The Stranger’s Child

in candour herself. My grandfather was a member too, back in the forties. Many distinguished people were.’

‘We have nothing to do with politics, however,’ said George, ‘or worldly fame. We’re thoroughly democratic.’

‘That’s right,’ said Cecil, with a note of regret. ‘Many great writers have been members, of course.’ He looked down, blinking modestly, and at the same time, sitting forward, gave George a vicious kick under the table. ‘I’m so sorry!’ he said, since George had yelped, and before anyone could quite understand what had happened the talk jumped on to other things, leaving George with a sense of guilty resentment, and beyond it a mysterious vision of screens, as of one train moving behind another, the large collective secret of the Society and the other unspeakable one still surely hidden from view.

By the time the pudding was brought in George was longing for dinner to be over, and wondering how soon he could politely arrange to get Cecil to himself again. He and Cecil ate everything with rapacious speed, while the others were surely dawdling wilfully and whimsically with their food. In the later phases of a meal, he well knew, his mother might go into trances of decoy and delay, a shivering delight in the mere fact of being at table, playful pleadings for a further drop of wine. After that, half an hour over port would be truly intolerable. Hubert’s friendly banalities were as wearing as Daphne’s prying prattle – ‘This will interest you,’ he would say, before launching into a bungled account of something everyone knew already. Perhaps tonight, being so few, they could all get up together; or would Cecil think that very bad form? Was he hideously bored? Or was he, just possibly, completely happy and at ease, and puzzled and even embarrassed by George’s evident desire to get through the meal and away from his family as soon as possible? When his mother pushed back her chair and said, ‘Shall we…?’ with a guarded smile at Mrs Kalbeck, George glanced at Cecil, and found him smiling back – a stranger might have thought amiably, but George knew it as a look of complete determination to get his way. As soon as the three females had passed through into the hall, Cecil nodded nicely to Hubert and said, ‘I have a horrible habit, anathema to polite society, which can only decently be pursued out of doors, under cover of darkness.’

Hubert smiled anxiously at this unexpected confession, whilst producing from his pocket a silver cigarette case which he laid rather bashfully on the table. Cecil in turn drew out the leather sheath that held, like two cartridges in a gun, a brace of cigars. They seemed almost shockingly designed for an exclusive session a deux. ‘But my dear fellow,’ said Hubert, with a note of perplexity, and a shy sweep of the hand to show that he was free to do as he pleased.

‘No, really, I couldn’t possibly fug up in so -’ Cecil was caught for a second – ‘so intimate a setting. Your mother would think very ill of me. It would be all over the house. Even at Corley, you know, we’re fearfully strict about it,’ and he fixed Hubert with a wicked little smile, to suggest this was an exciting moment for him as well, a chance to break with convention whilst still somehow doing the right thing. George wasn’t sure Hubert did see it quite like that, and not waiting for any further accommodations on his part, he said, ‘We’ll have a proper jaw tomorrow night, Huey, when Harry comes.’

‘Well, of course we will,’ said Hubert. He seemed only lightly offended, puzzled but perhaps relieved, acquiescent already to the pact between the Cambridge men. ‘You’ll see we don’t stand on ceremony here, Valance! You go and make as much stink as you like outside, and I’ll… I’ll just shuffle through and have a gasper with the ladies.’ And he flourished his cigarette case at them with an air of cheerful self-sufficiency.

6

After leaving the dining-room Daphne went upstairs and came back down in her mother’s crimson shawl with black tassels, and with a feeling of doing things that were only just allowed. She saw the housemaid glance at her in what she sensed was a critical way. Coffee and liqueurs had been brought in, and Daphne asked absent- mindedly for a small glass of ginger brandy, which her mother passed to her with a raised eyebrow and the mocking suppression of a smile. Hubert, standing on the hearth-rug, was fiddling with a cigarette case, tapping a cigarette on the lid, and flexing his face as if about to complain, or make a joke, or anyhow say something, which never came. Cecil, apparently not wanting to pollute the house, had seized the moment to open the french windows and take his cigar outside; and George had followed. Mrs Kalbeck sat down in her armchair with a preoccupied smile, and hummed one of her familiar leitmotifs as she looked over the various bottles. Everyone seemed to be quite drunk. To Daphne the lesson of these grown-up dinners was the way they went at the drinks, and what happened when they’d done so. She didn’t mind the general increase in friendliness and noise, and people saying what they thought, even if some of the things George thought were quite strange. What troubled her was when her mother got flushed and talked too much, a development that the others, who were drunk themselves, seemed not to mind. The Welsh came out in her voice in a slightly embarrassing way. If they had music she tended to cry. Now she said, ‘Shall we have some music? I was going to play Cecil my Emmy Destinn.’

‘Well, the window’s open,’ said Daphne, ‘he’ll hear it outside.’ She felt drawn to the garden herself, and had put on the shawl with a vague romantic view to going out.

‘Help me with the machine, child.’

Freda swept across the room, brushing against the small round table with the photographs on it. She was wide-hipped and tightly corseted, and the gathered back of her dress twitched like a memory of a bustle. Daphne watched her for several abstracted seconds in which her mother’s form, known more deeply and unthinkingly than anything in her life, appeared like that of someone quite unknown to her, a determined little woman in front of her in a shop or at the theatre. ‘Well… I have a few letters to write!’ said Hubert. Mrs Kalbeck smiled at him blandly to show she’d still be there when he got back.

The gramophone, in its upright mahogany disguise, was a recent gift of their neighbour Harry Hewitt; apart from the handle sticking out on the right it looked just like a nice old Sheraton cabinet, and part of the fun of playing it to people was to raise the lid and open the drawers and reveal it for what it was. There was no visible horn, and the drawers were really doors, concealing the mysterious louvred compartment from which the music emerged.

Now her mother was stooping and pulling records out from the cupboard at the bottom, trying to find Senta’s Ballad. There were only a dozen records but of course they all looked the same and she didn’t have her spectacles.

‘Are we having the Hollander?’ said Mrs Kalbeck.

‘If Mother can find it,’ said Daphne.

‘Ah, good.’ The old woman sat back with a glass of cherry brandy and a patient smile. She had heard all their records several times, the John McCormack and the Nellie Melba, so the excitement was mixed with a sense of routine, which she seemed to find almost as pleasing.

‘Is this it…?’ said Freda, squinting at the difficult small type on the label.

‘Oh, let me do it,’ said Daphne, dropping down beside her and nudging her until she went away.

It was Daphne’s own favourite, because something she couldn’t describe took place inside her when she heard it, something quite different from the song from Traviata or ‘Linden Lea’. Each time, she looked forward to running again through the keen, almost painful novelty of these particular emotions. She set the disc on the mat, took another big sip from her glass, coughed shamefully, and then cranked up the handle as tight as it would go.

‘Careful, child…!’ said her mother, one hand reaching for the mantelpiece, eyes fixed as if about to sing herself.

‘She’s a strong girl,’ said Mrs Kalbeck.

Daphne lowered the needle and at once walked towards the window, to see if she could spot the boys outside.

The orchestra, they had all agreed, left much to be desired. The strings shrilled like a tin whistle, and the brass thumped like something being thrown downstairs. Daphne knew how to make allowances for this. She had heard a real orchestra at the Queen’s Hall, she had been taken to The Rhinegold at Covent Garden, where they’d had six harps as well as anvils and a giant gong. With a record you learned to ignore the shortcomings if you knew what this piping and thumping stood for.

When Senta started singing it was spellbinding – Daphne said this word to herself with a further shiver of