The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [159]
“But you’re not living in London? I think the last time I saw you, you were in … Blackheath?”
“Ah, yes. No, I’ve moved, I’ve moved back to the country.”
“You don’t miss London?” he said amiably. He wanted to find out where she lived, and sensed already a certain resistance to telling him. She merely sighed, peered at the blotted world outside, sat forward to push down the window a crack, though in a moment the throb of the engine shivered it shut. “I’ve been in London myself for three years now.”
She tucked in her chin. “Well, you’re young, aren’t you. London’s fine when you’re young. I liked London fifty years ago.”
“Well, I know,” said Paul. In some absurd way her account in her book of living in Chelsea with Revel Ralph had coloured his own sense of what London life might offer: freedom, adventure, success. “I got out of the bank, you see. I think I always really wanted to be a writer.”
“Ah, yes …”
“It seems to be going quite well, I’m pleased to say.”
“I’m so glad.” She smiled anxiously. “We’re sure he is going to Paddington, aren’t we?”
Paul entered into it as a little joke, leaning forward. Through a wiped arc he saw for a moment a blurred corner pub, a hospital entrance, all unrecognizable. “We’re fine,” he said. “No, I’ve been doing a bit of reviewing. You may have seen a piece of mine in the Telegraph a couple of months ago …”
“I don’t see the Telegraph, as a rule,” she said, with droll relief more than regret.
“I know what you mean,” Paul said, “but actually I think the books pages are as good as any.” What he really wanted to know, but somehow couldn’t ask, was if she’d seen his review of The Short Gallery in the New Statesman, a paper he felt she was unlikely to take. He’d done it as a gesture of friendship, finding all that was best in the book, the tiny criticisms themselves clearly affectionate, the corrections of fact surely useful for any future edition. Whenever he reviewed a book he read all its other reviews as keenly as if he were the author of the book himself. Daphne’s memoir had been covered either by fellow survivors, some loyal, some sneering, or by youngsters with their own points to make; but a more or less open suggestion that she had made a good deal of it up hung over all of them. Paul blushed when he read about errors he had failed to spot, but drew a stubborn assurance of his own niceness from the fact of having been so gentle with her. His was much the best notice she had received. As he wrote it, he imagined her gratitude, phrased it for her in different ways and savoured it, and for weeks after the review appeared—rather cut, unfortunately, but its main drift still plain to see—he waited for her letter, thanking him, recalling their old friendship, and suggesting they meet up again, perhaps for lunch, which he pictured variously at a quiet hotel or in her own house in Blackheath, among the distracting memorabilia of her eighty-two years. In fact the only response had been a letter to the Editor from Sir Dudley Valance, pointing out a trifling error Paul had made in alluding to his novel The Long Gallery, on which Daphne’s title was a pawky in-joke. If even Sir Dudley, who lived abroad, saw the New Statesman, perhaps Daphne did too; or the publisher might have sent it on. Paul thought a certain well-bred reserve might have kept her from writing anything to a reviewer. She was pulling off her gloves. “You won’t mind if I have a cigarette?”
“Not at all,” said Paul; and when she’d found one in her bag he took the lighter from her and gently held her arm for a second as she leant to the flame. The smoke soured the fetid air almost pleasantly. And at once, with the little shake of her head as she exhaled, her face, even the uptilted gleam of her glasses, seemed restored to how they had been twelve years before. Encouraged, he said, “I’m very pleased to see you, because in fact I’m writing something about Cecil … Cecil Valance”—with a gasp of a laugh, quickly deferential. He didn’t come out with the full scale of his plans. “Actually, I was about to write to