After dinner they sat in the drawing-room, beneath a haze of fine writing. It was the summer of 1913, and all the integuments of their particular literary tomb were in place: the references to Lytton Strachey’s Landmarks in French Literature; the snatches from popular songs of the day; the hints of impending conflict. Nothing in the way of establishing detail had been omitted.
Leaning over discreetly to observe George’s nice young aristocratic friend, the lordly toss and thrust of whose pole her brother had so admired when he first saw him punting on the Cam, she saw, to her immense satisfaction, that Cecil was staring back at her.
‘I say, Daffers old girl,’ he murmured. ‘These jolly old social gatherings give me the blinking pip. But I’ve written you a bally verse or two. See what you think.’
With trembling hands, she arranged the scrap of paper on her lap.
The book left out beneath the trees
Is whipt by an ancestral breeze
Here wends another minstrel strummer
To hymn that prelapsarian summer
Stands the church clock at ten to four?
Yea, we have passed this way before.
More eager hands to work the bellows
Of a fire last lit by Julian Fellowes . . .
‘Oh, Cecil,’ she whispered moistly, ‘it’s too, too divine.’
Upstairs in the guest bedroom, parlour-maid and pantry-boy exchanged glances over the stained and reeking sheets.
‘What them two young gentlemen have been up to, I hardly care to think,’ Veronica declared. ‘Nocturnal missions ain’t the half of it.’
‘That Mr Cecil pinched my cheek and told me I were a lovely lad,’ Jonah admitted.
‘Nay, that malarkey ain’t for the likes of us,’ Veronica chided him. ‘Comic relief. That’s what we’re here for. That and the unobtrusive illustration of the social inequalities of a bygone age.’
As Cecil dived deep into the hidden pool, lost and secret amid the dappled woods, George watched the polished alabaster of his torso merge into the water’s green occlusion. Then, as his friend rose, all naked and marmoreal, to the bank, he said:
‘Isn’t this the moment for me to take you back to the house, get out my, er, membrum virile and shag you senseless over the back of a Louis XVI escritoire?’
‘Actually, no. Apparently we’re going for the Downton Abbey market this time, so discreet fumbling in the hammock is all you’re allowed.’
‘But Cess, Mr Hollinghurst is famous for his depictions of uninhibited gay sex.’
‘I know, but he’s fifty-seven now, and one has to calm down sometime. Besides, I think he wants the critics to acclaim his fully fledged maturity.’
‘Not even surreptitious oral congress in a private box at L’après-midi d’un faune? I’ve got a handkerchief.’
‘No! Look ducky, you’re becoming as overwrought as Mr Hollinghurst’s style. Never mind, we can still have impossibly artificial conversations about art and literature. That’s before I die, of course, and get turned into Rupert Brooke, while Daphne marries my brother.’ The water dripped like melted butter from his snow-white thighs, his arms sunburnt and sinewy, calves darkly hairy . . . [continues]. ‘Now, shall we go and listen to Traviata?’
‘Oh, Cess . . . let’s!’