The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [108]
“I don’t suppose you want to be doing this for a minute,” Jenny said, with a slyly commiserating smile. “I’m afraid they’re always getting people involved.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Paul.
“You know it’s a test. Aunt Corinna’s always testing people, she can’t help it. I’ve seen it masses of times. I don’t just mean on the piano, either.”
“Oh, have you?” said Paul, amused by her frankness, which seemed original and upper-class too. He looked out nervously as they came on to the lawn. Aunt Corinna was in the far corner, inspecting a sagging trellis and, quite possibly, lining up further tasks or tests for him. Beside her a large weeping beech-tree spread awkwardly but romantically, a table sheltered under its skirts.
“You know, she should have been a concert pianist. That’s what everyone says, at least; I don’t know if it’s actually true. I mean anyone can say they should have been something. Anyway now she teaches the piano. She gets fantastic results, of course, though you can see the children are simply terrified of her. Julian says she’s a sadist,” she said, a touch self-consciously.
“Oh …!” said Paul, with a frown and disparaging laugh and then, from the mention of anything taboo, a sure-fire, searching blush. Sometimes they ebbed unnoticed, sometimes kept coming, self-compounding. He stooped and half-hid himself spreading the plastic sacks on the grass. “So Julian’s her younger son,” he said, still with his back to her.
“Oh, John wouldn’t say that, he’s far too square.”
“So Julian isn’t square …?”
“What’s Julian? Julian’s sort of … elliptical.” They both laughed. “Have I embarrassed you?” said Jenny.
“Not at all,” said Paul, recovering. “The whole of your family’s new to me, you see. I’m from Wantage.”
“Oh, I see,” said Jenny—as if this was in fact a bit of a drawback. “Well, they’re rather a nightmare to sort out … the old lady you met over there is my grandmother.”
“You mean Mrs. Jacobs?”
“Yes, she married again when my father was quite small. She’s been married three times.”
“Goodness.”
“I know … She’s about to be seventy, and we’re going to have a huge enormous party.”
Paul started gingerly unearthing the plants from the trough—they trembled under this further assault on their dignity. He stood them, in their trailing tangle of earth and roots, on the old Fisons sack. Soft clots of some kind of manure, loosely forked into the soil, were still slightly slimy. “I hope I’m doing this right,” he said.
“Oh, I should think so,” said Jenny, who like the others was watching but not exactly paying attention.
“So your aunt said you’re going up to Oxford.” He tried to disguise his envy, if that’s what it was, in a genial avuncular tone.
“Did she. Yes, I am.”
“What are you going to study?”
“I’m reading French at St. Anne’s.” She made it sound beautifully exclusive, the rich simplicity of the proper nouns. He had taken his mother all round Oxford, gaping at the colleges, as a kind of masochistic treat for both of them before he went off to Loughborough to train for the bank; but they hadn’t bothered with the women’s colleges. “Julian’s applying to Univ this year.”
“Mm, so you might be there together.”
“Which would be rather fab,” said Jenny.
When he’d dug out all the earth he rocked the trough with both hands and it moved more readily. Still, he laughed at the second looming failure. “Here goes,” he said, and squatted down again. Over the lawn he saw Mrs. Keeping bearing down, with her keen sense of timing. With a violent force that in the moment itself seemed almost comical he heaved up the great stone object and with a stifled shout he lodged it on its other block, on the edge of it at least, but the job was done. “Aha!” said Mrs. Keeping, “we’re getting there at last,” and as he held it steady and smiled almost devotedly up at her he felt it turn under his hand; if he hadn’t jumped back in the second it slipped and fell it