The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [17]
“And does Olive have Jebland?”
“No, she does not,” said Daphne, trying to subdue the note of triumph to one of respect for the dead aviator.
“I see it’s rather morbid,” said Cecil. “You make me feel a little anxious.”
“Oh, everyone else in it is still alive!”
Cecil closed the book. “Well, leave it with me, and I promise I’ll think something up before I go.”
“Do feel free to write some occasional verse.” She came round the chair and stood looking at him full-face. He was fingering his own book again as he squinted up at her, smiling tensely against the light. She felt the momentary advantage she had over him, and gazed with a novel kind of licence at his parted lips and his strong brown neck where it emerged from his soft blue shirt. He was surely writing a poem now, the pencil was waiting in the cruck of the notebook. She felt she couldn’t ask about it. But nor could she let him alone. She said, “Have you seen over the garden?”
“D’you know, I have. I rambled right round it with Georgie, first thing.”
“Oh …”
“Oh, long before you were up. I went and tipped him out of bed.”
“I see …”
“I’m a pagan, you see, and I worship the dawn. I’m trying to instil the cult in your brother.”
“I wonder how you’ll get on.” Cecil closed his eyes languidly as he smiled, so that she had a further sense of screened-off mysteries. “Perhaps tomorrow you could tip me out of bed too.”
“Do you think your mother would approve?”
“Oh, she won’t mind.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
“I could show you all kinds of things.” She felt the grass with her hand before sitting down beside Cecil’s chair. “I can’t believe George showed you the whole of ‘Two Acres.’ ”
“Well, possibly not …,” said Cecil, with a quick snigger.
Daphne peered encouragingly at the view—the neat parched lawn, the little tor of the rockery, the line of dark firs that hid the Cosgroves’ potting-shed and motor-garage. To her the “Two” in her house’s name had always been reassuring, a quietly emphatic boast to schoolfriends who lived in a town or a terrace, the proof of a generous over-provision. But in Cecil’s presence she felt the first shimmer of uncertainty. Sitting side by side, she hoped to make him share her view, but wondered if she hadn’t started sharing his instead. She said, “You know, the rockery was my father’s contribution.”
“He must have put a good deal of work into it,” said Cecil.
“Yes, he worked terribly hard at it. Those large red stones came all the way from Devon—which of course he did!”
“They will be a strange geological conundrum to later ages,” said Cecil.
“Yes, I suppose they will.”
“They will be like the monoliths of Stonehenge.”
“Mm,” said Daphne, sensing teasing where she’d hoped for something better. She pressed on, “My father wasn’t artistic like my mother, but she gave him a free hand with the rockery. In a way it’s his monument.”
Cecil stared at it with a chastened expression. “I suppose you don’t really remember your father,” he said. “You must have been too young.”
“Oh, I remember him quite well.” She nodded up at him. “He used to come home from work, and have his Old Smuggler while I was in the bath.”
“You mean he drank whisky in the bathroom?”
“Yes, while he was telling me a story. We had a nanny of course, who used to bath me. Frankly, I think we had rather more money then, than we have now.”
Cecil gave her the fleeting wince of merely abstract sympathy that she’d noticed already when it came to money or servants. “I can’t imagine my father doing that,” he said.
“Well, your father doesn’t go to work, does he.”
“That’s true,” said Cecil, and giggled attractively.
“Of course Huey works very hard. My mother says one of us needs to get married.”
“Well, I’ve no doubt you will,” said Cecil, his dark eyes holding hers and his eyebrow rising slightly for emphasis and a hint of amusement, so that her heart thumped and she hurried on,
“One day, we’ll see. I dare say we all will.” She