The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [26]
“Oh, Mother!” said Daphne. “That was before I knew him.”
“He only arrived here last night, my lamb,” said Freda. “None of us knows him at all well, as yet.”
“Well, I feel I know him,” said Daphne.
“One can see that George is very attached to him,” said Elspeth, “in the Cambridge way.”
“Of course George is devoted to him,” said Freda. “Cecil has done so much for him. Helped him up and, you know, what have you …”
Elspeth took a quick sip of coffee. “A touch of hero-worship on George’s part, I would say, wouldn’t you!”
This seemed to put George in a rather foolish light. “Oh, George is no fool!” said Freda. She saw something pleasurable dawn in Daphne’s face, the way, over and over, a child slyly seizes on a new phrase, a new conception.
Daphne said, “Oh, I think he does hero-worship him,” with a frank little shake of the head. A great collective laugh was heard from across the hall, which rather showed up the ladies’ thin attempts at enjoying themselves. “I wonder what they’re talking about,” Daphne said.
“Best we never know, I think, don’t you,” said Freda.
“What would it be, though, that isn’t thought fit for our ears?” said Daphne.
“I think that’s a lot of nonsense,” said Elspeth.
“What is, dear?”
“You know,” said Elspeth.
“Do you mean they talk about women?” said Daphne.
“They must know some very amusing women, in that case,” said Freda, as another burst of laughter was heard. She had a disquieting sense of Harry, who was always so solemn with her, taking quite another character when the ladies were absent. She said, “Frank always said the secret was they didn’t want to bore us, but didn’t mind boring themselves. He always hurried them through. He wanted to get back to the women.” The thought was intensely poignant.
Daphne said, with a pretence of indifference, “Do you have many dinner parties of your own, Miss Hewitt?”
“At Mattocks? Oh, not a great many, no,” said Elspeth. “Poor Harry is so extremely busy, and of course he’s often away.”
“So you dine in solitary splendour, poor thing!” said Freda. “In that palace …”
“I can’t say I mind,” said Elspeth drily.
“Among all your marvellous pictures,” said Daphne, slightly over-doing it, Freda felt. She said,
“Harry must be doing awfully well …” But at this Elspeth’s pride seemed to knit up tight and in getting up to return her coffee cup she effectively swept the matter of her brother’s prospects aside. Freda said, artificially, she felt, “And your dress, dear, I’ve been wanting to ask—is it from our splendid Madame Claire?”
Elspeth wrinkled her nose in pretended apology—“Lucille,” she said.
“Ah, well!”
“Oh, yes,” said Elspeth, “I can’t deny Harry keeps me in fine style.”
“No, indeed!” said Freda, with a quickly spreading feeling she’d been put in her place. Of course Elspeth might have been hinting that he would do the same for his wife, but Freda was fairly clear she was saying she hadn’t a chance.
There was the sound of a door opening, and Daphne said, “Ah, here come the gentlemen.”
“Ah, yes,” said Freda, looking up at the group as they reappeared, with their funny discreet smiles. It was as if they had reached a decision, but were not at liberty to reveal what it was. Harry deferred to Cecil in the doorway, and then waited a few moments to defer to Hubert as well: he came in with an arm lightly round his shoulders, as if to thank and reassure him. Huey had drunk more than usual, and had a hot, uncertain look, the host to three men cleverer than himself. “Now then …,” he was saying, surely as glad as his father would have been to have got through that part of the evening. “Now then, how are we going to do this?”
There was a brief discussion of where Cecil was going to be, and how the chairs should be rearranged. George said wasn’t it frightfully hot in the room, and opened the french windows. “Shall we all sit outside?” said Daphne.
“Don’t be absurd,” said Freda. There were hazards enough