The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [139]
Mrs. Jacobs looked self-conscious too, but in a happy way, her head on one side. Her own responses were almost a part of the performance. The over-active first section of the music had ended, and now a slow tune came in, with a definite air, even on a first hearing, of being what they were waiting for. Mrs. Jacobs raised and then dropped her right hand in greeting to it, and shook her head slowly as it went on. Paul thought she was probably very drunk—he felt the glow of his friendly understanding with her, from that first evening; though he somehow saw that to her being drunk had its whole long sentimental history, whereas to him it was a freakish novelty. Somewhere at the back there was a frail bit of humming and a little giggle when someone shushed. Then here came the song again, and as his eyes slid over the heads of the audience to find Peter he found Peter turned sideways and looking back at him, and the rapid pressure on his own heart and the glow of his face were fitted by the music, like a theme tune: they both smiled just in the moment of turning away.
After that Paul looked around casually, to see if anyone had seen; he watched Julian, also standing, on the other side, pink with drink and the comical effort to look sober. Jenny sat just beside him, with a similar frown of critical concentration, pinned in beside a large old man with a farmer’s face and a mass of white hair, and politely ignoring the loud dejected noise of his breathing. Paul turned with a remote smile, as if transported by the music, and found Mr. Keeping, standing at the back, pressed against the red velvet curtains, and staring intently at his wife, also with a hint of a smile, his unreadable mask. She was on display, physical and passionate, and Paul realized he would never see Mr. Keeping himself in quite the same way again. Then his gaze dropped to the woman seated in front of him—the clasp of her necklace, the label at the neck of her dress turned out … Anne-Marie Paris London—he read it upside-down. When she twitched her head at a sudden loud chord the tips of her hair tickled his fingers. She glanced round, apology just ruffled by accusal. A little later she murmured something to her husband, who absorbed it with a quick tutting nod. Paul had a strange and intense apprehension, for three or four seconds that might have been a long tranced minute, of this unknown woman’s life, which would never cross with his again, and the hypnotic detail of her label showing, which she herself was unaware of.
The door beside him into the hall was propped open, and now and then he heard a clatter of plates or a forgetful raised voice from the kitchen, where the women from the Bell were washing up. The front door was open too, and by moments cool air with a distant smell of firs to it ran in and then ebbed away. There was the quiet section, the theme tune again—he didn’t dare look at Peter—and he heard the jingle of something on Roger’s collar, unconcernedly out of tune and time, as he nosed round on the edge of the drive. Then there were footsteps on the gravel, stopping uncertainly, but an unselfconscious few words of greeting to the dog, which barked uncertainly itself a couple of times. Paul thought of a policeman, for some reason, and then of Sir Dudley Valance, with his war wound, whom he now seemed to be slightly obsessed by. There was a throat-clearing, a light knock, several people looked round, with the lively interest of an audience in any disturbance … Paul made a cringing face and slipped out into the hall.
“Ah, hullo—good evening …!”—a man peering in, too absorbed in the moment to lower his voice, and giving at once a sense of awkwardness, in his tight brown suit. “I’m fearfully late—but I didn’t want to miss it.” A posh, silvery voice, with, not a stammer but pauses between phrases. Paul came out on to the doorstep, and shook his hand firmly and without exactly encouraging him, he thought. Surely this wasn’t Sir Dudley. They nodded at each other, as though they were both in a bit of a fix.
“We’re just