The Stranger’s Child

‘Why’s that?’ said Paul.

‘Oh…’ – Jenny puffed, and shook her head, as if it was all too tedious to explain to him. ‘Oh, god, it’s Uncle George,’ she said. ‘Here, let me take your drink.’ She put it down on a flat stone by the gate-post and shouted, ‘Hello, Uncle George!’ and with a kind of weary cheerfulness, ‘Aunt Madeleine…’

Paul leaned a hand on the sun-baked edge of the roof and smiled in through the open window. Uncle George, in the passenger seat, was a man in his seventies, perhaps, with a sunburnt pate and neat white beard. Craning past him was a strong-jawed woman with crimped grey hair and oddly gaudy make-up and ear-rings. Uncle George himself wore a deep red shirt with a floral green bow-tie. He squinted up at Paul as if determined to solve a puzzle without help. ‘Now which one are you?’ he said.

‘Um…’ said Paul.

‘He isn’t any of them,’ said Aunt Madeleine sharply, ‘are you?’

‘You’re not one of Corinna’s boys?’

‘No, sir, I’m… I’m just a colleague, a friend – ’

‘You remember Corinna’s boys, surely,’ said Madeleine.

‘Forgive me, I thought you might be Julian.’

‘No,’ said Paul, with a gasp, and a muddled sense of protest at being taken for a schoolboy, however pretty and charming.

‘So who’s he?’ said Paul, once he’d sent them on towards the field.

‘Uncle George? He’s Granny’s brother; well, there were two brothers, in fact, but one was killed in the War – in the First World War, I mean: he was called Uncle Hubert. You should ask her about it, if you’re interested in the First World War. Uncle George and Aunt Madeleine used to be history professors. They wrote quite a well-known book together called An Everyday History of England,’ said Jenny, almost yawning with casual pride.

‘Oh – not G. F. Sawle?’

‘That’s right, yes…’

‘What, G. F. Sawle and Madeleine Sawle! – we had it at school.’

‘There you are then.’

Paul pictured the title-page on which he had boxed the names G. F. SAWLE and MADELEINE SAWLE in a complex Elizabethan doodle. ‘Is everyone in your family a famous writer?’

Jenny giggled. ‘And you know Granny’s writing her memoirs…’

‘Yes, I know, she told me.’

‘She’s been writing them for yonks, actually. We all rather wonder if they’ll ever see the light of day.’

Paul took another swig of fruit-cup, already feeling weirdly giddy in the evening sunshine. He said, ‘I hope you won’t mind me saying but I find your family a bit complicated to work out.’

‘Mm, I did warn you.’

‘I don’t know, for instance, is there a Mr Jacobs?’

‘Dead, I’m afraid. Granny’s always had bad luck, in a way,’ said Jenny, as if she’d been there at the time. ‘First she married Dudley, who was probably very exciting but a bit unhinged by the War and he was beastly to her; so she ran away with… my grandfather – ’ she took a swig of whatever she was drinking -

‘Whatsisname… Ralph…’

‘Revel Ralph, the artist, who everyone thought was queer, you know, but anyway they somehow managed to have… my father… and in due course…’

‘Really?’ said Paul, as if amused and delighted, moving away, his face burning at this sudden eruption of queer, the word and the fact, and going a few yards down the lane… such a casual eruption, too, as if no one much cared. Everyone thought he was queer. Thank god, here was a car, at least, which he prayed was coming to Carraveen. He looked at it fondly, full of hospitable feelings, ignoring his blush in the fervent hope it would go away. A pea-green Hillman Imp, sounding rough in a low gear, windscreen white with dust, perhaps a farmer’s car, the visor flipped down against the glare full in the driver’s face. Paul watched almost impatiently as it approached, looked with odd camaraderie at the large hands on the wheel, the wrinkled nose, the involuntary grin of the man perhaps barely able to see him waiting, in silhouette, then saw, with a reeling adjustment of memory to the re-encountered fact, that it was Peter Rowe. Something providential in the drink brought him smiling to the open window.

‘Oh, hello,’ said Peter Rowe, ‘it’s you!’

‘Hello!’ said Paul, looking at his actual face, which seemed unaccountably both plainer and more lovable than he’d remembered, while his sense of the evening ahead seemed to shift around and beneath him, like stage scenery. The inside of the car smelt headily of oil and hot plastic. On the passenger seat lay a clutch of sheet music – ‘W. A. Mozart,’ he read, ‘Duetti’. He felt whimsical. ‘You’re not frail or elderly, are you?’ he said.

‘Absolutely not,’ said Peter Rowe, with a warm affronted tone and a sly smile.

‘Then I’m afraid you’ll need to park in the field over there,’ said Paul; and stayed smiling into the car without thinking of what to say next.

Peter Rowe gave the gear-knob a struggling thrust into first. ‘Well, I’ll see you in a minute,’ he said, ‘what fun…!’ Paul felt the hot car slip away under his fingers, which left a long scuffled trace in the dirt on the roof. ‘Watch your footing!’ he called out, over the popping roar of the engine, which for some reason in a Hillman Imp was at the back, where the boot should be; and the word footing, odd from the start, sounded now quite surreal and hilarious to him. He watched the car nose up through the gate and into the field, while the reek of its exhaust sank sweetly into the mild scent of grass.

‘Do you know Peter Rowe?’ said Jenny.

‘Well, I’ve met him,’ said Paul, feeling strangely fortified, so that he could say, ‘I didn’t know he’d be here tonight, though – that’s great.’

‘No, well, he’s going to play duets with Aunt Corinna – it’s a surprise for Granny.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Paul. He thought this was a pretty tame kind of surprise; but then he wasn’t really musical. Music always struck him as a bit of a performance. Still, he started to see the scene, himself watching, admiring, possessive, even slightly resentful of Peter’s confidence and ability. As a contribution to the party it certainly beat telling people where to park.

‘How do you know him?’ said Jenny, with a mischievous look.

‘Oh, he banks with us. I’ve cashed his cheques.’ Paul was blandness itself, just tinged with pink.

Jenny glanced over her shoulder, where Peter was now crossing the lane to go in by the other gate, with his music in his hand – he brandished it at them in a wave that was cheerful though suddenly not quite enough. Though perhaps he had to get ready, he had to practise. Paul watched him for these few seconds with a half- smile, an air, he hoped, of untroubled interest – a brisk, heavy walk, he found he knew it already. ‘He teaches at Corley Court as well,’ said Jenny; and dropping her voice, ‘We call him Peter Rowe-my-dear.’

‘Oh, yes…?’ said Paul, now a little critical of Jenny.

Again she gave him a droll look. ‘He’s rather full of himself,’ she said, in a plonking voice, so he saw that she was quoting someone – Aunt Corinna, very probably.

As the shadows shifted and lengthened and the church clock struck eight and then a quarter past, Paul’s happy excitement began to dim. In between cars he finished his drink, and the tipsy rush was followed by a less pleasant state of dry-mouthed impatience, as he found himself saying the same thing over and over. Jenny had gone in to find Julian and hadn’t come back – anyway they were only kids, even if Jenny treated Paul as somehow younger than herself. Roger wandered out for a sniff around the verge and pissed concisely at four different spots, but made no further sign of solidarity. The arrivals grew fewer. The dreaded Sir Dudley perhaps wasn’t coming – thus far Paul had let only one small car, which was virtually an invalid carriage, on to the drive itself. He thought of Peter’s smile, and the little throb in his voice as he said ‘Absolutely not!’ – there was a giddy sense of an understanding, like the kick and lift of the booze itself, undamaged, stronger in fact since their first meeting, that made Paul’s heart race again. It was almost as though Peter knew what he’d done in Paul’s daydreams, knew all about the bath and the bachelor flat. And now this vaguely headachy thirst, and a little doubt, like the cooling and quickening of the air, pushing among the hedge-tops in front of him and then leaving off. He could hear the cheery, faintly contentious noise of fifty or sixty people talking, on the big lawn at the back of the house, where tables and chairs had been set out. Peter was in there somewhere, among the family and friends, happily getting drunk, Peter Rowe-my-dear, rather full of himself. Certain things Paul didn’t quite like about him came dully to the light. Did he