The Stranger’s Child

‘You have to do something in the manner of the word,’ said Madeleine, unenthusiastically.

‘It can be rather fun,’ said Revel, giving Daphne a sweet but uncertain smile: ‘it’s about how you do things.’

‘Oh I see…’ said Tilda.

Daphne felt she didn’t mind playing, but she knew that Louisa wouldn’t like anything boisterous or dependent on a sense of humour for its success. They had played the adverb game once with the children, Louisa baffling them all by picking seldom. And in fact she said now, ‘I don’t want to be a wet blanket, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I bid you all goodnight.’ The men leapt to their feet, there was a warm overlapping chorus of goodnights, light-hearted protests; amid which Sebby said quietly that he had papers to read, and Freda too, with a sadly cringing smile at Dudley, announced that she had had a lovely day. Daphne went out with them as far as the foot of the stairs, with a certain apologetic air of her own; though she was grateful of course to see them clamber off to bed.

They all had another drink, the idea of a game still hanging in the air. Madeleine started prattling, in a painful attempt to ward off the threat. Tilda asked if anyone knew the rules for Strip Jack Naked. Then Dudley rang for Wilkes and told him to get the pianola out; they were going to have some dancing. ‘Oh, what fun,’ said Eva, with a hard smile through her cigarette-smoke.

‘I’m going to play for my guests,’ said Dudley. ‘It’s only right.’

‘And the carpet…’ murmured Daphne, with a shrug, as though she didn’t really care, which was the only way to get Dudley to do so.

‘Yes, remember my carpet!’ said Eva.

‘In the hall, Wilkes,’ said Dudley.

‘As you wish, Sir Dudley,’ said Wilkes, managing to convey, beneath his rosy pleasure at the prospect of the guests enjoying themselves, a flicker of apprehension.

The pianola was kept in the cow-passage. In a minute Dudley came out into the hall to watch Robbie and another of the men wheel it roaringly across the wide oak floor. He went down the passage himself, and came back with an awkward armful of the rolls: he had a wild look, mockery mixed up with genuine excitement. It was the moment when Daphne knew she had lost what frail control of the evening she might ever have had – she gave it up in a familiar mixture of misery and relief.

Some of the rolls were just well-known numbers, foxtrots and the like; one or two were the special ones made by Paderewski, of short pieces by Chopin, which were supposed to sound like him playing it himself. Dudley only ever played these to send them up with his absurd imitation of a wild-haired virtuoso. Now he threaded a roll in, drunkenly concentrating, smiling to himself at the treat he was preparing for them, smiling at the machine itself, which he had a childish reverence for. Then he sat down, flung his head back, and started pedalling – out came the foxtrot they’d had a hundred times, and which Daphne knew she would have on the brain if something bigger and better couldn’t be made to replace it. The keys going up and down under invisible hands had something almost menacing about them.

Mark, who was as tight as Dudley, immediately seized hold of Daphne, and they shimmied off at a lively stagger across the hall; she felt Mark’s warm but undiscriminating interest in her as a member of the opposite sex, they were both breathless with laughter and then Mark bumped quite hard into the table and almost fell over, still holding on to her. She freed herself, and looked around at the others, Madeleine virtually in hiding, doubled up behind the pianola, as if looking for something she’d dropped, and George pretending to praise Dudley’s playing with a keen facetious grin, entirely ignored by Dudley himself. Of course she wanted to dance with Revel, but he, quite reasonably, she supposed, had presented his hand to Flo, and moved off with her very confidently, steering as if by magic past the various hazards of hall chairs, plant-stands and the grandfather clock. Daphne only half- followed them, then she saw Revel smiling at her over Flo’s shoulder in a perfectly open way from which, none the less, she felt allowed to draw something quite private. The roll came to an end, and Dudley jumped up to choose a replacement, which turned out to be the other foxtrot he always played. He had no ear for music, but was obsessively attached to these two numbers, or at least to playing them, with a staring pretence that anyone who really did care for music would love them too. So Daphne took hold of Stinker, with a certain mischievous determination, and he bumped along beside her and somewhat on top of her, gasping, ‘Oh, my dear girl, you’re too fast for me…’ In a moment Dudley started singing raucously as he pedalled, ‘Oh, the lights of home!… the lights of home! and a place I can call my own!’

‘What’s that?’ shouted Stinker over his shoulder, trying boldly to wriggle out of dancing.

‘What? You can’t be so Philistine. It’s a lovely song by my brother Cecil’ – and he pounded on, jamming the words in to the rhythm nonsensically, and soon with tears of laughter running down his cheeks. Above him the large unapprehending cows in ‘The Loch of Galber’ gazed on. The roll came to an end.

‘Goodness, I’m hot after all that,’ said Stinker, and murmuring extravagantly about what tremendous fun it all was he steered his way back into the drawing-room. Cautious clinking and crashing could be heard and the hoarse gasp of the gazogene; then the pianola started up again. ‘Come on, Stinker!’ shouted Dudley, ‘it’s the “Hickory- Dickory Rag” – your favourite!’

‘Come on, Stinker!’ cried Tilda, with exceptional high spirits, so that people laughed at her a little, but then immediately joined her, ‘Come on, we’re starting!’ – Flo was darting around already, and Eva, taking the man’s part, seized her shoulders and trotted her briskly down the room, head jerking up and down like a hen in a new kind of move she seemed to have designed herself. The women’s beads could just be heard, rattling against each other. ‘Oh!’ said Tilda, ‘oh, my golly!’ She followed them with a wide-eyed smile that Daphne had never seen before, something touching and comical in her pleasure, gazing at each of the others to see if they shared it; she peered almost cunningly at George, whose own smile was broad but slightly strained, and suddenly she had hooked his arm round her somehow, and they were moving off together, Tilda doing some intent little back-kicks and George, with shouts of ‘Whoops!’ and ‘Oh, my word!’ randomly trying something similar. ‘Oh, do come on, Stinker!’ shouted Dudley again, rocking from side to side like a cyclist on a steep hill as he worked at the treadles, something mad and relentless in his grin. ‘Stinker!’ shouted Mark, ‘Stinker-winker!’ But Stinker resisted all these calls, and a minute later Daphne saw him wander past the window with a tumbler in his hand, and disappear into the relative safety of the garden. There was a large moon tonight, and he seemed to be peering around for it.

When the dancing stopped, Flo said, ‘Let’s all go outside and get some air.’ Daphne glanced at Revel, who said, ‘Oh, good idea,’ with a sweeping smile which lingered for a moment on her before dropping thoughtfully aside. There was a rush to the front door, even shoving and protesting, then Mark, already out on the drive, singing lustily, to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, ‘We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here’, which seemed to Daphne rather rude, though preferable no doubt to many of the other army songs that he and Dudley sang when they were drunk, such as ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse’, which he started to sing next.

‘Tell Mark to stop singing,’ said Daphne to Flo, who seemed to get the point. On a still night every word would be audible in Louisa’s bedroom.

‘You coming out, Dud?’ said George, still panting a bit, and letting his high spirits run on over his brother-in- law.

‘Eh…? Oh – no, no,’ said Dudley, swivelling round on the stool, and then back again to reach for his drink. ‘No, no – you all go out. I’m going to stop in and read.’

‘Oh…’ said Tilda, still breathless and delighted. Dudley stood up with a fixed but already absent smile, shuffled sideways and dropped back on to the edge of the stool, which shot away across the bare floor – he lunged for the edge of the keyboard as he fell, George jumped from the flying cut-glass tumbler, and Daphne started forward but merely snatched his elbow as he thumped heavily backwards, with a furious shout of ‘Watch out!’ as if someone else was behaving dangerously. ‘Oh!’ said Tilda again. He lay there for several seconds, then sat up like the Dying Gaul, leaning on one hand, staring at the floor as though only just containing his patience, then raised his other hand, whether for help or to ward help off it was hard to tell. Daphne found herself gasping with alarm and pity and almost giggling with childish hilarity.

‘No, I’m perfectly all right,’ said Dudley, and sprang up quite smartly, in the soldier-like way he still had, though unsteady for a moment as he gained his feet. A wince of pain was covered by a sarcastic laugh at the whole situation. His shirt-front and lapel were wet with whisky.

‘Are you sure, old man?’ said George. Dudley didn’t answer or even look at him, but crossed the hall with