The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
‘They’d let me know this might happen,’ something slightly absurd in half-shouting this at a first-floor window.
‘Had they, sir?’
‘Oh, yes: I’m in touch with the Commander at the Base. He keeps me in the picture.’
‘What was it, sir?’ said Brookings.
The Headmaster peered again at the sky, with a genially proprietary air. ‘Well, back to your lessons, come on!’ and nodding uncertainly at Peter he trudged on down the drive towards the garages.
‘Anyone know what it was?’ said Peter, as they took their places again; with their Airfix and their Biggles and their War Picture Libraries they lived a constant battle in the air.
‘Was it a Hustler, sir?’ said Sloane.
‘Why would a Hustler make that noise?’ said Peter, pretty sure he knew, but taking a donnish tone.
‘Sonic boom, sir!’ said several of the boys.
‘So when we speak of a Hustler, what do we mean?’ said Peter.
‘It’s a B-58 bomber, sir,’ said Sloane, and someone else made a stupid booming noise. ‘They can do Mach 2, and of course they carry a nuclear weapon, sir.’
‘I hope they don’t bomb us, sir,’ said Peebles, with that utter feebleness that only provoked the others.
‘I don’t think we’d know much about it, if they did,’ said Peter.
‘The Americans don’t just go round bombing people, you idiot,’ said Milsom 1, to Peebles, not to Peter, though there was a slight sense of things getting out of hand.
‘Right, where were we?’ said Peter, and with a sudden intense boredom, that seemed the natural counterpart of his desire to be thorough and exciting: ‘OK, I’ve had enough of the ruddy Arethusa, let’s do something else. “Cherry Ripe”, perhaps?’
‘Oh, no, sir . . . !’ There were sickened protests.
‘Fine, fine . . . Fine, what about “Hearts of Oak”.’
‘Mm, all right, sir,’ said Sloane, who was still exhilarated by the magic eruption of the sonic boom, and seemed to have promoted himself to class leader, or bargainer.
‘ “Hearts of Oak” is a fine old song,’ said Peter. ‘Come, cheer up, my lads, ’tis to glory we steer!’ And a minute later he had them all at it.
Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men,
We always are ready – Steady, boys, steady!
and he joined them to stiffen up the sinew: ‘We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again!’ There was undoubtedly something wrong, but he got them into the next verse and shouting ‘Keep going!’ he left the piano and walked along just in front of the front row and then behind the back row, pausing and leaning in as if to share a confidence with each child. There was a standard place for giggles in this song, as reliable as some old music-hall gag, and Peter hardened his face against it:
But should their flat bottoms in darkness get o’er
Still Britons they’ll find to receive them on shore.
‘Yes, thank you very much, Prowse 2,’ said Peter. ‘Sing on, sing on!’ As a master, one could make the boys laugh, but one couldn’t be made to laugh by them – in class it meant a notable loss of authority, and out of class it was oddly too intimate. Even so, the sheer idiocy of their jokes could be hard to resist.
‘Aha!’ he said, ‘yes, I thought as much.’ He sounded much more bad-tempered than he really meant. Poor Dupont coloured up and dried up too, but Peter had got the proof he needed. The singing trailed off at the promise of an incident, less exciting than a sonic boom but with a human interest that had them all peering round in happy relief that someone else was in trouble. It had happened before – in the first week of term red-headed Macpherson had been sent out smirking and shrugging into his new freedom. ‘Just give me the first verse,’ said Peter. Dupont stared at him with a mixture of anxiety and indignation he hadn’t seen before; cleared his throat; and then started singing, very quietly, ‘Come, cheer up, my lads . . .’ in a voice that wouldn’t obey him. There were sniggers from along the row, and Peter supported him, nodding firmly, holding his eye – ‘’Tis to glory we steer, To add something more to this wonderful year . . .’ – Dupont burning red and looking away as the tune cracked and lurched out of control – ‘Ah well – I’m sorry,’ said Peter, and pursed his lips in friendly regret. In the front row Morgan-Williams uttered a croaky warble. Peter ignored the laughter that followed. ‘It will happen to you too,’ he said, ‘we’ll all enjoy laughing at you then.’ He went back to the piano. But he sensed something more was in the air. When he sat down, and turned to look at them, Dupont was still hovering at the end of the row. Peter smiled at him, to say goodbye, a little flash of favouritism after all – in a way it was cause for congratulation, like being confirmed. He would soon settle down, in the Sixth Form next term, long trousers, a teenage voice, he could hear him already. Milsom 1 was looking with furrowed interest at his friend. Sloane said, ‘You’re meant to go, Dupe.’ Dupont’s mortification made Peter himself feel uncomfortable. This clever and unusual child felt for the first time like a figure of fun, perhaps, or of superstition, sent out awkwardly into the future on the other boys’ behalf. ‘You can go and read in the library, if you like,’ said Peter, which properly was a Sixth Form privilege. Still, there was a crackle of mockery as Dupont went smiling through his blushes to the door.
3
Paul leant forward, raised the brass bolt, and opened the little doors of his position. In less than a minute the bank itself would open; through the frosted glass in the lower half of the windows the grey shapes of three or four waiting customers could be seen outside, blurred and overlapping. But for now the Public Space was deserted, its dark linoleum unscuffed, the ashtrays sparkling, the ink-wells full, The Times and the Financial Times untouched on the table. There was something beautiful in the sheer old-fashioned dullness of the place. On the notice-board above the table were advertisements for 5% Defence Bonds and Premium Savings Bonds, and under a bold sans-serif heading a statement on ‘BANK RAIDS’ which lent the Public Space its one note of possible excitement.
Already he and Geoff had emptied the Night Deposit Safe, and spent a friendly ten minutes checking the contents of the locked leather wallets. As the bank closed at three, most shopkeepers dropped off their takings later, in the swivelling chute of the safe. Counting and entering the paid-in cash and cheques was the first task of the day. Geoff counted money with eye-puzzling speed, the rubber thimble on his right forefinger pulsing over the notes. Paul was lightly distracted by the sense of competition, as well as by Geoff’s sleepy but determined morning presence, hair still damp, aftershave new and sharp. He sighed and started on a batch again. Mrs Marsh had reduced his military bandage to a neat pad at the base of his thumb, but he still felt clumsy and went cautiously. Ten-shilling notes were the dirtiest and most torn, and had sometimes to be set aside. Ten-pound notes he always took more slowly, out of respect. Susie had asked him about his bandage, and the story of last night had come out and given him a first enjoyable taste of being a character, with comical adventures. He heard her say, ‘Did you hear what happened to young Paul?’
There were three positions on the counter – Jack nearest the door from the street, Geoff in the centre, and Paul waiting to be discovered at the far end, closest to the Manager’s office. Geoff was informally keeping an eye on Paul, and Paul even more informally, in fact quite furtively, was keeping an eye on Geoff. It was absurd to have a thing about Geoff, but there he was all day long, on view, in his tight-fitting suit and zip-up ankle-boots with built-up heels hooked over the bar of his stool. Mr Keeping made sardonic allusions to Geoff’s boots, but didn’t actually ban them. Among the girls, too, at their desks and typewriters behind them, Geoff’s looks were a bit of a joke, one of those jokes that of course allowed them to be talked about. Paul felt no such freedom. When they ribbed Geoff about Sandra, the girl he was seeing from the National Provincial, it was Paul who blushed and felt his pulse quicken at the curiosity in the air. He imagined being kissed
His first customer was a farmer paying in cheques and drawing a large cash sum for his men’s wages – Fridays were heavily to do with paying wages and banking the week’s takings, alarming queues building up while he tallied fifty or sixty cheques. Hundreds of pounds could pass through his window at a time. He felt the farmer, George Hethersedge, was treating him as a bit of a fool for never having seen him before. He seemed to suggest he would look back on this moment of ignorance with rueful embarrassment. Paul had a rough sense, as he counted the notes and totted up the cheques on his adding-machine, that the name Hethersedge had implications, a weight and a place in the light and shade of local opinion. Like many of these quick-set local names, it also had a terrifying overdraft attached to it. He saw how strange it was, in normal social terms, for him to know this. This slight social awkwardness seemed to lie at the heart of their professional relations.
Quite hidden by Mr Hethersedge was a little old lady, Miss M. A. Lane, whose hand trembled and who seemed distraught by the business of cashing a cheque for £2. She peeped at Paul through the scrap of coarse veil on the front of her hat. He liked old people, and enjoyed her anxious respect and even slight fear of him as a quick-witted official. Then there was Tommy Hobday, the chemist from next door, who was in and out all the time and knew his name; and then the little shock of contact and novelty began to dull, and his own fear, of error or exposure, subsided slowly into the routine of a very busy day. Inside the front door was a shallow lobby with a further glass door that had a tightly sprung closer – the snap and swallow of the closer announced the incessant unrhythmical coming and going of the customers.
Just before lunch Paul heard a voice in the Public Space, and sensed a small commotion with it – now Miss Cobb had appeared and was speaking in a strange delighted tone like someone at a party: then the voice again, sharply gracious, Mrs Keeping, of course, ‘No, no, no, absolutely,’ pretending not to demand attention, people glancing round. Paul’s customer went, leaving him with a clear view of her, in a pale blue frock with a white handbag and looking quite like someone at a party herself. She had picked up the Financial Times and was scanning the headlines, her hard black eyebrows raised. Paul watched her nervously, from his ambiguous position, both invisible and on show. She looked up over the page, ran her eye abstractedly across the room, but gave no sign at all of seeing him. He let the smile fade from his face as if preoccupied by something else, his heart quickening for a minute in a muddle of protest and shame. When the lobby door opened she turned slightly and nodded. In a moment Paul saw Mrs Jacobs, with her heavy tread and humorous questing look, come into view, peer across at him and then approach, ‘Now then . . .’ dumping her tapestry bag on the counter between them.
‘Good morning, madam,’ Paul said almost humorously, unsure if he should use her name.
‘Good morning,’ said Mrs Jacobs, genial, rummaging, perhaps herself unaware who he was. Out on to the counter came glasses case, head-scarf, twenty Peter Stuyvesants, a paper bag from Hobday’s with the rattle of tablets, an orange paperback upside-down, a novel . . . Paul couldn’t quite see . . . at last a cheque-book. Then the changing of the glasses, the puzzled reach for the pen. She wrote her cheque in a raffish, off-hand way, keeping up a vague air of absurdity, as if money were an amusing mystery to her. Paul smiled patiently back, scanned and stamped the cheque, which was for £25, and asked her how she would like it. It was only then, with a brief stare, that she took in who he was. ‘Oh, you’re you!’ she said, in a jolly tone but none the less placing him, as the funny little man of the night before, whose name she had probably forgotten. Paul smiled as he leant over the cash drawer by his left knee, freed a bundle of clean green oners from its paper wrapper. Rather lovely, it seemed to him, the fine mechanical sameness of the Queen’s face under his counting fingers. He counted them out again for her, at a pace she could follow – ‘There you are, Mrs Jacobs.’
‘And your hand, yes,’ she said, confirming it was him. Paul raised it to show the dressing, and wiggled his fingers to show it was working.
‘Good for you,’ said Mrs Jacobs, finding her purse, and cramming the notes into it – again as if she found money somewhat unmanageable. ‘It’s our young man,’ she murmured to her daughter as she rejoined her; but she herself was now murmuring to Mr Keeping, who had emerged from his office, with his trilby in his hand and his raincoat over his arm, despite the cloudless splendour of the sky as seen through the clear upper halves of the bank windows. Paul supposed they were going to walk him home.
Today he had a late lunch-break, which he preferred – he had the staff-room to himself and read his Angus Wilson over his sandwich without anyone asking questions; and when he got back, it was only an hour to closing time. In the afternoons he felt more confined, on his high stool, swivelling fractionally between the deep cash drawer by his left knee and the wooden bowls of pins, paper-clips and rubber-bands on the counter to the right. Where he’d felt purposeful and efficient in the morning he now felt stiff and disenchanted. The cash drawer boxed him in. His knees were raised, the balls of his feet taut against the metal foot-rest, his thighs spread as he leant forwards; he jiggled his knees for relief from the numbness in his upper thighs and buttocks. The low curved back to the stool nodded forward if it wasn’t leant on; though it turned upwards nicely when he pressed and arched against it. He got a faint tingling, an odd compound of numbness and arousal, in the hidden zone between the legs. Queues formed in front of him, with their shuffle of private faces – vacant, amiable, accusing, resigned – glimpsed only by him, and half the time he had a half-erection, seen by no one, caused by no one, under the counter.
Just before closing he came back to his seat from the chief clerk’s desk, and found that he had no customers – he glanced out, saw Heather cross the Public Space to stand by the door, and sensed already the little shift of perspective that would come about when she locked it shut, and the team were left alone again. Perhaps it was just a new boy’s self-consciousness, but he felt a mood of solidarity settled on the staff when the public had gone. They barely showed it, of course – ‘No, you’re just in time!’ said Heather, with a grudging laugh, and Paul saw a large young man scoot in past her, smiling keenly, though in fact it was 3.28, he was within his rights, and the smile expressed confidence more than apology. He was feeling in his breast pocket, his smile now slightly mischievous as he homed in on Geoff’s position, where a customer was already waiting. Paul had an impression of quirky liveliness and scruffiness, such as you didn’t see much in a town like this, something artistic and a little preoccupied, more like a person from London or it could be Oxford, only fifteen miles away. He could well be an Oxford type, with his pale linen jacket curling at the lapels and his blue knitted tie. A pen had made a red ink stain, not far from his heart. His dark curly hair half-covered his ears, there was something witty and attractive in his expression, though he wasn’t exactly handsome. Paul leant forward and for a few expanded, trance-like seconds watched him gazing at Geoff, over the shoulder of the man in front of him. His head was on one side, with the vacantly calculating frown of impatience, the tip of his tongue on his lower lip; and then, just for a moment, his face stiffened, his eyes widened as if to fill themselves with Geoff, and then narrowed into a slow blink of amused indulgence; and of course Paul knew, and his heart thumped with feelings he couldn’t disentangle, of curiosity, envy and alarm. ‘Can I help you?’ he said, and his own voice sounded loud and almost mocking.
The man looked at him without moving his head, and then with a widening smile, as if he knew he’d been caught out. He came over. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘you’re new!’
‘Yes, I’m the new boy,’ said Paul, pleasantly, and feeling a bit silly.
The man looked at
‘Oh, yes?’ said Paul, wary of being too familiar, but laughing a little.
‘Well, new master, but it’s much the same. Now I’ve got to pay this in for the Colonel.’ He had a paying-in book, the slip all made out, and a cheque for £94: Corley Court School, General Account. Paul saw, in the moment he stamped it, an image of the school, teeming and condensed, wealthy and famous, he was sure, though he had never heard of it.
‘Where is it, actually?’ he said.
‘What, Corley?’ – the man said the word as one might London, perhaps, or Dijon, with cultured certainty and polite surprise. ‘It’s out on the Oxford road, about three miles away. It’s a prep-a-ra-turry school,’ he said, in a Noël Coward voice.
‘The bank is about to close, ladies and gentlemen!’ announced Heather.
‘Look, you’d better give me some money,’ said the man. ‘Don’t they have drinking-up time in here?’
‘Afraid not,’ said Paul, with a nod and a smile, in the way one always conceded a customer might have a point; but with some further concession of this one’s charm. The man looked at him acutely for a moment before getting out his pen; he had one of those thick biros with four different colours, red, green, black and blue. He wrote a cheque for £5, in neat but imaginative writing, having chosen the green ink. His name was P. D. Rowe. Peter Rowe in the signature.