The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [42]
“Oh, Veronica,” she said.
“Sorry, miss!” said Veronica.
“No, not that,” said Daphne. “Did you see, did Mr. Valance leave anything for me, my autograph book, I mean?”
“Oh, no, miss.” And knotting her duster in a pretence of interest, “Is that the one with the vicar in?”
“What …?” said Daphne. “Well, it has a number of important men in it.” She didn’t quite trust Veronica, who was more or less her own age, and treated her more or less like a fool.
“I’ll ask, miss, shall I?” Veronica said. But then George looked round the door, gave a rueful smile, and said,
“Cecil says goodbye.” He hovered there, feeling the atmosphere, seeming uncertain whether to share the subject of Cecil any further with his sister.
“I’m afraid I slept somewhat badly,” said Daphne, aware of her own adult tone. “And then I must have overslept …”
“He was up fearfully early,” said George. “You know Cecil!”
“Perhaps Mr. George has got it, miss,” said Veronica.
“Oh, really, it doesn’t matter,” said Daphne, and coloured at the disclosure of her private worry.
“Got what?” said George, with an anxious look of his own.
So Daphne had to say to him, “I wondered if Cecil had found a chance to write in my little album, that’s all.”
“I expect he wrote something or other. Cess is rarely at a loss for words.”
“I expect he’s left it somewhere,” Daphne said, and spread some butter on her toast, though really her smothered anxiety had squeezed up her appetite to nothing. She looked at her brother with a cold smile. “So what are you doing today, George?” she said, conscious of denying him a talk on the obvious subject.
“Eh? Oh, I’ll find something,” he said, with a hint of pathos. He was leaning against the doorpost, neither in nor out, the maid sidling past him back into the hall. Daphne saw him decide to speak, and as he started airily, “No, it was a shame Cecil couldn’t stay longer …,” she said, “I’ve invited Olive for tea tomorrow, I haven’t seen her since they got back from Dawlish.” She knew Olive Watkins was small beer after Cecil, and Dawlish after the Dolomites, and she felt ashamed and almost sad as well as defiant in mentioning her. But she couldn’t indulge George in his present mood. It rubbed up too closely against her own.
“Oh, have you …,” said George, startled and bored. Daphne saw she’d produced a particular kind of family atmosphere, and that itself was depressing after the wider horizons of Cecil’s visit. Also, she really wanted her book back, to show Olive whatever it was that Cecil had written. This had been her main purpose in asking her to tea.
Then Veronica, with her own bored persistence, looked back in and said, “I asked Jonah, miss. He’s having a look.”
“Thank you,” said Daphne, feeling oppressed now by the public nature of the search.
“Jonah’s looking in his room now. I mean he’s looking in Mr. Valance’s room!”
And George, without saying anything more, drifted away, and then Daphne heard him going, rather stealthily she thought, upstairs as well, two at a time. She told herself, without fully believing it, that probably, after all, Cecil would have put nothing but his name and the date.
A minute later George came back down, with Jonah at his heels, and Daphne’s mauve album open in his hands. “My word, sis …,” he said abstractedly, turning the page and continuing to read; “he’s certainly done you proud!”
“What is it?” said Daphne, pushing back her chair but determined to keep her dignity, almost to seem indifferent. Not just his name, then: she could see it was much, much more—now that the book was here, open, in the room, she felt quite frightened at the thought of what might come out of it.
“The gentleman left it in the room,” said Jonah, looking from one to the other of them.
“Yes, thank you,” said Daphne. George was blinking slowly and softly biting his lower lip in concentration. He might have been pondering how to break some rather awkward news to her, as