The Stranger's Child (40 page)

He stepped out with a racing heart on to the patio, where the drinks table was. They’d all met him, of course, but none of them knew who he was. He sensed nodding curiosity mixed with something cooler as he edged among these mainly grand and grey-haired people. Some women from the Bell had been brought in as waitresses, in black dresses with white aprons and caps – they ladled him out a fresh beaker of the fruit-cup, and there was something slightly comic about it, with the bits of orange and so on plopping in. ‘Do you want more bits, dear?’ said the woman. ‘No, just drink, please,’ said Paul, and they all laughed.

He saw Peter on the far side of the lawn, talking to a woman in a tight green dress – he was getting her to hold his glass while he fished out cigarettes from his pocket, there was a clumsy bit of business, and then she was raising her face to him, charmed as well as grateful for the light. Paul approached, heard the chuckling run of Peter’s voice, his impatient murmur as he lit his own cigarette, saw their shared smile and toss of the head as they blew out smoke – ‘What? in the second act, you mean,’ Peter said; now he was almost in front of them, with a tense tiny smile, but still eerily unseen, and abruptly not sure of a welcome – in a moment he had sidled off, his smile now wounded and preoccupied, round the edge of the chattering groups, looking round as if searching for someone else, till he found himself stuck, by himself, in a corner beside a high stand of pampas grass. He sipped repeatedly at his drink, which seemed much less toxic than his first helping. He was staggered by his own timidity, but he argued in a minute that his little scamper away had been so quick it could surely be reversed. The conversations close by were a blur of wilful absurdity. ‘I don’t think you ever will, with Geraldine,’ the woman nearest him was saying to a crumpled-looking man whose elbow virtually knocked Paul’s drink. He couldn’t stay here. Through a momentary opening among the shifting and swaying backs of the guests he saw Mrs Jacobs herself, in the middle of the lawn, in a blue dress and a dark-red necklace, her glasses gleaming as she turned, her face somehow spot-lit by the fact of this being her own party. ‘Now, we can’t have this . . . !’ – Corinna Keeping, in red and black, and all the more alarming in grinning high spirits, had found him out.

She took him, like some bashful hero, though also (she couldn’t help it) like a culprit who’d stupidly thought he could escape her, through the thick of the party to the far side of the lawn. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you!’ she said, unable fully to conceal her surprise at this, and in a moment she had delivered him to Peter Rowe – ‘And Sue Jacobs – well, you can introduce yourselves,’ though she stood there, with her defiant smile, to make sure they did. They shook hands, and Peter said quietly, ‘At last,’ as he blew out smoke.

‘I didn’t catch your name,’ said Sue Jacobs.

‘Oh,
Paul Bryant
,’ said Paul, with the queer little effort of clarity and breathless laugh that always came with saying who he was. And Peter nodded, ‘Paul . . . yes’ – of course, he’d only just found out his name.

‘We’ll have supper in a minute,’ said Corinna, ‘and then bring everyone in for the concert.’ She rested a black-gloved hand on Sue Jacobs’s forearm. ‘Is that all right, love?’

‘Absolutely!’ said Sue, and grinned back, as if trying to match Corinna’s abnormal good humour.

‘Are you playing too?’ said Paul, not able to look at Peter yet.

‘I’m singing,’ said Sue, her smile vanishing as Corinna moved off. ‘I’d hoped for a run-through, but we had a hellish drive down.’ He saw that she was older than he’d thought, perhaps forty, but lean and energetic and somehow competitive.

‘Where do you live?’

‘Mm? – in Blackheath. Right on the other side. We could perfectly well have had the party there, rather than dragging everyone down into darkest Berkshire.’

‘But you couldn’t?’ said Peter.

‘Corinna wanted it here, and what Corinna wants . . . Sorry, I’m Daphne’s step-daughter,’ she said to Paul. ‘She married my father.’ She made this sound rather a regrettable turn of events.

‘Ah, yes!’ said Paul, laughing nervously, and not sure where Blackheath was – he pictured something like the New Forest. He saw that just behind them in the edge of the flower-bed, the broken trough was sitting, its end apparently cemented back on and hidden by some quickly arranged nasturtiums; on his hand too the graze had scabbed and been picked back to pink. He said to Peter, ‘Jenny says you’re playing tonight.’ It was magical as well as completely straightforward having him just a foot away. He had a commonplace smell of smoke mixed with some unusual aftershave that made Paul confusedly imagine being held by him and kissed on the top of his head.

‘I could have done with a run-through too, god knows,’ Peter said. ‘We bashed through it at school, but she’s ten times as good as me.’

‘I shouldn’t smoke if I’m singing,’ said Sue, opening her little evening bag.

Peter squashed his own cigarette under foot before getting out his lighter for her. ‘I don’t know the Bliss songs,’ he said.

‘I’m only doing the Valance,’ said Sue. ‘Mm, thanks . . . It’s Five Songs opus something, but we’re just doing the one, thank god.’

‘Aha . . . ! Which poem, I wonder?’

‘I expect you’ll know – it’s about a hammock. He’s supposed to have written it for Daphne . . . apparently!’

‘I must ask her about Cecil Valance,’ said Peter. ‘I’ve just been doing him with my Fifth Form.’

‘Well, you should. She seems to think he wrote pretty well everything for her.’

‘Do you think she’d come and talk to the boys?’

‘She might, I suppose. I don’t know if she’s ever been back to Corley, has she? It will all be in the famous memoirs, of course.’

‘Oh, is she writing them?’ said Peter, putting his hand on Paul’s arm for a long moment, as if not to lose him, with talk about strangers, and surely conveying something rather more. In fact, Paul said,

‘She’s been writing them for yonks.’

‘Oh, you know about it,’ said Sue.

‘Well, a bit . . .’ – and then: ‘Isn’t it the poem that starts, “A larch tree at your head, and at your feet / A weeping willow”?’

‘You do know,’ said Sue again, sounding slightly put out.

‘I’d better get
you
to talk to the Fifth Form!’ said Peter, the hint of mockery in his tone dissolving in his long, brown-eyed gaze, as if he too felt excitements teeming softly around and ahead of them. It was a look of a kind Paul had never had before, and in his happiness and alarm he found he had completely finished his drink.

‘Well, supper, perhaps,’ said Sue, in a way that made Paul think she’d become aware of something.

‘May we join you, sir?’ said Peter.

George Sawle’s sunburnt face settled into a vague smile as he gestured at the chairs. In the shade, or by now the midge-haunted shadow, of the weeping beech, it was the most secluded of the supper-tables. The old boy seemed almost to be hiding. ‘I’m Daphne’s brother,’ he said.

‘Oh, I know who you are,’ said Peter, with his suggestive chuckle, putting down his plate next to him. ‘I’m Peter Rowe. I teach at Corley Court.’

‘Oh, goodness . . . !’ said old Sawle, in a tone that suggested there was a lot to be said on the subject, if one were ever to get round to it. Paul grinned but didn’t know if it would be right to say what an honour it was to meet him. He’d sometimes seen John Betjeman in Wantage but had never actually met an author before. The
Everyday History
, with its old-fashioned pictures of strip-farming and horse-drawn transport, had come out some time before the War. It was slightly magical that G. F. Sawle and Madeleine Sawle should even be alive, much less battering round the country in an Austin Princess. Paul sat down next to Peter – it seemed this was what they were doing, it was so absurdly new and easy, and he was trying to keep his head as they sallied around together. This large glass of white wine was clearly going to help. ‘We met earlier – I’m Paul Bryant.’ The chair lurched and sank slightly under him in the rough grass.

‘Yes, indeed . . .’ said Sawle, nodding and then pulling a little shyly at the longer white tufts of beard under his chin. He quizzed the salmon and new potatoes on their plates through his thick-lensed spectacles.

‘Are you not eating, Professor?’ said Peter.

‘Ah, my wife, I believe . . .’ said Sawle, and after a moment looked round. ‘Here she comes . . . !’ There seemed to be some fleeting invitation to find them comical as a couple, in their devotion or their eccentricity.

Paul looked out and saw Madeleine Sawle stepping warily across the patio with a plate in each hand, and then working towards them among the white-clothed tables where other guests were bagging seats and saying, ‘My dear, of course you may . . . !’ to the people they had just been trying to avoid. The whole social tone was new to him, the top notes of the upper class above a more general mix, with one or two loud local voices, and he was glad to be hidden away here, under the raised flounce of the old beech-tree. He felt the evening’s quickening swell of good luck, and with it the usual suspicion that it was all a mistake – surely any minute Mrs Keeping would send him back to stand by the gate.

‘We’re tucked under this obliging tree, dear, just as you suggested,’ said George Sawle, very clearly, as Madeleine set down the plates with a flicker of a frown, and opened her bag to take out the cutlery she’d transported in it. Paul was struck again by the bold oddity of the red ear-rings flanking her square mannish face. ‘You’ve met, um . . .’

Paul and Peter introduced themselves – Peter smiled and said ‘Peter Rowe’, warmly and almost forgivingly, as if it were a delightful fact Mrs Sawle might perhaps have been expected to know. ‘I’m Paul Bryant,’ said Paul, and felt he made a slenderer claim. She tilted her head – of course she was rather deaf.

‘
Peter
. . . and
Paul
,’ she said, with amiable sternness. Paul was pleased at the coupling, though he felt like a school-child under her gaze. He wondered if the Sawles themselves had children. She seemed very much the helpmeet of the
Everyday History
, something industrious and educational about her. Paul saw them toiling together in an oak-beamed interior, with perhaps a hand-loom of their own in the background. Otherwise he knew nothing about who she was or what she had done. He thought it was a bit odd that the Sawles were hiding away here, and not joining the rest of the family for dinner. ‘Are you old friends?’

‘Oh, we are,’ said Peter, ‘we met about fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Well, a couple of weeks . . .’ Paul said, laughing, slightly put out.

‘Of Daphne’s, I mean?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry – not yet,’ said Peter, ‘though of course I’m hoping to be.’ He smiled his way broadly through these bits of silliness, and Paul found his admiration for him wrapped up with just a tinge of embarrassment. ‘I like her enormously’ – and at the same moment, as he sat forward to start eating, Paul felt Peter’s knee push roughly against his own and stay there, almost as though he thought it was a strut of the table. His heart was beating as he edged his knee away, just an inch. Peter’s moved with it, he shifted forwards a bit in his chair to keep the contact more easily. His smile showed he was enjoying that as well as everything else. The warmth transfused from leg to leg and quickly travelled on up to lovely but confusing effect – Paul hunched forward himself and spread his napkin in his lap. He felt a hollow ache, a kind of stored and treasured hunger, in his chest and down his thighs. He found his hand was shaking, and he had another big gulp from his glass, smiling thinly as if in a trance of respectful pleasure at the company and the occasion.

‘Oh, Daphne . . . well, of course,’ Madeleine Sawle was saying, and gave Peter a sparring look as she settled next to her husband, leaving an empty chair between herself and Paul. ‘You’re not in the theatre?’ she said.

‘It sometimes feels like it,’ said Peter, ‘but no, I’m a schoolmaster.’

‘He teaches at Corley, dear,’ said George.

‘Oh, goodness,’ said Mrs Sawle, and tutted as she spread her napkin and checked her husband’s readiness to start eating. ‘I’ve not been to Corley in forty years. I expect it makes a rather better school than it did a private house.’

‘Ghastly pile,’ said the Professor.

‘Ooh . . . !’ said Peter, flushing slightly in humorous protest, which Sawle didn’t notice.

‘We used to go there, of course,’ said Mrs Sawle, ‘when Daphne was married to Dudley, as I expect you know.’

‘Not a very happy time,’ said the Professor, in a blandly confidential tone.

‘It wasn’t a very happy time,’ said Mrs Sawle, ‘or I fear a very happy marriage,’ and gave a firm smile at her plate.

Peter said, ‘I’ve just been reading the Stokes memoir of Cecil Valance – it strikes me you must have known him, sir.’

‘Oh, I knew Cecil,’ said Sawle.

‘You knew him very well, George,’ said Mrs Sawle. ‘That was the last time we were there, to meet Sebastian Stokes, when he was getting his materials together.’

‘Mm, I remember all too clearly,’ said old Sawle. ‘Dudley got us pie-eyed and we danced all night in the hall.’

Mrs Sawle said, ‘It was on the very eve of the General Strike! I remember we talked of little else.’

‘Do you know this book?’ Peter said, jiggling his knee now and moving his calf too against Paul’s.