The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [233]
He could see the Sorleys rather sticking to him, now they’d got him, among all these strangers and alarming if sometimes unnameable celebrities. Paul Bryant and Bobby were leaving, Bobby turning and giving Rob a finger wave. They went out through the double doors, arm in arm for a moment, so that he felt abashed by their evident contentment and self-sufficiency. “That’s very funny,” he said to Bill Sorley, “yes …”: they seemed happy to do most of the talking. He spotted Jennifer, by the white marble fireplace, talking to a man he’d seen arrive about half an hour ago, as if unavoidably detained or really as if appointments of any kind were beyond him. He had a soft, intelligent but very nervous face, and thick shoulder-length grey hair, unwashed and unmanageable, which he ran his hands through incessantly as he spoke. His suit was old and shiny and scuffed at the heels, and Rob imagined he might have had some difficulty getting past the porter downstairs. He couldn’t tell from Jennifer’s expression, which seemed to hover between grief and hilarity, if she needed rescuing. He smiled and slumped regretfully—“Well, I think I really have to go …”
As he approached her, she looked up and nodded at him, as if they were partners themselves, or at least had some useful and chivalrous agreement for the occasion. The man half turned—“Well, it was marvellous to see you, darling,” a cultured voice, terrible teeth, a flinching smile, the look of being fed up with being a nuisance to people.
“And you!” said Jennifer, warm in the moment of escape; but perhaps here there was more to it too. “Shall we?” she said to Rob. And then, “This is Julian Keeping.”
“Hello.” Rob smiled keenly at him, leant in and shook his hand, which had a bony grip.
Keeping flapped his other hand, as if to say he wouldn’t bother them further. “An old friend of Peter’s, from way back,” he said, shaking his head. “Too long ago!” He had a sad smell to him—Rob didn’t think it was drink, that sweet and sour choke to the nose; but smoke certainly, his finger ends and nails were tanned; and beyond that perhaps just long and compounded neglect. Rob nodded to him again, and then followed Jennifer to the door.
“Are you getting a taxi?” she said, at the top of the stairs, and Rob saw, which he hadn’t a minute before, that she was pretty drunk. She went down with high-stepping wariness, smiling faintly, preoccupied perhaps by thoughts of this unfortunate man. Rob was bright and speedy with drink himself, laughing half-guiltily at the echo of his own voice off the marble stairwell. “Believe it or not,” she said, “that was my first sweetheart.”
“Really,” said Rob. “Well …” He glanced at her, still unsure of her feelings, or what she would let him see of them.
“He couldn’t be said to have worn well.”
“Um, no …”
“Corinna’s son, in fact,” she said.
“Oh, really?” Rob looked narrowly at her. “So, your cousin, and, let me get this right, Cecil Valance’s grandson!”
“Well, if you believe all that,” she said; she shook her head and laughed, “Oh god!”
They went to their separate cloakrooms, and then he waited for her under the columns of the hall—the lights on now and a glimpse through the glass doors of evening already in possession of the street outside. She came back out with a humorous smile of accepted courtesy, a little flushed, but clearly, even determinedly, refocused on the present. Her coat was long, dark, made of some softly crinkling and glowing material, shyly extravagant, and again with an air of being a fashion all of her own. “So funny seeing Paul Bryant,” she said, as they went through into the lobby, her tone again very dry.
“Oh, yes,” said Rob, glad she hadn’t forgotten her promise.
“I probably shouldn’t say this …”
“Oh, surely?”—catching her mischievous look under the flowered hat, and giddily aware of the contrasting sobriety of the porter, in his striped trousers. Jennifer glanced over her shoulder. “He was always somewhat of a fantasist,