The Stranger’s Child

he approached. Really you didn’t mow at weekends, but Dudley had ordered it, doubtless so as to annoy his guests. George and Madeleine were strolling on the far side, avoiding the mowing, heads down in talk, perhaps enjoying themselves in their own way.

The children hastened, at a ragged march, towards their uncle and aunt – and seemed unsure themselves how much of their delight was real, how much good manners; Corinna by now took delight in good manners for their own sake. George stood his ground, in his dark suit and large brown shoes, and then squatted down with a wary cackle to inspect them for a moment on their own level. Madeleine, wrapped in a long mackintosh, held back, with a thin fixed smile, in which various doubts and questions were tightly hidden.

‘Aunt Madeleine, I’ve learned a new piece to play for you,’ said Corinna straight away.

‘Oh,’ said Madeleine, ‘what is it?’

‘It’s called “The Happy Wallaby”.’

‘Well, my dear,’ said Madeleine, as if seeing something faintly compromising in this, ‘we’ll have to see.’

‘She’s been practising, haven’t you, Corinna,’ said Daphne, and saw her glance at Wilfrid.

‘And Wilfie’s going to do his dance,’ Corinna said.

‘Oh, that will be capital,’ said George. ‘When will you do it? I don’t want to miss that,’ making up for his wife’s lack of warmth.

‘After nursery tea,’ said Daphne. ‘They’re allowed down.’ The thing about seeing George with Madeleine was that it made you fonder of George; he stood up, and they kissed with a noisy firmness that amused them both. ‘How’s Brum?’ said Daphne.

‘Brum’s all right,’ said George.

‘It’s a great deal of work,’ said Madeleine; ‘you don’t see us at our best, I fear!’

‘I don’t think you’ve met Revel Ralph, Madeleine… Revel, my brother George Sawle.’

George looked keenly at Revel as he shook his hand. ‘Madeleine and I have been reading a lot about your show… congratulations! Your designs sound marvellous.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Madeleine uncertainly.

‘I wonder if we’ll get down,’ said George, now smiling rather anxiously at Revel. ‘I’d love to see it.’

‘Well, let me know, won’t you,’ said Revel.

‘You’ve been, Daph, of course?’ said George.

‘I’d have to stay with someone, wouldn’t I,’ said Daphne.

‘You ought to have a little place in Town,’ said Revel.

‘Well, we did have that very nice flat in Marylebone, but of course Louisa sold it,’ said Daphne, and changed the subject before it got going – ‘Watch out…’ The donkey was plodding rapidly towards them, and they set off to the mown side of the lawn, damp grass cuttings clinging to their shoes. ‘God knows why they’re mowing today,’ she said, though she took a kind of pleasure in it too, different from her husband’s – it was something to do with labour, and running a place with twenty servants.

‘How is Dudley?’ said George.

‘I think all right,’ said Daphne, with a quick glance at the children.

‘Book coming on?’

‘Oh, I find it best not to ask.’

George gave her a strange look. ‘You’ve not seen any of it?’

‘No, no.’ She took a bright, hard tone: ‘You know he’s very excited about boxing things in.’

‘Oh, yes, I want to see this,’ said George, with his taste for controversy as much as for design. ‘How far is he taking it?’

‘Oh, quite far.’

‘But you don’t mind,’ with a sideways smile at her.

‘Well, there are some things. You’ll see.’

‘What do you think, Ralph?’ said George. ‘For or against the egregious grotesqueries of the Victorians?’ And now Daphne saw they were back in common-room mode, after a brief spontaneous holiday. The children smirked.

Revel thought and said, ‘Can I be somewhere in between?’ with an appealing wriggle in his voice.

‘I’d want to know why. Or rather where.’

‘I suppose what I feel,’ said Revel, after a minute, ‘well, the grotesqueries are what I like best, really, and the more egregious the better.’

‘What? Not St Pancras?’ said George. ‘Not Keble College?’

‘Oh, when I first saw St Pancras,’ said Revel, ‘I thought it was the most beautiful building on earth.’

‘And you didn’t change your mind when you’d seen the Parthenon.’

Revel blushed slightly – Daphne thought perhaps he had yet to see the Parthenon. ‘Well, I feel there’s room in the world for more than one kind of beauty,’ he said, ‘put it that way,’ firmly but graciously.

George took this in, seemed even to blush a little himself. He stopped and looked away towards the house: turrets and gables, the glaring plate glass in Gothic windows, the unrestful patterns of red, white and black brick. Creeper spread like doubt around the openings at the western end. Daphne felt she wouldn’t have chosen it, felt it had in a way chosen her, and now she would be sick at heart to lose it. She turned to Madeleine. ‘I remember when George first came to stay here, Madeleine,’ she said: ‘we thought we’d never hear the end of the splendours of Corley Court. Oh, the jelly-mould domes in the dining-room!’ But such comical alliances with her sister-in-law rarely stuck – Madeleine smiled for a second, but her allegiance to George’s intellect was the firmer. ‘No grotesqueries then!’ insisted Daphne.

George clearly thought it wise to laugh at himself for a moment: ‘Cecil liked them, and one didn’t argue with Cecil.’ It seemed not to bother him that he was mocking his sister’s home.

‘I see,’ said Revel, with that mixture of dryness and forgiveness that was so unlike Dudley’s humour. ‘So you know the house quite well.’

‘Oh, quite…’ said George absently, the question of why he so rarely came to Corley perhaps embarrassing him. ‘You’re too young to have known Cecil,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Revel solemnly, and with the faintest smile, since his youth was generally thought to be in his favour, it was what all the articles in the magazines dwelt on – his being so brilliant so young.

‘But you’ve been over Corley before,’ said George, now a touch proprietary.

‘Oh, heaps of times,’ said Revel; and a strange sort of tension, of rivalry and regret, seemed for a moment to flicker in the two men’s different smiles.

‘Anyway, you’ll meet Mrs Riley,’ said Daphne, ‘she’s staying for the weekend.’

‘Oh, is she…’ said Revel, as if seeing a disadvantage after all in his visit.

‘She hung around for ages, you know, measuring things up or whatever she does and dropping ash on the carpet; and then Dud for some reason asked her to stay. And would you believe it, she had all her evening clothes in the boot of her car.’

‘Why did she?’ said Wilfrid.

‘She’ll have been on the way to someone else’s house, old chap,’ said George.

‘Well, she designs clothes,’ said Corinna. ‘She’s got tons of skirts and dresses in the car. She’s going to make one for me, green velvet, with a low waist and no particular bust.’

‘No particular bust!’ said Daphne. And then, ‘Is she indeed!’

‘Is she all right?’ said Revel. ‘I dare say she is – we come at things from different ends.’

Daphne was a little unsure about the turn she’d given the talk. ‘I’m sure she’s a genius,’ she said. ‘I’m just not awfully good with very fashionable people.’ And she thought, and where is she now? – in a scurry of anxiety which she quickly brought to heel.

‘I don’t expect she comes cheap,’ said Revel.

‘No. In fact she’s quite violently expensive,’ said Daphne, in a way that suggested a more than reasonable cause of annoyance.

They strolled back, their group still tentative and self-conscious, towards the white gate under the stone arch, and the broad path back to the house. Freda and Clara had come out for some air, and were moving at their own peculiar pace among the spring beds and low hedges of the formal garden. Daphne saw the man that Revel had mentioned, in a brown trilby, lope across and engage them in talk – they seemed confused, earnestly helpful, and then somewhat defensive. Clara raised one stick, and pointed it, as if sending him off. He had a camera-case slung