The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst Page B

Valance was a lunatic; and at this thought he gave a sort of staring giggle. Well, he would have to wait for Veronica. The bed was all over the floor as if a fight had taken place in it. He looked at the shaving-water cold and scummy in the basin, the shaving-brush lying in a wet ring on top of the bookcase. He frowned at the clothes strewn over the floor and across the little armchair with a new and painful feeling that he’d known them in an earlier and happier time, when things were still going convincingly. And the roses were as good as dead – yes, Cecil must have knocked them over and then jammed the stems just anyhow into the vase with no water. Their heads had dropped after a few hours of neglect, and a patch on the patterned rug was dark and damp to the back of the hand. On the dressing-table the scribbled sheets of paper were more what Jonah had expected. ‘When you were there, and I away,’ Jonah read, ‘But scenting in the Alpine air the roses of an English May.’ Then he snatched up the shaving-brush and stared at the oily pool it had made.
    Jonah went over to the waste-paper basket, as if routinely tidying a barely occupied room, and took out the handful of bits of paper. He saw one of them was written by George, and felt embarrassed on his behalf that his guest should have made such a mess. It was hard to read . . . ‘Veins’, it seemed to say, if that was how you spelt it: ‘Viens.’ The poetry notebook, that Jonah had been told never to touch, still lay within reach, on the bedside table. Later, he thought, he almost certainly would have a look at it.
    ‘I see he’s made himself at home,’ said Veronica from the door, and her competent tone cheered Jonah up. ‘Yes, Cook said he’ll make a mess but he’ll give you ten shillings – could be a guinea if you’re lucky.’
    ‘I expect so,’ said Jonah, as though used to such treatment, stuffing the bits of paper awkwardly into his trouser pocket. Then he couldn’t help smiling. ‘Cook said that?’
    Veronica plucked the pillows off the bed. ‘Well, he’s an aristocrat,’ she said, with the air of someone who’d seen a few. ‘If they make a mess they can pay for it.’ She pulled the rucked bottom sheet tight and looked at it with a raised eyebrow and a strange twist of the mouth. ‘Well, Jonah, look what I see.’
    ‘Oh yes . . .’ said Jonah.
    ‘Your gentleman’s had a mission.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Jonah, with the same look of suppressed confusion.
    Veronica glanced at him shrewdly but not unkindly. ‘You don’t know what that is, do you? A nocturnal mission, they call it. It’s something the young gentlemen are very much prone to.’ She tugged off the sheet with surprising strength, the mattress shuddering as it came free. ‘There you are, smell it, you can always tell.’
    ‘No, I won’t!’ said Jonah, feeling this wasn’t right, and colouring up at the sudden connection it made with a worry of his own.
    ‘Well, you’ll know all about it soon enough, my dear,’ said Veronica, who had just taken on in Jonah’s mind the character of someone alarmingly older and rather wicked. ‘Ah! Don’t you worry. You should see Mr Hubert’s. Have to change his sheets two or three times a week. Mrs S. knows – I mean, she didn’t say anything exactly, she just said, “Any marks or stains, Veronica, kindly change the boys’ sheets.” It’s a fact of nature, my dear, I’m afraid.’
    Jonah busied himself picking up and folding clothes, unsure if the items that had been worn should be put back in the wardrobe or politely hidden somewhere else until Cecil left and they could be packed again; he couldn’t ask Veronica anything while her upsetting little speech was still burning his ears. Here was the cast-off dress-shirt from last night, a grey smear across its stiff white front, cigar ash perhaps, and the beautiful singlet and drawers, fine as ladies’ wear, now thoughtlessly stained in ways he wouldn’t be able to look into