The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [19]
Cecil smiled. “I tell you what. I’ll have a good look at him, as a total outsider, and let you know what I think.”
“All right …,” said Daphne, not at all sure about this compromise.
“Ah!” said Cecil, sitting forward in his chair. George was coming across the lawn, his jacket hooked over his shoulder, and whistling cheerily. Then he stood looking down at them, with a question hidden somewhere in his smile.
“What is that thing you’re always whistling?” said Daphne.
“I don’t know,” said George. “It’s a song my gyp sings, ‘When I sees you, my heart goes boomps-a-daisy.’ ”
“Really …! I’d have thought if you had to whistle, you’d have chosen something nice,” and seeing a chance to bring them all back to the subject of last night—“such as The Flying Dutchman, for instance.”
George pressed his hand to his heart and started on the lovely part of Senta’s Ballad, staring at her with his eyebrows raised and slowly shaking his head, as if to throw his own self-consciousness over to her. He had a sweet high swooping whistle, but he put in so much vibrato he made the song sound rather silly, and soon he couldn’t keep his lips together and the whistle became a breathy laugh.
“Hah …,” muttered Cecil, seeming slightly uncomfortable, standing up and slipping his notebook into his jacket pocket. Then, with a cold smile, “No … I can’t whistle, I’m afraid.”
“Well, with your tin ear!” said Daphne.
“I’m just going to take this precious book inside,” he said, holding up Daphne’s little album. And they watched him cross the lawn and go in by the garden door.
“So what were you talking about to Cess?” said George, looking down at her again with his funny smile.
She picked over the grass in front of her, in a teasing delay. Her first thought, surprisingly strong, was that her own relations with Cecil, going on quite independently of George’s, if not entirely satisfactorily, must be kept as secret as possible. She felt there was something there, which mustn’t be exposed to reason or mockery. “We were talking about you, of course,” she said.
“Oh,” said George, “that must have been interesting.”
Daphne gave a soft snort at this. “If you must know, Cecil was asking if you had any particular girlfriends.”
“Oh,” said George, more airily this time, “and what did you say?”—he had started blushing, and turned away in a vain attempt to conceal the fact. Now he was gazing off down the garden, as if he’d just noticed something interesting. It was quite unexpected, and it even took Daphne, with her sisterly intuition, a few moments to understand, and then shout out,
“Oh, George, you have!”
“What …? Oh nonsense …,” George said. “Be quiet!”
“You have, you have!” said Daphne, feeling at once how the joy of discovery was shadowed by the sense of being left behind.
8
ONCE THE GENTLEMEN had gone out, Jonah set off upstairs, and was almost at the top when he found he’d forgotten Mr. Cecil’s shoes, and turned back to get them. But just then he heard voices in the hall below. They must have gone into the study for a minute, to the right of the front door: now they were by the hall-stand, getting their hats. Jonah stood where he was, not hiding, but in the shadows, on the turn of the stair.
“Is this one yours?” Cecil said.
“Oh, you ass,” said George. “Come on, let’s get out. I’ll bring this, I think, just in case.”
“Good idea … How do I look?”
“You look quite decent, for once. Jonah must be doing all right for you.”
“Oh, Jonah’s a dream,” said Cecil. “Did I tell you, I’m taking him back to Corley with me.”
“Oh no, you don’t!” There was a little tussle that Jonah couldn’t see, giggling and gasping, voices under their breath—“… ow! … for God’s sake, Cecil …”—and then the noise of the front door opening. Jonah went up three steps and peeped out of the little window. Cecil vaulted the garden gate, and George seemed to think about it, just for a moment, and then opened it and went out. Cecil was already some way down the lane.
Jonah waited a minute