The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [8]
“Do you have jelly-mould domes?” she wanted to know.
“At Corley?” said Cecil. “As a matter of fact, we do.” He said the word “Corley” as other men said “England” or “The King,” with reverent briskness and simple confidence in his cause.
“What are they,” Daphne said, “exactly?”
“Well, they’re perfectly extraordinary,” said Cecil, unfolding his lily, “though not I suppose strictly domes.”
“They’re sort of little compartments in the ceiling, aren’t they,” said George, feeling rather silly to have bragged to the family about them.
Hubert murmured abstractedly and stared at the parlour-maid, who had been brought in to help the housemaid serve dinner, and was taking round bread-rolls, setting each one on its plate with a tiny gasp of relief.
“I imagine they’re painted in fairly gaudy colours?” Daphne said.
“Really, child,” said her mother.
Cecil looked drolly across the table. “They’re red and gold, I think—aren’t they, Georgie?”
Daphne sighed and watched the golden soup swim from the ladle into Cecil’s bowl. “I wish we had jelly-mould domes,” she said. “Or compartments.”
“They might look somewhat amiss here, old girl,” said George, pulling a face at the oak beams low overhead, “in the Arts and Crafts ambience of 2A.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t,” said his mother. “You make us sound like a flat above a shop.”
Cecil smiled uncertainly, and said to Daphne, “Well, you must come to Corley and see them for yourself.”
“There, Daphne!” said her mother, in reproach and triumph.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?” asked Mrs. Kalbeck, perhaps already envisaging the visit.
“There are only two of us, I’m afraid,” said Cecil.
“Cecil has a younger brother,” said George.
“Is he called Dudley?” said Daphne.
“He is,” Cecil admitted.
“I believe he’s very handsome,” said Daphne, with new confidence.
George was appalled to find himself blushing. “Well …,” said Cecil, taking a first moody sip of soup, but, thank heavens, not looking at him. In fact anyone would have said that Dudley was extremely good-looking, but George was ashamed to hear his own words repeated back to Cecil. “A younger brother can be something of a bane,” Cecil said.
Hubert nodded and laughed and sat back as if he’d made a joke himself.
“Dud’s awfully satirical, wouldn’t you say, Georgie?” Cecil went on, giving him a sly look over the white roses.
“He works on your mother’s patience,” said George with a sigh, as though he’d known the family for years, and aware too that this repeated “Georgie,” never used by his own family, was showing him to them in a novel light.
“Is your brother at Cambridge also?” asked George’s mother.
“No, he’s at Oxford, thank heavens.”
“Oh, really, which college?”
“Now, which one is it?” said Cecil. “I think it’s called something like … Balliol?”
“That certainly is one of the Oxford colleges,” said Hubert.
“Well, that’s it, then,” said Cecil. George sniggered and gazed with nervous admiration at his pondering face, above the high starched collar and lustrous black tie, the sparkle of his dress-studs in the candlelight, and felt a quick knock against his foot under the table. He gasped and cleared his throat but Cecil was turning with a bland smile to Mrs. Kalbeck, and then as Hubert started to say something idiotic George felt the sole of Cecil’s shoe push against his ankle again quite hard, so that the secret mischief had something rougher in it, as often with Cecil, and after a few testing and self-conscious seconds George regretfully edged his foot out of the way. “I’m sure you’re absolutely right,” said Cecil, with another solemn shake of the head. The fact that he was already mocking his brother made George queasily excited, as if some large shift of loyalties was about to be demanded of him, and he soon got up to deal with the wine for the fish, which the maids were hopelessly dim about.
Mrs. Kalbeck tackled