The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [91]
“Have you seen him?” she said.
Daphne said, “Who …? Oh, Stinker … isn’t he wandering around, I’m sure he’s all right … darling,” which wasn’t what she usually called her, any more than Stinker was Arthur. She’d always thought of Tilda as a youngish aunt, perhaps, silly, harmless, hers for life.
“He’s so strange these days, don’t you think?”
“Is he …?” In so far as Daphne could be bothered to think about it, she wished he was a good deal stranger.
“Am I mad? You don’t think, do you, he might be seeing another woman?”
“Stinker? Oh, surely not, Tilda!” It was easy and allowable to smile. “No, I really don’t think so.”
“Oh!—oh good”—Tilda seemed half-relieved. “I felt you’d know.” She flinched, and peered at her again. “Why not?” she said.
Daphne controlled her laugh and said, “But it’s obvious Stinker adores you, Tilda.” And then perhaps thoughtlessly, “And anyway, who could it be?”
Tilda half-laughed but hesitated. “I suppose I thought perhaps because we haven’t, you know …”And just then Daphne saw Revel step out through the french window and frown along the path to where he evidently heard their voices. She knew Tilda meant because they didn’t have children.
“Come along,” said Daphne, getting up, but now in turn grasping Tilda’s hand, to conceal her own brusqueness. Any more on this subject would be unbearable.
“Well, I’m just going to sit here and wait for him,” Tilda said, not seeing what was happening, still adrift in drink and her own worry.
“All right, darling,” said Daphne, feeling fortune free her and claim her at the same moment. She almost ran along the path.
“Oh, Duffel, darling,” said Revel, touching her arm as they came back in together, and taking a smiling five seconds to continue his sentence, “do let’s pop up and look at the children sleeping.”
“Oh,” said Daphne, “of course,” as if it were hopeless of her not to have offered this entertainment already. She gazed at him and her giggle was slightly rueful. She didn’t think she herself could have slept, even two floors up, through the “Hickory-Dickory Rag.” And then the earlier horror, at the real piano, came back to her—it was wonderful, a blessing, that she’d forgotten it for a while.
“Dudley’s gone to bed,” said Revel, plainly and pleasantly.
“I see.” After the garden the drawing-room was a dazzle; and in their absence, it had been perfectly tidied—everything was always tidied. “Now, have you got a drink?” she said.
“I’ve got a port in every one,” said Revel, a bit cryptically.
“I think I’ve had enough,” said Daphne, looking down on the tray of bottles, some friendly, some perhaps over-familiar, one or two to be avoided. She sloshed herself out another glass of claret. “Oh, Tilda’s outside!” she explained to Stinker, who had just come in, stumbling on the sill of the french window. “You’ve just missed her.” He leant on a table and gazed at her, but found nothing immediate to say.
She led the way down the cow-passage and up the east back-stairs, Revel touching her at each half-landing very lightly between the shoulders. His face when she glanced at it was considerate, with inward glints of anticipated pleasure. She was excited almost to the point of talking nonsense. “All rather back-stairs, as Mrs. Riley would say,” she said.
“I don’t think this is quite what she had in mind, do you,” said Revel coolly, so that a leap had been taken, several unsayable matters all at once in the air. Daphne’s heart was beating and she felt herself gripped at the same time by a strange gliding languor, as if to counter and conceal the speed of her pulse. She said,
“I’ve got to tell you about the oddest scene just now, with old Mrs. Riley. I’m absolutely certain she was making love to me.”
Revel gave a careless laugh. “So she does have good taste, after all.”
Daphne thought this rather glib, though charming of course. “Well …”
“You see I thought she’d set her sights on Flo, who has a bit of a look of all that, doesn’t she.”
“You see I thought …”—but it