The Stranger’s Child

‘I prefer a hard chair, my dear,’ said Louisa. ‘I find armchairs somewhat effeminate.’ She sighed. ‘I wonder what Cecil would have made of all these changes.’

‘Mm, I wonder,’ said Dudley, turning away; and then facetiously, as if only half-hoping to be heard, ‘Perhaps you could ask him, the next time you’re in touch?’

Daphne slid a horrified glance at Louisa, it wasn’t clear if she’d heard, Dudley’s head was nodding in noiseless laughter, and his mother went on with tense determination, ‘Cecil had a keen sense of tradition, he was never less than dignified-’ but at that moment the door flew open, and there was Nanny, with a hand on each child’s shoulder. She held them to her, perhaps a moment too long, in a little tableau of her own efficiency. ‘Well, here they are!’ she said. When Granny Sawle visited, they were brought down at six, between nursery supper and bed. Wilfrid broke away and ran to greet her, with a low sweeping bow, which was his new game, while Corinna walked in front of the fireplace with her hands behind her back, as though about to make one of her announcements. They each found a moment to peep nervously at their father – but Dudley’s high spirits didn’t much falter.

‘Say hello to Mrs Riley,’ he said.

‘Hello, Mrs Riley,’ said the children, promptly but with no great warmth.

‘My dears…’ said Mrs Riley over her cocktail-glass.

Wilfrid ran round politely to bow to Granny V as well, who said warily, ‘Look at you!’ as with a quick panting sound and the thwack of his tail against chairs and table-legs Rubbish bustled across the room from the open garden door and excitedly circled his master.

‘Oh, do we really want the dog in?’ said Daphne, with a flutter of panic as her mother raised her drink away from its thrusting nose and made a face at the gamy heat of its breath. She got up to grab it, but Dudley was growling indulgently and provokingly, ‘Oh, Wubbishy Wubbishy Wubbish!’ and had already produced from somewhere one of the bone-hard black biscuits that Rubbish was said to like, which after a bit of teasing he threw into the air – it went down in one. Clara was still nervous of the dog, and smiled keenly at it to suggest she was not. She hid her shyness in a bit of pantomime, stretching out a hand in childish reconciliation, but she had no biscuit, and Rubbish walked past as if he hadn’t seen her.

Corinna had moved in a discreetly purposeful way towards the piano, and now perched on the edge of the stool, studying her father for the best moment to speak. ‘You’re not going to play for us, or anything, are you, old girl?’ said Dudley.

‘Oh, does she play?’ said Eva, with a sly spurt of smoke.

‘Play? She’s a perfect fiend at the piano,’ said Dudley. ‘Aren’t you, my darling?’ At which Corinna smiled uncertainly.

‘I’ll play for you tomorrow,’ she said.

‘Good idea. Play for Uncle George,’ said Dudley, tired already of his own sarcasm, as well as the subject itself.

‘And Wilfie can do his dance,’ said Corinna, reminding her father of the terms of the deal.

‘Well exactly…’ said Dudley after a minute.

Louisa, still rather fixed on Eva, said, ‘I imagine you might care for music, Mrs Riley?’

Mrs Riley smiled at her to prepare her for her answer: ‘Oh, awfully – certain music, at least.’

‘What, Gounod and what have you?’

‘Not Gounod particularly, no…’

‘I should think one would draw the line at Gounod.’

‘Now Wilfie,’ said Dudley, with a loud cough, as if reproving him; but then went on, ‘have you heard about the Colonel and the Rat?’

‘No, Daddy,’ said Wilfrid softly, hardly daring to believe that a poem was starting, but perhaps apprehensive too about its subject.

‘Well…’ said Dudley. ‘The Colonel was there, with bristling hair, and a terrible air, of pain and despair.’

Wilfrid laughed at this, or at least at the awful face his father had pulled to go with it; anything awful could be funny too. ‘Oh ducky,’ said Daphne, ‘is Daddy doing doggerel for you.’

‘It’s not doggerel, Duffel,’ said Dudley, tightly suppressing a snort at so much alliteration, ‘it’s called Skeltonics, it dates from the time of King Henry VIII. If you remember Skelton was the poet laureate.’

‘Oh, in that case,’ said Daphne.

‘Well, if you don’t want me to tell you a poem.’

‘Oh, yes, Daddy!’ said Wilfrid.

‘Your uncle Cecil was a famous poet, but what people tend not to know is that I have quite a talent that way myself.’

Daphne glanced at Louisa, who had an unprovokable look, as though she found her son and her grandson equally beyond comprehension.

‘I know, Daddy,’ said Wilfrid, and stood yearningly by his father’s knee, almost as if he might be going to lay his hand on it.

4

After breakfast the next day Daphne appeared in the nursery, just as Mrs Copeland was getting the children ready for a walk: ‘No, Wilfrid, not those white trousers, you’ll be all over mud.’

‘Mud will be all over me, you mean, Nanny,’ he said.

‘Mother, we’re walking to Pritchett’s farm,’ said Corinna, with a stoical wince as Mrs Copeland pulled a band over her hair.

‘Don’t worry, Nanny,’ said Daphne, ‘I’ll take them myself. We’ve got photographers.’

‘Indeed, my lady!’ said Nanny, with a keen smile and a hint of pique, scanning her charges with a sharper eye. ‘Shall we be in the papers again, then?’

‘Well, we shall,’ Daphne wanted to say, ‘not you’, but she made do with, ‘It’s the Sketch, I think.’

Mrs Copeland tugged a little harder at Corinna’s hair. ‘My sister in London sent Sir Dudley’s picture from the Daily Mail.’

‘I fear publicity is all a part of being a successful writer,’said Daphne, ‘these days! No, leave those trousers on, my duck – we’ll just be sitting about in the garden.’

Wilfrid frowned at her bravely for a moment, but then turned and went to the window as if suddenly remembering something outside. ‘Wilfrid was promised to see the new foal,’ said Corinna, in a pitying, almost mocking voice, ‘and the little chicks in the incubator,’ but she was touched already by the strange contagion of grief, and when a wail went up from the window she started to crumple too, which was worse for her because of the loss of status. She didn’t make much noise, but she attended to her doll’s overnight bag with a swollen face, jamming in the parasol and the tiny red cardigan.

‘Oh, are you bringing Mavis, darling?’ said Daphne. Corinna nodded vigorously but didn’t risk speaking.

‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ said Nanny smugly.

‘Oh, Wilfie, don’t cry,’ said Daphne, picturing the new foal nuzzling its mother and then running off with a nervy sense of untested liberty; but she hardened herself: ‘You don’t want to look all blotchy in the paper.’

‘I don’t want to be in the paper,’ said Wilfrid tragically, his back still turned. Again, Daphne saw the sense of this, but she said,

‘My duck, what a thing to say. You’ll be famous. You’ll be there with Bonzo the Dog, think of that. All over England people will be asking themselves’ – here she ran over and snatched him up with a grunt and a slight stagger at his six-year-old weight – “Who is that lucky, lucky little boy?” ’

But Wilfrid seemed to find that idea even more upsetting than the missed muddy walk.

Out among the maze-like hedges and commas of lawn in the flower-garden, Daphne saw him brighten and perhaps forget. After half a minute his dragging sorrow had a skip in it, there was a glance of reconciliation, a further ten seconds of remembered sorrow, rather formal and conscious, and then the surely unselfconscious surrender to the game of the paths. Gravel, or flagged, or narrow strips of grass, the paths curled between