‘Indeed,’ said Cecil solemnly. Emmy Destinn had finished, and in her place Daphne saw the figure of her mother coming to the lighted window and peering vainly out.
‘We’re all here!’ Daphne shouted. And in the darkness, under the millions of stars, with the boys on either side of her, she felt she could speak for them all; there was a hilarious safety that seemed a renewal of the pact they had made without speaking when Cecil arrived.
‘Well, hurry in,’ her mother said, in a hectic, ingenious tone. ‘I want Cecil to read to us.’
‘There you are,’ murmured Cecil, straightening his bow-tie. Daphne glanced up at him. George went responsibly ahead on the path, and as they followed behind him Cecil slipped his large hot hand around her, and left it there, just where he’d kicked her, until they reached the open french windows.
7
After breakfast next morning she found Cecil in a deckchair on the lawn, writing in a small brown book. She sat down too, on a nearby wall, keen to observe a poet at work, and just close enough to put him off; in a minute he turned and smiled and shut his book with the pencil in it. ‘What have you got there?’ he said.
She was holding a small book of her own, an autograph album bound in mauve silk. ‘I don’t know if you can be prevailed upon,’ she said.
‘May I see?’
‘If you like you can just put your name. Though obviously…’
Cecil’s long arm and blue-veined hand seemed to pull her to him. She presented the book with a blush and mixed feelings of pride and inadequacy. She said, ‘I’ve only been keeping it a year.’
‘So whom have you got?’
‘I’ve got Arthur Nikisch. I suppose he’s the best.’
‘Right-oh!’ said Cecil, with the delighted firmness that conceals a measure of uncertainty. She leant over the back of the deckchair to guide him to the page. He was like an uncle this morning, confidential without the least hint of intimacy. Last night’s rough-house, apparently, had never happened. She noticed again that smell he had, as if he’d always just got back from one of his rambles, or scrambles, which she pictured as fairly boisterous affairs. Oh, it was so typical of boys, they got on their dignity, they kept closing the door on some interesting scene they had let you witness a moment before. Though perhaps it was meant as a reproach to her, for last night’s foolery.
‘I got him when we went to The Rhinegold.’
‘Ah yes… He’s quite a big shot, isn’t he?’
‘Herr Nikisch? Well, he’s the conductor!’
‘No, I’ve heard of him,’ said Cecil. ‘You may as well know that I have a tin ear, by the way.’
‘Oh…’ said Daphne, and looked for a moment at Cecil’s left ear, which was brown and sunburnt on top. She said, ‘I should have thought a poet had a good ear,’ with a frown at the unexpected cleverness of her own words.
‘I can hear poems,’ said Cecil. ‘But all the Valances are tone-deaf, I’m afraid. The General’s almost queer about it. She went to The Gondoliers once, but she said never again. She thought it was never going to end.’
‘Well, she certainly wouldn’t like Wagner, in that case,’ said Daphne, rescuing a kindly superiority from her initial sense of disappointment. And still not quite sure she had got to the bottom of it, ‘Though you said you liked the gramophone last night.’
‘Oh, I don’t hate it, it’s just rather lost on me. I was enjoying the company.’ His ear coloured slightly at this, and she saw that perhaps she’d been given a compliment, and blushed a little herself. He said, ‘Did you care for the opera when you went?’
‘They had a new swimming apparatus for the Rhine-maidens, but I didn’t find it very convincing.’
‘It must be hard work swimming and singing at the same time,’ said Cecil, turning the page. ‘Now who’s this Byzantine fellow?’
‘That’s Mr Barstow.’
‘Should I know him?’
‘He’s the curate in Stanmore,’ said Daphne, unsure if they were both admiring the elaborate penwork.
‘I see… And now: Olive Watkins, you could read that at twenty paces.’
‘I didn’t really want to have her, as it’s supposed to be only adults, but she got me for hers.’ Underneath her signature Olive had written, with great force, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed’, the indentations of the pen being readable on the following pages. ‘She has the best collection, certainly that I know,’ said Daphne. ‘She has Winston Churchill.’
‘My word…’ said Cecil respectfully.
‘I know.’
Cecil turned a page or two. ‘But you’ve got Jebland, look. That’s special in another way.’
‘He’s my other best,’ Daphne admitted. ‘He only sent it me the week before his propeller broke. I’ve learned that you can’t wait with airmen. They’re not like other autographs. That’s how Olive lost Stefanelli.’
‘And does Olive have Jebland?’
‘No, she does not,’ said Daphne, trying to subdue the note of triumph to one of respect for the dead aviator.
‘I see it’s rather morbid,’ said Cecil. ‘You make me feel a little anxious.’
‘Oh, everyone else in it is still alive!’
Cecil closed the book. ‘Well, leave it with me, and I promise I’ll think something up before I go.’
‘Do feel free to write some occasional verse.’ She came round the chair and stood looking at him full-face. He was fingering his own book again as he squinted up at her, smiling tensely against the light. She felt the momentary advantage she had over him, and gazed with a novel kind of licence at his parted lips and his strong brown neck where it emerged from his soft blue shirt. He was surely writing a poem now, the pencil was waiting in the cruck of the notebook. She felt she couldn’t ask about it. But nor could she let him alone. She said, ‘Have you seen over the garden?’
‘D’you know, I have. I rambled right round it with Georgie, first thing.’
‘Oh…’
‘Oh, long before you were up. I went and tipped him out of bed.’
‘I see…’
‘I’m a pagan, you see, and I worship the dawn. I’m trying to instil the cult in your brother.’
‘I wonder how you’ll get on.’ Cecil closed his eyes languidly as he smiled, so that she had a further sense of screened-off mysteries. ‘Perhaps tomorrow you could tip me out of bed too.’
‘Do you think your mother would approve?’
‘Oh, she won’t mind.’
‘Well, we’ll see.’
‘I could show you all kinds of things.’ She felt the grass with her hand before sitting down beside Cecil’s chair. ‘I can’t believe George showed you the whole of “Two Acres”.’
‘Well, possibly not…’ said Cecil, with a quick snigger.
Daphne peered encouragingly at the view – the neat parched lawn, the little tor of the rockery, the line of dark firs that hid the Cosgroves’ potting-shed and motor-garage. To her the ‘Two’ in her house’s name had always been reassuring, a quietly emphatic boast to schoolfriends who lived in a town or a terrace, the proof of a generous over-provision. But in Cecil’s presence she felt the first shimmer of uncertainty. Sitting side by side, she hoped to make him share her view, but wondered if she hadn’t started sharing his instead. She said, ‘You know, the rockery was my father’s contribution.’
‘He must have put a good deal of work into it,’ said Cecil.
‘Yes, he worked terribly hard at it. Those large red stones came all the way from Devon – which of course he did!’
‘They will be a strange geological conundrum to later ages,’ said Cecil.
‘Yes, I suppose they will.’
‘They will be like the monoliths of Stonehenge.’
‘Mm,’ said Daphne, sensing teasing where she’d hoped for something better. She pressed on, ‘My father wasn’t artistic like my mother, but she gave him a free hand with the rockery. In a way it’s his monument.’