The Stranger's Child Read online

  ‘I’m not quite certain I want my boys getting hacked to pieces’ – in a droll tone, but the image startled them all, the boys themselves gleaming in the candlelight, Huey wiping his moustache with a white napkin. Huey said sternly but kindly,

  ‘Let us hope it doesn’t come to that, Mother.’

  ‘I think our boys are ready for a scrap,’ said Elspeth.

  ‘Yes, but you don’t have any boys to get in a scrap, my dear,’ said Freda. Elspeth was Harry’s spinster sister, and one had to wonder, if Harry were to marry, where Elspeth would go. She’d kept house for him for so many years that it was hard to imagine her in a house of her own. But she would have to go somewhere . . . But then, Harry marry, wasn’t there something absurd in the very phrase?

  The pudding was a macédoine of fruits, the apples from the orchard. Cecil, on Freda’s right, ate quickly and without apparent pleasure, even with a vague air of annoyance. Disheartening for a hostess, but was it perhaps a sign of good breeding not to dwell on food? Something put in front of you by servants, something that stopped you talking, however briefly, about matters that were more important. George tonight was beside Cecil, and somehow teamed with him; now and then he put a hand on his sleeve and murmured to him under the louder talk all around, but Cecil’s preference was to speak to the whole table. Cecil too had been to Germany, and produced rather crushingly a good deal of information on the military and industrial side – much of it seemingly untranslatable. Freda, whose German was limited to heroic expressions of love, loyalty and revenge, and how to ask for a brandy and water, soon felt sad and somewhat squashed. Her Germany was hot, formal though not well organized, a maze of arrangements all shot through and redeemed for ever by the love of the Volsungs, the Forest Murmurs, and Wotan’s Farewell, the keenest ten minutes in the ten years of her widowhood. A shudder ran up her spine and her lower lip drew back at the thought of it.

  An awkward seating, with Daphne facing the two boys, and flanked by Harry and Elspeth. Daphne looked crushed herself, but revived in a moment whenever Cecil turned his attention to her. Normally Harry brought a glow, almost at times a sparkle, to Hubert – he was the one among her friends who paid him the most attention; but this evening Huey seemed somewhat preoccupied – was he even a little jealous of Cecil’s evident fascination for Harry? Harry, who seemed to see all the new books, had a number of questions for him about Cambridge figures. ‘I wonder if you know young Rupert Brooke?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, Rupert Brooke,’ said Freda, ‘what an Adonis!’

  Cecil gave a snuffly smile as if at some rather basic misapprehension. ‘Oh, yes, I know Brooke,’ he said. ‘We used to see a lot of him in College, but now of course rather less.’

  ‘My mother thinks Rupert’s work rather advanced,’ said George.

  ‘Really, my dear?’ said Elspeth, with twinkling concern.

  Freda thought it best not to protest – as a mother one had to play the fool from time to time. ‘I didn’t awfully care to read about his being sea-sick,’ she said, ‘to be perfectly honest.’

  ‘Oh, gobbets up I throw!’ said Daphne.

  ‘Thank you, child, I said I didn’t care for it.’ In fact it was one of their own silly catch-phrases, those puerile tags that reduced the family to weeping laughter but were strictly not for the outside world. Freda gave her daughter a sharp pinch of a frown, in part to stop herself smirking. She felt Cecil would be forming a very poor impression of all of them.

  ‘I’m no expert on poetry,’ said Hubert, with sweet redundancy, and seemed ready to head them off in another direction.

  ‘I’m less up to date with English poetry,’ said Elspeth.

  Harry said, ‘I always enjoy Strachey’s pieces in the Spectator – you must know him, I suppose?’

  Again, perhaps, was the boys’ Club in the air, that fearfully important ‘Conversazione Society’ she wasn’t allowed to mention? ‘We do see Lytton from time to time,’ Cecil said, with an air of discretion.

  ‘Now he’s awfully clever,’ said Elspeth.

  ‘Who’s that, dear?’ said Freda.

  ‘Lytton Strachey – you must have seen his Landmarks in French Literature.’

  ‘Oh . . . I . . . ?’

  ‘Harry thought less highly of it than I did.’

  ‘I prefer a heavier ratio of fact to hot air,’ said Harry.

  ‘We all believe Lytton will do something brilliant one day,’ said Cecil suavely.

  ‘I don’t care for him,’ said George.

  ‘Now, why’s that, dear?’ said Freda mockingly, though she didn’t think she’d ever heard of this man Strachey before a minute ago.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ muttered George, and blushed, and then looked rather cross.

  ‘No one could deny,’ said Cecil, ‘that poor Strachey has the most unfortunate speaking voice.’

  ‘Oh . . . ?’ Freda knew she mustn’t catch Daphne’s eye.

  ‘What you musical types I believe call a falsetto. It makes any sort of public speaking impossible for him.’

  ‘Even his private speaking’s pretty impossible,’ said George.

  ‘Well, happily, we don’t have to hear the fellow,’ said Harry; ‘or, in your mother’s case, read him either.’ He looked at Freda beside him with a smirk of almost parental collusion, and then at Hubert, who laughed uncertainly. It would be something one had to put up with, his cool good humour curdling into sarcasm. He was a kind and generous man, oddly generous perhaps for one so cool, but you couldn’t be sure he would make the right effect.

  ‘Well, on the matter of at least semi-public speaking . . .’ said Cecil archly, and gave a strange look at Daphne.

  ‘Oh yes!’ said Daphne, with a child’s alertness at the sudden touch of attention. ‘What about our readings, Cecil?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, what’s this?’ said Freda, fearing Daphne was about to bore their guests.

  ‘It was Cecil’s idea,’ said Daphne.

  ‘He may have said it just to be kind,’ said Freda.

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Cecil.

  ‘Mother, Cecil has offered to read to us!’ said Daphne, almost as if Freda were deaf, as well as mad to ignore such an offer.

  Freda said, ‘Well, that is very kind, Cecil, whatever you may say. If you’re sure . . . ?’ She herself, of course, had suggested something similar the night before, to get them in from the garden.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll read us some of your own work?’ Harry said, with a solemn look, to show Cecil that its fame had gone before him.

  Cecil smiled and looked down again. ‘Well, Daphne and I hatched this plan, do you see, that everyone would read out their own favourite poem of Tennyson’s.’

  ‘Goodness, I don’t know,’ said Freda, thinking she couldn’t without her glasses. And Hubert said warmly,

  ‘Oh no, old chap, we’d much rather listen to you.’

  ‘Well, if you’d really like that . . .’ said Cecil, with a clever little show of discomfort.

  Freda looked at Daphne, whose own desire to perform for them all seemed sunk in her fascination with Cecil. To a hostess such a reading was potentially awkward, but of course it might turn out to be a triumph and a thing they’d remember for years. Harry had asked for it, and she didn’t want to disappoint him. She had a dread of Harry being bored. She said, ‘Well, then – after dinner . . . !’ And then, ‘You know we met him, of course . . . ?’

  ‘Now this will interest you, Cecil,’ said Hubert.

  ‘Met whom, my dear?’ said Elspeth.

  ‘Oh, Lord Tennyson. Yes, indeed,’ she said warmly, laying a hand for a minute on Cecil’s sleeve. Cecil smiled courteously at the hand, until after a quick squeeze she took it away. ‘We were on our honeymoon, so it seemed auspicious.’ She looked round the table with the satisfaction of having their attention, but made anxious by George’s expression, his eyebrows raised in mocking indulgence. She felt he was trying to deflect the story which she’d now found a chance to tell. She knew she had a way of telling
it, and knew from experience that she was liable to leave something out. ‘It was our honeymoon,’ she repeated, to steady herself; she let her eyes rest speculatively on Harry, as that intriguing word glowed in the candlelight. She didn’t think he’d heard the story before, but she wasn’t completely sure. ‘We went to the Isle of Wight – Frank said he wanted to take me over the water!’

  ‘Very typical of him,’ said Hubert, with a fond shake of the head.

  ‘You know you go over on the ferry, from . . . Lynmouth, isn’t it?’

  ‘Lymington, I believe . . .’ said Harry.

  ‘Why do I always get that wrong?’

  ‘You can go across from Portsmouth too, of course,’ said George; ‘but it’s a little further.’

  ‘Do let Mother tell the story,’ said Daphne, sounding frustrated equally with the story and the interruptions.

  Freda let Harry fill her glass, and took a rich long sip of wine. ‘It must have been the early evening. Have you been on that ferry? It seems to wander over to the Isle of Wight, as if it had all the time in the world! Or perhaps we were just impatient . . . I remember the Queen was at Osborne, and Frank said he’d seen the Equerry, with the red boxes – everything had to go back and forth on the ferry, of course, it must have been a business for them.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they minded,’ said Hubert. ‘She was the Queen, after all, and that was their job.’

  ‘No . . . probably they didn’t. Anyway – we were sitting inside, as I was feeling rather cold, but Frank was always very curious about ships!’

  ‘One could say that my father was fascinated by all kinds of transport,’ said Hubert.

  ‘And Frank said,’ said Freda, ‘would I mind, though it was our honeymoon, if he went outside and had a look round.’

  ‘And he ran into Tennyson,’ said Cecil, who had leant forward over his plate in a twisted posture of attention.

  ‘Well, I didn’t know it was him!’ said Freda, rather flustered by Cecil’s narrative economy. ‘You know, Frank always liked to have a talk with the captain and that kind of thing. Well, after a while I looked out and saw him leaning on the rail beside a most extraordinary figure.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Cecil. ‘He must often have been on the ferry, going to Farringford.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure . . . But I felt quite alarmed!’ said Freda. And she started, with a faint sense of panic, on the bit of the story she knew best, knew word for word from her earlier tellings: ‘It was a tall old man, even then he was taller than Frank, though I believe he was eighty. I can see him now, he had a cloak on over his clothes and – ’ here she always made large swooping gestures above her head – ‘an extraordinary, very wide hat, and from behind—’

  ‘A wide-awake hat,’ said George.

  ‘Yes . . . and from behind you saw his – ’ – she always dropped her voice – ‘filthy-looking hair. I can see him now. My first thought was he was bothering Frank, you see, I mean that he was a beggar or something! Imagine!’

  ‘The Poet Laureate of England!’ said Hubert.

  ‘Well, you know they talked for some time. Apparently the captain had told him we were newly-weds.’ She had another drink of wine, looking at Harry over the glass. Her heart was beating absurdly.

  ‘And what did they talk about, darling?’ prompted George, with a rather tight smile.

  ‘Oh, I forget . . .’

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Cecil, slumping back as if he’d paid good money for nothing, but also, surprisingly, as if he knew her well enough now to tease her. She laughed at herself and again put her hand for a moment on his sleeve.

  ‘Lord Tennyson said – I shouldn’t really say.’ She felt a knot of incoherence in her chest.

  ‘We won’t tell,’ said Elspeth, kindly, but as if to a slightly trying child.

  Daphne said loudly, in a gruff and approximately regional voice, ‘He said, “We need more bloody, young man.” ’

  ‘Really, child . . .’ said Freda, laughing and flushing.

  ‘ “Less awfully, young man, more bloody!” ’ boomed Daphne.

  ‘I can tell you, he was very down-to-earth!’ said Freda.

  Cecil laughed now, in his brief, loud way, and mild amusement and relief spread round the table, the laugh in part at the girl’s absurd bit of play-acting.

  ‘So that was all they got out of that great poet,’ Daphne explained in her normal voice. ‘No occasional verse, just – ’ and here she tucked in her chin again – ‘ “More bloody, young man!” ’

  ‘Enough, child . . . !’ said Freda.

  ‘I suppose one sees what he meant,’ said Harry.

  ‘He was fed up with fine words by that stage,’ said Hubert, clearly quite proud of this family anecdote, and seeing the interest in it.

  ‘Poor Frank was a little disconcerted,’ said Freda, feeling uncertainly for the ebbing hilarity, and realizing she’d missed out what Tennyson had said about honeymoons. That too was a little disconcerting, and she thought it best to let it go.

  ‘No, he could be very blunt,’ said Cecil, splintering a brazil nut in the silver jaws of the nutcracker.

  ‘Bloody blunt, you might say,’ said George, smirking round.

  ‘If you can’t be blunt at eighty . . .’ said Daphne.

  ‘He could be very blunt indeed,’ said Cecil again, through a mouthful of nut, and a sudden uncouth appearance of being quite drunk. ‘I remember my grandfather saying so – he knew him pretty well, of course.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Freda – it was almost a wail.

  ‘Oh, Lord, yes,’ said Cecil, his loud emphasis followed by a total loss of interest; his face went blank and heavy and he turned away.

  When the ladies withdrew for coffee the dining-room door was firmly closed, but the louder sounds carried across the hall – Cecil’s yap, and now and again the awkward note of Huey’s laughter. One never knew what went on, as they pushed the decanter round; whatever it was, it stayed in the room. All they ever brought in with them afterwards was a sporting sense of solidarity and the comfortable stink of cigars. The women’s team, by contrast, was plainly unfocused and without a strategy.

  ‘Oh, my dear, goodness . . .’ said Freda, vaguely motioning Elspeth to a chair.

  ‘I’ll stand for a while,’ said Elspeth, taking up her coffee cup, declining a liqueur with a tiny shudder, and walking to the end of the room on a brisk inspection of ornaments and pictures. At Mattocks, of course, there was quite an advanced collection of pictures, strange symbolic works of various Continental schools. One glanced around with a degree of apprehension.

  ‘And you, child?’ said Freda. ‘A little ginger brandy, perhaps?’

  ‘No, thank you, Mother.’

  ‘No, indeed!’ said Elspeth.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Daphne, ‘perhaps just a small one, Mother, thank you so very much.’

  Elspeth was combative, but not easily rattled. She came back across the room and perched on the edge of the window-seat. Straight-backed, smartly but staidly dressed in shades of grey, she had something of Harry’s sharp-eyed handsomeness and, it had to be admitted, coolness. ‘I think your young poet so striking,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, isn’t he striking,’ said Freda, sipping off the top from a perilously full glass of Cointreau. She sat down carefully. ‘He’s made quite an impression here.’

  ‘He has charm,’ said Elspeth, ‘but not too much of it.’

  ‘I find him most charming,’ said Daphne.

  Freda glanced at her daughter, who looked flushed and slightly reckless as though she’d already had her drink. She said, with a vague desire to annoy, ‘Daphne finds him charming, but she thinks he speaks too loud.’

  ‘Oh, Mother!’ said Daphne. ‘That was before I knew him.’

  ‘He only arrived here last night, my lamb,’ said Freda. ‘None of us knows him at all well, as yet.’

  ‘Well, I feel I know him,’ said Daphne.

  ‘One can see that George is very attached to him,’ said Elspeth, �
�in the Cambridge way.’

  ‘Of course George is devoted to him,’ said Freda. ‘Cecil has done so much for him. Helped him up and, you know, what have you . . .’

  Elspeth took a quick sip of coffee. ‘A touch of hero-worship on George’s part, I would say, wouldn’t you!’

  This seemed to put George in a rather foolish light. ‘Oh, George is no fool!’ said Freda. She saw something pleasurable dawn in Daphne’s face, the way, over and over, a child slyly seizes on a new phrase, a new conception.

  Daphne said, ‘Oh, I think he does hero-worship him,’ with a frank little shake of the head. A great collective laugh was heard from across the hall, which rather showed up the ladies’ thin attempts at enjoying themselves. ‘I wonder what they’re talking about,’ Daphne said.

  ‘Best we never know, I think, don’t you,’ said Freda.

  ‘What would it be, though, that isn’t thought fit for our ears?’ said Daphne.

  ‘I think that’s a lot of nonsense,’ said Elspeth.

  ‘What is, dear?’

  ‘You know,’ said Elspeth.

  ‘Do you mean they talk about women?’ said Daphne.

  ‘They must know some very amusing women, in that case,’ said Freda, as another burst of laughter was heard. She had a disquieting sense of Harry, who was always so solemn with her, taking quite another character when the ladies were absent. She said, ‘Frank always said the secret was they didn’t want to bore us, but didn’t mind boring themselves. He always hurried them through. He wanted to get back to the women.’ The thought was intensely poignant.

  Daphne said, with a pretence of indifference, ‘Do you have many dinner parties of your own, Miss Hewitt?’

  ‘At Mattocks? Oh, not a great many, no,’ said Elspeth. ‘Poor Harry is so extremely busy, and of course he’s often away.’

  ‘So you dine in solitary splendour, poor thing!’ said Freda. ‘In that palace . . .’

  ‘I can’t say I mind,’ said Elspeth drily.

  ‘Among all your marvellous pictures,’ said Daphne, slightly overdoing it, Freda felt. She said,