Free The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst Page A

said Cecil, slumping back as if he’d paid good money for nothing, but also, surprisingly, as if he knew her well enough now to tease her. She laughed at herself and again put her hand for a moment on his sleeve.
    ‘Lord Tennyson said – I shouldn’t really say.’ She felt a knot of incoherence in her chest.
    ‘We won’t tell,’ said Elspeth, kindly, but as if to a slightly trying child.
    Daphne said loudly, in a gruff and approximately regional voice, ‘He said, “We need more bloody, young man.” ’
    ‘Really, child . . .’ said Freda, laughing and flushing.
    ‘ “Less awfully, young man, more bloody!” ’ boomed Daphne.
    ‘I can tell you, he was very down-to-earth!’ said Freda.
    Cecil laughed now, in his brief, loud way, and mild amusement and relief spread round the table, the laugh in part at the girl’s absurd bit of play-acting.
    ‘So that was all they got out of that great poet,’ Daphne explained in her normal voice. ‘No occasional verse, just – ’ and here she tucked in her chin again – ‘ “More bloody, young man!” ’
    ‘Enough, child . . . !’ said Freda.
    ‘I suppose one sees what he meant,’ said Harry.
    ‘He was fed up with fine words by that stage,’ said Hubert, clearly quite proud of this family anecdote, and seeing the interest in it.
    ‘Poor Frank was a little disconcerted,’ said Freda, feeling uncertainly for the ebbing hilarity, and realizing she’d missed out what Tennyson had said about honeymoons. That too was a little disconcerting, and she thought it best to let it go.
    ‘No, he could be very blunt,’ said Cecil, splintering a brazil nut in the silver jaws of the nutcracker.
    ‘Bloody blunt, you might say,’ said George, smirking round.
    ‘If you can’t be blunt at eighty . . .’ said Daphne.
    ‘He could be very blunt indeed,’ said Cecil again, through a mouthful of nut, and a sudden uncouth appearance of being quite drunk. ‘I remember my grandfather saying so – he knew him pretty well, of course.’
    ‘Oh, really?’ said Freda – it was almost a wail.
    ‘Oh, Lord, yes,’ said Cecil, his loud emphasis followed by a total loss of interest; his face went blank and heavy and he turned away.
    When the ladies withdrew for coffee the dining-room door was firmly closed, but the louder sounds carried across the hall – Cecil’s yap, and now and again the awkward note of Huey’s laughter. One never knew what went on, as they pushed the decanter round; whatever it was, it stayed in the room. All they ever brought in with them afterwards was a sporting sense of solidarity and the comfortable stink of cigars. The women’s team, by contrast, was plainly unfocused and without a strategy.
    ‘Oh, my dear, goodness . . .’ said Freda, vaguely motioning Elspeth to a chair.
    ‘I’ll stand for a while,’ said Elspeth, taking up her coffee cup, declining a liqueur with a tiny shudder, and walking to the end of the room on a brisk inspection of ornaments and pictures. At Mattocks, of course, there was quite an advanced collection of pictures, strange symbolic works of various Continental schools. One glanced around with a degree of apprehension.
    ‘And you, child?’ said Freda. ‘A little ginger brandy, perhaps?’
    ‘No, thank you, Mother.’
    ‘No, indeed!’ said Elspeth.
    ‘Oh, well,’ said Daphne, ‘perhaps just a small one, Mother, thank you so very much.’
    Elspeth was combative, but not easily rattled. She came back across the room and perched on the edge of the window-seat. Straight-backed, smartly but staidly dressed in shades of grey, she had something of Harry’s sharp-eyed handsomeness and, it had to be admitted, coolness. ‘I think your young poet so striking,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, isn’t he striking,’ said Freda, sipping off the top from a perilously full glass of Cointreau. She sat down carefully. ‘He’s made quite an impression here.’
    ‘He has charm,’ said Elspeth, ‘but not too much of it.’
    ‘I find him