The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [70]
“The sun will put that fire out.”
Mrs. Riley lit a cigarette with a hint of impatience. “My dear, do you believe that?” she said.
“You may laugh,” said Freda, and then, “At least, that’s what I believe,” and smiled at her rather timidly. She had clearly registered her daughter’s dislike for the woman, but herself perhaps found her no more than disconcerting.
Daphne said pleasantly, “Well, we’ll hardly miss it, Mummy, will we, it’s such a warm day.” She smiled across at her mother, who was sitting with another letter in her lap, an old one, whose envelope, half-ripped in the long-ago moment of opening it, she was pressing and smoothing with her thumb.
“This is all I have,” she said. “I hardly knew Cecil.”
“It really doesn’t matter,” said Daphne. “Anyway, you did.”
“I didn’t know he was going to be a great poet.”
“Mm, well, I’m not sure anyone thinks that …” The far door led to the library, and there Sebby Stokes was having his little chats. She thought Wilkes was in there now, being pressed for recollections, early signals of genius. The talk of course wasn’t audible, but none the less somehow present to those in the morning-room, sitting like waiting patients half-expecting to hear cries from the surgery. Freda looked at her daughter, with a fretful effort at concentration.
“I do remember one or two things about him … Was it twice he came to the house? I’ve only the one letter, you see.”
“Twice perhaps, yes.”
“He was very energetic,” said Freda.
“Well, he could be, couldn’t he …”
Though nothing was ever said, Daphne felt that her mother hadn’t specially cared for Cecil. She saw him again, larger than life in their house, stooping briefly to their low-beamed ways. They had given him special rights, as a poet and a member of the upper classes; he’d been allowed to break things, to stay up all night, worship the dawn … They’d done their best to treat his absurdities as virtues, enlightening novelties. He’d been welcomed, as a friend of George’s, which was a novelty in itself. Had Freda picked up on the goings-on in the garden, after nightfall? There was much that she’d missed in those years, with the bottles in the wardrobe, and who knew where else. She had been excited by the poem, and really quite encouraging when Cecil started writing to Daphne—she saw a future in it, no doubt; she had allowed them to meet, when Cecil was on leave. Even so, something was amiss. It seemed possible Cecil had done or said some particular small thing, some slight that Freda could never mention and never forget—and in fact rather treasured for the reliable throb of indignation it caused … Now he was just an excuse for her—Daphne knew she’d come for the weekend so as to see the children. But Freda’s frown softened: “I’ll never forget him reading to us that night in the garden—reading Swinburne, was it, and in such a voice …”
“Oh yes … Was it Swinburne? I know he read In Memoriam.”
“Ha, indeed, how apt,” said Freda, and then looked blankly again at the thin flames. “Didn’t he read us his own things?”
“He kept us up all night listening to him,” said Daphne.
“We were out on the lawn, weren’t we, under the stars …” Daphne didn’t think this was right, but nor was it worth correcting. Freda’s gaze wandered round the room and out, beyond Mrs. Riley, to the present-day lawns and the trees of the Park beyond. “I sometimes think how different things would have been if George had never met Cecil,” she said.
“Well, yes …!” said Daphne, with a short laugh. “Of course they would, Mother.”
“No, darling, you know,” Freda said, “but I do think some of his ideas were rather silly … I don’t know … one can’t say that, I suppose.”
“His ideas …?” Daphne felt she half-knew what her mother meant. “I think you can say what you like.”
Freda seemed to weigh