The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [191]
“Well, of course!” said Paul, unable to tell if anything here was in his favour. She seemed to be inviting him to agree he was a disaster in the making.
“And you’ve read my husband’s books?”
“I certainly have.” It was time to be sternly flattering. “Black Flowers, obviously, is a classic—”
“Then I’m sorry to tell you you’ve really read everything he has to say about old … um … Cecil.”
Paul smiled as if at the great bonus of what Dudley had already given them; but did go on, “There are still one or two things …”
Linette was distracted. But she turned back to him after five seconds, again with her look of haughty humour, which made him unsure if she was mocking him or inviting him to share in her mockery of something else. “There’s been some extraordinary nonsense written.”
“Has there …?” Paul rather wanted to know what it was.
She made an oh-crikey face: “Extraordinary nonsense!”
“Lady Valance? I don’t know if this would be a good moment?” The elderly don had come back. “Forgive my breaking in …”
“Oh, for the … um …?”
“Indeed, if you’d like to see …” The smiling old man left just enough sense of a chore in his voice to make it clear he was doing her a favour which she couldn’t decline.
“I don’t know if my husband …” But her husband seemed perfectly happy. And by a miracle the old chap took her off, out of the room, the slight flirty wobble of her high heels glimpsed beneath the raised wing of his gown, leaving Paul free at last to approach his prize.
In fact it was Martin who brought him in—“Sir Dudley, I’m not sure if you’ve met—”
“Well, no, we haven’t yet,” said Paul, bending to shake hands, which seemed to irritate Dudley, and went on cheerfully, before anyone could say his name, “I’m writing up the conference for the TLS.” Martin of course knew about the Cecil job, but probably not about Dudley’s resistance to it.
“Ah, yes, the TLS,” said Dudley, as Paul further found himself being offered the low armchair at right-angles to him at the end of the sofa. He was in the presence, with a need no doubt to say his piece. “I’ve got a bone to pick with the TLS,” Dudley went on, with a narrow smile that wasn’t exactly humorous.
“Oh, dear!” said Paul, his clutched brandy glass seeming to impose a new way of performing on him, a sort of simmering joviality. But Dudley’s smile remained fixed on his next remark:
“They once gave me a very poor review.”
“Oh, I’m surprised … what was that for?”
“Eh? A book of mine called The Long Gallery.”
The mock-modesty of the formulation made this less amusing, though a man on the other side laughed and said, “That would be what, sixty years ago?”
“Mm, a bit before my time,” Paul said, and put his head back rather steeply to get at the brandy in the bottom of his glass. He found Dudley disconcerting, in his sharpness and odd passive disregard for things around him, as if conserving his energy, perhaps just a question of age. He seemed to show he had fairly low expectations of the present company and the larger event they were part of, whilst no doubt thinking his own part in it quite important. Paul wanted to bring the talk round to Cecil before Linette got back, but without disclosing his plans. Then he heard an American graduate he’d met briefly earlier say, “I don’t know how you would rate your brother’s work, sir?”
“Oh …” Dudley slumped slightly; but he was courteous enough, perhaps liked to be asked for a bad opinion. “Well, you know … it looks very much of its time now, doesn’t it? Some pretty phrases—but it didn’t ever amount to anything very much. When I looked at ‘Two Acres’ again a few years ago I thought it had really needed the War to make its point—it seems hopelessly sentimental now.”
“Oh, I grew up on it,” said another man, half-laughing, not exactly disagreeing.
“Mm, so did I …,” said Paul quietly over his balloon.
“It always rather amused me,” said Dudley, “that my brother, who was heir to three thousand acres, should be best known for his ode to a mere two.” This was exactly the joke that he had made in Black Flowers, and it