The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [57]
“Brum’s all right,” said George.
“It’s a great deal of work,” said Madeleine; “you don’t see us at our best, I fear!”
“I don’t think you’ve met Revel Ralph, Madeleine … Revel, my brother George Sawle.”
George looked keenly at Revel as he shook his hand. “Madeleine and I have been reading a lot about your show … congratulations! Your designs sound marvellous.”
“Oh, yes,” said Madeleine uncertainly.
“I wonder if we’ll get down,” said George, now smiling rather anxiously at Revel. “I’d love to see it.”
“Well, let me know, won’t you,” said Revel.
“You’ve been, Daph, of course?” said George.
“I’d have to stay with someone, wouldn’t I,” said Daphne.
“You ought to have a little place in Town,” said Revel.
“Well, we did have that very nice flat in Marylebone, but of course Louisa sold it,” said Daphne, and changed the subject before it got going—“Watch out …” The donkey was plodding rapidly towards them, and they set off to the mown side of the lawn, damp grass cuttings clinging to their shoes. “God knows why they’re mowing today,” she said, though she took a kind of pleasure in it too, different from her husband’s—it was something to do with labour, and running a place with twenty servants.
“How is Dudley?” said George.
“I think all right,” said Daphne, with a quick glance at the children.
“Book coming on?”
“Oh, I find it best not to ask.”
George gave her a strange look. “You’ve not seen any of it?”
“No, no.” She took a bright, hard tone: “You know he’s very excited about boxing things in.”
“Oh, yes, I want to see this,” said George, with his taste for controversy as much as for design. “How far is he taking it?”
“Oh, quite far.”
“But you don’t mind,” with a sideways smile at her.
“Well, there are some things. You’ll see.”
“What do you think, Ralph?” said George. “For or against the egregious grotesqueries of the Victorians?” And now Daphne saw they were back in common-room mode, after a brief spontaneous holiday. The children smirked.
Revel thought and said, “Can I be somewhere in between?” with an appealing wriggle in his voice.
“I’d want to know why. Or rather where.”
“I suppose what I feel,” said Revel, after a minute, “well, the grotesqueries are what I like best, really, and the more egregious the better.”
“What? Not St. Pancras?” said George. “Not Keble College?”
“Oh, when I first saw St. Pancras,” said Revel, “I thought it was the most beautiful building on earth.”
“And you didn’t change your mind when you’d seen the Parthenon.”
Revel blushed slightly—Daphne thought perhaps he had yet to see the Parthenon. “Well, I feel there’s room in the world for more than one kind of beauty,” he said, “put it that way,” firmly but graciously.
George took this in, seemed even to blush a little himself. He stopped and looked away towards the house: turrets and gables, the glaring plate glass in Gothic windows, the unrestful patterns of red, white and black brick. Creeper spread like doubt around the openings at the western end. Daphne felt she wouldn’t have chosen it, felt it had in a way chosen her, and now she would be sick at heart to lose it. She turned to Madeleine. “I remember when George first came to stay here, Madeleine,” she said: “we thought we’d never hear the end of the splendours of Corley Court. Oh, the jelly-mould domes in the dining-room!” But such comical alliances with her sister-in-law rarely stuck—Madeleine smiled for a second, but her allegiance to George’s intellect was the firmer. “No grotesqueries then!” insisted Daphne.
George clearly thought it wise to laugh at himself for a moment: “Cecil liked them, and one didn’t argue with Cecil.” It seemed not to bother him that he was mocking his sister’s home.
“I see,” said Revel, with that mixture of dryness and forgiveness that was so unlike Dudley’s humour. “So you know the house quite well.”
“Oh, quite …,” said George absently, the