The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [119]
Just before closing he came back to his seat from the chief clerk’s desk, and found that he had no customers—he glanced out, saw Heather cross the Public Space to stand by the door, and sensed already the little shift of perspective that would come about when she locked it shut, and the team were left alone again. Perhaps it was just a new boy’s self-consciousness, but he felt a mood of solidarity settled on the staff when the public had gone. They barely showed it, of course—“No, you’re just in time!” said Heather, with a grudging laugh, and Paul saw a large young man scoot in past her, smiling keenly, though in fact it was 3:28, he was within his rights, and the smile expressed confidence more than apology. He was feeling in his breast pocket, his smile now slightly mischievous as he homed in on Geoff’s position, where a customer was already waiting. Paul had an impression of quirky liveliness and scruffiness, such as you didn’t see much in a town like this, something artistic and a little preoccupied, more like a person from London or it could be Oxford, only fifteen miles away. He could well be an Oxford type, with his pale linen jacket curling at the lapels and his blue knitted tie. A pen had made a red ink stain, not far from his heart. His dark curly hair half-covered his ears, there was something witty and attractive in his expression, though he wasn’t exactly handsome. Paul leant forward and for a few expanded, trance-like seconds watched him gazing at Geoff, over the shoulder of the man in front of him. His head was on one side, with the vacantly calculating frown of impatience, the tip of his tongue on his lower lip; and then, just for a moment, his face stiffened, his eyes widened as if to fill themselves with Geoff, and then narrowed into a slow blink of amused indulgence; and of course Paul knew, and his heart thumped with feelings he couldn’t disentangle, of curiosity, envy and alarm. “Can I help you?” he said, and his own voice sounded loud and almost mocking.
The man looked at him without moving his head, and then with a widening smile, as if he knew he’d been caught out. He came over. “Hello,” he said, “you’re new!”
“Yes, I’m the new boy,” said Paul, pleasantly, and feeling a bit silly.
The man looked at him appreciatively as he felt in his breast pocket. “Well, me too,” he said, his voice quick and deep, with a curl of humour in it.
“Oh, yes?” said Paul, wary of being too familiar, but laughing a little.
“Well, new master, but it’s much the same. Now I’ve got to pay this in for the Colonel.” He had a paying-in book, the slip all made out, and a cheque for £94: Corley Court School, General Account. Paul saw, in the moment he stamped it, an image of the school, teeming and condensed, wealthy and famous, he was sure, though he had never heard of it.
“Where is it, actually?” he said.
“What, Corley?”—the man said the word as one might London, perhaps, or Dijon, with cultured certainty and polite surprise. “It’s out on the Oxford road, about three miles away. It’s a prep-a-ra-turry school,” he said, in a Noël Coward voice.
“The bank is about to close, ladies and gentlemen!” announced Heather.
“Look, you’d better give me some money,” said the man. “Don’t they have drinking-up time in here?”
“Afraid not,” said Paul, with a nod and a smile, in the way one always conceded a customer might have a point; but with some further concession of this one’s charm. The man