The Stranger’s Child

said, with a moment’s worry that she wouldn’t have heard of it.

Cecil smiled at them both, savouring his power of choice, and said, ‘Well, you’ll find out when I read it to you.’

‘I hope it’s not “The Lady of Shalott”,’ said Daphne.

‘Oh, I like “The Lady of Shalott”.’

‘I mean, that’s my favourite,’ said Daphne.

George said, ‘Well, come up and meet Mother,’ spreading his arms to shepherd them.

‘And Mrs Kalbeck’s here too,’ said Daphne, ‘by the way.’

‘Then we’ll try and get rid of her,’ said George.

‘Well, you can try…’ said Daphne.

‘I’m already feeling sorry for Mrs Kalbeck,’ said Cecil, ‘whoever she may be.’

‘She’s a big black beetle,’ said George, ‘who took Mother to Germany last year, and hasn’t let go of her since.’

‘She’s a German widow,’ said Daphne, with a note of sad realism and a pitying shake of the head. She found Cecil had spread his arms too and, hardly thinking, she did the same; for a moment they seemed united in a lightly rebellious pact.

2

While the maid was removing the tea-things, Freda Sawle stood up and wandered between the small tables and numerous little armchairs to the open window. A few high streaks of cloud glowed pink above the rockery, and the garden itself was stilled in the first grey of the twilight. It was a time of day that played uncomfortably on her feelings. ‘I suppose my child is straining her eyes out there somewhere,’ she said, turning back to the warmer light of the room.

‘If she has her poetry books,’ said Clara Kalbeck.

‘She’s been studying some of Cecil Valance’s poems. She says they are very fine, but not so good as Swinburne or Lord Tennyson.’

‘Swinburne…’ said Mrs Kalbeck, with a wary chuckle.

‘All the poems of Cecil’s that I’ve seen have been about his own house. Though George says he has others, of more general interest.’

‘I feel I know a good deal about Cecil Valance’s house,’ said Clara, with the slight asperity that gave even her nicest remarks an air of sarcasm.

Freda paced the short distance to the musical end of the room, the embrasure with the piano and the dark cabinet of the gramophone. George himself had turned rather critical of ‘Two Acres’ since his visit to Corley Court. He said it had a way of ‘resolving itself into nooks’. This nook had its own little window, and was spanned by a broad oak beam. ‘They’re very late,’ said Freda; ‘though George says Cecil is hopeless about time.’

Clara looked tolerantly at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I think perhaps they are rambling around.’

‘Oh, who knows what George is doing with him!’ said Freda, and frowned at her own sharp tone.

‘He may have lost his connection at Harrow and Wealdstone,’ said Clara.

‘Quite so,’ said Freda; and for a moment the two names, with the pinched vowels, the throaty r, the blurred W that was almost an F, struck her as a tiny emblem of her friend’s claim on England, and Stanmore, and her. She stopped to make adjustments to the framed photographs that stood in an expectant half-circle on a small round table. Dear Frank, in a studio setting, with his hand on another small round table. Hubert in a rowing-boat and George on a pony. She pushed the two of them apart, to give Daphne more prominence. Often she was glad of Clara’s company, and her unselfconscious willingness to sit, for long hours at a time. She was no less good a friend for being a pitiful one. Freda had three children, the telephone, and an upstairs bathroom; Clara had none of these amenities, and it was hard to begrudge her when she laboured up the hill from damp little ‘Lorelei’ in search of talk. Tonight, though, with dinner raising tensions in the kitchen, her staying-put showed a certain insensitivity.

‘One can see George is so happy to be having his friend,’ said Clara.

‘I know,’ said Freda, sitting down again with a sudden return of patience. ‘And of course I’m happy too. Before, he never seemed to have anybody.’

‘Perhaps losing a father made him shy,’ said Clara. ‘He wanted only to be with you.’

‘Mm, you may be right,’ said Freda, piqued by Clara’s wisdom, and touched at the same time by the thought of George’s devotion. ‘But he’s certainly changing now. I can see it in his walk. And he whistles a great deal, which usually shows that a man’s looking forward to something… Of course he loves Cambridge. He loves the life of ideas.’ She saw the paths across and around the courts of the colleges as ideas, with the young men following them, through archways, and up staircases. Beyond were the gardens and river-banks, the hazy dazzle of social freedom, where George and his friends stretched out on the grass, or slipped by in punts. She said cautiously, ‘You know he has been elected to the Conversazione Society.’

‘Indeed…’ said Clara, with a vague shake of the head.

‘We’re not allowed to know about it. But it’s philosophy, I think. Cecil Valance got him into it. They discuss ideas. I think George said they discuss, “Does this hearth-rug exist?” That kind of thing.’

‘The big questions,’ said Clara.

Freda laughed guiltily and said, ‘I understand it’s a great honour to be a member.’

‘And Cecil is older than George,’ said Clara.

‘I believe two or three years older, and already quite an expert on some aspect of the Indian Mutiny. Apparently he hopes to be a Fellow of the college.’

‘He is offering to help George.’

‘Well, I think they’re great friends!’

Clara let a moment pass. ‘Whatever the reason,’ she said, ‘George is blooming.’

Freda smiled firmly, as she took up her friend’s idea. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘He’s coming into bloom, at last!’ The image was both beautiful and vaguely unsettling. Then Daphne was sticking her head through the window and shouting,

‘They’re here!’ – sounding furious with them for not knowing.

‘Ah, good,’ said her mother, standing up again.

‘Not a moment too soon,’ said Clara Kalbeck, with a dry laugh, as if her own patience had been tried by the wait.

Daphne glanced quickly over her shoulder, before saying, ‘He’s extremely charming, you know, but he has a rather carrying voice.’

‘And so have you, my dear,’ said Freda. ‘Now do go and bring him in.’

‘I shall depart,’ said Clara, quietly and gravely.

‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Freda, surrendering as she had suspected she would, and getting up and going into the hall. As it happened Hubert had just got home from work, and was standing at the front door in his bowler hat, almost throwing two brown suitcases into the house. He said,

‘I brought these up with me in the van.’

‘Oh, they must be Cecil’s,’ said Freda. ‘Yes, “C. T. V.”, look. Do be careful…’ Her elder son was a well-built boy, with a surprisingly ruddy moustache, but she saw in a moment, in the light of her latest conversation, that he hadn’t yet bloomed, and would surely be completely bald before he had had the chance. She said, ‘And a most intriguing packet has come for you. Good evening, Hubert.’

‘Good evening, Mother,’ said Hubert, leaning over the cases to kiss her on the cheek. It was the little dry comedy of their relations, which somehow turned on the fact that Hubert wasn’t lightly amused, perhaps didn’t even know there was anything comic about them. ‘Is this it?’ he said, picking up a small parcel wrapped in shiny red paper. ‘It looks more like a lady’s thing.’

‘Well, so I had hoped,’ said his mother, ‘it’s from Mappin’s-’ as behind her, where the garden door had stood open all day, the others were arriving: waiting a minute outside, in the soft light that spread across the path,