round his neck, but didn’t seem interested in using the camera on them. ‘Go on, my darlings, rescue Granny Sawle,’ said Daphne. But just then the man, backing away and glancing round, saw Dudley himself emerge through the garden door, with the look of tricky geniality that he put on for the press, and with Sebby just behind him, jammed in the doorway by the excitable dog, and clearly more reluctant to be seen.
‘Here we are,’ said Dudley, as they all came up, shaking hands with George, shaking hands, rather pointedly, with Madeleine, though grinning at her fiercely as he did so. ‘And Revel, my dear, you’ve made it.’ He turned with a lurch to embrace the whole group in his grin. ‘What a lovely reunion!’ Daphne glanced at her mother, who she felt was the one most vulnerable to Dudley’s performance, but she was too caught up in her own reunion with George to notice it.
‘Hello, George!’ said Freda, with a brave little quiver, the tone of someone not quite sure of being remembered. And perhaps this tiny glimpse touched George as well – he enveloped his mother in a firm hug, sweetly, and guiltily, protracted.
‘Maddy, dear,’ he said, and Madeleine too held Freda’s shoulder and angled in for a kiss under the tilting brims of their hats.
‘Now, I’m sorry to say, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Dudley, ‘that our little weekend idyll has been infiltrated by one of the tireless and pitiless agents of Fleet Street. What’s your name?’
‘Oh, I’m Goldblatt, Sir Dudley,’ said the photographer, swallowing Dudley’s harsh tone, ‘Jerry Goldblatt,’ lifting his trilby an inch as he looked over the group.
‘Jerry Goldblatt,’ said Dudley, and paused unpleasantly, ‘is just going to take a few snapshots for the
‘I prefer to say portraits,’ said Goldblatt, ‘portrait groups.’
‘So if you wouldn’t mind awfully doing what he says for ten minutes, then we can get the damn fellow out of here.’
‘Much obliged,’ said Goldblatt, ‘well, ladies and gentlemen – ’
But they saw very quickly that it was Dudley who’d be telling them what to do. A trying hour or more of sittings ensued, different groupings around various stone seats, or posed, with a hint of awkward clowning, under the raised arms and bare breasts of bronze and marble statues. The Scottish boy made himself useful, and quickly set up the croquet lawn, where they started a pretend game which immediately got serious, and was abandoned with bad grace for work at another location. Really there were three of them the photographer wanted, Dudley, Sebby and Revel, with Daphne and the children as decorative extras. Dudley of course knew this, but in a complicated rigmarole brought in all the others, and nearly pretended not to want to be involved himself at all.
Dudley said: ‘But look here, Goldblatt, you must have a snapshot of our friend Frau Kalbeck. You know, she’s one of the original Valkyries of Stanmore Hill.’
‘Oh, yes, Sir Dudley?’ said the photographer warily.
‘No, no, please…!’ said Clara, tickled but mortified at the same time. She seemed ready to tuck her sticks out of sight. Daphne said,
‘But not if you don’t want to, dear,’ and indeed thought it quite impossible that they’d use such a photograph, which would make it, in the longer view, even sadder for her.
‘Perhaps not, I think,’ said Clara, and hid her tiny disappointment in a histrionic call – ‘But where is dear Mrs Riley?’ It was unexpected, but she seemed to have taken a shine to Eva.
‘Dudley dear, where’s Mrs Riley?’ said Daphne coolly.
‘Oh lord…’ said Dudley, the mad glint showing for a second through his puzzled tone. ‘Robbie, run and look for Mrs Riley’ – and as Robbie went swiftly away, ‘She may be just too busy…’
‘Is that Mrs Eva Riley, sir?’ said Jerry Goldblatt, with a cunning glance at the house. ‘The interior decorator?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Dudley, ‘Mrs Riley, the famous interior decorator of the Carousel Restaurant,’ as if writing the copy for the
‘That is a stroke of luck, Sir Dudley,’ said Goldblatt.
Daphne saw that Dudley had got almost everything he wanted; he’d rescued a stylish, amusing and important party from the jaws of the other one that bored him to madness, and posed it, for as long as the camera’s flashes lasted, for the world to see. Sebby Stokes in fact declined to join in, suspecting that he shouldn’t be seen playing croquet while the nation stood on the brink of a general strike; he shrewdly told Goldblatt he would be ‘working on Cabinet papers in the library’. George, quite new to the world of publicity, acted up determinedly, followed Revel’s instructions for new poses, and whisked the children along in a hectic and rather touching show of affection. He seemed to like Revel – perhaps the little friction in their views on St Pancras Station had excited him. Madeleine, with the unhappy solidarity of the shy, had perched beside Clara, and in effect opted out of the photographs. As for Revel himself, Daphne saw that she needn’t have worried, in fact there was almost some further friction in his eagerness to direct arrangements himself. ‘Well… yes…’ said Dudley, frowning, ‘no, no, my dear, you’re the designer!’ – shaking his head none the less in slight bafflement, while Jerry Goldblatt pleaded, ‘If I could just have Lady Valance and the kiddies?’ Then Eva Riley arrived, her long legs white in sheeny stockings, almost laughably fashionable, a pearl-coloured cloche hat pulled down tight on her black bob. ‘Do you really need me?’ she wailed, and Jerry Goldblatt called back that he certainly did.
Revel and Daphne had their picture taken together, back by the fishpond. They stood on either side of a rose arch, each with one arm raised like a dancer to gesture at the view beyond it. Daphne laughed to show she was not an actress, not certainly a dancer, and looked across at Revel, who kept a straighter face. She felt her laughter had a touch of panic to it. She had an apprehensive image of next week’s
5
At the end of lunch George slipped out from the dining-room and set off for a distant lavatory, treasuring the prospect of four or five minutes alone. He felt stifled already by the subject of Cecil, and by the thought of a further twenty-four hours devoted to his brilliance, bravery and charm. What things they all found themselves saying. Perhaps in certain monasteries, or in finishing schools, the conversation at meals was as strictly prescribed. The General threw up a topic, and the rest of them batted it gingerly to and fro, with Sebastian Stokes as umpire; even Dudley’s sneering had been edgily reined in. George had met Stokes once before, in Cambridge, when they’d all gone out in a punt, Cecil clearly exciting his guest by his lordly thrust and toss of the pole and intermittent recital of sonnets. Stokes seemed not to remember that George had been of the party, and George didn’t remind him, when the talk turned to their Cambridge days. He felt undeniably uneasy, and drank several glasses of champagne, in the hope they would relax him, but they had only made him hot and giddy, while the dining-room itself, with its gaudy decor, its mirrors and gilding, had appeared to him more ghastly than ever, like some funereal fairground. Of course one indulged the dead, wrote off their debts; one forgave them as one lamented them; and Cecil had been mightily clever and fearless, no doubt, and had broken many hearts in his short life. But surely no one but Louisa could want a new memorial to him, ten years after his passing? Here they all were, submissively clutching their contributions. A dispiriting odour, of false piety and dutiful suppression, seemed to rise from the table and hang like cabbage-smells in the jelly-mould domes of the ceiling.
As he crossed the hall, the door under the stairs was shoved open by Wilkes, with the surprising look, for just a second, of a man who has a life of his own.
‘Ah, sir…!’ said Wilkes, turning to catch the door, the age-old benignity back at once like a faint blush.
‘Thanks so much, Wilkes,’ said George. And since he had him there, ‘I hope you’re well.’
‘
‘I’m so glad.’
‘I trust you’re well, too, sir; and Mrs Sawle…’
‘Oh, yes, both frightfully busy and burdened with work, you know, but, thank you, pretty well.’
George and Wilkes were both holding the door, while Wilkes gazed at him with his usual flattering lack of impatience, of any suggestion that a moment before he had been rushing elsewhere. ‘It’s good to see you back at
