The Stranger's Child (68 page)

He spoke clearly, and rather stiffly, with a hint of reproof in his face for all the trivialities that had gone before. The nice square Nigerian diction, with its softened consonants and strong hard vowels, had been slowly effaced by London in the years since Rob had met him at a party and taken him home shivering in a taxi. He said how being Peter’s friend had been the greatest privilege of his life, and that being married to him for two years had been not only wonderfully happy but a celebration of everything Peter had believed in and worked for. He had always said how important the changes in the law in 1967 had been to him and to so many others like him, when he was a young man teaching at Corley Court, but that it was very imperfect, only a beginning, there were many more battles to be won, and the coming of civil partnerships for same-sex couples was a great development not just for them but for civil life in general. This was met by a few seconds of firm applause, and flustered but generally supportive looks among those who didn’t clap. Rob clapped, and Jennifer, surprised but willing, a moment later clapped too. It was good to see the gay subject, which after all had bubbled through Peter’s life more keenly and challengingly than it did in his own, brought home here under the gilded Corinthian capitals of a famous London club. There was a sort of yearning in some of the older faces not to be startled by it. Then Desmond said he was going to read a poem, and drew out a folded sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his pin-stripe suit. ‘Oh, do not smile on me if at the last / Your lips must yield their beauty to another . . .’ Rob didn’t think he knew it, and felt the awkwardness of poetry in the mouths of people untrained to read it; then abruptly felt the reverse, the stiff poignancy of words which an actor would have made into a dubious show of technique. ‘Let yours be the blue eye, the laughing lips / That at the last and always smile on me.’ Rob gave Jennifer a quizzical glance, she leant towards him and whispered behind her hand, ‘Uncle Cecil.’

Rob escorted Jennifer through the clearing and stacking of the chairs towards the crowd around the buffet table, Jennifer making confidential but fairly loud remarks about some of the speakers, while Rob discreetly switched on his phone. ‘A shame about the sound,’ she said. ‘That young man was absolutely hopeless!’

‘I know . . .’

‘You’d have thought they’d have something as basic as that sorted out.’ Rob saw he had a text from Gareth. ‘I thought that Scotsman was awfully boring, didn’t you?’

see u 7
@
Style bar – cant wait! XxG

‘He was rather. . .’ said Rob – distracted for a moment in the mental blush of disorientation, then pocketing his phone and glancing round. The blond man had attached himself to the group of leather queens. But the idea of picking him up, so simply initiated by a sly shared smile, didn’t wholly dissolve under the reminder of his imminent date with someone else.

There were rows and rows of white cups and saucers, for tea and coffee, but Jennifer said, ‘I’m having a drink,’ and Rob, who never drank during the day, said, ‘I’m going to join you.’ She picked up a glass of red with a quick shiver – and then seeing platters of sandwiches already reduced to cress-strewn doilies she pushed in between two other people waiting and built herself a little plateful of sausage rolls and chocolate fingers. She had the look of someone making the most of a day out – Rob thought the arrangements at St Hilda’s College might be fairly spartan; and then a visit to London . . . She held her plate and glass expertly in one hand, and ate swiftly, almost greedily. He wondered what her emotional history had been – not women, he felt. She had a quiver of sexual energy about her, unexpectantly tucked under her crushed velvet hat. They moved away together, each looking round as if prepared to free the other. He felt she liked him, without being interested in him – it was a consciously temporary thing, and none the less happy for that. He said, ‘Well, you were saying. . . !’ and she said, ‘What? – oh, well,
yes . . .
so, Paul Bryant started out, before he became a great literary figure, as a humble bank clerk Rob glanced round – ‘Oh, actually,’ he said, and touched her arm. The readers and speakers of course were moving among the crowd, with uncertain status, as mourners and performers. Now Bryant was just beside them, making for the buffet, talking to a large woman and a handsome young Chinese man with glasses and a tie-clip. ‘Oh, I know!’ Bryant was saying, ‘it’s an absolute outrage – the whole thing!’ There was something camp and declamatory about him – Rob saw he was still riding the wave of his performance, to himself he was still the focus of attention. ‘I need a drink!’ he said, sounding just like Peter, cutting in behind Jennifer, with a busy but gracious nod, an unguarded blank glance at her, two heavy seconds of possible recognition, a breathless turn, surely, and denial – ‘Andrea, what are you having?’ But Jennifer, curious and fearless, touched his shoulder: ‘Paul?’ she said, and as he twitched and turned, her face was a wonderful hesitant mask of mockery, greeting and reproach. Rob thought she must be the most terrifying teacher.

Bryant stepped back, gripped her forearm, stared as if he were being tricked, while some rushed but extremely complex calculation unfurled behind his eyes. Then, ‘Jenny, my dear, I don’t believe it!’

‘Well, here I am.’

‘Oh, Peter would have been thrilled,’ shaking his head in wonderment. Was it a fight or a reunion? He craned forward – ‘I can’t believe it!’ again; and kissed her.

She laughed, ‘Oh!’, coloured slightly and went on at once, ‘Well, Peter meant a lot to me, long ago.’

‘Oh, the dear old tart that he was . . .’ Bryant said, glancing narrowly at Rob, not knowing of course what role he might have played in Peter’s life. ‘No, a great man. Peter Rowe-my-dear you used to call him, do you remember?’ – he was sticking to the fondly proprietary view of the deceased, barbs in an indulgent tone of voice. ‘Andrea, this is Jenny Ralph – or was – I don’t know . . . ?’

‘Still is,’ said Jenny firmly.

‘A very old friend. Andrea . . . who was Peter’s next-door neighbour, am I right?’

‘Rob,’ said Rob, nodding, not giving them much to go on, though Jennifer endorsed him, in a supportive murmur, ‘Yes, Rob . . .’

‘Rob . . . hello, and this is – where are you? –
come here!
– Bobby’ – to the patient Chinese man he’d turned his back on – ‘my partner.’

Rob shook hands with Bobby, and smiled at him through the knowing shimmer of gay introductions, the surprise and speculation. ‘Civil?’ he said.

Bryant said, ‘Hmm, well, some of the time,’ and Bobby, with a sweet but tired grin at him, said politely,

‘Yes, we’re civil partners.’

In a minute glasses of wine were raised, Bryant peeping over his a bit cautiously at Jennifer, who said, in her candid way, ‘Well, I read your book.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ he said, with a little shake of the head; then, ‘Which one?’

‘You know – Uncle Cecil . . .’

‘Oh,
England Trembles
, yes . . .’

‘You caused quite a stir with that one,’ said Jennifer.

‘Tell me about it!’ said Bryant. ‘Oh, the trouble I had with that book.’ He explained to Andrea, ‘It’s the book I mentioned in my speech just now, if you remember – the life of Cecil Valance. My first book, actually.’ He turned to Jennifer. ‘There were times I felt I’d bitten off more than I could chew.’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Jennifer.

‘Didn’t he write “Two Acres”?’ said Andrea. ‘I had to learn that at school.’

‘Then you probably still know it,’ Jennifer assured her.

‘Something about the something path of love . . .’

‘It was written for my grandmother,’ said Jennifer.

‘Or, as I contend, for your great-uncle!’ said Bryant gamely.

‘That’s amazing.’ Andrea looked round. ‘I must introduce you to my husband, he’s really the poetry lover.’

Bryant chuckled uneasily. ‘It was your dear grandmother who gave me so much trouble.’

‘Well, you certainly reciprocated,’ said Jennifer, so that Rob thought perhaps it was a fight after all.

‘Was I awful? I just couldn’t get anything out of her.’

‘That could have been because she wanted to keep it to herself, I suppose.’

‘Mm, Jenny, I can tell you disapprove.’

‘Who was this?’ said Andrea.

‘My grandmother, Daphne Sawle,’ said Jennifer, as if this needed no further explanation.

‘I knew she’d never see it, of course, so . . .’

But Jennifer didn’t give ground on this, and Rob, who imagined they were both wrong in different ways, was not in the mood for a row. He said to Bobby, ‘So did you ever meet Peter?’ and drew him aside as he got a second glass of wine. He glanced round, thinking with a touch of relief of the two hundred other people here he could talk to if he wanted. He saw the blond man look over the shoulder of the man he was joking with and give him a frank saucy look, as though he thought Rob had picked Bobby up. Bobby had a wide smile, short shiny black hair, and a strong uncritical belief in his husband’s work. He dismissed his own work in IT – ‘Too boring!’ He told Rob they lived out in Streatham, and though Paul often worked in the British Library, Bobby rarely came into Town. They had been together for nine years. ‘And you?’ said Bobby. ‘Oh, I’m very much single,’ said Rob, and grinned, and felt Bobby was slightly sorry for him. He looked round and saw that Nigel Dupont was coming through towards the buffet. ‘That woman is being quite aggressive to Paul!’ said Bobby. ‘Yes, I know . . .’ said Rob. In fact Bryant himself had half-turned away from Jennifer.

‘About my present project? I can’t tell you,’ he was confessing to a woman in a black suit. ‘Oh, yes, another Life. Still rather hush-hush – I’m sure you’ll understand! – ah, Nigel . . .’ – with a clever little air of deflation.

‘Hello, Paul!’ said Dupont, warily genial, and rather oddly too, since they’d just been sharing a podium.

‘Oh, I loved what you said,’ said the woman. ‘Very moving.’

‘Thanks . . .’ said Dupont. ‘Thanks so much.’

‘Do you know Jenny Ralph?’ said Bryant.

‘Ah! nice to see you,’ said Dupont warmly, allowing the possibility they had met before.

‘Bobby you’ve met, and . . .’

‘Rob Salter.’

‘Rob . . . hi!’ – shaking his hand gratefully, and holding his eye.

Rob smiled back. ‘Interesting to hear about your school – and the Valance connection.’

‘That’s right . . . Old times . . .’

‘So here we have his editor –’

‘. . . in the red corner . . . !’ said Bryant –

‘hah – and his biographer!’

‘That’s right . . .’ said Dupont again.

‘No, we’re old friends,’ said Bryant, curving against him, as if he’d just been kidding. ‘It worked out quite well, didn’t it. We were both digging away like mad, from quite different angles.’ He tilted his head from side to side. ‘I’d get one thing, old Nigel would get another.’

‘It worked out fine,’ said Dupont, in a tone that showed he had a forgiving nature, and it had all been a long time ago. From here the Valance work seemed a distant prolegomenon to far more sensational achievements.

‘Of course I put you on to the Trickett MS,’ said Bryant, wagging his finger.

‘That’s right . . . If only you’d been able to track down the lost poems as well . . .’ said Dupont, with a playful shake of the head.

‘Oh, they’re gone, don’t you think? I’m sure Louisa burnt them – if they ever existed!’

‘What was the Trickett thing?’ said Rob, piqued by the talk of manuscripts and lost poems.

Dupont, whom Rob now found, with the sudden surrender of a prejudice, completely charming, even sexy, paused on the brink of a shift into academic talk – ‘Oh, it was an unpublished part of one of the poems, which turned out to be a sort of queer manifesto, except in tetrameter couplets . . .’

‘Really?’

‘Written in 1913, quite interesting . . .’

‘You know, I had to take issue with one thing you said,’ said Bryant.

‘Oh, lord,’ said Dupont, with a comical cringe.

‘Just now, I mean, when you said dear old Pete’s famous Imp was pea-green.’

‘Yes’ – Dupont looked nonplussed.

‘I could swear it was sort of beige.’ Bryant grinned and narrowed his eyes.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Dupont. ‘I went in that car a lot. In fact I even washed it once, before a group of us went to Windsor Castle in it, just in case we saw the Queen.’

‘Well, I won’t tell you what I did in it!’ said Bryant with a gasp – ‘no, but I’m sure you’re wrong.’

‘Maybe you’re colour-blind,’ said the woman in black.

‘Not at all,’ said Bryant. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter!’

‘It sometimes looked beige with dirt, I suppose,’ Dupont said in a cleverly bemused tone.

Jennifer said, ‘I’m very much of Professor Dupont’s view.’

Rob thought it rather comical that these two who’d tussled over Cecil Valance were doing it again over Peter Rowe. He saw that Bryant, a moderately successful writer, after all, and in his mid-sixties, had a look of exasperation, as though never given the credit due to him, and almost provokingly determined to get it. Rob thought he might get hold of
England Trembles
, and judge for himself.