The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst Page A

some other existence. A plan was afoot of which I was the dupe; he had not killed anybody at all … Then I heard another voice, just odd syllables, high—it sounded like a young girl. I heard Arthur say ‘Yeah, well I expect he’ll be back here soon.’ I made a noise and went into the room.
    ‘Will, thank God,’ Arthur said, half rising from the sofa, but encumbered by the heavy breadth of my photograph album, which lay open across his lap and across that of a small boy sitting beside him and leaning over it as if it were a table. It was my nephew Rupert.
    Rupert had had longer than me to work out what to say. Even so, he was clearly unsure of the effect he would have. First of all he wanted it to be a lovely surprise: he stared up at me, mouth slightly open, in a spell of silence, while Arthur, too, looked very uncertain. Again I found myself suddenly responsible for people.
    ‘This is an unexpected pleasure, Roops,’ I said. ‘Have you been showing Arthur the pictures?’ I thought something might be seriously wrong.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, a little shamefaced. ‘I’ve decided to run away.’
    ‘That’s jolly exciting,’ I said, going over to the sofa, and liftingup the photograph album. ‘Have you told Mummy where you’ve gone?’ I held the heavy, embossed leather book in my arms, and looked down at him. Arthur caught my eye, frowned and expelled a little puff of air. ‘Blimy, Will,’ he said confidentially.
    Rupert was then six years old. From his father he had inherited an intense, practical intelligence, and from his mother, my sister, vanity, self-possession, and the pink and gold Beckwith colouring that Ronald Staines had so admired in me. I had always liked Gavin, a busy, abstracted man, whose mind, even at a dinner party, was still absorbed in the details of Romano-British archaeology, which was his passion and career, and who would have had nothing to do with the way his son now appeared, in knickerbockers and an embroidered jerkin, with a Millais-esque lather of curls, as if about to go bowling a hoop in Kensington Gardens. Philippa had a picturesque and romantic attitude to her children (there was also a little girl, Polly, aged three), and Gavin allowed her a free hand, concentrating his affection for them in sudden bursts of generosity, unannounced treats and impulsive outings which disrupted the life of the picture-book nursery at Ladbroke Grove, and were rightly popular.
    ‘I left a note,’ Rupert explained, standing up and beginning to walk around the room. ‘I told Mummy not to worry. I’m sure she’ll see that it’s all for the best.’
    ‘I don’t know, old chap,’ I demurred. ‘I mean, Mummy’s jolly sensible, but it
is
quite late, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she were getting a
bit
worried about you. Did you tell her where you were going?’
    ‘No, of course not. It was a secret. I didn’t even tell Polly. It had to be very very carefully planned.’ He picked up a Harrods carrier-bag. ‘I’ve brought some food,’ he said, tipping out on to the sofa a couple of apples, a pack of six Penguin biscuits and a roughly sawn-off chuck of cold, cooked pork. ‘And I’ve got a map.’ From inside his jerkin he tugged out an
A-Z
, on the shiny cover of which he had written ‘Rupert Croft-Parker’ with a blue biro in heavy round writing.
    I went into the bedroom and rang Philippa. A maid, Spanish by the sound of her, answered the phone; they had a fast turnover of staff, and if I had been Philippa I would have been led by now to ponder why. Almost immediately she came through from another extension.
    ‘Hello, who is this?’
    ‘Philippa, it’s me, I’ve got Roops here.’
    ‘Will, what the hell do you think you’re playing at? Can’t you imagine how worried I’ve been?’
    ‘I thought you would be—that’s really why I’m phoning …’
    ‘Is he all right? What’s been going on?’
    ‘I gather he ran away. Didn’t you see his message?’
    ‘Of course not,