The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [218]
“The curfew tolls the knell of passing day: one; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way: nil,” said Daphne, getting a bit carried away. “When I’m gone, you should get a job on the telly.”
“Don’t … talk like that,” said Wilfrid, and Paul, not seeing their faces, took a moment to realize it was not her mockery but the mention of her going that he was objecting to. And what indeed would he do then? Puzzled for a moment by his own muddled feelings of affection and irritation towards Daphne, Paul tiptoed back out again and rang the bell.
Exactly as yesterday, but with determined new warmth, Paul said to Wilfrid in the hall, “And how is your mother?”
“I fear she didn’t sleep at all well,” said Wilfrid, not meeting his eye; “you might keep it … pretty short today.” Paul went into the sitting-room and set up the mike and looked over his notes with a clear sense they were blaming him for her bad night. But in fact when Daphne came through she seemed if anything rather more spry than yesterday. She made her way among the helpful obstacles of the room with the inward smile of an elderly person who knows they’re not done yet. He felt something had happened in the interim; of course she would have been thinking, reassessing her position as she lay awake, and he would have to find out as he went along if the spryness was a sign of compliance or resistance.
“Rather a lovely day,” she said as she sat down; and then cocking her head to check Wilfrid was still in the kitchen making coffee, “Has he been telling you about his popsy?”
“Oh—well, I gathered …” Paul smiled distractedly as he checked the tape-recorder.
“I mean, he’s sixty! He can’t look after a lively young woman—he can hardly look after me!”
“Perhaps she would look after him.”
But she gave a rather earthy chuckle at this. “He’s not a bad person, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, or even a flea probably, but he’s totally impractical. I mean look at this house! It’s a miracle I haven’t tripped over something and broken my leg; or my wrist; or my neck!”
“Does she live locally?”
“Thank god, no—she lives in Norway.”
“Oh, I see …”
“Birgit. She’s a pen-pal, didn’t he tell you that?”
“Well, Norway’s a long way away.”
“That’s not what Birgit thinks. Well, she’s got designs on him.”
“Do you think?”
Daphne was quietly candid. “She wants to be the next Lady Valance. Ah, tea, Wilfie, how splendid!”
“Coffee, you said, Mummy.” She took it cautiously from the tray. “Shall I go over to Smiths’ for those things, then?”
“No, no,” she said, “stay and talk with us—it will be more fun for Mr. Bryant, and you can help me out—I forget so much!”
“Do call me Paul,” said Paul, with a glare of a smile at Wilfrid—if he stayed it was certain Daphne would say nothing remotely interesting; he needed to be sent off on some sort of errand, but it was hard for Paul to know what.
“Well, of course I’m very interested in … Paul’s great project.”
“Well, I know you are.” She sipped. “Mm, delicious.”
Paul wondered how to cope with this. As always he had plans, which as often proved impossible to follow, and he had never been good at improvising: he clung to the discarded plan still when he could. He reminded her about Corley Court, and the times he’d visited the house, and how he was hoping to go again, he’d written to the Headmaster; but she couldn’t be got to show any interest in the topic at all. “Do you have much from those days, I wonder?” Paul said. Perhaps under the tablecloths and blankets in this room there were Valance heirlooms, little dusty things that Cecil might have owned and handled. The sense of the whole unexamined terrain of Cecil’s life lying so close and yet so stubbornly out of view came over him at times in waves of dreamlike opportunity and bafflement.
“I didn’t get much. I got the Raphael.”
“Oh, well …?”—Paul narrowed his eyes at her tone.
“You probably saw it in the loo.”
“Oh … oh, the picture of the man, do you mean … Goodness … Well, that must be worth quite a lot!” Paul hated his own snigger—he really had no idea.
“Well, so one had hoped. Unfortunately it