The Stranger's Child (39 page)

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I think people need to know that, though of course he loathes having any special exceptions made for him. Probably he’d hate me telling you this. Essentially he cannot tolerate being alone.’

‘Yes, I see.’ Peter glanced at her face, unsure if this explanation marked a new intimacy. She jetted up the last bit of smoke, and stubbed the cigarette out in the bin.

‘He was escaping from a German POW camp when the tunnel collapsed.’ She beamed at the top line of the opening Allegro. ‘No light, no air – can you imagine? He thought he’d die there, but they rescued him just in time.’

‘Goodness,’ said Peter.

‘So that, my dear,’ said Corinna, with a sharp frown, ‘is why I need to take him to the cricket club,’ and she fired off the first bars with a snap of the jaw before he was nearly ready.

‘I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ said Jenny Ralph.

‘Oh, I don’t mind, honestly.’

She approached him awkwardly over the gravel in her high heels, her glass held away from her. ‘They’re using you again!’

‘It’s only while people are arriving – I like having something to do.’ Paul stood in the gateway and watched a large black Rover 3-litre coming very slowly along the lane, like a car at a funeral. He said as happily as he could, ‘I’m a bit of an outsider here, anyway.’

‘Well, you needn’t be shy,’ Jenny said. She was wearing a wide-skirted dress like a ballroom-dancer’s and a lot of eyeshadow, and the fact was she did make him feel a bit shy, despite his greater age. He was wearing his work suit, and wished he had something else. ‘And you’ve obviously hit it off with Granny.’

‘Oh . . . well, she’s interesting, I like her.’

‘Mm, well, she adores you,’ said Jenny, rather tartly.

‘Oh, does she?’

‘ “The bank clerk who quotes darling Cecil!” ’

‘Oh, I see . . .’ said Paul, laughing as he stepped out from the gate, but wondering again if he was just a figure of fun to them all. He smiled and waved at the car. The visors were down against the lowering sun, and the deafish old couple inside seemed a little bemused. The plan was that they were to go on past the house and leave their cars in the field opposite, walking back across the lane and in through the further entrance to the drive. If they were extremely frail, they could park in the drive proper. It was delicate work deciding if the numerous quite elderly arrivals were frail enough to qualify. In the field itself there was a further just possible hazard from cow-shit, which Paul thought it better not to mention explicitly. ‘Do mind your footing,’ he called out, as the car crept off.

‘No,’ he said, ‘we had to learn “Soldiers Dreaming” by heart.’

‘I beg your pardon . . . ?’

‘The poem by Valance.’

‘Okay . . .’ said Jenny.

‘ “Some stroll through farms and vales unmarked by war, / Not knowing in their dreams / They are at war for just such tranquil fields, / Such fleet-foot streams.” ’

‘I see . . .’ said Jenny. ‘By the way, you know there’s a dance at the Corn Hall tonight.’

‘Yes, I know – well, I know someone who’s going.’

‘Oh really . . . do you want to go later?’

‘Would you be allowed?’ Geoff had been talking about it, he was taking Sandra, and Paul felt suddenly heavy with the idea – then saw in a second that he couldn’t possibly take Jenny.

‘It’s the Locomotives, a group from Swindon . . . Too thrilling. Actually don’t say anything about it,’ said Jenny, turning round to smile at young John Keeping, who was crossing the drive, also with a tumbler in his hand. He had changed into a dark double-breasted suit, with a red silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, and looked immediately like a successful businessman. ‘My grandmother thought you might care for a drop of the fruit-cup,’ he said. He brought a heavy irony to being, for a moment, a waiter.

‘How kind of her,’ said Paul, taking the glass, not sure what fruit-cup was.

Jenny made a sharp little face. ‘I just caught Granny tipping in another half-bottle of gin, so I should be a bit careful, if I were you.’

‘Oh lord, well, watch out,’ said John, with a lazy guffaw.

Paul blushed as he took a sip. ‘Mm, not bad actually,’ he said, trying not to cough as the gin cut through the momentary illusion of something like orange squash. He took another sip.

John looked at him narrowly, then swivelled on his heel to take in the view down the lane, the half-circle of the drive. He said, ‘When my grandfather gets here, do you know? Sir Dudley Valance?’

‘Oh, yes . . .’ said Paul.

‘Can we save a spot for him by the front door. He won’t appreciate being made to walk.’

‘Right . . .’

‘He has a war-wound, you know,’ said John, with some satisfaction. ‘Well, here you are,’ he said, nodding at an approaching Austin Princess, and set off back over the gravel to find a drink of his own.

‘He can walk perfectly well,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s just that everyone’s frightened of him.’

‘Why’s that?’ said Paul.

‘Oh . . .’ – Jenny puffed, and shook her head, as if it was all too tedious to explain to him. ‘Oh, god, it’s Uncle George,’ she said. ‘Here, let me take your drink.’ She put it down on a flat stone by the gate-post and shouted, ‘Hello, Uncle George!’ and with a kind of weary cheerfulness, ‘Aunt Madeleine . . .’

Paul leaned a hand on the sun-baked edge of the roof and smiled in through the open window. Uncle George, in the passenger seat, was a man in his seventies, perhaps, with a sunburnt pate and neat white beard. Craning past him was a strong-jawed woman with crimped grey hair and oddly gaudy make-up and ear-rings. Uncle George himself wore a deep red shirt with a floral green bow-tie. He squinted up at Paul as if determined to solve a puzzle without help. ‘Now which one are you?’ he said.

‘Um . . .’ said Paul.

‘He isn’t any of them,’ said Aunt Madeleine sharply, ‘are you?’

‘You’re not one of Corinna’s boys?’

‘No, sir, I’m . . . I’m just a colleague, a friend – ’

‘You remember Corinna’s boys, surely,’ said Madeleine.

‘Forgive me, I thought you might be Julian.’

‘No,’ said Paul, with a gasp, and a muddled sense of protest at being taken for a schoolboy, however pretty and charming.

‘So who’s he?’ said Paul, once he’d sent them on towards the field.

‘Uncle George? He’s Granny’s brother; well, there were two brothers, in fact, but one was killed in the War – in the
First
World War, I mean: he was called Uncle Hubert. You should ask her about it, if you’re interested in the First World War. Uncle George and Aunt Madeleine used to be history professors. They wrote quite a well-known book together called
An Everyday History of England
,’ said Jenny, almost yawning with casual pride.

‘Oh – not G. F. Sawle?’

‘That’s right, yes . . .’

‘What, G. F. Sawle and Madeleine Sawle! – we had it at school.’

‘There you are then.’

Paul pictured the title-page on which he had boxed the names G. F. SAWLE and MADELEINE SAWLE in a complex Elizabethan doodle. ‘Is everyone in your family a famous writer?’

Jenny giggled. ‘And you know Granny’s writing her memoirs . . .’

‘Yes, I know, she told me.’

‘She’s been writing them for yonks, actually. We all rather wonder if they’ll ever see the light of day.’

Paul took another swig of fruit-cup, already feeling weirdly giddy in the evening sunshine. He said, ‘I hope you won’t mind me saying but I find your family a bit complicated to work out.’

‘Mm, I did warn you.’

‘I don’t know, for instance, is there a Mr Jacobs?’

‘Dead, I’m afraid. Granny’s always had bad luck, in a way,’ said Jenny, as if she’d been there at the time. ‘First she married Dudley, who was probably very exciting but a bit unhinged by the War and he was beastly to her; so she ran away with . . . my grandfather – ’ she took a swig of whatever she was drinking –

‘Whatsisname . . . Ralph . . .’

‘Revel Ralph, the artist, who everyone thought was queer, you know, but anyway they somehow managed to have . . . my father . . . and in due course . . .’

‘
Really?
’ said Paul, as if amused and delighted, moving away, his face burning at this sudden eruption of
queer
, the word and the fact, and going a few yards down the lane . . . such a casual eruption, too, as if no one much cared.
Everyone thought he was queer
. Thank god, here was a car, at least, which he prayed was coming to Carraveen. He looked at it fondly, full of hospitable feelings, ignoring his blush in the fervent hope it would go away. A pea-green Hillman Imp, sounding rough in a low gear, windscreen white with dust, perhaps a farmer’s car, the visor flipped down against the glare full in the driver’s face. Paul watched almost impatiently as it approached, looked with odd camaraderie at the large hands on the wheel, the wrinkled nose, the involuntary grin of the man perhaps barely able to see him waiting, in silhouette, then saw, with a reeling adjustment of memory to the re-encountered fact, that it was Peter Rowe. Something providential in the drink brought him smiling to the open window.

‘Oh, hello,’ said Peter Rowe, ‘it’s you!’

‘Hello!’ said Paul, looking at his actual face, which seemed unaccountably both plainer and more lovable than he’d remembered, while his sense of the evening ahead seemed to shift around and beneath him, like stage scenery. The inside of the car smelt headily of oil and hot plastic. On the passenger seat lay a clutch of sheet music – ‘W. A. Mozart,’ he read, ‘Duetti’. He felt whimsical. ‘You’re not frail or elderly, are you?’ he said.

‘Absolutely not,’ said Peter Rowe, with a warm affronted tone and a sly smile.

‘Then I’m afraid you’ll need to park in the field over there,’ said Paul; and stayed smiling into the car without thinking of what to say next.

Peter Rowe gave the gear-knob a struggling thrust into first. ‘Well, I’ll see you in a minute,’ he said, ‘what fun . . . !’ Paul felt the hot car slip away under his fingers, which left a long scuffled trace in the dirt on the roof. ‘Watch your footing!’ he called out, over the popping roar of the engine, which for some reason in a Hillman Imp was at the back, where the boot should be; and the word
footing
, odd from the start, sounded now quite surreal and hilarious to him. He watched the car nose up through the gate and into the field, while the reek of its exhaust sank sweetly into the mild scent of grass.

‘Do you know Peter Rowe?’ said Jenny.

‘Well, I’ve met him,’ said Paul, feeling strangely fortified, so that he could say, ‘I didn’t know he’d be here tonight, though – that’s great.’

‘No, well, he’s going to play duets with Aunt Corinna – it’s a surprise for Granny.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Paul. He thought this was a pretty tame kind of surprise; but then he wasn’t really musical. Music always struck him as a bit of a performance. Still, he started to see the scene, himself watching, admiring, possessive, even slightly resentful of Peter’s confidence and ability. As a contribution to the party it certainly beat telling people where to park.

‘
How
do you know him?’ said Jenny, with a mischievous look.

‘Oh, he banks with us. I’ve cashed his cheques.’ Paul was blandness itself, just tinged with pink.

Jenny glanced over her shoulder, where Peter was now crossing the lane to go in by the other gate, with his music in his hand – he brandished it at them in a wave that was cheerful though suddenly not quite enough. Though perhaps he had to get ready, he had to practise. Paul watched him for these few seconds with a half-smile, an air, he hoped, of untroubled interest – a brisk, heavy walk, he found he knew it already. ‘He teaches at Corley Court as well,’ said Jenny; and dropping her voice, ‘We call him Peter Rowe-my-dear.’

‘Oh, yes . . . ?’ said Paul, now a little critical of Jenny.

Again she gave him a droll look. ‘He’s rather full of himself,’ she said, in a plonking voice, so he saw that she was quoting someone – Aunt Corinna, very probably.

As the shadows shifted and lengthened and the church clock struck eight and then a quarter past, Paul’s happy excitement began to dim. In between cars he finished his drink, and the tipsy rush was followed by a less pleasant state of dry-mouthed impatience, as he found himself saying the same thing over and over. Jenny had gone in to find Julian and hadn’t come back – anyway they were only kids, even if Jenny treated Paul as somehow younger than herself. Roger wandered out for a sniff around the verge and pissed concisely at four different spots, but made no further sign of solidarity. The arrivals grew fewer. The dreaded Sir Dudley perhaps wasn’t coming – thus far Paul had let only one small car, which was virtually an invalid carriage, on to the drive itself. He thought of Peter’s smile, and the little throb in his voice as he said ‘Absolutely not!’ – there was a giddy sense of an understanding, like the kick and lift of the booze itself, undamaged, stronger in fact since their first meeting, that made Paul’s heart race again. It was almost as though Peter knew what he’d done in Paul’s daydreams, knew all about the bath and the bachelor flat. And now this vaguely headachy thirst, and a little doubt, like the cooling and quickening of the air, pushing among the hedge-tops in front of him and then leaving off. He could hear the cheery, faintly contentious noise of fifty or sixty people talking, on the big lawn at the back of the house, where tables and chairs had been set out. Peter was in there somewhere, among the family and friends, happily getting drunk, Peter Rowe-my-dear, rather full of himself. Certain things Paul didn’t quite like about him came dully to the light. Did he truly fancy him, now he’d seen him again? Could he really imagine getting undressed with that heavy-footed prep-school master? He thought of Geoff’s tight zip, and then of beautiful Dennis Flowers, at King Alfred’s in Wantage, Captain of Cricket, not a master but a boy. Paul stared in a kind of abstruse distress at the stretch of the lane by the gate, its chalky potholes, the parched grass and tough, half-pretty groundsel, knotty and yellow-flowered, that grew along its crown. Then the church clock struck 8.30, the two bright notes with their unusual interval that seemed to tell him, in their complete indifference, to get in to the house at once.