The Stranger's Child Read Online Free PDF

. ‘But my dear fellow,’ said Hubert, with a note of perplexity, and a shy sweep of the hand to show that he was free to do as he pleased.
    ‘No, really, I couldn’t possibly fug up in so –’ Cecil was caught for a second – ‘so intimate a setting. Your mother would think very ill of me. It would be all over the house. Even at Corley, you know, we’re fearfully strict about it,’ and he fixed Hubert with a wicked little smile, to suggest this was an exciting moment for him as well, a chance to break with convention whilst still somehow doing the right thing. George wasn’t sure Hubert did see it quite like that, and not waiting for any further accommodations on his part, he said, ‘We’ll have a proper jaw tomorrow night, Huey, when Harry comes.’
    ‘Well, of course we will,’ said Hubert. He seemed only lightly offended, puzzled but perhaps relieved, acquiescent already to the pact between the Cambridge men. ‘You’ll see we don’t stand on ceremony here, Valance! You go and make as much stink as you like outside, and I’ll . . . I’ll just shuffle through and have a gasper with the ladies.’ And he flourished his cigarette case at them with an air of cheerful self-sufficiency.

6
     
    After leaving the dining-room Daphne went upstairs and came back down in her mother’s crimson shawl with black tassels, and with a feeling of doing things that were only just allowed. She saw the housemaid glance at her in what she sensed was a critical way. Coffee and liqueurs had been brought in, and Daphne asked absent-mindedly for a small glass of ginger brandy, which her mother passed to her with a raised eyebrow and the mocking suppression of a smile. Hubert, standing on the hearth-rug, was fiddling with a cigarette case, tapping a cigarette on the lid, and flexing his face as if about to complain, or make a joke, or anyhow say something, which never came. Cecil, apparently not wanting to pollute the house, had seized the moment to open the french windows and take his cigar outside; and George had followed. Mrs Kalbeck sat down in her armchair with a preoccupied smile, and hummed one of her familiar leitmotifs as she looked over the various bottles. Everyone seemed to be quite drunk. To Daphne the lesson of these grown-up dinners was the way they went at the drinks, and what happened when they’d done so. She didn’t mind the general increase in friendliness and noise, and people saying what they thought, even if some of the things George thought were quite strange. What troubled her was when her mother got flushed and talked too much, a development that the others, who were drunk themselves, seemed not to mind. The Welsh came out in her voice in a slightly embarrassing way. If they had music she tended to cry. Now she said, ‘Shall we have some music? I was going to play Cecil my Emmy Destinn.’
    ‘Well, the window’s open,’ said Daphne, ‘he’ll hear it outside.’ She felt drawn to the garden herself, and had put on the shawl with a vague romantic view to going out.
    ‘Help me with the machine, child.’
    Freda swept across the room, brushing against the small round table with the photographs on it. She was wide-hipped and tightly corseted, and the gathered back of her dress twitched like a memory of a bustle. Daphne watched her for several abstracted seconds in which her mother’s form, known more deeply and unthinkingly than anything in her life, appeared like that of someone quite unknown to her, a determined little woman in front of her in a shop or at the theatre. ‘Well . . . I have a few letters to write!’ said Hubert. Mrs Kalbeck smiled at him blandly to show she’d still be there when he got back.
    The gramophone, in its upright mahogany disguise, was a recent gift of their neighbour Harry Hewitt; apart from the handle sticking out on the right it looked just like a nice old Sheraton cabinet, and part of the fun of playing it to people was to raise the lid and open the drawers and