The Stranger's Child (28 page)

‘Come along,’ said Daphne, getting up, but now in turn grasping Tilda’s hand, to conceal her own brusqueness. Any more on this subject would be unbearable.

‘Well, I’m just going to sit here and wait for him,’ Tilda said, not seeing what was happening, still adrift in drink and her own worry.

‘All right, darling,’ said Daphne, feeling fortune free her and claim her at the same moment. She almost ran along the path.

‘Oh, Duffel, darling,’ said Revel, touching her arm as they came back in together, and taking a smiling five seconds to continue his sentence, ‘do let’s pop up and look at the children sleeping.’

‘Oh,’ said Daphne, ‘of
course
’, as if it were hopeless of her not to have offered this entertainment already. She gazed at him and her giggle was slightly rueful. She didn’t think she herself could have slept, even two floors up, through the ‘Hickory-Dickory Rag’. And then the earlier horror, at the real piano, came back to her – it was wonderful, a blessing, that she’d forgotten it for a while.

‘Dudley’s gone to bed,’ said Revel, plainly and pleasantly.

‘I see.’ After the garden the drawing-room was a dazzle; and in their absence, it had been perfectly tidied – everything was always tidied. ‘Now, have you got a drink?’ she said.

‘I’ve got a port in every one,’ said Revel, a bit cryptically.

‘I think I’ve had enough,’ said Daphne, looking down on the tray of bottles, some friendly, some perhaps over-familiar, one or two to be avoided. She sloshed herself out another glass of claret. ‘Oh, Tilda’s outside!’ she explained to Stinker, who had just come in, stumbling on the sill of the french window. ‘You’ve just missed her.’ He leant on a table and gazed at her, but found nothing immediate to say.

She led the way down the cow-passage and up the east back-stairs, Revel touching her at each half-landing very lightly between the shoulders. His face when she glanced at it was considerate, with inward glints of anticipated pleasure. She was excited almost to the point of talking nonsense. ‘All rather back-stairs, as Mrs Riley would say,’ she said.

‘I don’t think this is quite what she had in mind, do you,’ said Revel coolly, so that a leap had been taken, several unsayable matters all at once in the air. Daphne’s heart was beating and she felt herself gripped at the same time by a strange gliding languor, as if to counter and conceal the speed of her pulse. She said,

‘I’ve got to tell you about the oddest scene just now, with old Mrs Riley. I’m absolutely certain she was making love to me.’

Revel gave a careless laugh. ‘So she does have good taste, after all.’

Daphne thought this rather glib, though charming of course. ‘
Well
. . .’

‘You see I thought she’d set her sights on Flo, who has a bit of a look of all that, doesn’t she.’

‘You see I thought . . .’ – but it was too much to explain, and now a housemaid was coming along the top landing with a baby, no, a hot-water bottle wrapped in a shawl. ‘You’re so sweet to the children,’ Daphne said loudly, ‘they’ll be thrilled to see you,’ giving the servant an absent-minded nod as she came past and thinking all would be explained by this, her virtue as a mother touchingly asserted after the frightful racket from downstairs. ‘If they’re not asleep, of course, I mean!’ She kissed her raised forefinger and pushed open the door with preposterous caution. Then she had the drama of the light behind her for a minute, before they both came in and Revel closed the door with a muffled snap. Now a sallow night-light glowed from the table and heaped large shadows on the beds and up the walls. ‘No, Wilfie darling, you go back to sleep,’ she said. She peered down at him uncertainly in the stuffy gloom – he had stirred and groaned but was not perhaps awake . . . then across at Corinna, by the window, who looked less than lovely, flat on her back, head arched back on the pillow and snoring reedily. ‘If only she could see herself,’ murmured Daphne, in wistful mockery of her ceremonious child.

‘If only we could see ourselves . . .’ said Revel. ‘I mean, I expect if you saw me . . .’

‘Mm,’ said Daphne, leaning back, almost feeling with her shoulders to where he was, feeling his left hand slip lightly round her waist, confident but courteous and staying only a moment. ‘Mm . . . well, there you have them!’ – stepping aside in a way that felt dance-like, a promise to return. She muttered into her wineglass as she swigged. ‘Not a terribly pretty picture, I’m afraid.’ She felt a run of trivial apology opening up in front of her, the children perhaps not pleasing to Revel. He must be aware of the smell of the chamber-pot, she seemed to see Wilfie’s yellow tinkle. ‘Of course their father never looks at them – when they’re asleep, I mean – well, as little as possible at other times – when they’re awake! – they can’t contrive to be picturesque at all times of the day and night – ’ she shook her head and sipped again, turned back to Revel. Revel was picking up Roger, Wilfie’s brown bear, and frowning at the creature in the pleasant quizzical way of a family doctor: then he looked at her with the same snuffly smile, as if it didn’t matter what she said. Her own mention of Dudley hung oddly in the half-light of the top-floor room.

She went round to the far side of Wilfrid’s little bed, set her glass down on the bedside table, peered down at him, then perched heavily on the side of the bed. His wide face, like a soft little caricature of his father, all mouth and eyes. She thought of Dudley kissing her just now, in the cow-passage, all her knowledge of him that had to be kept from a child, their child, facing blankly upwards, one cheek in shadow, the other in the gleam of the night-light. She didn’t want to think of her husband at all, but his kiss was still there, in her lips, bothering away at her. She gently straightened and smoothed and straightened again the turned-over top of Wilfrid’s sheet. Dudley had a way of trapping you, he stalked your conscience, his maddest moments were also oddly tactical. And then of course he was pitiable, wounded, haunted – all that. Wilfrid’s head twitched, his eyelids opened and closed and he turned his whole body in a sudden convulsion to the right, then in a second or two he thumped back again, murmured furiously and lay the other way. He had bad dreams that were sometimes spooled out for her, formless descriptions, comically earnest, too boring to do more than pretend to listen to. He claimed to dream about Sergeant Bronson, which Daphne deplored and felt very slightly jealous of. She leant over him and straddled him with her arm, as if to keep him to herself, to say he was spoken for. ‘Uncle Revel,’ said Wilfrid sociably.

‘Hello, old chap!’ whispered Revel, smiling down at him, setting Roger down safely by the pillow. ‘We didn’t mean to wake you up.’

Wilfrid gave him a look of unquestioning approval and then his eyes closed and he swallowed and pursed his lips. As they both watched him, the happy look slowly faded from his face, until it was again a soft witless mask.

‘You see how he adores you,’ said Daphne, almost with a note of complaint, a breathless laugh. She gave him a long stare over the child’s head. Revel’s smiling coolness made her wonder for a moment more soberly if she was being played with. He went to the table and pulled out the diminutive child’s chair and sat down with his knees raised. He pretended drolly that life was always lived on this scale. She watched him, vaguely amused. The night-light made a study of his face as he worked quickly at a drawing. It seemed the very last moment of a smile lingered there in his teasing concentration. He used the children’s crayons as though they were all an artist could desire, and he was the master of them. Then with a louder snort Corinna had woken herself up and sat up and coughed uninhibitedly.

‘Mother, what is it?’ she said.

‘Go back to sleep, my duck,’ said Daphne, with a little shushing moue, affectionate but slightly impatient with her. The child’s hair was tousled and damp.

‘No, Mother, what’s the matter?’ she said. It was hard to tell if she was angry or merely confused, waking up to these unexpected figures in her room.

‘Shush, darling, nothing,’ said Daphne. ‘Uncle Revel and I came up to say goodnight.’

‘He’s not Uncle Revel actually,’ said Corinna; though Daphne felt this was not the only matter on which she might put her in the wrong. The child had a fearfully censorious vein; what she really meant was that her mother was drunk.

Revel looked over his shoulder, half-turned on the little chair. ‘We were wondering if we might still see that dance, if we asked very nicely,’ he said, which actually wasn’t a very good idea.

‘Oh, it’s too late for that,’ said Corinna, ‘far too late,’ as if they were the children pleading with her for some special concession. And getting out of bed she thumped across the room and went out to the lavatory. Daphne slightly dreaded her coming back and making more of a scene, allowing herself to say what she thought. If they all said what they thought . . . And now Wilfrid had woken again at the noise, with a furtive look, like an adult pretending not to have slept. She watched Revel finishing his drawing. There was the clank and torrent of the cistern, suddenly louder as the door was opened. But now Corinna seemed more balanced, more awake perhaps. She got back into bed with the little twitch of propriety that was part of her daylight character.

‘Shall I just read you something, darling, and then you both go back to sleep,’ Daphne said.

‘Yes, please,’ said Corinna, lying down and turning on her side, ready for both the reading and the sleeping.

Daphne looked by Wilfrid’s bed, then got up to see what books Corinna had. It was rather a bore, but they would be asleep again in a moment. ‘Are you reading
The Silver Charger
– how I adored that book . . . though I think I was a good deal older . . .’

‘There you are, little one,’ said Revel, getting up from the desk and holding his picture in front of Wilfrid to catch the light. The child pondered it, with a conditional sort of smile, against the pull of sleep. ‘I’ll put it over here, shall I?’

‘Mm,’ said Wilfrid. Daphne couldn’t quite make it out; she saw the great bill of a bird.

‘It’s chapter eight,’ said Corinna. Did she think that she ought to have a drawing too? Perhaps, tomorrow, Revel could be asked to make her one, if he wouldn’t mind – he might even draw her likeness . . .

‘ “So Lord Pettifer climbed into his carriage,” ’ Daphne read, rather cautiously in the dim light, ‘ “which was all of gold . . . with two handsome footmen in scarlet livery with gold braid, and the coachman in his great cockled hat – cocked hat – and the green” – I’m so sorry! – “the
great
coat of arms of the Pettifers of Morden emblazoned upon the doors. The snow had begun to fall, very gently and silently, and its soft white flakes sat –
settled
– for a moment on the manes of the four black horses and on the gold . . . panaches of the footmen’s hats” – oh lawks, I remember them – or how do we say it? –
panaches
, French . . .’ She looked up over the edge of the book at Revel, who was a dark column against the low light, perhaps a little impatient with her performance. He was a man of the theatre, after all; it was just that reading aloud brought out how much you’d had to drink. ‘ “ ‘I shall return before dusk on Sunday!’ said Lord Pettifer. ‘Pray tell Miranda, my ward, to prepare . . . herself.’ ” ’ She wasn’t sure how much feeling to put into the speeches; and in fact at that moment there was a snort from Corinna’s bed, and Daphne saw that her mouth had opened, and she was already asleep. She peered hopefully at Wilfrid, who was gazing at her clearly, though he couldn’t have had the least idea what was going on. ‘Well, I’ll just read a little bit more, shall I?’ she said. And lowering her voice she read on, skipping a fair bit, through the wonderful description of Lord Pettifer’s journey to Dover through the falling snow, which she hadn’t read since she was a girl. How quaint it looked – part of her didn’t want to read it like this, distracted by Revel, stumbling over the words; but partly she kept it up out of simple disquiet about stopping. ‘ “In the distance they saw the lights of a lonely house – that she could never return,” ’ read Daphne, turning over two pages at once, and taking a moment to realize. She glanced at Wilfrid, then carried on, quite at a loss as to what was happening herself. He smiled distantly, as if to say now it made sense, and to thank her politely, and turned away from the light and pulled up his knees under the covers, which she felt she could take as a sign to stop.

When they were outside in the passage again, things were both more urgent and more awkward. She felt it might go wrong if it wasn’t acted on quickly, it would wither on the stem in a horrible embarrassment of delay and indecision. But then Revel put his arms round her lightly. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘Nanny . . . !’

‘Oh . . .’

‘Let’s go down.’

‘Really?’ said Revel. ‘If you like.’ For the first time she had a sense that she could wound him, she could add to his other hurts; though he pressed his little flinching frown into a look of concern for her.

‘No, you’ll see,’ she said, and kissed him quickly on the cheek. She led him round, through the L-shaped top passage and out on to the top of the main stairs, with their sudden drama, the gryphons or whatever they were with their shields and raised glass globes of light descending beneath them. She thought,
the glare of publicity
.

‘They’re wyverns,’ she said, ‘I think,’ as they went down.

‘Ah,’ said Revel, as if he had indeed asked.

In the enormous mirror on the first-floor landing there they went, figures in a story, out of the light into the shadow. She thought she was calmer now but then she started gossiping under her breath, ‘My dear, I simply have to tell you what Tilda Strange-Paget said’ – she peered round – ‘about Stinker!’