Revel thought and said, ‘Can I be somewhere in between?’ with an appealing wriggle in his voice.
‘I’d want to know why. Or rather where.’
‘I suppose what I feel,’ said Revel, after a minute, ‘well, the grotesqueries are what I like best, really, and the more egregious the better.’
‘What? Not St Pancras?’ said George. ‘Not Keble College?’
‘Oh, when I first saw St Pancras,’ said Revel, ‘I thought it was the most beautiful building on earth.’
‘And you didn’t change your mind when you’d seen the Parthenon.’
Revel blushed slightly – Daphne thought perhaps he had yet to see the Parthenon. ‘Well, I feel there’s room in the world for more than one kind of beauty,’ he said, ‘put it that way,’ firmly but graciously.
George took this in, seemed even to blush a little himself. He stopped and looked away towards the house: turrets and gables, the glaring plate glass in Gothic windows, the unrestful patterns of red, white and black brick. Creeper spread like doubt around the openings at the western end. Daphne felt she wouldn’t have chosen it, felt it had in a way chosen her, and now she would be sick at heart to lose it. She turned to Madeleine. ‘I remember when George first came to stay here, Madeleine,’ she said: ‘we thought we’d never hear the end of the splendours of Corley Court. Oh, the jelly-mould domes in the dining-room!’ But such comical alliances with her sister-in-law rarely stuck – Madeleine smiled for a second, but her allegiance to George’s intellect was the firmer. ‘No grotesqueries then!’ insisted Daphne.
George clearly thought it wise to laugh at himself for a moment: ‘Cecil liked them, and one didn’t argue with Cecil.’ It seemed not to bother him that he was mocking his sister’s home.
‘I see,’ said Revel, with that mixture of dryness and forgiveness that was so unlike Dudley’s humour. ‘So you know the house quite well.’
‘Oh, quite…’ said George absently, the question of why he so rarely came to Corley perhaps embarrassing him. ‘You’re too young to have known Cecil,’ he said.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Revel solemnly, and with the faintest smile, since his youth was generally thought to be in his favour, it was what all the articles in the magazines dwelt on – his being so brilliant so young.
‘But you’ve been over Corley before,’ said George, now a touch proprietary.
‘Oh, heaps of times,’ said Revel; and a strange sort of tension, of rivalry and regret, seemed for a moment to flicker in the two men’s different smiles.
‘Anyway, you’ll meet Mrs Riley,’ said Daphne, ‘she’s staying for the weekend.’
‘Oh, is she…’ said Revel, as if seeing a disadvantage after all in his visit.
‘She hung around for ages, you know, measuring things up or whatever she does and dropping ash on the carpet; and then Dud for some reason asked her to stay. And would you believe it, she had all her evening clothes in the boot of her car.’
‘Why did she?’ said Wilfrid.
‘She’ll have been on the way to someone else’s house, old chap,’ said George.
‘Well, she designs clothes,’ said Corinna. ‘She’s got tons of skirts and dresses in the car. She’s going to make one for me, green velvet, with a low waist and no particular bust.’
‘No particular bust!’ said Daphne. And then, ‘Is she indeed!’
‘Is she all right?’ said Revel. ‘I dare say she is – we come at things from different ends.’
Daphne was a little unsure about the turn she’d given the talk. ‘I’m sure she’s a genius,’ she said. ‘I’m just not awfully good with very fashionable people.’ And she thought, and where is she now? – in a scurry of anxiety which she quickly brought to heel.
‘I don’t expect she comes cheap,’ said Revel.
‘No. In fact she’s quite violently expensive,’ said Daphne, in a way that suggested a more than reasonable cause of annoyance.
They strolled back, their group still tentative and self-conscious, towards the white gate under the stone arch, and the broad path back to the house. Freda and Clara had come out for some air, and were moving at their own peculiar pace among the spring beds and low hedges of the formal garden. Daphne saw the man that Revel had mentioned, in a brown trilby, lope across and engage them in talk – they seemed confused, earnestly helpful, and then somewhat defensive. Clara raised one stick, and pointed it, as if sending him off. He had a camera-case slung round his neck, but didn’t seem interested in using the camera on them. ‘Go on, my darlings, rescue Granny Sawle,’ said Daphne. But just then the man, backing away and glancing round, saw Dudley himself emerge through the garden door, with the look of tricky geniality that he put on for the press, and with Sebby just behind him, jammed in the doorway by the excitable dog, and clearly more reluctant to be seen.
‘Here we are,’ said Dudley, as they all came up, shaking hands with George, shaking hands, rather pointedly, with Madeleine, though grinning at her fiercely as he did so. ‘And Revel, my dear, you’ve made it.’ He turned with a lurch to embrace the whole group in his grin. ‘What a lovely reunion!’ Daphne glanced at her mother, who she felt was the one most vulnerable to Dudley’s performance, but she was too caught up in her own reunion with George to notice it.
‘Hello, George!’ said Freda, with a brave little quiver, the tone of someone not quite sure of being remembered. And perhaps this tiny glimpse touched George as well – he enveloped his mother in a firm hug, sweetly, and guiltily, protracted.
‘Maddy, dear,’ he said, and Madeleine too held Freda’s shoulder and angled in for a kiss under the tilting brims of their hats.
‘Now, I’m sorry to say, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Dudley, ‘that our little weekend idyll has been infiltrated by one of the tireless and pitiless agents of Fleet Street. What’s your name?’
‘Oh, I’m Goldblatt, Sir Dudley,’ said the photographer, swallowing Dudley’s harsh tone, ‘Jerry Goldblatt,’ lifting his trilby an inch as he looked over the group.
‘Jerry Goldblatt,’ said Dudley, and paused unpleasantly, ‘is just going to take a few snapshots for the Sketch.’
‘I prefer to say portraits,’ said Goldblatt, ‘portrait groups.’
‘So if you wouldn’t mind awfully doing what he says for ten minutes, then we can get the damn fellow out of here.’
‘Much obliged,’ said Goldblatt, ‘well, ladies and gentlemen – ’
But they saw very quickly that it was Dudley who’d be telling them what to do. A trying hour or more of sittings ensued, different groupings around various stone seats, or posed, with a hint of awkward clowning, under the raised arms and bare breasts of bronze and marble statues. The Scottish boy made himself useful, and quickly set up the croquet lawn, where they started a pretend game which immediately got serious, and was abandoned with bad grace for work at another location. Really there were three of them the photographer wanted, Dudley, Sebby and Revel, with Daphne and the children as decorative extras. Dudley of course knew this, but in a complicated rigmarole brought in all the others, and nearly pretended not to want to be involved himself at all.
Dudley said: ‘But look here, Goldblatt, you must have a snapshot of our friend Frau Kalbeck. You know, she’s one of the original Valkyries of Stanmore Hill.’
‘Oh, yes, Sir Dudley?’ said the photographer warily.
‘No, no, please…!’ said Clara, tickled but mortified at the same time. She seemed ready to tuck her sticks out of sight. Daphne said,
‘But not if you don’t want to, dear,’ and indeed thought it quite impossible that they’d use such a photograph, which would make it, in the longer view, even sadder for her.
‘Perhaps not, I think,’ said Clara, and hid her tiny disappointment in a histrionic call – ‘But where is dear Mrs Riley?’ It was unexpected, but she seemed to have taken a shine to Eva.