The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [56]
“There was a chap in a greasy trilby I don’t think I’ve seen before,” Revel said.
“Hmm, that’ll be him,” said Daphne.
“And I think I spotted your brother and his wife.”
“Oh, really?” said Daphne, rather heavily.
“Fair, balding, wire-framed glasses …?”
“That sounds like Madeleine …”
“But nice-looking,” said Revel, with the little giggle she loved. “Madeleine more severe. Heavy tread, awful hat. If I may say so.”
“Oh, say what you like,” said Daphne. “Everyone does here.”
“Is Uncle George here?” said Wilfrid.
“He is,” said Revel. “I think they were going up to the High Ground.”
“How perfectly obstreperous of him,” said Corinna.
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Daphne.
“How entirely preposterous,” said Corinna.
“Well, perhaps we should join them,” Daphne said. And taking charge, she went out under the further rose arch, with the children eventually following, and Revel ambling between them and Daphne, speaking in the pointed way one did with other people’s children, to amuse them and amuse the listening parent in a different way. “Certainly I don’t think any brontosauruses have been spotted in Berkshire for several years now,” he said. “But I’m told there are other wild beasts, some of them fiendishly disguised in smart white trousers …” Daphne felt the magnetic disturbance of his presence just behind her, at the corner of her eye as she led them up the steps and passed through the white gate under the arch. You were wonderfully safe of course with a man like Revel; but then the safety itself had something elastic about it. There were George and Madeleine—so odd that they’d set straight off on a walk. Perhaps just so as to be doing something, since Madeleine was unable to relax; or possibly to put off seeing Dudley for as long as they decently could.
The High Ground was an immense lawn beyond the formal gardens, from which, though the climb to it seemed slight, you got “a remarkable view of nothing,” as Dudley put it: the house itself, of course, and the slowly dropping expanse of farmland towards the villages of Bampton and Brize Norton. It was an easy uncalculating view, with no undue excitement, small woods of beech and poplar greening up across the pasture-land. Somewhere a few miles off flowed the Thames, already wideish and winding, though from here you would never have guessed it. Today the High Ground was being mown, the first time of the year, the donkey in its queer rubber overshoes pulling the clattering mower, steered from behind by one of the men, who took off his cap to them as he approached. Really you didn’t mow at weekends, but Dudley had ordered it, doubtless so as to annoy his guests. George and Madeleine were strolling on the far side, avoiding the mowing, heads down in talk, perhaps enjoying themselves in their own way.
The children hastened, at a ragged march, towards their uncle and aunt—and seemed unsure themselves how much of their delight was real, how much good manners; Corinna by now took delight in good manners for their own sake. George stood his ground, in his dark suit and large brown shoes, and then squatted down with a wary cackle to inspect them for a moment on their own level. Madeleine, wrapped in a long mackintosh, held back, with a thin fixed smile, in which various doubts and questions were tightly hidden.
“Aunt Madeleine, I’ve learned a new piece to play for you,” said Corinna straight away.
“Oh,” said Madeleine, “what is it?”
“It’s called ‘The Happy Wallaby.’ ”
“Well, my dear,” said Madeleine, as if seeing something faintly compromising in this, “we’ll have to see.”
“She’s been practising, haven’t you, Corinna,” said Daphne, and saw her glance at Wilfrid.
“And Wilfie’s going to do his dance,” Corinna said.
“Oh, that will be capital,” said George. “When will you do it? I don’t want to miss that,” making up for his wife’s lack of warmth.
“After nursery tea,” said Daphne. “They