The Stranger's Child Page 11

  ‘I know, dear,’ said their mother, with a little flinch at her two prickly children. ‘He’s been most generous to Jonah too.’

  George got up, and went to the window, and looked out in the manner of someone who wants to say something firm but difficult. ‘The poem’s really nothing to do with Daphne.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Daphne, shaking her head. Wasn’t it? It was there, she had seen it at once, the lovers’ kiss in the shadows, telling their secrets; but of course she couldn’t say that to either of them. ‘I suppose I should be sorry he didn’t write a poem for you.’

  George’s pitying look was focused on the cherry-trees outside. ‘As a matter of fact, he has written a poem for me.’

  ‘Oh, George, you never said,’ said their mother. ‘You mean just now?’

  ‘No, no – last term sometime – it really doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Well!’ said their mother, trying to maintain a tone of bewildered amusement. ‘Rather a fuss about a poem.’

  ‘There’s no fuss, darling,’ said George, now in a brightly patient tone.

  ‘It’s too lovely to have a poem written for you at all, in my view.’

  ‘I quite agree!’ said Daphne, and the feeling that everything was being spoiled welled up inside her.

  ‘I’m beginning to feel very sorry that I mentioned it. If Cecil’s visit has to end in this kind of childish bickering.’

  ‘Oh, read it if you want to!’ said Daphne, pursing her lips against tears, and flapping through the book to give it to her open at the right page. Her mother looked at her sharply, and after a moment, and quite gently, took it from her.

  ‘Thank you . . . now if the girl could run for my glasses.’ And when Veronica came back, their mother sat down at the dining-table and addressed herself, with a quizzical but sporting look, to the poem that had just been written about her house.

  TWO

  Revel

  Man must say farewell

  To parents now,

  And to William Tell,

  And Mrs Cow.

  Edith Sitwell, ‘Jodelling Song’

  1

  From where she sat, in the window of the morning-room, the two figures seemed to hurry towards each other. Above the long hedge at the end of the formal garden, a man’s head, jerking with the lurch of a limp, moved impatiently along. ‘Rubbish!’ he shouted. ‘Rubbish!’ Whilst away to the right, between the hazily green horse-chestnuts of the park, a shiny beige car was approaching, its windscreen flashing in the sun.

  ‘D’, she wrote, and hesitated, with her nib on the paper. Not Darling, so ‘Dear’ certainly, and then another pause, which theatened to turn into a blot, before she added ‘est’: ‘Dearest Revel’. One went up and down the scale with people – certainly among their set there were startling advances in closeness, which sometimes were followed by coolings just as abrupt. Revel, though, was a family friend, the superlative quite proper. ‘It is too awful about David,’ she went on, ‘and you have all my sympathy’ – but she thought, what one really needed was a scale below ‘Dear’, since often one had no time whatever for the person one was warmly embracing on the page: ‘Untrustworthy Jessica’, ‘Detestable Mr Carlton-Brown’.

  She heard the car stop outside, the swift jangle of the bell, footsteps and then voices. ‘Is Lady Valance in?’ ‘I believe she’s in the morning-room, madam. Shall I—’ ‘Oh, I won’t disturb her.’ ‘I can tell her’ – Wilkes giving her a clear chance to do the right thing. ‘No, don’t bother. I’ll go straight through to the office.’ ‘Very good, madam.’ It was a small contest of wills, in which the subtle but hamstrung Wilkes was trounced by the forthright Mrs Riley. A minute later he came in to cast an eye at the fire, and said, ‘Mrs Riley has come, my lady. She went through to the office, as she calls it.’

  ‘Thank you, I heard her,’ said Daphne, looking up and lightly covering the page with her sleeve. She shared a moment’s oddly intimate gaze with Wilkes. ‘I expect she had her plans with her?’

  ‘She appeared to, madam.’

  ‘These plans!’ said Daphne. ‘We’re not going to know ourselves soon.’

  ‘No, madam,’ said Wilkes, passing his white-gloved hand into the black mitten that was kept in the log-basket. ‘But they are still only plans.’

  ‘Hmm. You mean they may not come off?’

  Wilkes smiled rather strictly as he lodged a small branch on the top of the pyre, and controlled the ensuing tumble of ash and sparks. ‘Perhaps not fully, madam, no; and in any case, not . . . irreversibly.’ He went on confidentially, ‘I understand Lady Valance is with us on the dining-room.’

  ‘Well, she’s rarely an advocate for change,’ said Daphne a little drily, but with respect for the butler’s old allegiances. With two Lady Valances in the house, there were niceties of expression which even Wilkes was sometimes tripped up by. ‘Though last night she claimed to find the new drawing-room “very restful”.’ She turned back to what she had written, and Wilkes, after a few more testing pokes at the fire, went out of the room.

  ‘Perhaps best not to come this weekend – we have a houseful with much family &c (my mother) – on top of which Sebby Stokes is coming down to look at Cecil’s poems. It will be somewhat of a “Cecil weekend”, and you would barely get a word in! Though perhaps’ – but here the bracket clock whirred and then hectically struck eleven, its weights spooling downwards at the sudden expense of energy. She had to sit for a moment, when the echo had vanished, to repossess her thoughts. Other clocks (and now she could hear the grandfather in the hall chime in belatedly) showed a more respectful attitude to telling the hour. They struck, all through the house, like attentive servants. Not so that old brass bully the morning-room clock, which banged it out as fast as it could. ‘Life is short!’ it shouted. ‘Get on with it, before I strike again!’ Well, it was their motto, wasn’t it: Carpe Diem! She thought better of her ‘perhaps’, and signed off blandly, ‘Love from us both, Duffel.’

  She took her letter into the hall, and stood for a moment by the massive oak table in the middle of the room. It seemed to her suddenly the emblem and essence of Corley. The children tore round it, the dog got under it, the housemaids polished it and polished it, like votaries of a cult. Functionless, unwieldy, an obstacle to anyone who crossed the room, the table had a firm place in Daphne’s happiness, from which she feared it was about to be prised by force. She saw again how imposing the hall was, with its gloomy panelling and Gothic windows, in which the Valance coat of arms was repeated insistently. Would those perhaps be allowed to stay? The fireplace was designed like a castle, with battlements instead of a mantelpiece and turrets on either side, each of which had a tiny window, with shutters that opened and closed. This had come in for particular sarcasm from Eva Riley – it was indeed hard to defend, except by saying foolishly that one loved it. Daphne went to the drawing-room door, put her fingers on the handle, and then flung it open as though hoping to surprise someone other than herself.

  The off-white dazzle of it, on a bright April morning, was undeniably effective. It was like a room in some extremely expensive sanatorium. Comfortable modern chairs in grey loose covers had replaced the old clutter of cane and chintz and heavy-fringed velvet. The dark dadoed walls and the coffered ceiling, with its twelve inset panels depicting the months, had been smoothly boxed in, and on the new walls a few of the original pictures were hung beside very different work. There was old Sir Eustace, and his young wife Geraldine, two full-length portraits designed to glance tenderly at each other, but now divided by a large almost ‘abstract’ painting of a factory perhaps or a prison. Daphne turned and looked at Sir Edwin, more respectfully hung on the facing wall, beside the rather chilling portrait of her mother-in-law. This had been done a few years before the War, and showed her in a dark red dress, her hair drawn back, a shining absence of doubt in her large pale eyes. She was holding a closed fan, like a lacquered black baton. Here nothing came between the couple, but still a vague air of satire seemed to thre
aten them, in their carved and gilded frames. In the old drawing-room, where the curtains, even when roped back, had been so bulky that they kept out much of the light, Daphne had loved to sit and almost, in a way, to hide; but no such refuge was offered by the new one, and she decided to go upstairs and see if the children were ready.

  ‘Mummy!’ said Wilfrid, as soon as she went into the nursery. ‘Is Mrs Cow coming?’

  ‘Wilfrid’s afraid of Mrs Cow,’ said Corinna.

  ‘I am not,’ said Wilfrid.

  ‘Why would anyone be afraid of a dear old lady?’ said Nanny.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Nanny,’ said Daphne. ‘Now, my darlings, are you going to give Granny Sawle a special surprise?’

  ‘Will it be the same surprise as last time?’ said Corinna.

  Daphne thought for a second and said, ‘This time it will be a double surprise.’ For Wilfrid these rituals, invented by his sister, were still sickeningly exciting, but Corinna herself was beginning to think them beneath her. ‘We must all be sweet to Mrs Cow,’ Daphne said. ‘She is not very well.’

  ‘Is she infectious?’ said Corinna, who had only just got over the measles.

  ‘Not that sort of unwell,’ said Daphne. ‘She has awful arthritis. I’m afraid she’s in a great deal of pain.’

  ‘Poor lady,’ said Wilfrid, visibly attempting a maturer view of her.

  ‘I know . . .’ said Daphne, ‘poor lady.’ She perched selfconsciously on the upholstered top of the high fender. ‘No fire today, then, Nanny?’ she said.

  ‘Well, my lady, we thought it was almost nice enough to do without.’

  ‘Are you warm enough, Corinna?’

  ‘Yes, just about, Mother,’ said Corinna, and glanced uneasily at Mrs Copeland.

  ‘I am rather cold,’ said Wilfrid, who tended to adopt a grievance once it had been pointed out to him.

  ‘Then let’s run downstairs and get warmed up,’ said Daphne, in happy contravention of Nanny’s number one rule, and getting up briskly.

  ‘No two-at-a-time, mind, Wilfrid!’ said Nanny.

  ‘You can be sure he will be all right with me,’ said Daphne.

  When they were out in the top passage, Wilfrid said, ‘Is Mrs Cow stopping for the night?’

  ‘Wilfrid, of course,’ said Corinna, as if at the end of her patience, ‘she’s coming on the train with Granny Sawle.’

  ‘Uncle George will take them home on Sunday, after lunch,’ said Daphne; and finding herself holding his hand, she said, ‘I thought it would be nice if you showed her up to her room.’

  ‘Then I will show Granny up to her room,’ said Corinna, making it harder for Wilfrid to get out of.

  ‘But what about Wilkes?’ said Wilfrid ingeniously.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Wilkes can put his feet up, and have a nice cup of tea, what do you think?’ said Daphne, and laughed delightedly until Wilfrid joined in on a more tentative note.

  On the top stairs, they trotted down hand-in-hand, and in step, which did require a measure of discipline. Then from the window on the first-floor landing she saw the car arriving from the station. ‘They’re here . . . oh, darlings, run!’ she said, shaking off the children’s hands.

  ‘Oh, Mummy . . .’ said Wilfrid, transfixed with anxious excitement.

  ‘Come on!’ said Corinna; and they pelted down the three bright turns of polished oak, Wilfrid losing his footing on the last corner and bumping down very fast over several steps on his hip, his bottom. Daphne tensed herself, with a touch of annoyance, but now he was limping across the hall and round the table (looking just like his father), and by the time he started self-righteously to wail he was already distracted by the need to do the next thing.

  Wilkes appeared, with the new Scottish boy, and Daphne let them go ahead and tackle the car for a minute while she watched from the porch. Awful to admit, but her pleasure at seeing her mother again was a touch defensive: she was thinking of the things her husband would say about her after she’d gone. Wilkes deferred to Freda very properly and smilingly, with his usual intuitive sense of what a guest might need. To Daphne herself she seemed an attractive figure, pretty, flushed, in a new blue dress well above the ankle and a fashionable little hat, with her own anxieties about the visit peeping out very touchingly. The handsome boy was helping Clara Kalbeck, a tactfully physical business: she came over the gravel slowly and determinedly, swathed in black, on two sticks, following Freda like her own old age.

  2

  Wilfrid glanced across at his sister, and then put his eye back to the chink between the shutters. His leg was burning, and his heart was thumping, but he still hoped to do it right. He saw Robbie come in to the house with the suitcases – he leant forward to watch him and nudged the door open with his cheek. ‘Not till I say,’ said Corinna. Robbie looked up and gave them a wink.

  ‘I know,’ muttered Wilfrid, and peered at her in the shadows with a mixture of awe and annoyance. The others seemed stuck in the porch, in endless adult talk. He could tell they were talking nonsense. He wanted to shout out at once, and he was also quite scared, as Corinna had said. The weekend loomed above him, with its shadowy guests and challenges. More people were coming tomorrow – Uncle George and Aunt Madeleine, he knew, and a man from London called Uncle Sebby. They would all be talking and talking, but at some point they would have to stop and Corinna would play the piano and Wilfrid would do his dance. He felt hollow with worry and excitement. When a fire was lit in the hall, this little cave-like passage was warm and stuffy, but today it smelt of cold stone. He was glad he had someone with him. At last Granny Sawle stepped in through the front door, and just for a second she glanced at the fireplace, with a dead look, so that Wilfrid knew she was expecting the surprise – though somehow this didn’t spoil it, in a way it made it better, and as soon as she’d dutifully turned her back he flung open his shutters and shouted, ‘Hello, Granny – ’

  ‘Not yet!’ wailed Corinna. ‘You’ve got it wrong, Wilfrid,’ but Granny had spun round already, a hand pressed to her heart.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘oh!’ – and so Corinna pushed open her shutters too and shouted the correct announcement, which was, ‘Welcome to Corley Court, Granny Sawle and Mrs Kalbeck!’ with Wilfrid in hilarious unison, riding roughshod over his own mistake, and even though Mrs Kalbeck hadn’t yet made it into the house.

  ‘It’s too amazing!’ said Granny. ‘The very walls have voices.’ Wilfrid giggled in delight. ‘Ah, Dudley, dear’ – now his father had come in, and the dog barking. She raised her voice – ‘This ancient fireplace has miraculous properties!’

  ‘Rubbish, Rubbish!’ his father shouted, as the dog ran yelping and shivering towards the front door. ‘Here, Rubbish, come here! Pipe down!’; though Rubbish as usual did no such thing, and wanted to give everyone a Corley welcome of his own.

  ‘Quite magical!’ Granny held on.

  ‘Well, it won’t be magical for much longer,’ said his father, in his meaning voice, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Come on out of there, will you!’ though it wasn’t clear now if he was shouting at the children or the dog.

  ‘Wilfrid messed it up,’ said Corinna in a further announcement, as Mrs Kalbeck leant in through the front door, on one stick after the other, clearly alarmed as Rubbish leapt up and waltzed with her for a moment with his front paws on her tummy – she took two panting steps backwards, and the dog dropped down and sniffed excitedly round her legs, her round black shoes. After that it took a while for her to see where the young girl’s voice was coming from.

  ‘Frau Kalbeck, marvellous to see you again,’ said Dudley, limping quickly but very heavily across to her, so that he seemed to be playing with her, aping her or just joining in, you couldn’t tell. ‘Please ignore my children.’

  ‘Oh, but darling,’ said their mother, ‘the children have asked to show the guests up to their rooms.’

  Dudley swung round with what they called the ‘mad glint’. The mood thickened, in a familiar way. But he seemed to let them off by sayi
ng simply, ‘Oh, the little dears.’

  Mrs Kalbeck was awfully slow on the stairs. Wilfrid watched the rubber tip of each stick as it felt for its purchase on the shiny oak. ‘It is very dangerous,’ he assured her. ‘I’ve fallen down here myself.’ Being responsible for her, he found her interesting as well as frightening. He bobbed up and down the stairs beside her, encouraging and assessing her much slower progress. Corinna and Granny Sawle had gone on ahead, and he was worried, as always, about being late, and about what his father would say. ‘This house is Victorian,’ he explained.

  Mrs Kalbeck chuckled amongst her sighs, and looked him in the face, levelly but sweetly. ‘And so am I, my dear,’ she said, in her precise German voice, her large grey eyes casting a kind of spell on him.

  ‘Do you like it then?’ he said.

  ‘This marvellous old house?’ she said gaily, but peering past him up the polished stairs with anxious blankness.

  ‘My father can’t warm to it,’ said Wilfrid. ‘He’s going to change it all.’

  ‘Well,’ she said disappointingly, ‘if that’s what he wants to do.’

  Mrs Kalbeck had been put in the Yellow Room, at the far end of the house, and Wilfrid went a step or two ahead of her along the broad strip of carpet on the landing. They passed the open door of Granny Sawle’s room, where Corinna had already been given a present, a bright red scarf which she was looking at in the mirror. It was a cheerful irresistible room, and Wilfrid started to go into it, but then did resist, and walked on. The next door on the other side was his parents’ bedroom. ‘I’m afraid you’re not allowed in that room,’ he said, ‘unless my parents ask you to go in, of course.’ He was embarrassed that he didn’t exactly know Mrs Cow’s name; though at the same time he enjoyed thinking of her by her rude name. He didn’t want to get too close to her black dress, and her smell, white flowers mixed up with something sour and unhappy. ‘Mrs Ka . . .’ he said tentatively.