The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [66]
Stokes said, in a most tactful tone, “But you and Cecil were clearly … very dear friends,” the tact being a continued sympathy for his loss, of course, but suggesting to George some further, not quite welcome, sympathy, of a subtler kind.
“Oh, for a while we were terrific pals.”
“Do you recall how you met?”
“Do you know, I’m not sure.”
“I suppose in College …”
“Cecil was very much a figure in College. It was flattering if he took an interest. I think I’d won … oh, one of our essay prizes. Cecil took a keen interest in the younger historians …”
“Quite so, I imagine,” said Stokes, with perhaps a passing twinkle at George’s tone.
“I’m not really able to talk about it,” said George, and saw Stokes’s ghost of a smile stiffen with repressed curiosity. “But still … you must know about the Society, I imagine.”
“Ah, I see, the Society …”
“Cecil was my Father.” It was striking, and useful, how one set of secrets nested inside another.
“I see …,” said Stokes again, with the usual faint drollery of an Oxford man about Cambridge customs. Still, the exchange of esoteric fact was very much his line, and his face softened once more into a ready reflector of hints and allusions. “So he …”
“He picked me—he put me up,” said George curtly, as if he shouldn’t be giving even this much away.
Stokes smiled almost slyly over this. “And do you still go back?”
“So you do know about us, perhaps everyone knows.”
“Oh, I don’t think by any means.”
George shrugged. “I haven’t been back for years. I’m immensely busy with the department in Birmingham. I can’t tell you how it nails me down.” He heard his own forced note, and thought he saw Stokes hear it too, absorb it and conceal it. He went on, with a quick laugh, “I’ve rather left Cambridge behind, to be frank.”
“Well, perhaps one day they will call you back.”
Stokes seemed to speak from the world of discreet power, of committees and advisers, and George smiled and murmured at his courtesy. “Perhaps. Who knows.”
“And what about letters, by the way?”
“Oh, I had many letters from him,” said George, with a sigh, and choosing Stokes’s word, “really splendid letters … But I’m afraid they were lost when we moved from ‘Two Acres.’ At least they’ve never turned up.”
“That is a shame,” said Stokes, so sincerely as to suggest a vague suspicion. “My own letters from Cecil, only a handful, you know, but they were marvellous things … joyous things. Even up to the end he had such spirit. I will certainly give some beautiful instances.”
“I hope you will.”
“And of course if yours were to be found …”
“Ah,” said George, with a laugh to cover his momentary vertigo. Was ever such a letter written by a man to a man? How the world would howl and condemn if it read over my shoulder, yet everything in it is as natural and true as the spring itself. He slid past Stokes to look at the tomb again and thought he could ask practically, “I suppose you’re his literary executor?”
“Yes,” said Stokes; and perhaps hearing something more in the question, “He didn’t appoint me, to be completely frank, but I made a promise I’d look after all that for him.” George saw he couldn’t ask if the promise had been made to Cecil in person or was purely a duty Stokes had imposed on himself.
“Well, he’s very lucky, in that at least.”
“There has to be someone …”
“Mm, but someone with judgement. Posthumous publication doesn’t always enhance a writer’s reputation.” He took a frank, almost academic note. “I don’t know how you would rate Cecil Valance, as a poet?”
“Oh …” Stokes looked at him, and then looked at Cecil, who