The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [90]
“Well …! I really don’t know.”
“Mm?” said Eva.
“Well, it’s something that sometimes has to be endured, I dare say.”
“Indeed,” said Eva, with a throb of grim humour.
“I don’t know if Trevor was unfaithful,” said Daphne, and shivered herself at the closeness of the subject. They paced on, in apparent amity, whilst Eva perhaps worked out what to say. Her evening bag, like a tiny satchel slung down to the hip, nudged against her with each step, and evidence about her underclothes, which had puzzled Daphne a good deal, could obscurely be deduced in the warm pressure of Eva’s side against her upper arm. She must wear no more than a camisole, no need really for any kind of brassière … She seemed unexpectedly vulnerable, slight and slippery in her thin stuffs.
“Can I tempt you?” said Eva, her hand dropping for a second against Daphne’s hip. The nacreous curve of her cigarette case gleamed like treasure in the moonlight.
“Oh …! hmm … well, all right …”
Up flashed the oily flame of her lighter. “I like to see you smoking,” said Eva, as the tobacco crackled and glowed.
“I’m starting to like it myself,” said Daphne.
“There you are,” said Eva; and as they strolled on, their pace imposed by the darkness more than anything else, she slid her arm companionably round Daphne’s waist.
“Let’s try not to fall into the fishpond,” Daphne said, moving slightly apart.
“I wish you’d let me make you something lovely,” said Eva.
“What, to wear, you mean?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, you’re very kind, but I wouldn’t hear of it,” said Daphne. Having her redesign her house was one thing, but her person quite another. She imagined her absurdity, coming down to dinner, kitted out in one of Eva’s little tunics.
“I don’t know where you get your things mainly now, dear?”
Daphne laughed rather curtly through her cigarette-smoke. “Elliston and Cavell’s, for the most part.”
And Eva laughed too. “I’m sorry,” she said, and snuggled against her again cajolingly. “I don’t think you know how enchanting you could look.” Now they had stopped, and Eva was assessing her, through the fairy medium of the moonlight, one hand on Daphne’s hip, the other, with its glowing cigarette, running up her forearm to her shoulder, where the smoke slipped sideways into her eyes. She pinched the soft stuff of her dress at the waist, where Daphne had felt her eyes rest calculatingly before. In a hesitant but almost careless tone Eva said, “I wish you’d let me make you happy.”
Daphne said, “We simply must get back,” a tight stifling feeling, quite apart from the smoke, in her throat. “I’m really rather cold, I’m most frightfully sorry.” She jerked herself away, dropping her cigarette on the path and stamping on it. The lights from the house threw the hedges and other intervening obstacles into muddled silhouette, but it was hard to retreat with complete dignity; nor was the moonlight as friendly as she’d thought. She cut across the grass, found her heels sinking in loam, stumbled back and around an oddly placed border. It was like a further extension of being tight, a funny nocturnal pretence of knowing where she was going. She felt Eva might be pursuing her, but when she looked over her shoulder she was nowhere to be seen—well, she must be there somewhere, lingering, plotting, blowing thin streams of smoke into the night. Daphne reached the firm flags of the path by the house, and in the second she noticed the dark form curled sideways on the bench beside her, her hand was grasped at—“Don’t go in …”
“Oh, my god!—who’s that? Oh, Tilda …”
“Sorry, darling, sorry …”
“You frightened the life out of me …” Tilda wasn’t letting her hand go.
“Isn’t it a lovely night?” she said brightly. “How are you?” And then, “I’m just rather worried about Arthur.”
For a moment Daphne couldn’t think who she was talking about. “Oh, Stinker, yes … why, Tilda?” She found herself sitting very temporarily on the bench, on its edge. As if with a child, she put away the unmentionable matter of Mrs. Riley. She found Tilda was staring at her, her white little face had forgotten the gaiety of the earlier