nose up unhappily. The trap jolted and moved off at a brisk pace, as if nothing had happened, leaving the boy to bring a shovel. At the top of the drive Granny Sawle turned and waved. Wilfrid stood beside his aunt and uncle and waved back, half-heartedly, with the sun in his eyes. ‘Well, here we are, Wilfrid,’ said Aunt Madeleine, which he felt just about summed it up. She stood stiff above him, blocking his view of some much happier morning, in which he was sitting at a table with Uncle Revel, drawing pictures of birds and mammals. When they went back into the house his mother appeared from the morning-room with a strange fixed smile.
‘I hope you slept for a minute or two?’ she said.
‘Oh, far more,’ said Uncle George, ‘ten minutes at least.’
‘I had a full half-hour,’ said Aunt Madeleine, apparently not joking.
‘What a night,’ said George. ‘I feel bright green this morning. I don’t know how you take the pace, Daph.’
‘It requires some getting used to,’ she said. ‘One has to be broken in.’
Wilfrid stared at his uncle for signs of this exotic colouring. Actually, his mother and George both looked very pale.
‘And how are you, Mummy?’ he said.
‘Good morning, little one,’ his mother said.
‘Do you do this every weekend?’ said Madeleine.
‘No, sometimes we’re very quiet and good, aren’t we, my angel,’ said his mother, as he ran to her and she stooped and pulled him in. He felt a quick shudder go through her, and held her tighter. Then after a moment she stood, and he had more or less to let go. She reached for him vaguely again, but somehow she wasn’t there. He looked up into her face, and its utterly familiar roundness and fairness, the batting of the eyelashes, the tiny lines by her mouth when she smiled, beauties he had always known and never for a moment needed to describe, seemed to him for a few strange seconds the features of someone else. ‘Well, I must get on,’ she said.
‘No, Mummy…’ said Wilfrid.
‘Hardly the best moment,’ she explained to Madeleine, ‘but Revel has offered to draw my picture, which feels too good an offer to refuse, even with a hangover.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said George, and smiled at her very steadily. ‘No, that should be quite something.’
‘Oh, Mummy, can I come too, can I come and watch?’ cried Wilfrid.
And again his mother gave him a strange bland look in which something hurtfully humorous seemed also to lurk. ‘No, Wilfie, not a good idea. An artist has to concentrate, you know. You can see it when it’s done.’ It was all too much for him, and the tears rose up in a stifling wail. He longed for his mother, but he pushed her off, shouting and gulping, fending them all off, with the tears dripping down on to his jersey.
So after that he was left, for an undefined period, with Uncle George and Aunt Madeleine. They went into the library, where George leant by the empty fireplace and talked to him encouragingly. Wilfrid stood listlessly spinning the large coloured globe, with its well-known splodges of British pink, first one way, then the other. His hands smacked lightly on the bright varnished paper, and the world echoed faintly inside. As often after a great explosion of tears he felt abstracted and weak, and it took him a while to see the point of things again.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen your father this morning,’ said George.
Wilfrid thought about how to answer this. He said, ‘We don’t see Daddy in the mornings.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Well, not as a rule. You see, he’s writing his book.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said George. ‘Well, that’s the most important thing, isn’t it.’
Wilfrid didn’t agree to this exactly. He said, ‘He’s writing a book about the War.’
‘Not like his other book, then,’ said Madeleine, who with her head back and her glasses on the end of her nose was gaping at the shelves above her.
‘Not at all,’ said Wilfrid. ‘It’s about Sergeant Bronson.’
‘Oh yes…’ said George vaguely. ‘So he tells you about it? How exciting…’
The constraints of strict truth felt more threateningly present in this room full of old learning. He wandered off to the centre table with a smile, keeping his answer. ‘Uncle George,’ he said, ‘do you like Uncle Revel’s pictures?’
‘Oh, very much, old boy. Not that I’ve seen very many of them. He’s still very young, you know,’ said George, looking less green now than pink. ‘You know he’s not really an uncle, don’t you?’
‘I know,’ said Wilfrid. ‘He’s an honourable uncle.’
‘Well, ha, ha!… Well, yes, that’s right.’
‘You mean an
‘Oh,’ said Wilfrid, ‘yes…’
‘I expect you mean both, don’t you, Wilfie,’ said George, and smiled at him understandingly. Wilfrid knew his father couldn’t stomach Aunt Madeleine, and he felt this gave him licence to hate her too. She hadn’t brought him a present, but as a matter of fact that wasn’t it at all. She never said anything nice, and when she tried to it turned out to be horrible. Now she tucked in her chin and gave him her pretend smile, staring at him over her glasses. He leant on the table, and opened and shut the hinged silver ink-well, several times, making its nice loud clopping noise. Aunt Madeleine winced.
‘I suppose this is where Granny does her book tests, isn’t it,’ she said, wrinkling her nose, her smile turning hard.
‘I’m sure the child doesn’t know about that,’ said Uncle George quietly.
‘Actually, I’m learning reading with Nanny,’ said Wilfrid, abandoning the table and going off towards the corner of the room, where there was a cupboard with some interesting old things in.
‘Jolly good,’ said George. ‘So what are you reading now? Why don’t we read something together?’ Wilfrid felt his uncle’s grateful relief at the idea of a book – he was already sitting down in one of the slippery leather chairs.
‘Corinna’s reading
‘Isn’t that a bit hard for you?’ said Madeleine.
‘Daphne loved that book,’ said George. ‘It’s a children’s book.’
‘I’m not reading it,’ said Wilfrid. ‘I don’t really want to read now, Uncle George. Have you seen this card machine?’ He opened the cupboard, and got the card machine out very carefully, but still banging it against the door. He carried it over and handed it to his uncle, who had assumed a slightly absent smile.
‘Ah, yes… jolly good…’ Uncle George wasn’t very clever at understanding it, he had it round the wrong way. ‘Quite a historic object,’ he said, ready to hand it back.
‘What is it?’ said Madeleine, coming over. ‘Oh, yes, I see… Historic indeed. Quite useless now, I fear!’
‘I like it,’ said Wilfrid, and something struck him again, by his uncle’s knee, with his aunt bending over him, with her smell like an old book. ‘Uncle George,’ he said, ‘why don’t you have any children?’
‘Well, darling,’ said Uncle George, ‘we just haven’t got round to it yet.’ He peered at the machine with new interest; but then went on, ‘You know, Auntie and I are both very busy at our university. And to be absolutely honest with you, we don’t have a very great deal of money.’
‘Lots of poor people have babies,’ Wilfrid said, rather bluntly, since he knew his uncle was talking nonsense.
‘Yes, but we want to bring up our little boys and girls in comfort, with some of the lovely things in life that you and your sister have, for instance.’
Madeleine said, ‘Remember, George, you need to finish those remarks for the Vice-Chancellor.’
‘I know, my love,’ said George, ‘but it’s so much pleasanter conversing with our nephew.’
Nevertheless, a minute later George was saying, ‘I suppose you’re right, Mad.’ A real anxiety started up in Wilfrid that he would be left alone with Aunt Madeleine. ‘You’ll be all right with Auntie, won’t you?’
‘Oh, please, Uncle George’ – Wilfrid felt the anxiety close in on him, but offset at once by a dreary feeling he couldn’t explain, that he was going to have to go through with whatever it was, and it didn’t really matter.
‘We’ll do something lovely later,’ said George, tentatively ruffling his nephew’s hair, and then smoothing it back down again. He turned in the doorway. ‘We can have your famous dance.’
When he’d gone, Madeleine rather seized on this.
‘Well, I can’t do it by myself,’ said Wilfrid, hands on hips.
‘Oh, I suppose you’d want music.’
