The Stranger's Child

by Alan Hollinghurst

  ‘Almost incredible,’ Rob said, ‘listening to a man read a poem he wrote a hundred and fifty years ago.’

  ‘Ah – yes,’ said Raymond, seeing this rather skirted the issue.

  Rob stood back. ‘I suppose that’s the earliest you can go, isn’t it,’ with a quick grasp for reassurance. ‘That must be the earliest recording of a poet.’

  ‘Well, strictly speaking,’ said Raymond, ‘though of course you can fake the voices, if you want to,’ peeping at Rob with that strange look, in a middle-aged man, of a teenager trying his luck.

  ‘Oh, for god’s sake,’ said Rob.

  ‘No, a bit naff, perhaps.’ Raymond shielded his feelings with a genial-sounding change of subject. ‘So what can I do for you, Rob?’

  Rob narrowed his eyes. ‘You said you might have something for me . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes . . . Yes, indeed.’ Raymond swivelled his chair and peered bemusedly around the office – a moment’s teasing to cover his excitement. He raked his beard as his eyes ran over the shelves. ‘I thought, this is quite up Rob’s street . . . if I can only find it. Oh, I know, I put it in my naughty drawer’ – and leaning forward over himself, Raymond tugged open the bottom drawer of a filing-cabinet. The naughty drawer was where he kept things he didn’t want the Harrow schoolboys to find, in their occasional lingering searches in the more hidden parts of the shop. Sometimes a house clearance turned up a stash of girlie mags or even muscle mags which by now were antique collectibles in themselves. Raymond was the mere dealer – to Rob’s eye he seemed to survey an old Penthouse and an issue of Physique Pictorial with the same gruff detachment. Now he brought out a red leather-bound book, a thickish quarto, at a glance a journal or manuscript book, with a rounded spine to enable it to open flat. He swivelled back, weighing the book in both hands, as if he shouldn’t let it go without certain warnings and preconditions. ‘What do you know about someone called Harry Hewitt?’

  ‘Nothing whatever.’ Rob saw that the book had a clasp, a lockable diary, perhaps; on the front, under Raymond’s thumb, an embossed gold H.

  ‘No . . .’ Raymond nodded. ‘Quite an interesting character. Died in the sixties. Businessman, art collector – left some stuff to the V and A?’ Rob shook his head obligingly. ‘Lived up the road – Harrow Weald. Big house called Mattocks, sort of Arts and Crafts. Never married,’ said Raymond reasonably.

  ‘I get the picture.’

  ‘Lived with his sister, who died in the mid-seventies. After which Mattocks became an old people’s home. Closed down a few years ago – place boarded up, kids got in, a bit of vandalism, not too bad. Now about to be demolished.’

  ‘I assume Hector’s been over it . . . ?’

  ‘There wasn’t much left.’

  ‘No, well, those old folks . . .’

  Raymond grunted. ‘Thieves got the best stained-glass windows. Hector salvaged a fireplace or two. But there was a strong-room no one had got into, which didn’t hold Hector back for long. Nothing valuable in it, apparently, just papers and stuff from Hewitt’s days.’

  ‘Including what you have in your hand.’

  Raymond passed it over – and as he did so the hinged brass bar of the lock dropped open. ‘We had to cut it, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ It seemed to Rob a bit rum that a man who could unlock a strong-room had to take a hacksaw to a book. A handsome book, too, the inner border of the binding tooled in gold, thick gold on the page-edges, the endpapers with gold-seamed crimson marbling, bound by Webster’s, ‘By Appointment to Queen Alexandra’. Rob winced at the violation, quite apart from the damage to the price. Inside perhaps a hundred pages densely written over in greyish blue-black ink, a sheet of mauve blotting-paper half-way through marking where the writing stopped.

  ‘Have a look at it,’ said Raymond. ‘Cup of tea?’

  And so he settled Rob down, after jarring shunting of a large wardrobe, in a tiny improvised sitting-room, made out of a chaise-longue, a bedside cupboard and a standard-lamp. The tea was served in a bone-china cup and saucer. Beyond the wardrobe, he could hear Raymond back at his computer, moments of music and talk.

  At first, Rob wasn’t sure what he was reading. ‘December 27, 1911 – My dear Harry – I can never thank you enough for the Gramophone, or “Sheraton Upright Grand” to give it its official title! It is the most splendid gift anyone ever had, Harry old boy. You should have seen my sister’s face when the lid was first opened – it was a Study, Harry. My mother says it is quite unearthly to have Mr McCormack singing his heart out in her own humble Drawing room! You must come and hear him yourself soon Harry. Mere Thanks are inadequate Harry old boy – Best love from Yours ever Hubert.’ The handwriting was small, vigorous and compacted. Under a ruled line another letter began immediately: ‘January 11, 1912 – My dear old Harry – A Thousand thanks for the Books. The binding alone is most handsome and Sheridan one of the best writers I am sure. My mother says we must read the plays out Harry she is keen for you to take a Part! Daphne is all set to dress up too! You know I am not much of an actor Harry old boy. We will see you tomorrow at 7.30. Really you are too kind to us all. Tons of love from yours Hubert.’

  So, a letter-book, copies kept by the grateful ‘Hubert’? It seemed a bit unlikely he would show such pride in them. In which case, letters transcribed by their recipient, also ‘H’ of course, to immortalize them, if that was the word? So many of them were thank-you letters that it seemed little more than a vanity project. He had an image of this wealthy old queen in effect writing thank-you letters to himself (‘ “My dear Harry,” wrote Harry.’). Rob skimmed on, with lowish expectations, eye out for proper nouns . . . Harrow, Mattocks, Stanmore, the whole thing parochial in the extreme, and then Hamburg, ‘when you get back from Germany, Harry,’ well, we knew Harry was a businessman. Rob sipped frowningly at his tea. It was slightly chilly in the shop. ‘You will not find me much use at bridge, Harry, Old maid is about my level!’

  Jumping ahead, Rob started to see there was something else going on, a kind of shadow side to the glow of gratitude. June 4, 1913 – ‘My dear old Harry, I am very sorry but you know by now I am not the demonstrative type, it is not in my nature Harry.’ September 14, 1913 – ‘Harry, you must not think me ungrateful, no one ever had a better friend, however I’m afraid I do rather shun, and Dislike, displays of physical affection between men. It is not in my way Harry.’ In fact – of course – the two strands often came together, thanks and no thanks. Perhaps the book of vanity was also a covert record of mortification – or success: Rob didn’t know how it was going to end. He tried to picture the displays of physical affection – what were they? More than hugs, kisses, perhaps, begun with tense negligence, then growing more insistent and difficult. And meanwhile the presents escalated. May 1913, ‘The gun arrived this morning – it’s an absolute ripper, Harry old boy’; October 1913, ‘Harry, I can’t thank you enough for the truly splendid wardrobe. My poor old suits look quite shabby in their new home!’ – and a quaint reflection, ‘Creature comforts in life do matter Harry, whatever the Divines may say!’ Then January 1914, ‘My dear old Harry, the little car is a joy – I went out with Daphne for a spin in her – we did 48mph several times! She says a Straker is the best car in the world, and I am bound to agree. Only a large Wolseley overhauled us.’ Was there a certain hardening, the half-hidden note of covetousness, poor puzzled Hubert very slightly corrupted by all this generosity? Perhaps Harry would give him a Wolseley next. To an ardent gay man the recurrent olds that tolled through the letters – ‘My dear old Harry’, ‘Harry old boy’ – however cheerfully meant, might have palled after a bit: ‘I cannot believe you are 37 tomorrow, Harry old boy!’ in November 1912. Well, it was a curiosity – clever of Raymond to see that, and worth paying a bit for. One of Garsaint’s customers would probably go for it, the collectors of Gay Lives, which Rob had made a speciality of. And then of course the date.

  He leafed forward, something resistant in the dense exclamatory crawl of the writin
g, the words themselves. There was very little after the end of 1914 – a few short letters from France, it seemed: BEF Rouen, more whole-hearted letters now they were apart, perhaps, and the whole perspective had changed. Then a letter of April 5, 1917: ‘My dear old Harry – A quick letter as we are moving shortly but don’t know where. They don’t give us much notice as a rule. A glorious day, which makes life feel much more worth living. We had our Easter service today, as we shall probably be moved by then, and I stayed to Communion afterwards. You will keep an eye on Hazel won’t you Harry old boy – she is a dear sweet girl – and on Mother and Daphne too. Goodnight Harry and best love from Hubert.’ After which Harry had written, ‘My last letter from my darling boy: FINIS.’ But underneath, in a ruled ink box, there was a little memorial:

  HUBERT OWEN SAWLE

  1st Lieut ‘The Blues’

  Born Stanmore, Mddx, January 15, 1891

  Killed at Ivry April 8, 1917

  Aged Twenty-Six

  At the counter Raymond raked his beard, ‘Ah, Rob – any interest?’

  ‘This Hubert Sawle – any relation of G. F. Sawle and Madeleine Sawle?’

  ‘Very good, Rob . . . yes . . . Hubert was G. F.’s brother.’

  ‘Totally unheard-of.’

  ‘Till now . . .’ – Raymond nodded at the book.

  ‘And Daphne Sawle was the sister. You see, I met this woman last week who was Daphne Sawle’s grand-daughter.’

  ‘Right . . .’

  ‘I got a bit lost in her story, about the biography of Cecil Valance, you know. She said her grandmother had written her memoirs. I meant to chase it up.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Raymond; and as this was something he didn’t like saying, he got to work.

  ‘Of course the house in “Two Acres” was round here, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Stanmore, yep.’

  ‘Anything there?’

  Raymond peered, scrolled down and up, tongue on lip. ‘Demolished five or six years ago – well, it was a ruin already. No, Rob, there’s no one called Sawle except G. F. and Madeleine, who I happen to know was his wife.’

  ‘Are you on Abe?’

  ‘G. F. edited Valance’s letters, of course.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Rob, again with the private glow of perceived connections, the protective feeling for his quarry that came up in any extended search. ‘I’ve an idea Daphne wrote under the name Jacobs.’

  ‘Oh yes . . .’ Raymond’s large hands made their darting wobble above the keyboard.

  ‘She’s totally forgotten now, but she published this book of memoirs about thirty years ago – she was married to Dudley Valance, then to an artist called Revel Ralph.’

  ‘Right . . . here we are . . . Daphne Jacobs: Assyrian Woodwind Instruments – that the one?’

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘Bronze Ornaments of Ancient Mesopotamia.’

  ‘I don’t think she goes back quite that far.’

  ‘Corpus Mesopotamianum . . .’ – that slowed him up for a second. ‘There’s loads of this stuff.’

  ‘I think her book’s called The Short Gallery.’

  ‘O-kay – here we go – The Short Gallery: Portraits from Life. Aha, seven copies . . . Plymbridge Press, 1979, 212 pp . . . First Edition, £1. There you are!’

  Rob came round and looked over Raymond’s shoulder. ‘Scroll down a bit.’ There were the usual anomalies – fine copy in fine dj, £2.50; ex-library, with no dj, damp-staining to rear boards, some light underlining, £18, with an excitable sales pitch, ‘Contains candid portraits of leading writers and artists A Huxley, Mary Gibbons, Lord Berners, Revd Ralph &c sensational account of teenage affair with WW1 Poet Dudley Valance.’

  ‘Wrong!’ said Raymond. ‘Right?’

  ‘Love Revd Ralph,’ said Rob. ‘Now that’s amusing. “Inscribed by the author ‘To Paul Bryant, April 18, 1980’.” ’ With it was the sixteen-page catalogue, which Garsaint sometimes had, for the Revel Ralph ‘Scenes and Portraits’ exhibition at the Michael Parkin Gallery in 1984, with a posthumous foreword by Daphne Jacobs – reassuringly unsigned: £25.

  The final copy, from Delirium Books in LA, floated aloft in a bookman’s empyrean of its own: ‘Sir Dudley Valance’s copy, with his bookplate designed by St John Hall, inscribed and signed by the author “To Dudley from Duffel”, with numerous comments and corrections in pencil and ink by Dudley Valance. Book condition: fair. Dust-jacket, losses to head of spine, 1cm repaired tear to rear panel. In protective red morocco slipcase. An exceptional association copy. $1,500.’

  ‘Take your pick,’ said Raymond.

  ‘Mm, I will,’ said Rob. Jennifer Ralph’s description of the book as ‘rather feeble’ tugged against his more indulgent curiosity. Of course she would have known some of the figures whose portraits appeared in it, which made a difference. ‘And how much do you want for Hewitt?’

  ‘Hundred?’

  Rob raised an eyebrow. ‘Raymond?’

  ‘You saw the Valance letters?’

  ‘I’m sorry . . . ?’ Rob raised an eyebrow too, coloured slightly.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ And taking the book back from him, Raymond showed him that a few blank pages further on from the mid-volume FINIS there was another small section of transcribed letters, very different in tone. ‘That’s really the interest, Robson, my friend.’

  ‘Dear Hewitt,’ the first one began, in September 1913; modulating to ‘Dear Harry’ in the third letter, sent from France. Five letters in total, the last dated June 27, 1916, signed, ‘Yours ever, Cecil’.

  ‘Have these been published, I wonder?’

  ‘You’d have to check.’

  ‘I bet they haven’t.’ Rob looked over them as quickly as the writing allowed. The idea that Valance might have had a thing with Hewitt too . . . No sign of it, which was itself somehow suggestive. ‘And why did the old fool transcribe them – I mean, what did he do with the originals?’

  ‘Ah, you see, he failed to think of the needs of a twenty-first-century bookseller – quite a common failing of the past.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’ Rob looked at the last letter more narrowly.

  It was bad luck you couldn’t get to up to Stokes’s – you would like him, I think. It occurred to me to send you the new poems before we get stuck in to the next big show – I will send them tomorrow, all being well, when I have gone over them once more. They are for your eyes only – you will see they are not publishable in my life-time – or England’s! Stokes has seen some (not all). One of them draws, you will see, on our last meeting. Let me know you have them safe. My love (is that too fresh?) to Elspeth the strict scholar.

  Yours ever, Cecil.

  ‘So the house has been completely cleared, has it?’

  ‘They’re getting out the last stuff this week.’

  ‘Mm, what sort of stuff?’ Rob thought he saw the colour creep up behind Raymond’s beard as he turned away and rummaged on the desk – a distraction, though at first Rob thought it was a search for some further evidence.

  ‘I haven’t been down there myself. I think Debbie’s there now.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say so before?’ – to Rob the slow afternoon, the mild trance of autumn in North London, the musty otherworld of Chadwick’s shop, were revealed as a decoy, a disastrous waste of time, like the stifling obstacles and digressions of a certain kind of dream. ‘How far is it to the house?’

  ‘Well, how are you going?’

  There was a taxi-rank down the road towards the school, as if ready to whisk the boys off to their homes, or the shops, or the airport . . . Rob ran down to the first car, but there was no driver: he was over the road, at the café, picking up a tea and a sandwich, and it was more than the driver of the second cab’s life was worth to take his fare . . . the cabbies’ tedious etiquette. Rob sensed there was something offputting in his own urgency, a hint of unwelcome trouble – he went grinning impatiently to the café, and after a minute the driver followed him out to the taxi. ‘It’s a house call
ed Mattocks – was an old people’s home. Do you know it?’

  ‘Well, I did know it,’ said the cabbie, slow in the pleasure of his own irony. ‘There’s not much going on down there now.’

  ‘No, I know.’

  ‘They’ll have the wreckers’ balls down there, any day now.’ And he looked at Rob in the mirror as he slid into his seat, doubtless toying with some dismal joke.

  ‘Let’s see if we can get there first,’ said Rob. He leant coaxingly forward and saw his own eyes and nose in the mirror, in surreal isolation.

  They turned and headed out north again, up through the most densely congested junctions of Harrow-on-the-Hill, the driver’s courtesy extending to any number of undecided road-crossers, reversing delivery-vans and anxious would-be joiners from side-roads; he was a great letter-in. Then in the leafy residential streets and avenues of the Weald his vaguely smiling dawdle on the brink of third gear suggested almost that he didn’t know where he was going. He started joking about something Rob seemed to have missed, Rob said ‘Sorry?’ and then saw he was talking on his phone, deploring something with a friend, laughing, the loud unguarded half of a conversation in which Rob’s needs seemed to shrink even further, the mere transient ticking of the fare. Above the pavements the tall horse-chestnuts were dropping their leaves, the oaks just beginning to rust and wither. So many of the big old houses had come down, their long gardens built over. There was a low wall with a sloped coping, the railings gone, a broken and leaning board fence behind. ‘Just a minute, Andy,’ said the driver, and set Rob down with a pleasant nod as he gave the change, a faint retroactive suggestion they’d had a nice time together.