The Stranger's Child Part 9

'Oh, Mummy . . .' said Wilfrid, transfixed with anxious excitement.

'Come on!' said Corinna; and they pelted down the three bright turns of polished oak, Wilfrid losing his footing on the last corner and b.u.mping down very fast over several steps on his hip, his bottom. Daphne tensed herself, with a touch of annoyance, but now he was limping across the hall and round the table (looking just like his father), and by the time he started self-righteously to wail he was already distracted by the need to do the next thing.

Wilkes appeared, with the new Scottish boy, and Daphne let them go ahead and tackle the car for a minute while she watched from the porch. Awful to admit, but her pleasure at seeing her mother again was a touch defensive: she was thinking of the things her husband would say about her after she'd gone. Wilkes deferred to Freda very properly and smilingly, with his usual intuitive sense of what a guest might need. To Daphne herself she seemed an attractive figure, pretty, flushed, in a new blue dress well above the ankle and a fashionable little hat, with her own anxieties about the visit peeping out very touchingly. The handsome boy was helping Clara Kalbeck, a tactfully physical business: she came over the gravel slowly and determinedly, swathed in black, on two sticks, following Freda like her own old age.

2.

Wilfrid glanced across at his sister, and then put his eye back to the c.h.i.n.k between the shutters. His leg was burning, and his heart was thumping, but he still hoped to do it right. He saw Robbie come in to the house with the suitcases he leant forward to watch him and nudged the door open with his cheek. 'Not till I say,' said Corinna. Robbie looked up and gave them a wink.

'I know,' muttered Wilfrid, and peered at her in the shadows with a mixture of awe and annoyance. The others seemed stuck in the porch, in endless adult talk. He could tell they were talking nonsense. He wanted to shout out at once, and he was also quite scared, as Corinna had said. The weekend loomed above him, with its shadowy guests and challenges. More people were coming tomorrow Uncle George and Aunt Madeleine, he knew, and a man from London called Uncle Sebby. They would all be talking and talking, but at some point they would have to stop and Corinna would play the piano and Wilfrid would do his dance. He felt hollow with worry and excitement. When a fire was lit in the hall, this little cave-like pa.s.sage was warm and stuffy, but today it smelt of cold stone. He was glad he had someone with him. At last Granny Sawle stepped in through the front door, and just for a second she glanced at the fireplace, with a dead look, so that Wilfrid knew she was expecting the surprise though somehow this didn't spoil it, in a way it made it better, and as soon as she'd dutifully turned her back he flung open his shutters and shouted, 'h.e.l.lo, Granny '

'Not yet!' wailed Corinna. 'You've got it wrong, Wilfrid,' but Granny had spun round already, a hand pressed to her heart.

'Oh!' she said, 'oh!' and so Corinna pushed open her shutters too and shouted the correct announcement, which was, 'Welcome to Corley Court, Granny Sawle and Mrs Kalbeck!' with Wilfrid in hilarious unison, riding roughshod over his own mistake, and even though Mrs Kalbeck hadn't yet made it into the house.

'It's too amazing!' said Granny. 'The very walls have voices.' Wilfrid giggled in delight. 'Ah, Dudley, dear' now his father had come in, and the dog barking. She raised her voice 'This ancient fireplace has miraculous properties!'

'Rubbish, Rubbish!' his father shouted, as the dog ran yelping and shivering towards the front door. 'Here, Rubbish, come here! Pipe down!'; though Rubbish as usual did no such thing, and wanted to give everyone a Corley welcome of his own.

'Quite magical!' Granny held on.

'Well, it won't be magical for much longer,' said his father, in his meaning voice, kissing her on the cheek. 'Come on out of there, will you!' though it wasn't clear now if he was shouting at the children or the dog.

'Wilfrid messed it up,' said Corinna in a further announcement, as Mrs Kalbeck leant in through the front door, on one stick after the other, clearly alarmed as Rubbish leapt up and waltzed with her for a moment with his front paws on her tummy she took two panting steps backwards, and the dog dropped down and sniffed excitedly round her legs, her round black shoes. After that it took a while for her to see where the young girl's voice was coming from.

'Frau Kalbeck, marvellous to see you again,' said Dudley, limping quickly but very heavily across to her, so that he seemed to be playing with her, aping her or just joining in, you couldn't tell. 'Please ignore my children.'

'Oh, but darling,' said their mother, 'the children have asked to show the guests up to their rooms.'

Dudley swung round with what they called the 'mad glint'. The mood thickened, in a familiar way. But he seemed to let them off by saying simply, 'Oh, the little dears.'

Mrs Kalbeck was awfully slow on the stairs. Wilfrid watched the rubber tip of each stick as it felt for its purchase on the shiny oak. 'It is very dangerous,' he a.s.sured her. 'I've fallen down here myself.' Being responsible for her, he found her interesting as well as frightening. He bobbed up and down the stairs beside her, encouraging and a.s.sessing her much slower progress. Corinna and Granny Sawle had gone on ahead, and he was worried, as always, about being late, and about what his father would say. 'This house is Victorian,' he explained.

Mrs Kalbeck chuckled amongst her sighs, and looked him in the face, levelly but sweetly. 'And so am I, my dear,' she said, in her precise German voice, her large grey eyes casting a kind of spell on him.

'Do you like it then?' he said.

'This marvellous old house?' she said gaily, but peering past him up the polished stairs with anxious blankness.

'My father can't warm to it,' said Wilfrid. 'He's going to change it all.'

'Well,' she said disappointingly, 'if that's what he wants to do.'

Mrs Kalbeck had been put in the Yellow Room, at the far end of the house, and Wilfrid went a step or two ahead of her along the broad strip of carpet on the landing. They pa.s.sed the open door of Granny Sawle's room, where Corinna had already been given a present, a bright red scarf which she was looking at in the mirror. It was a cheerful irresistible room, and Wilfrid started to go into it, but then did resist, and walked on. The next door on the other side was his parents' bedroom. 'I'm afraid you're not allowed in that room,' he said, 'unless my parents ask you to go in, of course.' He was embarra.s.sed that he didn't exactly know Mrs Cow's name; though at the same time he enjoyed thinking of her by her rude name. He didn't want to get too close to her black dress, and her smell, white flowers mixed up with something sour and unhappy. 'Mrs Ka . . .' he said tentatively.

'Yes, Wilfrid.'

'My name's not Vilfrid, you know, Mrs Ka . . . !'

The old lady stopped and pursed her lips obediently. 'Wilfrid,' she said, and coloured a little, which confused Wilfrid too for a moment. He looked away. 'You were saying, Wilfrid, my dear . . . ?' But of course he couldn't say. He danced on, down the long sunlit landing, leaving her to catch up.

The door of the Yellow Room was open, and the maid Sarah, not one of his favourites, was standing over Mrs Kalbeck's old blue suitcase, going through its contents with a slightly comic expression. When Mrs Kalbeck saw her, she lurched forward, almost fell as a rug slid away under her stick. 'Oh, I can do that,' she said. 'Let me do that!'

'It's no trouble, madam,' said Sarah, smiling coolly.

Mrs Kalbeck sat down heavily on the dressing-table stool, panting with indecision, though there was nothing she could do. 'Those old things . . .' she said, and looked quickly from the maid to Wilfrid, hoping he at least hadn't seen them, and then back again, as they were carried ceremoniously towards an open wardrobe.

'Well, goodbye,' said Wilfrid, and withdrew from the room as if not expecting to meet her again.

On the landing, by himself, he couldn't shake off the feeling that he should have said something. He trailed his fingers along the spines of the books in the bookcase as he pa.s.sed, producing a low steady ripple. He covered his unease with a kind of insouciance, though no one was watching. He'd done what he'd been told, he'd been extremely kind to Mrs Cow, but his worry was more wounding and obscure: that he'd been told to do it by someone who knew it was wrong, and yet pretended it wasn't. Three toes on his father's left foot had been blown off by a German sh.e.l.l, and the man he had learned to call Uncle Cecil was a cold white statue in the chapel downstairs, because of a German sniper with a gun. Wilfrid ran down the corridor, in momentary freedom from any kind of adult, his fear of being late overruled by a blind desire to hide ran past his grandmother's room and round the corner, till he got to the linen-room, and went in, and closed the door.

3.

'Have a drink, Duffel,' said Dudley genially, rather as if she were another guest.

'We're having Manhattans,' said Mrs Riley.

'Oh . . .' said Daphne, not quite looking at either of them, but crossing the room with a good-tempered expression. She still felt distinctly odd, like the subject of an experiment, whenever she came into the 'new' drawing-room; and having Mrs Riley herself in the room only made her feel odder. 'Should we wait for Mother and Clara?'

'Oh, I don't know . . .' said Dudley. 'Eva looked thirsty.'

Mrs Riley gave her quick smoky laugh. 'How do you know Mrs . . . um ?' she said.

'Mrs Kalbeck? She was our neighbour in Middles.e.x,' said Daphne, making a moody survey of the bottles on the tray; and though she loved Manhattans, and had loved Manhattan itself, when they'd gone there for Dudley's book, she set about mixing herself a gin and Dubonnet.

Mrs Riley said, 'She seems rather . . . um . . .' making a game of her own malice.

'Yes, she's a dear,' said Daphne.

'She's certainly an enormous a.s.set at a house party,' said Dudley.

Daphne gave a pinched smile and said, 'Poor Clara had a very hard war,' which was what her mother often said in her friend's defence, and now sounded almost as satirical as Dudley's previous remark. She'd never been fond of Clara, but she pitied her, and since they both had brothers who'd been killed in the War, felt a certain kinship with her.

'Just wait till she starts singing the Ride of the Valkyries,' Dudley said.

'Oh, does she do that,' said Mrs Riley.

'Well, she loves Wagner,' said Daphne. 'You know she took my mother to Bayreuth before the War.'

'Poor thing . . .' said Mrs Riley.

'She's never quite recovered,' said Dudley in a tactful tone, 'has she, Duffel, your mother, really?'

Mrs Riley chuckled again, and now Daphne looked at her: yes, that was how she chuckled, head back an inch, upper lip spread downwards, a huff of cigarette-smoke: a more or less tolerant gesture as much as a laugh.

'I don't rightly know,' said Daphne, frowning, but seeing the point of keeping her husband in a good humour. A certain amount of baiting of the Sawles would have to be allowed this weekend. She came over with her drink, and dropped into one of the low grey armchairs with a trace of a smirk at its continuing novelty. She thought she'd never seen anything so short, for evening wear, as Eva Riley's dress, only just on the knee when she sat, or indeed anything so long as her slithering red necklace, doubtless also of her own design. Well, her odd flat body was made for fashion, or at least for these fashions; and her sharp little face, not pretty, really, but made up as if it were, in red, white and black like a Chinese doll. Designers, it seemed, were never off duty. Curled across the corner of a sofa, her red necklace slinking over the grey cushions, Mrs Riley was a sort of advertis.e.m.e.nt for her room; or perhaps the room was an advertis.e.m.e.nt for her. 'I know this weekend has been consecrated to Cecil,' Daphne said, 'but actually I'm glad that Clara was persuaded to come. She has no one, really, except my mother. It will mean so much to her. Poor dear, you know she hasn't even got electricity.'

Dudley snorted delightedly at this. 'She'll revel in the electrical fixtures here,' he said.

Daphne smiled, as if trying not to, while the quick unmeaning use of the word revel lodged and sank in her, a momentary regret; she went on, 'It's really rather a hovel she lives in, I mean clean of course, but so tiny and dark. It's just down the hill from where my mother used to live.' Still, she knew she had been right to tell Revel not to come.

'And where you grew up, Duffel,' said Dudley, as if his wife were getting airs. 'The famous "Two Acres".'

'Oh, yes,' said Mrs Riley. 'What was it . . . ? "Two blessed acres of English ground!" '

'Indeed!' said Dudley.

'I suppose that was Cecil's most famous poem, wasn't it?' said Mrs Riley.

'I'm not sure,' said Daphne, with another little frown. There was perhaps something rea.s.suring after all about Eva Riley's long bare legs. A clever woman aiming to seduce a rich man right under his wife's nose would surely wear something more discreet, and dissembling. Daphne looked away, and out through the window at the garden already losing colour in the early spring evening. At the top of the central section of each window the Valance coat of arms appeared, with the motto beneath it on a folded strip in Gothic letters. The gaudy little shields looked cheerfully at odds with the cold modernity of the room.

Dudley sipped piously at his c.o.c.ktail, and said, 'I can't help feeling slightly mortified that my brother Cecil, heir to a baronetcy and three thousand acres, not to mention one of the ugliest houses in the south of England, should be best remembered for his ode to a suburban garden.'

'Well,' said Daphne stoutly, and not for the first time, 'it was quite a lovely garden. I hope you're not going to say things like that to Sebby Stokes.' She watched Mrs Riley's heavy-lidded smile indulge them both. 'Or indeed to my poor mother. She's very proud of that poem. Besides Cecil wrote far more poems about Corley, ma.s.ses of them, as you well know.'

'Castle of exotic dreams,' said Dudley, in an absurd Thespian tone, 'mirrored in enamelled streams . . .' but sounding in fact quite like Cecil's 'poetry voice'.

'I'm sure even Cecil never wrote anything so awful as that,' said Daphne. And Dudley, excited by mockery of anything that others held dear, grinned widely at Eva Riley, showing her, like a flash of nakedness, his glistening dog-teeth. Mrs Riley said, very smoothly, jabbing her cigarette out in the ashtray, 'I'm surprised your mother didn't marry again.'

'The General, dear G.o.d!' said Dudley.

'No . . . Lady Valance's mother,' said Eva Riley.

'It never seemed to come up, somehow . . . I'm not sure she'd have wanted it,' said Daphne, suppressing, in a kind of ruffled dignity, her own uncomfortable thoughts on the subject.

'She's a pretty little thing. And she must have been widowed rather young.'

'Yes yes, she was,' said Daphne, absently but firmly; and looked to Dudley to change the subject. He lit a cigarette, and steadied a heavy silver ashtray on the arm of his chair. It was one of over a hundred items that he had had stamped on the bottom: Stolen from Corley Court. Up in his dressing-room he kept a pewter mug of no great value with Stolen from Hepton Castle invitingly engraved on its underside, and he had followed the practice back at Corley, overseeing the work himself with fierce determination.

'When's the Stoker getting here?' he said, after a bit.

'Oh, not till quite late, not till after dinner,' said Daphne.

'I expect he's got some extremely important business to attend to,' said Dudley.

'There's some important meeting, something about the miners, you know,' said Daphne.

'You don't know Sebastian Stokes,' Dudley told Mrs Riley. 'He combines great literary sensitivity with a keen political mind.'

'Well, of course I've heard of him,' said Mrs Riley, rather cautiously. In Dudley's talk candour marched so closely with satire that the uninitiated could often only stare and laugh uncertainly at his p.r.o.nouncements. Now Mrs Riley leant forward to take a new cigarette from the malachite box on the low table.

'You don't need to lose any sleep about the miners with Stokes in charge,' said Dudley.

'I'm sleeping like a top as it is,' she said pertly, fiddling with a match.

Daphne took a warming sip of her gin and thought what she could say about the poor miners, if there had been any point to it at all. She said, 'I think it's rather marvellous of him to do all this about Cecil when the Prime Minister needs him in London.'

'But he idolized Cecil,' said Dudley. 'He wrote his obituary in The Times, you know.'

'Oh, really . . . ?' said Mrs Riley, as if she'd read it and wondered.

'He did it to please the General, but it came from the heart. A soldier . . . a scholar . . . a poet . . . etc., etc., etc. . . . etc. . . . and a gentleman!' Dudley knocked back his drink in a sudden alarming flourish. 'It was a wonderful send-off; though of course largely unrecognizable to anyone who'd really known my brother Cecil.'

'So he didn't really know him,' said Mrs Riley, still treading warily, but clearly enjoying the treacherous turn of the talk.

'Oh, they met a few times. One of Cecil's b.u.g.g.e.r friends had him down to Cambridge, and they went in a punt and Cecil read him a sonnet, you know, and the Stoker was completely bowled over and got it put in some magazine. And Cecil wrote him some high-flown letters that he put in The Times later on, when he was dead . . .' Dudley seemed to run down, and sat gazing, with eyebrows lightly raised, as if at the unthinkable tedium of it all.

'I see . . .' said Mrs Riley, with a coy smirk, and then looked across at Daphne. 'I don't suppose you ever knew Cecil, Lady Valance?' she said.

'Me, oh good lord yes!' said Daphne. 'In fact I knew him long before I met Dud-' but at that moment the door was opened by Wilkes and her mother came in, hesitantly it seemed, since she was waiting for her friend, on her two slow sticks, to cross the hall, and Clara herself was in distracted conversation with Dudley's mother, who came in briskly just behind her.

'My husband, you could fairly say, disliked music,' said Louisa Valance. 'It wasn't that he hated it, you understand. He was in many ways an unduly sensitive man. Music made him sad.'

'Music is sad, yes,' said Clara, looking vaguely hara.s.sed. 'But also, I think-'

'Come in, come and sit,' said Daphne, with a rescuing smile at Clara's shabby sparkle, the old black evening dress tight under the arms, the old black evening bag, that had been to the opera long before the War, swinging around the stick in her left hand as she thrust forward into the room. The Scottish boy, handsome as a singer himself in his breeches and evening coat, brought forward a higher chair for her, and propped her sticks by it once she'd sat down. Eva and Dudley seemed lightly mesmerized by the sticks, and gazed at them as if at rude survivals from a culture they thought they had swept away. The boy hovered discreetly, smiled and acted with proper impersonal charm. He was the first appointment Wilkes had made under Daphne's rule at Corley, and in some incoherent and almost romantic way she thought of him as her own.

'Sebastian hasn't arrived?' said Louisa.

'Not yet,' said Daphne. 'Not till after dinner.'

'We have so much to talk about,' said Louisa, with buoyant impatience.

'Ah, Mamma . . .' said Dudley, coming towards her as if to kiss her, but stopping a few feet off with a wide grin.

'Good evening, my dear. You knew I was coming in.'

'Well, I hoped so, Mamma, of course. Now what would you like to drink?'

'I think a lemonade. It's quite spring-like today!'

'Isn't it,' said Dudley. 'Let's celebrate.'