‘Oh, well…?’ – Paul narrowed his eyes at her tone.
‘You probably saw it in the loo.’
‘Oh… oh, the picture of the man, do you mean… Goodness… Well, that must be worth quite a lot!’ Paul hated his own snigger – he really had no idea.
‘Well, so one had hoped. Unfortunately it’s a copy, done when was it, Wilfie?’
‘About 1840, I believe,’ said Wilfrid, sportingly, but with a certain pride too.
‘But you didn’t know that at the time?’
‘Well, I think… you know. And what else?’ – she gazed around as if against a bright glare.
‘The ashtray,’ said Wilfrid.
‘Oh, yes – I got the ashtray.’ On the little table, beside her coffee cup, was a small silver bowl, with a scalloped edge. ‘Have a look.’ She lifted it and Paul got up to take it from her. It was just the sort of thing people used to keep in old suitcases in the strong-room at the bank, but tarnished and scratched by the protracted attentions of a heavy smoker.
‘Look on the bottom,’ said Wilfrid.
‘Oh, I see…’
‘I suppose Dudley had a sort of complex or something about property. He had that done to all sorts of valuable things, no doubt greatly reducing their value in the process.’ In flowing letters, like some more conventional inscription stamped in the silver, were the words Stolen from Corley Court. He handed it back, with a blush at the naming of this particular vice.
‘I was wondering about the picture behind you,’ he said, to distract her. Somehow the nightmare of the room was yielding small treasures, consolation prizes for the talk that Daphne was trying to prevent from happening.
‘Oh, well, that’s Revel, of course,’ said Daphne, as though now referring to an undisputed master.
‘And it’s obviously… you!’ said Paul.
‘I’m very attached to that drawing, aren’t I, Wilfie.’
‘Yes… you are,’ Wilfrid agreed.
‘So when was it done?’ Paul got up, and edged around between the back of Daphne’s chair and the standard-lamp to have a closer look. It struck him that the Victorian ‘thicket’ of furniture and stuff at Corley had been recreated here by Daphne willy-nilly. Perhaps clutter always won in the end.
‘It’s a very fine picture,’ said Daphne. It showed a round-faced young woman with dark hair in bunches on either side of her head. A light scarf was tied loosely in the open neck of her blouse. She leant forward, lips parted, as if waiting for the punchline of a joke. It was done in what Paul thought was red chalk, and signed For Daphne – RR April 1926. ‘We both had the most appalling hangovers at the time, but I don’t believe you can tell with either of us.’
Paul giggled, but didn’t hazard a view. When he thought about the date, it began to seem significant. ‘I’d like to see more of his pictures,’ he said, sad to hear himself surrender to a further diversion from the subject of Cecil, but with a feeling she could still be brought back to it.
‘Would you, really?’ Daphne sounded surprised, but was ready to oblige. ‘What have we got? Well, have a look at Revel’s albums, I suppose. You know where they are, Wilfie.’
‘Yes… now then…’ said Wilfrid, nodding his head from side to side as he fetched them out from a chest of drawers behind his chair. Paul began to suspect Wilfrid’s years-long failure to tidy the house was really a cover for a highly personal but efficient system of his own. ‘Well, there’s this one anyway.’ And Paul was shown, more hastily than he would have liked, a large black-covered sketchbook of Revel Ralph’s; it was laid open across Daphne’s knee, and Paul and Wilfrid flanked her, craning down politely while she peered from odd ingenious angles and quickly turned the pages, as if regretting showing them after all. There were pages of Georgian-looking houses, whether real or invented Paul had no idea, pretty but rather boring, which Wilfrid then said were designs for The School for Scandal; some sketches of another woman in a dark hat, which Daphne said were studies for a portrait of Lady somebody, ‘a very trying woman’; and then a rapid and much more inspired-looking series of drawings, over ten or twelve pages, of a naked young man, lying, sitting, standing, in a range of ideal but natural-looking positions, everything about him wonderfully brought out, except his cock and balls which were consigned to the imagination by a swoop of the pencil, ostentatiously discreet, pretending it wasn’t the point. Daphne seemed to sense Paul’s interest – ‘What’s that?’ pushing the book away so she could see it – ‘Oh, you remember him, Wilfie, the Scotch boy at Corley. Revel was awfully taken with him – he did a lot of drawings of him – I remember they became great friends.’
‘I was too young to remember him,’ said Wilfrid, and looking at Paul over Daphne’s head, ‘I was only seven when we… er, moved to London.’
Even so, Paul wondered whether Wilfrid wasn’t abashed by looking at these sketches, all the bolder for being private things, the little studies of the Scotch boy’s thighs, buttocks and nipples, in the presence of his mother; and what on earth Daphne herself thought, having married a man who produced such work. ‘I remember he came to several of our parties at the studio,’ she said, as if in fact recommending her husband’s roving eye. Paul thought for a moment she might be teasing him.
‘These ought to be in a museum,’ he said awkwardly.
‘And soon I dare say they will be. But I like having them around, so for now I’m hanging on to them, thanks very much’ – and she shut the book halfway through as if to say she’d indulged him quite enough.
‘Actually I wanted to ask if you have any pictures of “Two Acres”?’ – something told him it was cleverer to ask for pictures of the house than pictures of people: it sounded more disinterested, and no doubt both kinds of photo would be mounted in the same album. Once more Wilfrid obliged. ‘This was Granny Sawle’s album,’ he said.
‘It was a dear house,’ said Daphne, again holding the album down by her left knee and raising her eyebrows suspiciously. ‘That’s the view from the lane, isn’t it, yes, that was the dining-room window, and there were the four cherry-trees in front of it, of course.’
‘A cloud of snow at Eastertide!’ said Paul (it wasn’t Cecil’s most original line).
‘Aha!’ said Wilfrid from the far side of the room.
‘There you are…’ said Daphne. ‘And the rockery, look. Goodness, how it all comes back.’
‘Well, I’m glad,’ said Paul, with a frank laugh.
‘Now who’s that? Wilfie, is it Granny?’
‘Oh…’ said Paul. It was the stout old German woman again, that George had told him about, but of course he didn’t know her name. Already Paul felt annoyed by her, a figure of no interest who kept demanding attention. He remembered George had said she was a great bore. She sat in light-absorbing black in a deckchair from which it was hard to see how she would ever get up.
‘What?’ said Wilfrid, coming over. ‘I don’t know who everyone is, I wasn’t even born yet, remember? Oh, good grief – no, no, that’s not Granny. No, no.’ He laughed breathily. ‘Granny was a really a rather – lovely woman, with lovely auburn hair.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say it was auburn,’ said Daphne. ‘She was a dark blonde. She was very proud of her hair.’ It probably wasn’t something Daphne would say of herself. Paul looked to Wilfrid, and said,
‘She was the German woman, wasn’t she?’
‘That’s right…’ said Wilfrid, already abstracted, leaning forward quickly to turn the page. ‘I haven’t seen these for a long time,’ he said.
‘I wonder what’s become of the house,’ said Daphne.
‘It probably doesn’t even exist any more, Mother,’ said Wilfrid. It was one of those little moments when Paul found it in his power to inform and perhaps upset the person he had himself come to for information.