The Stranger's Child

  ‘He was very energetic,’ said Freda.

  ‘Well, he could be, couldn’t he . . .’

  Though nothing was ever said, Daphne felt that her mother hadn’t specially cared for Cecil. She saw him again, larger than life in their house, stooping briefly to their low-beamed ways. They had given him special rights, as a poet and a member of the upper classes; he’d been allowed to break things, to stay up all night, worship the dawn . . . They’d done their best to treat his absurdities as virtues, enlightening novelties. He’d been welcomed, as a friend of George’s, which was a novelty in itself. Had Freda picked up on the goings-on in the garden, after nightfall? There was much that she’d missed in those years, with the bottles in the wardrobe, and who knew where else. She had been excited by the poem, and really quite encouraging when Cecil started writing to Daphne – she saw a future in it, no doubt; she had allowed them to meet, when Cecil was on leave. Even so, something was amiss. It seemed possible Cecil had done or said some particular small thing, some slight that Freda could never mention and never forget – and in fact rather treasured for the reliable throb of indignation it caused . . . Now he was just an excuse for her – Daphne knew she’d come for the weekend so as to see the children. But Freda’s frown softened: ‘I’ll never forget him reading to us that night in the garden – reading Swinburne, was it, and in such a voice . . .’

  ‘Oh yes . . . Was it Swinburne? I know he read In Memoriam.’

  ‘Ha, indeed, how apt,’ said Freda, and then looked blankly again at the thin flames. ‘Didn’t he read us his own things?’

  ‘He kept us up all night listening to him,’ said Daphne.

  ‘We were out on the lawn, weren’t we, under the stars . . .’ Daphne didn’t think this was right, but nor was it worth correcting. Freda’s gaze wandered round the room and out, beyond Mrs Riley, to the present-day lawns and the trees of the Park beyond. ‘I sometimes think how different things would have been if George had never met Cecil,’ she said.

  ‘Well, yes . . . !’ said Daphne, with a short laugh. ‘Of course they would, Mother.’

  ‘No, darling, you know,’ Freda said, ‘but I do think some of his ideas were rather silly . . . I don’t know . . . one can’t say that, I suppose.’

  ‘His ideas . . . ?’ Daphne felt she half knew what her mother meant. ‘I think you can say what you like.’

  Freda seemed to weigh up this privilege. ‘He certainly turned your head,’ she said, in a rather bleak tone.

  ‘I was very young,’ said Daphne quietly, wishing more than ever that Mrs Riley wasn’t occupying her desk, toying with her fountain pen, and observing the conversation, in her disappointed and reducing way: now she said almost slyly,

  ‘You must have been a mere girl, my dear.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘She was very susceptible,’ Freda explained, ‘weren’t you, Daphne?’

  ‘Thank you, Mother!’

  ‘And then he wrote his most famous poem for you, you must have been swept off your feet,’ said Mrs Riley, enjoying the picture.

  ‘No, he did,’ said Freda.

  Daphne said, ‘Well . . . he wrote it for all of us, really, didn’t he.’ She felt vaguely amazed now by the whole business of the poem, by the awkward memory of what it had once meant to her. She would never have been allowed to keep it to herself. That morning she knew it was the most precious thing she had ever been given, and even then she had felt it being taken away from her. Everyone had wanted a part of it. Well, now they had it, they were welcome to it, if she tried to claim it back it was only as mortifying evidence of her first infatuation. Sometimes she acted her role: when people found out the story, and gloated over her, she agreed what a very lucky young lady she had been; but where possible she went on to say that she no longer cared. Within a week she had learned from George that other people were reading it. It appeared in New Numbers, a good deal rewritten. Then when Cecil died, it was quoted by Churchill himself, in The Times. She had just lent the famous autograph book to Sebby Stokes; it was a bit greasy and frayed, the other entries before it and after it looking sweetly strait-laced and proper in comparison. But the poem itself . . . ‘It’s entered the language, hasn’t it,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a bit of a jingle,’ said Freda, which Daphne had heard her say before.

  ‘You must be awfully proud,’ Mrs Riley insisted.

  ‘Well, you know,’ said Freda.

  Mrs Riley shook her head. ‘I can’t help wondering what Cecil would think of us all talking about him like this.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he’d be pleased to find he was still the centre of attention,’ said Daphne.

  ‘Cecil was awfully fond of Cecil!’ said Freda. ‘If you know what I mean.’

  Mrs Riley looked round for a second before saying, rather archly, ‘Does your mother-in-law still get messages from him, I wonder?’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Daphne. ‘Anyway, it was all nonsense, all that, and all very sad.’

  ‘What’s that, dear?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, Mother . . . Louisa’s book tests, you remember.’

  ‘Oh, that, yes . . .’ said Freda with a little stricken look. ‘So sad.’

  ‘I’m sure it must be nonsense,’ said Mrs Riley, ‘but I’ve always thought it would be fun to try.’

  ‘I don’t think fun comes into it very much,’ said Freda, frankly bemused.

  ‘We could try and get through to old Cecil . . .’ said Mrs Riley jauntily. But here the door opened and with an effect both tactful and inescapable Sebby Stokes came in.

  ‘Dear Mrs Sawle . . .’ he said, smiling and cushioning his formality.

  ‘Oh, well!’ Freda said, with a humorous tremor, reaching for her handbag.

  Daphne watched her mother cross the room, saw her distinctly, her comic note of bravery, knowing she was watched, flustered but making a go of it, an amenable guest in her daughter’s house. There was a little stoop of humility as she passed through the door, into the larger but darker library beyond, a hint of frailty, an affectation of bearing more than her fifty-nine years, a slight bewildered totter among the grandeur that her daughter now had to pretend to take for granted. Daphne saw what was sturdy and capable and truthful in the mother she’d always known, the bigger woman, morally big, that no one else but George perhaps could see; and at the same time she saw exactly how shaken and vulnerable she was. She was a grieving mother herself, though in the hierarchy of mourning here her grief was largely overlooked. Sebby glanced back with an abstracted nod as he pulled the door to. The dry click of the lock seemed oddly momentous.

  Mrs Riley got up from the desk and came over towards her. She had a sort of sloping and swooping walk, with a nerviness that was plastered over in her drawling talk. She crossed the hearthrug and flicked her ash into the fire. ‘This whole thing’s getting rather like one of Agatha Christie’s,’ she said, ‘with our Sebastian as clever Monsieur Poirot.’

  ‘I know . . .’ said Daphne, getting up too, and moving towards the window.

  ‘I wonder who did it. I don’t think I did . . .’

  ‘I suppose you’d remember?’ said Daphne, resisting the game. Outside, on the far side of the lawn, Revel was sitting on a stone bench drawing the house.

  ‘D’you think he’ll have us all in together at the end for the solution?’

  ‘Somehow I doubt it,’ said Daphne. There was something so charming in his posture, his look, the look he had of being himself a figure in a picture, that she couldn’t help smiling, and then sighing. He’d done it, seized the day – he was outside in the late April sunshine, while Daphne was in here like a child held back for some futile punishment. She looked down at her desk, where the letter lay on the blotter, but with Mrs Riley’s lacquered cigarette-case hiding the address.

  ‘I see your friend Revel’s making a drawing,’ said Mrs Riley.

  ‘I know, I feel very lucky,’ said Daphne, turning away from the window.

  ‘Mm, he’s clearly got something
,’ said Mrs Riley. She smiled abstractedly. ‘Quite a feminine touch – more feminine, probably, than me!’

  ‘Oh . . . well . . .’

  ‘He’s still terribly young, of course.’

  ‘That’s true . . .’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘I believe he’s twenty-four,’ said Daphne, slightly confused, and went on quickly, ‘I’m so pleased he’s drawing the house. He’s always had a great deal of feeling for Corley Court.’

  ‘You mean, you want him to capture it before I pull it down!’ said Mrs Riley, acknowledging her sense of rivalry with a laugh and a hint of a blush – a peculiar effect under so much pale powder. ‘Well, you needn’t worry.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not worried,’ said Daphne, with a tight little smile, but feeling rattled. Mrs Riley gazed out rather drolly at Revel, so that Daphne hoped he wouldn’t look this way and see her.

  ‘How did you get to know him?’

  This was easy. ‘He drew the jacket for The Long Gallery.’

  ‘Oh, your husband’s book, you mean?’ said Mrs Riley unguardedly.

  ‘You remember, the pretty drawing of the old Gothic window . . .’

  Mrs Riley threw her cigarette away, and became very simple. ‘To tell the truth, I feel rather foolish,’ she said.

  ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘I mean, not having known Cecil.’

  ‘It’s hardly foolish not to have known Cecil,’ said Daphne, with dry indulgence. So much of her own foolishness, she thought, stemmed from the fact that she had.

  ‘Well . . .’ said Mrs Riley, and she made a little grimace of reluctance, and went on, ‘Are you absolutely sure you wouldn’t rather I pushed off?’

  ‘Oh . . . Eva . . .’ said Daphne, with a gasp, ‘no, no,’ frowning and colouring uncomfortably in turn. ‘How could you?’

  ‘Are you sure? I feel like some ghastly “gate-crasher”, as they say.’ Daphne had an image of Mrs Riley’s smart little car smashing into the wrought-iron gates of Corley Court. ‘I’m not at all poetical. I’m not literary, like you are.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘No, you are. You’re always reading, I’ve seen you. Well, you’re married to a writer, for heaven’s sake! I only ever read thrillers. I was frankly surprised’ – and she crossed the room again for her cigarette case – ‘you know, when your husband asked me to stay.’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Daphne awkwardly, ‘I dare say he wanted some light relief from all this talk about his brother.’

  ‘Oh, perhaps, I wonder . . .’ said Eva, not immediately adjusting herself to this role.

  ‘I mean we can’t talk about Cecil every minute of the day – we’d go mad! Do you think I might have one of your cigarettes?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, I didn’t know,’ said Eva, coming back, offering the case languidly, but with a sharp glance.

  ‘Thank you.’ Daphne was urging her blush to subside, with its clear disclosure of her mutinous feelings, and the proof it gave Mrs Riley of her own clever tactics. She struck a match, away from her, awkwardly, and held it out to Eva, hiding her nerves by moving it around absent-mindedly, so that Eva stooped and laughed. When they were both puffing, Eva looked at her frankly, with a hint of amusement as she angled her smoke sideways. She said, ‘Well, I’m glad you think it’s all right.’ And then, ‘Tell me truly, don’t you ever find it just a teeny bit depressing having Cecil lying around next door – don’t you sometimes just want to forget about all that, really? I have to say I’m thoroughly sick of the War, and I think a lot of people feel the same.’

  ‘Oh, I like having him there,’ said Daphne, not quite truthfully, but seeing with a little run of the pulse another channel for her larger resentment of Eva to push into. ‘You see, I lost a brother too, though no one ever remembers that.’

  ‘Darling, I’d no idea.’

  ‘No, well, how could you have,’ said Daphne grudgingly.

  ‘You mean in the War . . .’

  ‘Yes, a bit later than Cecil. There weren’t any articles about it in The Times.’

  ‘Won’t you tell me about him?’

  ‘Well, he was a dear,’ said Daphne. She pictured her mother, beyond the heavy oak doors of the library, and keeping the whole matter to herself.

  Eva sat down, as if to pay more solemn attention, and threw back the loose cushion to make a space beside her, but Daphne preferred to remain on her feet. ‘What was he called?’

  ‘Oh . . . Hubert. Hubert Sawle. He was my elder brother.’ She felt the odd prickly decorum of telling Eva but very little of the solemn heartache which she hoped none the less to convey. When she went to the window, it seemed that Revel had gone; her spirits sank for a moment, but then she saw him again, talking to George – their heads and shoulders could be seen as they moved slowly away among the hedges. Now George stopped him and they laughed together. A twinge of jealous irritation went through her. ‘No, Hubert was very much our mainstay, as my father had died young.’

  ‘He wasn’t married, then?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t . . . He did get very close to a girl, from Hampshire . . .’

  ‘Oh . . . ?’

  Daphne turned back into the room. ‘Anyway, nothing happened.’

  ‘A lot of brave girls were left high and dry by the War,’ said Eva, in a strange defiant tone. Then, with a little gasp, ‘I hope I didn’t upset your mother by what I said earlier about, you know, getting in touch with Cecil – I mean actually I do think it’s ridiculous, but of course I didn’t know about your brother.’

  ‘I think she did go to a séance once, but it didn’t work for her.’

  ‘No, well . . .’

  Daphne found she didn’t want to talk about Louisa’s spiritualist obsession, which she and Dudley both deplored, to anyone outside the family; a feeling of loyalty was sharpened by her indignation at Eva’s mockery, which at the same time she perfectly understood. Then the bracket clock struck three-thirty, banishing all thought. ‘What a brute that thing is!’ said Eva, with a tight shake of the head, as though to say even Daphne surely wouldn’t regret getting rid of it. Then she was saying, ‘No, your husband read me that bit in his new book, you know, about the famous book tests – awfully funny, isn’t it, actually, the way he does it – that’s what put it in my mind.’

  ‘Oh, really . . .’ said Daphne, dawdlingly, though she knew her whole face was stiffening by the second, ungovernable, with hurt and indignation. ‘Will you excuse me for a moment,’ and she turned and went out quickly into the hall, where the grandfather clock was now mellowly stating the time, and the clock in the drawing-room beyond, with no sense of the mortifying scrumple of her feelings as she hurried to the front door and out into the porch. She stood looking across the gravel, at the various trees, and up the long slope of the entrance drive, to the inner set of gates, with the whole blue Berkshire afternoon lying hidden beyond them. She puffed at the last half-inch of the cigarette with a certain revulsion, and then trod it under her heel on the doorstep. She wasn’t going to mention it to Dudley, and she certainly wasn’t going to tell Eva Riley herself that no one had ever seen a word of ‘his new book’, much less had awfully amusing bits of it read to them. Some occasion in his ‘office’, no doubt, over the plans. The awful undermining evidence that all her own scruples of loyalty to Louisa, to the family, weren’t actually shared by the head of the family himself. She felt foolish, in her simple high-mindedness, and furious much more than hurt. She touched her hair and her neck as though in front of a mirror and then she did what one always did at Corley, and went back in.

  Eva looked glad to see her. She went on, ‘You know, I feel very fortunate to have met your husband’ – modest but also subtly possessive.

  ‘It’s silly of me,’ said Daphne, ‘I don’t quite know how you did.’ She knew what Dudley had said, of course.

  ‘Well, I fitted up Bobby Bannister’s place in Surrey, didn’t I, and he must have told . . . your husband about me. I rather think he gave him the whole idea for improvin
g Corley.’

  This was exactly Dudley’s version too, though the cool nerve of ‘improving’ made Daphne laugh. She said, ‘It’s become a bit of a thing with Dud – I think he’s doing it mainly to upset his mother.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope it’s rather more than that,’ said Eva. ‘I must say I love working here’ – and she gave Daphne a look of rather unnerving sweetness.

  ‘Well . . .’ Daphne went back towards the window to see where Revel and George had got to, but there was now no sign of them. Then there was the click of the library door, and Daphne turned, expecting her mother to be shown back in, amid reassuring murmurs and thanks – but it was Sebby alone, head cocked, with an apologetic half-smile. It seemed Freda had been shown out the other way, into the hall: this was oddly confounding for a second or two, as though she had vanished in some more permanent sense. ‘She seemed anxious about her friend,’ Sebby said.

  ‘Ah yes, I fear she’s not at all well.’ Daphne gave a bland nod to Eva and went in, and when he closed the door behind her, the click confirmed her earlier sense of the process: you watched for a bit, and then you were part of it. A slight awkwardness, at being a guest in her own house, coloured the first moments for both of them, but they smiled through it. ‘I feel rather like a doctor,’ said Sebby.

  ‘Mrs Riley thought a detective,’ said Daphne.

  Sebby was hesitant but sure. ‘Really I hope no more than a well-meaning friend,’ he said, and waited for Daphne to sit down. On the big table he had laid out the publications in which Cecil’s verses had appeared – a small pile of periodicals, the anthologies, Georgian Poetry, the Cambridge Poets, and the one book he’d published in his lifetime, Night Wake and Other Poems, in its soft grey paper covers easily dog-eared and torn. Another pile seemed to contain things in manuscript – there was her autograph book, given up this morning. Daphne was impressed, and again unsettled by the evidence of a clear procedure. She saw that she hadn’t prepared. This was because she hadn’t been able to, her mind wouldn’t fix on any of the things she knew she might say, she had had an unaccountable confidence that inspiration would come to her as soon as Sebby’s questions began. Now she regretted the past ten minutes spent sparring with Eva, when she could have been putting her thoughts in order.