‘Perhaps you would rather I didn’t?’ said Wilfrid in his usual tone of dry forbearance.
‘Poetry, I mean, you have no idea how to read poetry. It’s not the football results…’
‘Well I’m sorry…’
‘The curfew tolls the knell of passing day:
‘Don’t… talk like that,’ said Wilfrid, and Paul, not seeing their faces, took a moment to realize it was not her mockery but the mention of her going that he was objecting to. And what indeed would he do then? Puzzled for a moment by his own muddled feelings of affection and irritation towards Daphne, Paul tiptoed back out again and rang the bell.
Exactly as yesterday, but with determined new warmth, Paul said to Wilfrid in the hall, ‘And how is your mother?’
‘I fear she didn’t sleep at all well,’ said Wilfrid, not meeting his eye; ‘you might keep it… pretty short today.’ Paul went into the sitting-room and set up the mike and looked over his notes with a clear sense they were blaming him for her bad night. But in fact when Daphne came through she seemed if anything rather more spry than yesterday. She made her way among the helpful obstacles of the room with the inward smile of an elderly person who knows they’re not done yet. He felt something had happened in the interim; of course she would have been thinking, reassessing her position as she lay awake, and he would have to find out as he went along if the spryness was a sign of compliance or resistance.
‘Rather a lovely day,’ she said as she sat down; and then cocking her head to check Wilfrid was still in the kitchen making coffee, ‘Has he been telling you about his popsy?’
‘Oh – well, I gathered…’ Paul smiled distractedly as he checked the tape-recorder.
‘I mean, he’s sixty! He can’t look after a lively young woman – he can hardly look after me!’
‘Perhaps she would look after him.’
But she gave a rather earthy chuckle at this. ‘He’s not a bad person, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, or even a flea probably, but he’s totally impractical. I mean look at this house! It’s a miracle I haven’t tripped over something and broken my leg; or my wrist; or my neck!’
‘Does she live locally?’
‘Thank god, no – she lives in Norway.’
‘Oh, I see…’
‘Birgit. She’s a pen-pal, didn’t he tell you that?’
‘Well, Norway’s a long way away.’
‘That’s not what Birgit thinks. Well, she’s got designs on him.’
‘Do you think?’
Daphne was quietly candid. ‘She wants to be the next Lady Valance. Ah, tea, Wilfie, how splendid!’
‘Coffee, you said, Mummy.’ She took it cautiously from the tray. ‘Shall I go over to Smiths’ for those things, then?’
‘No, no,’ she said, ‘stay and talk with us – it will be more fun for Mr Bryant, and you can help me out – I forget so much!’
‘Do call me Paul,’ said Paul, with a glare of a smile at Wilfrid – if he stayed it was certain Daphne would say nothing remotely interesting; he needed to be sent off on some sort of errand, but it was hard for Paul to know what.
‘Well, of course I’m very interested in… Paul’s great project.’
‘Well, I know you are.’ She sipped. ‘Mm, delicious.’
Paul wondered how to cope with this. As always he had plans, which as often proved impossible to follow, and he had never been good at improvising: he clung to the discarded plan still when he could. He reminded her about Corley Court, and the times he’d visited the house, and how he was hoping to go again, he’d written to the Headmaster; but she couldn’t be got to show any interest in the topic at all. ‘Do you have much from those days, I wonder?’ Paul said. Perhaps under the tablecloths and blankets in this room there were Valance heirlooms, little dusty things that Cecil might have owned and handled. The sense of the whole unexamined terrain of Cecil’s life lying so close and yet so stubbornly out of view came over him at times in waves of dreamlike opportunity and bafflement.
‘I didn’t get much. I got the Raphael.’
‘Oh, well…?’ – Paul narrowed his eyes at her tone.
‘You probably saw it in the loo.’
‘Oh… oh, the picture of the man, do you mean… Goodness… Well, that must be worth quite a lot!’ Paul hated his own snigger – he really had no idea.
‘Well, so one had hoped. Unfortunately it’s a copy, done when was it, Wilfie?’
‘About 1840, I believe,’ said Wilfrid, sportingly, but with a certain pride too.
‘But you didn’t know that at the time?’
‘Well, I think… you know. And what else?’ – she gazed around as if against a bright glare.
‘The ashtray,’ said Wilfrid.
‘Oh, yes – I got the ashtray.’ On the little table, beside her coffee cup, was a small silver bowl, with a scalloped edge. ‘Have a look.’ She lifted it and Paul got up to take it from her. It was just the sort of thing people used to keep in old suitcases in the strong-room at the bank, but tarnished and scratched by the protracted attentions of a heavy smoker.
‘Look on the bottom,’ said Wilfrid.
‘Oh, I see…’
‘I suppose Dudley had a sort of complex or something about property. He had that done to all sorts of valuable things, no doubt greatly reducing their value in the process.’ In flowing letters, like some more conventional inscription stamped in the silver, were the words
‘I was wondering about the picture behind you,’ he said, to distract her. Somehow the nightmare of the room was yielding small treasures, consolation prizes for the talk that Daphne was trying to prevent from happening.
‘Oh, well, that’s Revel, of course,’ said Daphne, as though now referring to an undisputed master.
‘And it’s obviously… you!’ said Paul.
‘I’m very attached to that drawing, aren’t I, Wilfie.’
‘Yes… you are,’ Wilfrid agreed.
‘So when was it done?’ Paul got up, and edged around between the back of Daphne’s chair and the standard- lamp to have a closer look. It struck him that the Victorian ‘thicket’ of furniture and stuff at Corley had been recreated here by Daphne willy-nilly. Perhaps clutter always won in the end.
‘It’s a very fine picture,’ said Daphne. It showed a round-faced young woman with dark hair in bunches on either side of her head. A light scarf was tied loosely in the open neck of her blouse. She leant forward, lips parted, as if waiting for the punchline of a joke. It was done in what Paul thought was red chalk, and signed
Paul giggled, but didn’t hazard a view. When he thought about the date, it began to seem significant. ‘I’d like to see more of his pictures,’ he said, sad to hear himself surrender to a further diversion from the subject of Cecil, but with a feeling she could still be brought back to it.
‘Would you, really?’ Daphne sounded surprised, but was ready to oblige. ‘What have we got? Well, have a look at Revel’s albums, I suppose. You know where they are, Wilfie.’
‘Yes… now then…’ said Wilfrid, nodding his head from side to side as he fetched them out from a chest of
