The Stranger's Child (22 page)

‘Darling:
Piccadilly
. . .’ said Mrs Riley: ‘two
c
s?’

‘Well, yes!’ said Daphne.

‘Oh, I think two,’ said her mother, after a moment.

‘I’m not entirely stupid,’ said Mrs Riley, ‘but there are one or two words . . .’ She drew a bold line beneath the address, and smiled mischievously at what she’d written. None of them knew what the letter was, but the address in Piccadilly seemed designed to make them wonder. They were in the morning-room, with its chintz and china, and a small fire disappearing in the sunlight. Freda gazed at the pale flames and said, as Daphne knew she would,

‘The sun will put that fire out.’

Mrs Riley lit a cigarette with a hint of impatience. ‘My dear, do you believe that?’ she said.

‘You may laugh,’ said Freda, and then, ‘At least, that’s what I believe,’ and smiled at her rather timidly. She had clearly registered her daughter’s dislike for the woman, but herself perhaps found her no more than disconcerting.

Daphne said pleasantly, ‘Well, we’ll hardly miss it, Mummy, will we, it’s such a warm day.’ She smiled across at her mother, who was sitting with another letter in her lap, an old one, whose envelope, half-ripped in the long-ago moment of opening it, she was pressing and smoothing with her thumb.

‘This is all I have,’ she said. ‘I hardly knew Cecil.’

‘It really doesn’t matter,’ said Daphne. ‘Anyway, you did.’

‘I didn’t know he was going to be a great poet.’

‘Mm, well, I’m not sure anyone thinks that . . .’ The far door led to the library, and there Sebby Stokes was having his little chats. She thought Wilkes was in there now, being pressed for recollections, early signals of genius. The talk of course wasn’t audible, but none the less somehow present to those in the morning-room, sitting like waiting patients half-expecting to hear cries from the surgery. Freda looked at her daughter, with a fretful effort at concentration.

‘I do remember one or two things about him . . . Was it twice he came to the house? I’ve only the one letter, you see.’

‘Twice perhaps, yes.’

‘He was very energetic,’ said Freda.

‘Well, he could be, couldn’t he . . .’

Though nothing was ever said, Daphne felt that her mother hadn’t specially cared for Cecil. She saw him again, larger than life in their house, stooping briefly to their low-beamed ways. They had given him special rights, as a poet and a member of the upper classes; he’d been allowed to break things, to stay up all night, worship the dawn . . . They’d done their best to treat his absurdities as virtues, enlightening novelties. He’d been welcomed, as a friend of George’s, which was a novelty in itself. Had Freda picked up on the goings-on in the garden, after nightfall? There was much that she’d missed in those years, with the bottles in the wardrobe, and who knew where else. She had been excited by the poem, and really quite encouraging when Cecil started writing to Daphne – she saw a future in it, no doubt; she had allowed them to meet, when Cecil was on leave. Even so, something was amiss. It seemed possible Cecil had done or said some particular small thing, some slight that Freda could never mention and never forget – and in fact rather treasured for the reliable throb of indignation it caused . . . Now he was just an excuse for her – Daphne knew she’d come for the weekend so as to see the children. But Freda’s frown softened: ‘I’ll never forget him reading to us that night in the garden – reading Swinburne, was it, and in such a voice . . .’

‘Oh yes . . . Was it Swinburne? I know he read
In Memoriam
.’

‘Ha, indeed, how apt,’ said Freda, and then looked blankly again at the thin flames. ‘Didn’t he read us his own things?’

‘He kept us up all night listening to him,’ said Daphne.

‘We were out on the lawn, weren’t we, under the stars . . .’ Daphne didn’t think this was right, but nor was it worth correcting. Freda’s gaze wandered round the room and out, beyond Mrs Riley, to the present-day lawns and the trees of the Park beyond. ‘I sometimes think how different things would have been if George had never met Cecil,’ she said.

‘Well, yes . . . !’ said Daphne, with a short laugh. ‘Of course they would, Mother.’

‘No, darling, you know,’ Freda said, ‘but I do think some of his ideas were rather silly . . . I don’t know . . . one can’t say that, I suppose.’

‘His ideas . . . ?’ Daphne felt she half knew what her mother meant. ‘I think you can say what you like.’

Freda seemed to weigh up this privilege. ‘He certainly turned your head,’ she said, in a rather bleak tone.

‘I was very young,’ said Daphne quietly, wishing more than ever that Mrs Riley wasn’t occupying her desk, toying with her fountain pen, and observing the conversation, in her disappointed and reducing way: now she said almost slyly,

‘You must have been a mere girl, my dear.’

‘Yes, I was.’

‘She was very susceptible,’ Freda explained, ‘weren’t you, Daphne?’

‘Thank you, Mother!’

‘And then he wrote his most famous poem for you, you must have been swept off your feet,’ said Mrs Riley, enjoying the picture.

‘No, he did,’ said Freda.

Daphne said, ‘Well . . . he wrote it for all of us, really, didn’t he.’ She felt vaguely amazed now by the whole business of the poem, by the awkward memory of what it had once meant to her. She would never have been allowed to keep it to herself. That morning she knew it was the most precious thing she had ever been given, and even then she had felt it being taken away from her. Everyone had wanted a part of it. Well, now they had it, they were welcome to it, if she tried to claim it back it was only as mortifying evidence of her first infatuation. Sometimes she acted her role: when people found out the story, and gloated over her, she agreed what a very lucky young lady she had been; but where possible she went on to say that she no longer cared. Within a week she had learned from George that other people were reading it. It appeared in
New Numbers
, a good deal rewritten. Then when Cecil died, it was quoted by Churchill himself, in
The Times
. She had just lent the famous autograph book to Sebby Stokes; it was a bit greasy and frayed, the other entries before it and after it looking sweetly strait-laced and proper in comparison. But the poem itself . . . ‘It’s entered the language, hasn’t it,’ she said.

‘It’s a bit of a jingle,’ said Freda, which Daphne had heard her say before.

‘You must be awfully proud,’ Mrs Riley insisted.

‘Well, you know,’ said Freda.

Mrs Riley shook her head. ‘I can’t help wondering what Cecil would think of us all talking about him like this.’

‘Oh, I’m sure he’d be pleased to find he was still the centre of attention,’ said Daphne.

‘Cecil was awfully fond of Cecil!’ said Freda. ‘If you know what I mean.’

Mrs Riley looked round for a second before saying, rather archly, ‘Does your mother-in-law still get messages from him, I wonder?’

‘Not any more,’ said Daphne. ‘Anyway, it was all nonsense, all that, and all very sad.’

‘What’s that, dear?’

‘Oh, nothing, Mother . . . Louisa’s book tests, you remember.’

‘Oh, that, yes . . .’ said Freda with a little stricken look. ‘So sad.’

‘I’m sure it must be nonsense,’ said Mrs Riley, ‘but I’ve always thought it would be fun to try.’

‘I don’t think fun comes into it very much,’ said Freda, frankly bemused.

‘We could try and get through to old Cecil . . .’ said Mrs Riley jauntily. But here the door opened and with an effect both tactful and inescapable Sebby Stokes came in.

‘Dear Mrs Sawle . . .’ he said, smiling and cushioning his formality.

‘Oh, well!’ Freda said, with a humorous tremor, reaching for her handbag.

Daphne watched her mother cross the room, saw her distinctly, her comic note of bravery, knowing she was watched, flustered but making a go of it, an amenable guest in her daughter’s house. There was a little stoop of humility as she passed through the door, into the larger but darker library beyond, a hint of frailty, an affectation of bearing more than her fifty-nine years, a slight bewildered totter among the grandeur that her daughter now had to pretend to take for granted. Daphne saw what was sturdy and capable and truthful in the mother she’d always known, the bigger woman, morally big, that no one else but George perhaps could see; and at the same time she saw exactly how shaken and vulnerable she was. She was a grieving mother herself, though in the hierarchy of mourning here her grief was largely overlooked. Sebby glanced back with an abstracted nod as he pulled the door to. The dry click of the lock seemed oddly momentous.

Mrs Riley got up from the desk and came over towards her. She had a sort of sloping and swooping walk, with a nerviness that was plastered over in her drawling talk. She crossed the hearthrug and flicked her ash into the fire. ‘This whole thing’s getting rather like one of Agatha Christie’s,’ she said, ‘with our Sebastian as clever Monsieur Poirot.’

‘I know . . .’ said Daphne, getting up too, and moving towards the window.

‘I wonder who did it. I don’t think I did . . .’

‘I suppose you’d remember?’ said Daphne, resisting the game. Outside, on the far side of the lawn, Revel was sitting on a stone bench drawing the house.

‘D’you think he’ll have us all in together at the end for the solution?’

‘Somehow I doubt it,’ said Daphne. There was something so charming in his posture, his look, the look he had of being himself a figure in a picture, that she couldn’t help smiling, and then sighing. He’d done it,
seized the day
– he was outside in the late April sunshine, while Daphne was in here like a child held back for some futile punishment. She looked down at her desk, where the letter lay on the blotter, but with Mrs Riley’s lacquered cigarette-case hiding the address.

‘I see your friend Revel’s making a drawing,’ said Mrs Riley.

‘I know, I feel very lucky,’ said Daphne, turning away from the window.

‘Mm, he’s clearly got something,’ said Mrs Riley. She smiled abstractedly. ‘Quite a feminine touch – more feminine, probably, than me!’

‘Oh . . . well . . .’

‘He’s still terribly young, of course.’

‘That’s true . . .’

‘How old is he?’

‘I believe he’s twenty-four,’ said Daphne, slightly confused, and went on quickly, ‘I’m so pleased he’s drawing the house. He’s always had a great deal of feeling for Corley Court.’

‘You mean, you want him to capture it before I pull it down!’ said Mrs Riley, acknowledging her sense of rivalry with a laugh and a hint of a blush – a peculiar effect under so much pale powder. ‘Well, you needn’t worry.’

‘Oh, I’m not worried,’ said Daphne, with a tight little smile, but feeling rattled. Mrs Riley gazed out rather drolly at Revel, so that Daphne hoped he wouldn’t look this way and see her.

‘How did you get to know him?’

This was easy. ‘He drew the jacket for
The Long Gallery
.’

‘Oh, your husband’s book, you mean?’ said Mrs Riley unguardedly.

‘You remember, the pretty drawing of the old Gothic window . . .’

Mrs Riley threw her cigarette away, and became very simple. ‘To tell the truth, I feel rather foolish,’ she said.

‘Oh . . .’

‘I mean, not having known Cecil.’

‘It’s hardly foolish not to have known Cecil,’ said Daphne, with dry indulgence. So much of her own foolishness, she thought, stemmed from the fact that she had.

‘Well . . .’ said Mrs Riley, and she made a little grimace of reluctance, and went on, ‘Are you absolutely sure you wouldn’t rather I pushed off?’

‘Oh . . .
Eva
. . .’ said Daphne, with a gasp, ‘no, no,’ frowning and colouring uncomfortably in turn. ‘How could you?’

‘Are you sure? I feel like some ghastly “gate-crasher”, as they say.’ Daphne had an image of Mrs Riley’s smart little car smashing into the wrought-iron gates of Corley Court. ‘I’m not at all poetical. I’m not literary, like you are.’

‘Well . . .’

‘No, you are. You’re always reading, I’ve seen you. Well, you’re married to a writer, for heaven’s sake! I only ever read thrillers. I was frankly surprised’ – and she crossed the room again for her cigarette case – ‘you know, when your husband asked me to stay.’

‘Well . . .’ said Daphne awkwardly, ‘I dare say he wanted some light relief from all this talk about his brother.’

‘Oh, perhaps, I wonder . . .’ said Eva, not immediately adjusting herself to this role.

‘I mean we can’t talk about Cecil every minute of the day – we’d go mad! Do you think I might have one of your cigarettes?’

‘Oh, my dear, I didn’t know,’ said Eva, coming back, offering the case languidly, but with a sharp glance.

‘Thank you.’ Daphne was urging her blush to subside, with its clear disclosure of her mutinous feelings, and the proof it gave Mrs Riley of her own clever tactics. She struck a match, away from her, awkwardly, and held it out to Eva, hiding her nerves by moving it around absent-mindedly, so that Eva stooped and laughed. When they were both puffing, Eva looked at her frankly, with a hint of amusement as she angled her smoke sideways. She said, ‘Well, I’m glad you think it’s all right.’ And then, ‘Tell me truly, don’t you ever find it just a teeny bit depressing having Cecil lying around next door – don’t you sometimes just want to forget about all that, really? I have to say I’m thoroughly sick of the War, and I think a lot of people feel the same.’