The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [18]
“I don’t think George has a particular girlfriend?” said Cecil, after a minute.
“We all thought you would know,” she said, and then regretted the suggestion that they’d been talking about him. Something in Cecil of course demanded to be talked about. She tore up a few blades of grass, and glanced at him, feeling still the great novelty and interest of his presence. He shifted in the deckchair, crossed his right ankle on his left knee, a glimpse of brown calf. He was wearing white canvas shoes, scuffed at the heel. It would be amusing if they could explain George to each other behind his back. She said, “We all thought there might be someone when he started getting letters; but of course they were from you!”
Cecil looked both pleased and embarrassed by this, and glanced over his shoulder at the house. “But what about your mother, do you think?” he said, in a sudden sensitive tone. “She’s still quite young, and really most attractive. She might marry again herself. She must have many admirers …?”
“Oh, I don’t think so!” Daphne frowned and blushed at the question. It was one thing to talk about poor George’s prospects, quite another to ask about those of a middle-aged lady whom he hardly knew. It was most inappropriate; and besides, the last thing she wanted was a stepfather. She pictured Harry Hewitt standing on her father’s rockery—worse, ordering its demolition. Though actually, almost certainly, they would all have to move to Mattocks, with its peculiar pictures and statues. She sat looking at Cecil’s white shoes, and thinking rather hard. He didn’t press her for an answer. She saw it was a new kind of talk, which she wasn’t quite ready for, like certain books, which were in English obviously, but too grown-up for her to understand. He said,
“I didn’t mean to pry. You know how Georgie and I and all our lot are devils for speaking candidly.”
“That’s all right,” she said.
“Tell me it’s none of my business.”
“Well, there’s a man who’s coming to dinner tonight that I think likes my mother a lot,” she said, and a sense of betrayal discoloured the following seconds.
“Is this Harry?”
“Yes, it is,” she said, feeling her shame still more.
“The man who gave you the gramophone.”
“Oh, yes, well he’s given us all kinds of things. He’s given Hubert a gun, and … lots of things. The Complete Works of Sheridan.”
“I imagine Huey might appreciate some of these gifts rather more than others,” said Cecil, again familiar and casual.
“Well … He gave me a dressing set, with a scent bottle, which I’m not old enough for, and silver-backed brushes.”
“He sounds like Father Christmas,” said Cecil; and with a hint of boredom, looking round, “What a jolly fellow.”
“Hmm. He’s very generous, I suppose, but he’s not a bit jolly. You’ll see.” She glanced up at him, still strangely indignant both with him and with Harry, but he was gazing at the top of the spinney, where they’d met last night, as if at something much more intriguing. “He goes to Germany a great deal, he does import-export, you know. He brings us back things.”
“And you think all these presents are his way of … paying court to your mamma,” said Cecil.
“I fear so.”
Cecil’s splendid profile, the autocratic nose and slightly bulbous eye, seemed poised for judgement; but when he turned and smiled she felt the sudden return of his attention and kindness. “But, my dear child, you’ve no need to fear unless you think she returns his feelings.”
“Oh, I don’t know …!” She was flustered, by having come so far, and by this unexpected word child, which was what her mother herself called her, quite naturally, though often with a hint of criticism. She had got it last night, once or twice, when she was trying to make Cecil feel at home and asking him questions. He must have heard her say it. Now she felt some not quite nice rhetorical