The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [6]
Having some time to spare, he went downstairs to the gloomy little room by the front door, which had been his father’s office, and where Hubert too liked to write his letters. In truth he had very little private correspondence, and was dimly aware of not having the knack of it. When there was a letter to write, he did it with businesslike promptness. Now he sat down at the oak desk, fished his new gift from his dinner-jacket pocket, and laid it on the blotter with faint unease. He took a sheet of headed paper from a drawer, dipped his pen in the pewter ink-well and wrote, in a rolling, backward-leaning hand:
My dear old Harry—
I can never thank you enough for the silver cigarette case. It’s an absolute ripper, Harry old boy. I have told no one about it yet but will hand it round after dinner & just watch their faces! You are too generous, I’m sure no one ever had such a friend Harry. Well, it is nearly dinner-time, & we have a young friend of George’s staying, a poet! You will meet him tomorrow, when you come over, he looks the part I must say though I have read not a word from his pen! Tons of thanks, Harry old boy, & best love from yours ever,
Hubert.
Hubert turned the paper over on the blotter and thumped it tenderly with his fist. By writing large he had got the final few words on to the third side of the small folded sheet, which was a sign one hadn’t merely written dutifully; the letter ran on pleasantly, and reading it over again he felt satisfied with the touches of humour. He tucked it into an envelope, wrote “Harry Hewitt Esq., Mattocks, Harrow Weald” and “By Hand” in the corner, and placed it on the tray in the hall for Jonah to take over in the morning. He stood looking at it for a moment, struck by the solemn rightness of living just here, and of Harry living where he did, and of letters passing between them with such noble efficiency.
5
GEORGE WAS THE LAST to come down, and even so he stopped on the stairs for a minute. They were almost ready. He saw the housemaid cross the hall with a salt-cellar, caught the odour of cooked fish, heard Cecil’s high overriding laugh, and felt the chill of his own act of daring, bringing this man into his mother’s house. Then he thought of what Cecil had said to him in the park, in the half-hour they had made for themselves by pretending he’d missed his train, and felt his scalp, his shoulders, his whole spine prickle under the sweeping, secret promise. He tiptoed down and slipped into the drawing-room with a nearly dizzy-making sense of the dangers ahead. “Ah, George,” murmured his mother, with a hint of reproach; he shrugged and smirked slightly as if his only offence had been to keep them waiting. Hubert, with his back to the empty grate, had ensnared them all in talk about local transport. “So you were stranded at Harrow and Wealdstone, eh?” He beamed over his raised champagne glass, as proud of the rigours of life in Stanmore as he was of the blessings.
“Didn’t matter a bit,” said Cecil, catching George’s eye and smiling curiously.
“As a wit once said, it sounds like some medieval torture. Harrow and wealdstone—can’t you just see it!”
“Oh, spare me the wealdstone!” said Daphne.
“We’re devoted to Harrow and Wealdstone, whatever a wit may have said,” said his mother.
George stood for a moment with his hand pressed flat against Cecil’s lower back and gazed into his friend’s glass. He wiggled his fingers to play the secret notes of apology and promise. “Well, the Valance motto,” Cecil said, “is ‘Seize the Day.’ We were brought up not to waste time. You’d be amazed what one can find to do, even at a suburban railway station.” He gave them all his happiest smile, and when Daphne said, “What sort of things do you mean?” he carried on smiling as if he hadn’t heard her.
“I gather you came up through the Priory,” said Hubert, genially determined to follow every step of his journey.
“Yes, indeed