The Stranger’s Child

‘Peter – you see, I rather liked him.’

‘Oh, yes, well…’ murmured Paul, coming round in front of her; she didn’t seem interested in shaking hands. She was wearing a thick grey skirt and a blouse under a shabby sleeveless cardigan. She gave him a calculating look, perhaps only the result of her not seeing him properly. After the first awkward moments, he absorbed this as a likely hazard of the hours ahead.

‘What became of him, I wonder?’

‘Peter? Oh, he’s doing all right, I think,’ said Paul blandly. He was standing in the small area between the fire and a low coffee-table heaped with books and newspapers, it was almost like a childish dare as the back of his calves got hotter and hotter.

‘Of course he taught at Corley Court – he was extremely interested in that house, you know.’

‘Oh he was,’ said Wilfrid, with a shake of the head.

‘Extremely interested. He wanted to put back all the jelly-mould ceilings and what-have-you that Dudley did away with.’

‘During your time, of course,’ said Paul encouragingly, as if the interview had already started. He moved round towards the armchair facing hers, and got out the tape-recorder from his briefcase in a slightly furtive way.

‘You see, he’s the one I might have expected to be writing about Cecil,’ she said. ‘He was extremely interested in him, as well.’

‘What wasn’t he interested in!’ said Paul.

Daphne said, ‘I’m having a certain amount of trouble with my eyes,’ reaching on the little table beside her with its lamp and books. Could she still read, Paul wondered? He half-expected to see his own letters there.

‘Yes, so I gathered from Robin,’ he said, with a fond tone towards this mutual friend.

‘You didn’t block the drive, did you?’ said Daphne.

‘Oh… no – I got a taxi at Worcester station.’

‘Oh, you got a Cathedral. Aren’t they expensive?’ said Daphne, with a hint of satisfaction. ‘Can you find somewhere to sit? One day quite soon Wilfrid’s going to sort this room out, but until that day I fear we live in chaos and disorder. It’s funny to think I once lived in a house with thirty-five servants.’

‘Goodness…!’ said Paul, lifting a leather Radio Times folder and a heap of thick woollen socks, perhaps waiting to be darned, from the armchair. In her book he was sure she’d said twenty-five servants. He rigged up the microphone on top of the books on the coffee-table between them. ‘Why is this house called Olga, I wonder?’ he said, just to test the levels.

‘Ah! You see, Lady Caroline had it built for her old housekeeper,’ said Wilfrid in a pious tone, ‘whose name was Olga. She retired here… out of sight but not quite… out of reach.’

‘And now Lady Caroline lets it to you,’ said Paul, watching the bobbing red finger which dropped, as if by gravity, when no one spoke.

‘Well, we hardly pay a thing…’

Daphne chuckled narrowly. ‘What have you got there?’ she said.

‘I hope you don’t mind if I tape our conversation…’ Paul clicked the button and rewound.

‘Perhaps as well to get it right,’ said Daphne uncertainly. It was the tape-recorder’s odd insinuations of flattery and mistrust. Some people glanced at it as an awkward third person in the room, others were calmed by the just-detectable turning of the spool, some, like old Joan Valance, a second cousin of Cecil’s whom he’d tracked down in Sidmouth, were moved to gabbling relief at having so impartial and receptive an audience. Daphne fidgeted with her cushions. ‘I’ll have to be careful what I say.’

‘Oh, I hope not,’ with his ear to the idiotic tone of the playback.

‘Very careful.’

‘If you want to tell me anything off the record, you can: just say, and I’ll stop the tape.’

‘No, I don’t think I’ll be doing that,’ said Daphne, with a quick smile. ‘Aren’t we having any refreshments, Wilfrid?’

‘Well, if you care to ask for them…’

They both said coffee. ‘Bring us a couple of coffees, Wilfrid, and then find something useful to do. You could make a start on clearing up those things in the garage.’

‘Oh, that’s a very big job, Mummy,’ said Wilfrid, as if not so easily fooled.

When he had gone out of the room, she said, ‘It’s only a very big job because he will keep putting it off. Oh, he’s so… disorganized,’ and she shifted her cushion again, flinched and half-turned, the powder-and-smoke- smudged discs of her glasses blank for a second in the light. This irritable nervousness might be hard to deal with. Paul wanted to remind her of their old connections, but he was wary of mentioning Corinna. He said, just while they waited,

‘I was wondering, do you see much of John, and Julian, and Jenny?’ They sounded like characters in a children’s book.

‘We’re a bit cut off here, to be perfectly frank,’ she said. He saw she wouldn’t want to admit to feeling neglected.

‘What are they doing now?’ – with a glance at the red needle.

‘Well…’ She was slow to warm to the question. ‘Well, they’re all extremely busy, and successful, as you might expect. Jennifer’s a doctor – I mean, not an actual doctor, obviously. She’s teaching at Edinburgh, I think it’s Edinburgh. Wilfrid will put me right if it’s not.’

‘Teaching French literature?’

‘Yes… and John of course has his very successful wine business.’

‘He takes after his grandfather,’ said Paul, almost fondly.

‘His grandfather doesn’t have a wine business.’

‘No, I meant – I believe Sir Dudley is involved in the sherry world, isn’t he.’

‘Oh, I see… And Julian – well Julian’s the artistic one. He’s very creative.’

Paul could tell from her tone, which was also fond, but final, that he shouldn’t ask what form this creativity took. He felt his own secret interest in Julian as a sixth-former might somehow burn through. Daphne said, ‘Why, have you met Dudley?’

‘Yes, I have,’ said Paul simply, with no idea as yet what line to take about him. He told her a bit about the Oxford conference, in what felt to him a very fair-minded way, and finding he had already somehow both censored and excused Dudley’s crushing put-down over the phone; as an anecdote it had a value that went some way to compensate for the further talk they had never had. ‘He was quite controversial. He said that war poems, being written at the time, were usually not much good, “inept and amateurish” I think were his words; whereas the great war writing was all in prose, and appeared ten years later – or more in his case, of course.’

‘That sounds like Dudley.’

‘He wouldn’t say anything much about Cecil.’

She pondered for a minute, and he thought she might say something about him herself. ‘Of course they’ve made him an honorary fellow, haven’t they,’ she said.

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Yes, they have. We’re talking about your father,’ Daphne said, as Wilfrid came back in.

‘Oh…!’ said Wilfrid, with a surprising cold grimace.

‘Not Wilfie’s favourite person,’ said Daphne.

When Wilfrid had gone out again, there was swiftly a new atmosphere, of involuntary intimacy, as if Paul were a doctor and about to ask her to undo her blouse. He checked the tape again. Daphne had a look of conditional resignation. He cleared his throat and looked at his notes, his plan, designed to make the whole thing more like a conversation, and for both of them more convincing. Still, it sounded more stilted than he’d meant: ‘I was wondering about the way you wrote your memoirs, er, The Short Gallery, as a set of portraits of other people, rather than one of yourself.’ He was afraid she couldn’t see his respectful smile.

‘Oh, yes.’ Her head went back an inch. No doubt the shadowy question of his review of that book lurked somewhere beyond the actual question – beyond all of them. ‘Well…’

‘I mean’ – Paul laughed – ‘why did you do it like that? Of course, I remember when I first met you you said you were writing your memoirs then, so I know it occupied you for a long time. That was thirteen years ago!’

‘No, it did,’ said Daphne. ‘Much longer than that, even.’