The Stranger's Child

  ‘Say hello to Mrs Riley,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Riley,’ said the children, promptly but with no great warmth.

  ‘My dears . . .’ said Mrs Riley over her cocktail-glass.

  Wilfrid ran round politely to bow to Granny V as well, who said warily, ‘Look at you!’ as with a quick panting sound and the thwack of his tail against chairs and table-legs Rubbish bustled across the room from the open garden door and excitedly circled his master.

  ‘Oh, do we really want the dog in?’ said Daphne, with a flutter of panic as her mother raised her drink away from its thrusting nose and made a face at the gamy heat of its breath. She got up to grab it, but Dudley was growling indulgently and provokingly, ‘Oh, Wubbishy Wubbishy Wubbish!’ and had already produced from somewhere one of the bone-hard black biscuits that Rubbish was said to like, which after a bit of teasing he threw into the air – it went down in one. Clara was still nervous of the dog, and smiled keenly at it to suggest she was not. She hid her shyness in a bit of pantomime, stretching out a hand in childish reconciliation, but she had no biscuit, and Rubbish walked past as if he hadn’t seen her.

  Corinna had moved in a discreetly purposeful way towards the piano, and now perched on the edge of the stool, studying her father for the best moment to speak. ‘You’re not going to play for us, or anything, are you, old girl?’ said Dudley.

  ‘Oh, does she play?’ said Eva, with a sly spurt of smoke.

  ‘Play? She’s a perfect fiend at the piano,’ said Dudley. ‘Aren’t you, my darling?’ At which Corinna smiled uncertainly.

  ‘I’ll play for you tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘Good idea. Play for Uncle George,’ said Dudley, tired already of his own sarcasm, as well as the subject itself.

  ‘And Wilfie can do his dance,’ said Corinna, reminding her father of the terms of the deal.

  ‘Well exactly . . .’ said Dudley after a minute.

  Louisa, still rather fixed on Eva, said, ‘I imagine you might care for music, Mrs Riley?’

  Mrs Riley smiled at her to prepare her for her answer: ‘Oh, awfully – certain music, at least.’

  ‘What, Gounod and what have you?’

  ‘Not Gounod particularly, no . . .’

  ‘I should think one would draw the line at Gounod.’

  ‘Now Wilfie,’ said Dudley, with a loud cough, as if reproving him; but then went on, ‘have you heard about the Colonel and the Rat?’

  ‘No, Daddy,’ said Wilfrid softly, hardly daring to believe that a poem was starting, but perhaps apprehensive too about its subject.

  ‘Well . . .’ said Dudley. ‘The Colonel was there, with bristling hair, and a terrible air, of pain and despair.’

  Wilfrid laughed at this, or at least at the awful face his father had pulled to go with it; anything awful could be funny too. ‘Oh ducky,’ said Daphne, ‘is Daddy doing doggerel for you.’

  ‘It’s not doggerel, Duffel,’ said Dudley, tightly suppressing a snort at so much alliteration, ‘it’s called Skeltonics, it dates from the time of King Henry VIII. If you remember Skelton was the poet laureate.’

  ‘Oh, in that case,’ said Daphne.

  ‘Well, if you don’t want me to tell you a poem.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Daddy!’ said Wilfrid.

  ‘Your uncle Cecil was a famous poet, but what people tend not to know is that I have quite a talent that way myself.’

  Daphne glanced at Louisa, who had an unprovokable look, as though she found her son and her grandson equally beyond comprehension.

  ‘I know, Daddy,’ said Wilfrid, and stood yearningly by his father’s knee, almost as if he might be going to lay his hand on it.

  4

  After breakfast the next day Daphne appeared in the nursery, just as Mrs Copeland was getting the children ready for a walk: ‘No, Wilfrid, not those white trousers, you’ll be all over mud.’

  ‘Mud will be all over me, you mean, Nanny,’ he said.

  ‘Mother, we’re walking to Pritchett’s farm,’ said Corinna, with a stoical wince as Mrs Copeland pulled a band over her hair.

  ‘Don’t worry, Nanny,’ said Daphne, ‘I’ll take them myself. We’ve got photographers.’

  ‘Indeed, my lady!’ said Nanny, with a keen smile and a hint of pique, scanning her charges with a sharper eye. ‘Shall we be in the papers again, then?’

  ‘Well, we shall,’ Daphne wanted to say, ‘not you’, but she made do with, ‘It’s the Sketch, I think.’

  Mrs Copeland tugged a little harder at Corinna’s hair. ‘My sister in London sent Sir Dudley’s picture from the Daily Mail.’

  ‘I fear publicity is all a part of being a successful writer,’said Daphne, ‘these days! No, leave those trousers on, my duck – we’ll just be sitting about in the garden.’

  Wilfrid frowned at her bravely for a moment, but then turned and went to the window as if suddenly remembering something outside. ‘Wilfrid was promised to see the new foal,’ said Corinna, in a pitying, almost mocking voice, ‘and the little chicks in the incubator,’ but she was touched already by the strange contagion of grief, and when a wail went up from the window she started to crumple too, which was worse for her because of the loss of status. She didn’t make much noise, but she attended to her doll’s overnight bag with a swollen face, jamming in the parasol and the tiny red cardigan.

  ‘Oh, are you bringing Mavis, darling?’ said Daphne. Corinna nodded vigorously but didn’t risk speaking.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ said Nanny smugly.

  ‘Oh, Wilfie, don’t cry,’ said Daphne, picturing the new foal nuzzling its mother and then running off with a nervy sense of untested liberty; but she hardened herself: ‘You don’t want to look all blotchy in the paper.’

  ‘I don’t want to be in the paper,’ said Wilfrid tragically, his back still turned. Again, Daphne saw the sense of this, but she said,

  ‘My duck, what a thing to say. You’ll be famous. You’ll be there with Bonzo the Dog, think of that. All over England people will be asking themselves’ – here she ran over and snatched him up with a grunt and a slight stagger at his six-year-old weight – “Who is that lucky, lucky little boy?” ’

  But Wilfrid seemed to find that idea even more upsetting than the missed muddy walk.

  Out among the maze-like hedges and commas of lawn in the flower-garden, Daphne saw him brighten and perhaps forget. After half a minute his dragging sorrow had a skip in it, there was a glance of reconciliation, a further ten seconds of remembered sorrow, rather formal and conscious, and then the surely unselfconscious surrender to the game of the paths. Gravel, or flagged, or narrow strips of grass, the paths curled between hedges, flanked the long borders, or opened into circles that had nearly identical statues in them, and presented a further compass of decisions, on which the children rarely tried to agree. Now Corinna marched ahead, down the main grass walk that was flanked with clematis grown along chains, dipping and rising between tall posts – in a week or two it would be a blaze of white, like the route of a wedding. She clutched, not Mavis, but Mavis’s red leather reticule. Wilfie avoided the processional way – he cantered around to left and right, talking in an odd private voice, sometimes sounding furious with himself or with some imaginary friend or follower. ‘Come along, my darling, let’s see what those fish are up to,’ said Daphne.

  A pool of dumb goldfish struck her as a wan consolation for the hot breath and smells and squelch of a farmyard, and Wilfie himself, when they all arrived at the central pond, took a bit of encouraging to focus on it. ‘Can they all be under that leaf?’ said Daphne. The pool was ringed by a flagged path, and then four stone seats between high rose arches, thick with red and dark green leaves and only the tips of one or two buds as yet showing pink or white. Daphne sat down, with a passive conventional sense that it would make a good place for a photograph.

  ‘Mother, is Sebby coming here?’ said Corinna, setting her case on the bench between them.

  ‘I don’t know, darling,’ said Daphne, g
lancing round. ‘He’s talking to your father.’

  ‘What on earth is Uncle Sebby doing?’ said Wilfrid.

  ‘He’s not Uncle Sebby,’ said Corinna, with a giggle.

  ‘No, ducky, he’s not . . .’ Poor Wilfie was haunted and puzzled by phantom uncles. Uncle Cecil at least was in the house, in a highly idealized marmoreal form, and was often invoked, but Uncle Hubert was mentioned so rarely that he barely existed for him – she wasn’t sure that he had ever even seen his picture. All he had to go on, for uncles, was an occasional appearance by Uncle George, with his long words. When most uncles no longer existed, it was natural to co-opt one or two who did.

  ‘Well, you see,’ said Daphne, ‘it’s been decided that there’s going to be a book of all Uncle Cecil’s poems, and Sebby’s come down to talk to your father about it, and Granny V, and well, talk to everybody really.’

  ‘Why?’ said Wilfrid.

  ‘Well . . . there’s to be a memoir, you know . . . the story of Uncle Cecil’s life, and Granny V wants Sebby to write it. So he needs to talk to all the people who knew him.’

  Wilfrid said nothing, and started on a game, and a minute later, staring into the pond, said, ‘A memoir . . . !’ under his breath, as if they all knew it was a mad idea.

  ‘Poor Uncle Cecil,’ said Corinna, in one of her calculated turns of piety. ‘What a great man he was!’

  ‘Oh . . . well . . .’ said Daphne.

  ‘And so handsome.’

  ‘No, he was,’ Daphne allowed.

  ‘Was he more handsome than Daddy, would you say?’

  ‘He had enormous hands,’ said Daphne, looking round at the first bark of the dog, which must mean Dudley, and everyone coming.

  ‘Oh, Mother!’

  ‘He was a great climber, you know. Always clambering up the Dolomites or somewhere.’

  ‘What’s the Dolomites?’ said Wilfrid, stirring the fishpond tentatively with a short stick.

  ‘It’s mountains,’ said Corinna, as Rubbish busied in through the rose arch behind them, went rather fast round half the circle, and came back, nose low and lively over the flagstones, scruffy grey tail flickering. Wilfrid pointed his wet stick bravely at him and Corinna commanded, ‘Rubbish!’ but Rubbish only gave them a perfunctory sniff; it was almost hurtful to the children how little they counted for in the dog’s stark system of command and reward, though a relief too, of course. ‘Bad dog!’ said Wilfrid. Sometimes Rubbish explored by himself, sometimes he joined you flatteringly for the outset of a walk and then doubled off on business of his own, but mainly he was Dudley’s running herald, hounded himself by his own shouted name. Daphne waited for the shouts, ignoring the dog, and rather disliking it; but no shouts came and in a minute Rubbish, oddly polite, stepping forward and stopping, gave a long cajoling whine, and when she looked round there was Revel under the arch.

  He made a little picture of himself, in its frame. ‘My dear,’ said Daphne, ‘you made it!’ as though she’d encouraged him rather than put him off. She felt she put a hint of warning in her welcome, in the look she gave him, which searched his charming sharp little face for signs of distress. He almost ignored her, bit his lip in mock-penitence, while his dark eyes went from one child to the other. He made everything depend on them – he was the opposite of the dog. ‘Rubbish told me I’d find you here,’ he said, coming forward to kiss Corinna on the silky top of her hair, pulling Wilfie quickly against his thigh, while the dog barked brusquely and then, its duty done, trotted back towards the house without looking round.

  ‘Uncle Revel,’ said Wilfrid, taking the surprise more easily than his mother, ‘will you draw a brontosaurus?’

  ‘I’ll draw anything you like, darling,’ said Revel. ‘Though brontosauruses are rather hard.’ He came towards Daphne, who stood up, without quite wanting to, and felt his cheek and chin harsh against hers for a second. He said quietly, ‘I hope you don’t mind, I rang up Dud and he said just to come.’

  ‘No, of course,’ she said. ‘Did you see someone? Did you see the photographer?’ She felt somehow that Revel’s visit, if it had to happen, should be kept out of the papers – and of course, if the photographers saw him they’d want him: he seemed to her to come emphasized, transfigured, set apart by success in a light of his own that was subtly distinct from the general gleam of the April day. Everyone was talking about him, not as much perhaps as they were about Sebby and the Trade Unions, but a good deal more than about Dudley, or Mrs Riley, or of course herself! And now he’d had a frightful row with David, so the gleam about him was that of suffering as well as fame. Surely the last thing he needed was to see himself splashed all over the Sketch.

  ‘There was a chap in a greasy trilby I don’t think I’ve seen before,’ Revel said.

  ‘Hmm, that’ll be him,’ said Daphne.

  ‘And I think I spotted your brother and his wife.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Daphne, rather heavily.

  ‘Fair, balding, wire-framed glasses . . . ?’

  ‘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 Berkshire 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 passed 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 grass cuttings clinging to their shoes. ‘God 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.