The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [190]
So back they went, Paul now rather shy at getting what he wanted. At a first quick survey, over his coffee cup, he saw that Linette had been separated from her husband, and was standing talking to a group of men, one almost her own age, a couple of them younger than Paul. He attached himself to another small group round Jon Stallworthy, from which he could watch while nodding appreciatively at the conversation. Dudley was sitting on a long sofa at the other side of the room, with various Fellows and a good-looking younger woman who seemed to be flirting with him. His magnetism was physical, even in old age, and to certain minds no doubt class would come into it. Without him Linette seemed disoriented, an Englishwoman in her seventies, who lived much of the year abroad. She exacted some gallantry from the men, which went on in nervous swoops and laughs, small faltering sequences of jokes, perhaps to cover their own slight boredom and disorientation with her. And then, in a strange nerveless trance, Paul found himself accepting a glass of brandy, crossing the floor and joining the group around her—he didn’t know what he would say, it felt pointless and even perverse and yet, as a self-imposed dare, inescapable. She had a large jet brooch on her green jacket, a black flower in effect, which he examined as she talked. Her face, close-to, had a mesmerizing quality, fixed and photogenic, somehow consciously the face Dudley Valance had been pleased and proud to gaze on every day for half a century, as handsome as his own, in its way, and as disdainful of the impertinent modern world. She was having to say something about his work, but Paul had the feeling their lives and the people they saw were far from literary. He pictured them sitting in their fortified house, knocking back their fortified wine, their friends presumably the fellow expats of Antequera. And there was something else, about that stiff auburn mane, and those long black lashes—Paul knew in his bones that she hadn’t been born into Dudley’s world, even though she now wore its lacquered carapace. Anyway, it seemed his arrival had been more or less what the others were waiting for, and after a minute, with various courteous murmurs and nods they all moved off in different directions, leaving the two of them together. “I really must check on my husband,” she said, looking past him, the gracious smile not yet entirely faded from her face. Paul had a feeling that all that was going to change when he said who he was. He said,
“I’m so looking forward to your husband’s talk tomorrow, Lady Valance.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, and he almost laughed, and then saw it was merely a general term of assent. She meant, what she then said, “It’s a great coup for you all to have got him here.”
“I think everyone thinks the same,” said Paul, then went on quickly, “I’m hoping he’ll be saying something about his brother.”
Linette’s head went back a little. It was as if she’d only vaguely heard that he had a brother. “Oh, good lord, no,” she said, with a little shake. “No, no—he’ll be discussing his own work.” And a new suspicion floated in her eyes, in the quick pinch of her lips and angling of the head. “I don’t think I caught your name.”
“Oh—Paul Bryant.” It semed absurd to be skulking around the truth, but he was glad to be able to say, “I’m covering the conference for the TLS.”
“For the …?”—she turned an ear.
“The Times …”
“Oh, really?” And with a slightly awkward hesitation, “Did you write to my husband?”
Paul looked puzzled. “Oh, about Cecil, you mean? Yes, I did, as it happens …”
She glanced approvingly at Dudley. “I’m afraid all requests such as yours fall on very stony ground.”
“Well, I don’t want to be any trouble to him …” Paul seemed to glimpse the barren hillsides of Andalusia. “So you’ve had others …”
“Oh, every few years, you know, someone wants to poke about in Cecil’s papers, and one just knows from the start that it would be a disaster, so it’s best simply to say no.” She was rather jolly about it. “I mean, his letters were published