway compartments, of Corley Court.

She slept unusually late, slept on with only a momentary murmur and swallow through the rustling and b.u.mping on the landing, the fact of voices downstairs; and when she at last came up into fuddled life her little clock said a quarter to nine. After that, and a further helpless three minutes of gaping sleep, she found she had attuned to something, to the loss of something she was amazed to find she had already grown used to, the noise of Cecil in the house. Of course he had gone! There was a thinness in the air that told her, in the tone of the morning, the texture of the servants' movements and fragments of talk. And all her plans for him were thwarted, the witty thing she was going to say to him, as he climbed into Horner's van . . . It would be weeks, perhaps months, before she saw him again. Moaning with a lover's pangs, as well as with a certain sulky relief at this tragic postponement, she thrust herself out of bed, and on to her instantly tender right foot.

In the thick of her solitary breakfast, with the maid looking in once a minute to see if she'd finished, there was George coming past the window, back home from the station and seeing Cecil off. He had a bleak, faraway look which annoyed her the moment she saw it and felt its meaning. It was a time of reckoning for him his guest, his first one ever, had left, and now the family could take him back and tell him, more or less, what they thought. He would be moody and delicate, unsure who to side with. And then she remembered her book. Oh, what had Cecil done with it? Had he written in it? Where had he put it? She was suddenly sick with anger at Jonah for packing it with Cecil's other books. Even now it would be trapped unbeknownst between other books in his suitcase, in a crowd of other cases on Harrow and Wealdstone station.

'Oh, Veronica,' she said.

'Sorry, miss!' said Veronica.

'No, not that,' said Daphne. 'Did you see, did Mr Valance leave anything for me, my autograph book, I mean?'

'Oh, no, miss.' And knotting her duster in a pretence of interest, 'Is that the one with the vicar in?'

'What . . . ?' said Daphne. 'Well, it has a number of important men in it.' She didn't quite trust Veronica, who was more or less her own age, and treated her more or less like a fool.

'I'll ask, miss, shall I?' Veronica said. But then George looked round the door, gave a rueful smile, and said, 'Cecil says goodbye.' He hovered there, feeling the atmosphere, seeming uncertain whether to share the subject of Cecil any further with his sister.

'I'm afraid I slept somewhat badly,' said Daphne, aware of her own adult tone. 'And then I must have overslept . . .'

'He was up fearfully early,' said George. 'You know Cecil!'

'Perhaps Mr George has got it, miss,' said Veronica.

'Oh, really, it doesn't matter,' said Daphne, and coloured at the disclosure of her private worry.

'Got what?' said George, with an anxious look of his own.

So Daphne had to say to him, 'I wondered if Cecil had found a chance to write in my little alb.u.m, that's all.'