‘Well, she certainly wouldn’t like Wagner, in that case,’ said Daphne, rescuing a kindly superiority from her initial sense of disappointment. And still not quite sure she had got to the bottom of it, ‘Though you said you liked the gramophone last night.’
‘Oh, I don’t hate it, it’s just rather lost on me. I was enjoying the company.’ His ear coloured slightly at this, and she saw that perhaps she’d been given a compliment, and blushed a little herself. He said, ‘Did you care for the opera when you went?’
‘They had a new swimming apparatus for the Rhine-maidens, but I didn’t find it very convincing.’
‘It must be hard work swimming and singing at the same time,’ said Cecil, turning the page. ‘Now who’s this Byzantine fellow?’
‘That’s Mr Barstow.’
‘Should I know him?’
‘He’s the curate in Stanmore,’ said Daphne, unsure if they were both admiring the elaborate penwork.
‘I see… And now: Olive Watkins, you could read that at twenty paces.’
‘I didn’t really want to have her, as it’s supposed to be only adults, but she got me for hers.’ Underneath her signature Olive had written, with great force, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’, the indentations of the pen being readable on the following pages. ‘She has the best collection, certainly that I know,’ said Daphne. ‘She has Winston Churchill.’
‘My word…’ said Cecil respectfully.
‘I know.’
Cecil turned a page or two. ‘But you’ve got Jebland, look. That’s special in another way.’
‘He’s my other best,’ Daphne admitted. ‘He only sent it me the week before his propeller broke. I’ve learned that you can’t wait with airmen. They’re not like other autographs. That’s how Olive lost Stefanelli.’
‘And does Olive have Jebland?’
‘No, she does not,’ said Daphne, trying to subdue the note of triumph to one of respect for the dead aviator.
‘I see it’s rather morbid,’ said Cecil. ‘You make me feel a little anxious.’
‘Oh, everyone else in it is still alive!’
Cecil closed the book. ‘Well, leave it with me, and I promise I’ll think something up before I go.’
‘Do feel free to write some occasional verse.’ She came round the chair and stood looking at him full-face. He was fingering his own book again as he squinted up at her, smiling tensely against the light. She felt the momentary advantage she had over him, and gazed with a novel kind of licence at his parted lips and his strong brown neck where it emerged from his soft blue shirt. He was surely writing a poem now, the pencil was waiting in the cruck of the notebook. She felt she couldn’t ask about it. But nor could she let him alone. She said, ‘Have you seen over the garden?’
‘D’you know, I have. I rambled right round it with Georgie, first thing.’
‘Oh…’
‘Oh, long before you were up. I went and tipped him out of bed.’
‘I see…’
‘I’m a pagan, you see, and I worship the dawn. I’m trying to instil the cult in your brother.’
‘I wonder how you’ll get on.’ Cecil closed his eyes languidly as he smiled, so that she had a further sense of screened-off mysteries. ‘Perhaps tomorrow you could tip me out of bed too.’
‘Do you think your mother would approve?’
‘Oh, she won’t mind.’
‘Well, we’ll see.’
‘I could show you all kinds of things.’ She felt the grass with her hand before sitting down beside Cecil’s chair. ‘I can’t believe George showed you the whole of “Two Acres”.’
‘Well, possibly not…’ said Cecil, with a quick snigger.
Daphne peered encouragingly at the view – the neat parched lawn, the little tor of the rockery, the line of dark firs that hid the Cosgroves’ potting-shed and motor-garage. To her the ‘Two’ in her house’s name had always been reassuring, a quietly emphatic boast to schoolfriends who lived in a town or a terrace, the proof of a generous over-provision. But in Cecil’s presence she felt the first shimmer of uncertainty. Sitting side by side, she hoped to make him share her view, but wondered if she hadn’t started sharing his instead. She said, ‘You know, the rockery was my father’s contribution.’
‘He must have put a good deal of work into it,’ said Cecil.
‘Yes, he worked terribly hard at it. Those large red stones came all the way from Devon – which of course
‘They will be a strange geological conundrum to later ages,’ said Cecil.
‘Yes, I suppose they will.’
‘They will be like the monoliths of Stonehenge.’
‘Mm,’ said Daphne, sensing teasing where she’d hoped for something better. She pressed on, ‘My father wasn’t artistic like my mother, but she gave him a free hand with the rockery. In a way it’s his monument.’
Cecil stared at it with a chastened expression. ‘I suppose you don’t really remember your father,’ he said. ‘You must have been too young.’
‘Oh, I remember him quite well.’ She nodded up at him. ‘He used to come home from work, and have his Old Smuggler while I was in the bath.’
‘You mean he drank whisky in the bathroom?’
‘Yes, while he was telling me a story. We had a nanny of course, who used to bath me. Frankly, I think we had rather more money then, than we have now.’
Cecil gave her the fleeting wince of merely abstract sympathy that she’d noticed already when it came to money or servants. ‘I can’t imagine my father doing that,’ he said.
‘Well, your father doesn’t go to work, does he.’
‘That’s true,’ said Cecil, and giggled attractively.
‘Of course Huey works very hard. My mother says one of us needs to get married.’
‘Well, I’ve no doubt you will,’ said Cecil, his dark eyes holding hers and his eyebrow rising slightly for emphasis and a hint of amusement, so that her heart thumped and she hurried on,
‘One day, we’ll see. I dare say we all will.’ She wanted to say she had overheard them last night, and to tell him they were wrong, he and George: Hubert wasn’t a womanizer at all, he was really intensely respectable. But she was frightened by this unknown subject, and worried that she might have misunderstood.
‘I don’t think George has a particular girlfriend?’ said Cecil, after a minute.
‘We all thought you would know,’ she said, and then regretted the suggestion that they’d been talking about him. Something in Cecil of course demanded to be talked about. She tore up a few blades of grass, and glanced at him, feeling still the great novelty and interest of his presence. He shifted in the deckchair, crossed his right ankle on his left knee, a glimpse of brown calf. He was wearing white canvas shoes, scuffed at the heel. It would be amusing if they could explain George to each other behind his back. She said, ‘We all thought there might be someone when he started getting letters; but of course they were from you!’
Cecil looked both pleased and embarrassed by this, and glanced over his shoulder at the house. ‘But what about your mother, do you think?’ he said, in a sudden sensitive tone. ‘She’s still quite young, and really most attractive. She might marry again herself. She must have many admirers…?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so!’ Daphne frowned and blushed at the question. It was one thing to talk about poor George’s prospects, quite another to ask about those of a middle-aged lady whom he hardly knew. It was most inappropriate; and besides, the last thing she wanted was a stepfather. She pictured Harry Hewitt standing on her father’s rockery – worse, ordering its demolition. Though actually, almost certainly, they would all have to move to Mattocks, with its peculiar pictures and statues. She sat looking at Cecil’s white shoes, and thinking rather hard. He didn’t press her for an answer. She saw it was a new kind of talk, that she wasn’t quite ready for, like certain books, which were in English obviously, but too grown-up for her to understand. He said,
‘I didn’t mean to pry. You know how Georgie and I and all our lot are devils for speaking candidly.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said.
‘Tell me it’s none of my business.’
‘Well, there’s a man who’s coming to dinner tonight that I think likes my mother a lot,’ she said, and a sense
