The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [231]
Bryant chuckled uneasily. “It was your dear grandmother who gave me so much trouble.”
“Well, you certainly reciprocated,” said Jennifer, so that Rob thought perhaps it was a fight after all.
“Was I awful? I just couldn’t get anything out of her.”
“That could have been because she wanted to keep it to herself, I suppose.”
“Mm, Jenny, I can tell you disapprove.”
“Who was this?” said Andrea.
“My grandmother, Daphne Sawle,” said Jennifer, as if this needed no further explanation.
“I knew she’d never see it, of course, so …”
But Jennifer didn’t give ground on this, and Rob, who imagined they were both wrong in different ways, was not in the mood for a row. He said to Bobby, “So did you ever meet Peter?” and drew him aside as he got a second glass of wine. He glanced round, thinking with a touch of relief of the two hundred other people here he could talk to if he wanted. He saw the blond man look over the shoulder of the man he was joking with and give him a frank saucy look, as though he thought Rob had picked Bobby up. Bobby had a wide smile, short shiny black hair, and a strong uncritical belief in his husband’s work. He dismissed his own work in IT—“Too boring!” He told Rob they lived out in Streatham, and though Paul often worked in the British Library, Bobby rarely came into Town. They had been together for nine years. “And you?” said Bobby. “Oh, I’m very much single,” said Rob, and grinned, and felt Bobby was slightly sorry for him. He looked round and saw that Nigel Dupont was coming through towards the buffet. “That woman is being quite aggressive to Paul!” said Bobby. “Yes, I know …,” said Rob. In fact Bryant himself had half-turned away from Jennifer.
“About my present project? I can’t tell you,” he was confessing to a woman in a black suit. “Oh, yes, another Life. Still rather hush-hush—I’m sure you’ll understand!—ah, Nigel …”—with a clever little air of deflation.
“Hello, Paul!” said Dupont, warily genial, and rather oddly too, since they’d just been sharing a podium.
“Oh, I loved what you said,” said the woman. “Very moving.”
“Thanks …,” said Dupont. “Thanks so much.”
“Do you know Jenny Ralph?” said Bryant.
“Ah! nice to see you,” said Dupont warmly, allowing the possibility they had met before.
“Bobby you’ve met, and …”
“Rob Salter.”
“Rob … hi!”—shaking his hand gratefully, and holding his eye.
Rob smiled back. “Interesting to hear about your school—and the Valance connection.”
“That’s right … Old times …”
“So here we have his editor—”
“… in the red corner …!” said Bryant—
“hah—and his biographer!”
“That’s right …,” said Dupont again.
“No, we’re old friends,” said Bryant, curving against him, as if he’d just been kidding. “It worked out quite well, didn’t it. We were both digging away like mad, from quite different angles.” He tilted his head from side to side. “I’d get one thing, old Nigel would get another.”
“It worked out fine,” said Dupont, in a tone that showed he had a forgiving nature and it had all been a long time ago. From here the Valance work seemed a distant prolegomenon to far more sensational achievements.
“Of course I put you on to the Trickett MS,” said Bryant, wagging his finger.
“That’s right … If only you’d been able to track down the lost poems as well …,” said Dupont, with a playful shake of the head.
“Oh, they’re gone, don’t you think? I’m sure Louisa burnt them—if they ever existed!”
“What was the Trickett thing?” said Rob, piqued by the talk of manuscripts and lost poems.
Dupont, whom Rob now found, with the sudden surrender of a prejudice, completely charming, even sexy, paused on the brink of a shift into academic talk—“Oh, it was an unpublished part of one of the poems, which turned out to be a sort of queer manifesto, except in tetrameter couplets …”
“Really?”
“Written in 1913, quite interesting …”
“You know, I had to take issue with one thing you said,” said Bryant.
“Oh, lord,” said Dupont, with a comical cringe.
“Just now, I mean, when you said dear old Pete’s famous Imp was pea-green.”
“Yes”—Dupont