The Line of Beauty

by Alan Hollinghurst

  "The whatnots," Nick made a friendly correction.

  Russell blinked at him. "He's a fruit, is he, Uncle Lionel?" he said.

  "No, no," Catherine said, faltering for a moment at the expression. "Nothing like that."

  Nick's dinner jacket had belonged to his great-uncle Archie; it was double-breasted and wide on the shoulder in a way that was once again fashionable. It had glazed, pointed lapels which reached almost to the armpits, and shiny silk-covered buttons. As he crossed the drawing room he acknowledged himself with a flattered smile in a mirror. He was wearing a wing collar, and something dandyish in him, some memory of the licence and discipline of being in a play, lifted his mood. The only trouble with the jacket, on a long summer night of eating and bopping, was that when it warmed up it gave off, more and more unignorably, a sharp stale smell, the re-awoken ghost of numberless long-ago dinner-dances in Lincolnshire hotels. Nick had dabbed himself all over with "Je Promets" in the hope of delaying and complicating the effect.

  Drinks were being served on the long terrace, and when he came out through the French windows there were two or three small groups already laughing and glowing. You could tell that everyone had been on holiday, and like the roses and begonias they seemed to take and hold the richly filtered evening light. Gerald was talking to a somehow familiar man and his blonde-helmeted wife; Nick knew from his smiles and guffaws that he was being recklessly agreeable. None of his particular friends was here yet, and Toby was still upstairs with Sophie, interminably getting dressed. He took a flute of champagne from a dark-eyed young waiter, and strolled off into the knee-high maze of the parterre. He wondered what the waiter thought of him, and if he was watching him in his solitary meandering over trimmed grass and pea gravel. He had worked as a waiter himself, two Christmases ago, and stood about with a tray in a similar way at two neighbouring hunt balls. It was not impossible that he would do so again. He felt he might look like a person with no friends, and that the waiter might know that he didn't really belong to this looking-glass world. Could he even tell, any more than Lord Kessler could, that he was gay? He felt there had been a flashing hint, in their moment of contact, of some more luxurious understanding, of a longer gaze, full of humour and curiosity, that they might have shared . . . He thought at the second contact, the refill, he would make it all right. The curlicue of the path brought him round to a view of the house again, but the waiter had moved off, and instead he saw Paul Tompkins ambling towards him.

  "My dear!"

  At Oxford Tompkins was widely known as Polly, but Nick said, "Hello, Paul," because the nickname seemed suddenly too intimate or too critical. "How are you?" He realized that in the romantic retrospect of his undergraduate life Paul was a figure he had painted out.

  "I'm extremely well," Paul said meaningly. He was large and round in the middle and seemed to taper away, in his tight evening suit, towards narrow feet and a tall, jowly head. He had been a noise, a recurrent clatter of bitchery and ambition, a kind of monster of the Union and the MCR, throughout Nick's years in college. He had come out just below the top in the Civil Service exams, and had recently started in some promising capacity in Whitehall. He looked pop-eyed already from the tussle between pompous discretion and a natural love of scandal. He raised his glass. "My compliments to wicked old Lionel Kessler. The waiters here are sheer heaven."

  "I know . . ."

  "That one with the champagne is from Madeira, which is rather funny."

  "Oh, really . . . "

  "Well, better than the other way round. Now, however, he lives in Fulham: really awfully close to me."

  "You mean that one there."

  "Tristao." Paul gave Nick a look of concentrated mischief. "Ask me more after our date next week, my dear."

  "Ah." Nick's face was tight with regret for a second, the pinch of his own incompetence. It was a mystery to him that fat old Polly, who was rutted with acne scars and completely lacking in ordinary kindness, had such a conspicuous success with men. In college he had brought off a number of almost impossible seductions, from kitchen boys to the solemnly hetero Captain of Boats. Nothing that lasted, but startling triumphs of will, opportunism and technique, even so. Nick was slightly frightened of him. He walked on a pace or two, round the plinth of a large urn, and looked across the roses at the assembling guests. A famous TV interviewer was exerting his charm over a group of flattered girls. Nick said, "It's rather a distinguished crowd."

  "Mmm." Paul's murmur had a note of scepticism in it as well as a suggestion that here too there were opportunities. He got out, and lit, a cigarette. "That depends very much on your idea of distinction. But aren't the wives marvellous, since the last election? It's as if any doubts they had the first time round have now been completely discounted. The men did something naughty, and got away with it, and not only did they get away with it but they've been asked to do it again, with a huge majority. That's so much the mood in Whitehall—the economy's in ruins, no one's got a job, and they just don't care, it's bliss. And the wives, you see, all look like . . . her—they've all got the blue bows, and the hair."

  "Well, Rachel hasn't," said Nick, who rather doubted that Paul could sum up the mood in Whitehall when he'd only been there five minutes.

  "No, dear, but Rachel's got a lot more class. Jewish class, but still class. And her husband's not called Norman."

  Nick had some further objections to what Paul was saying, but didn't want to seem humourless. "No, or Ken," he said.

  Paul inhaled tolerantly and blew the smoke out in a long sibilant jet. "I must say Gerald is looking quite delicious this evening."

  "Gerald Fedden . . . ?"

  "Absolutely . . ."

  "You're pulling my leg."

  "Now I've shocked you," Paul said unapologetically.

  "Not at all," said Nick, to whom life was a series of shocks, more or less well mastered. "No, I can see he's . . ."

  "Of course now you're living in his house you've probably grown accustomed to his sheer splendour."

  Nick laughed and together they watched the MP as he wound up a story (which was all chortling patter with booming emphases) and the blue-dressed women around him rippled and staggered about slightly on the fine gravel. "I wouldn't deny that he's very charming," Nick said.

  "Aha . . . So who is it at the house, just you and them and the Sleeping Beauty?"

  Nick loved hearing Toby described like that, the praise in the mockery. "I'm afraid the Sleeping Beauty isn't there much any more, you know he's been given his own flat. But there's Catherine, of course."

  "Oh, yes, I love Catherine. I just caught her smoking a joint about a yard long with a very dodgy-looking man. She's quite a girl."

  "She's certainly a very unhappy one," Nick said, swelling for a moment with his portentous secret knowledge of her.

  Paul's eyebrow suggested that this was a wrong note. "Really? Every time I see her she's got a new man. She really should be happy, she must have everything a girl could want."

  "You sound just like her father, I've heard him say exactly the same thing."

  "Ah, there you are!" said Paul. He grinned and stamped out his half-smoked cigarette on the path. "There's Toby now." He nodded towards the door from the drawing room, where Toby was emerging with Sophie on his arm, more like a wedding than a birthday party. "Christ, the jammy bitchl" Paul murmured, in an oddly sincere surrender to the sheer dazzle of the couple.

  "I know, I do hate her."

  "Oh, she's marvellous. She's good-looking, she's as thick as a jug—and of course she's a highly promising actress."

  "Exactly."

  Paul smiled at him, as if at a country cousin. "My dear, don't take it so seriously. Anyway, they're all tarts, these boys, they've all got a price. Get Toby at two in the morning, when he's had a bottle of brandy, and you'll be able to do what you want with him. I promise you."

  This idea was so wildly, almost grimly, exciting to Nick that he could hardly smile. It was clever of old Polly to tamper so in
timately with his feelings. Nick said, "Mm, this is rather a festival of the girlfriend, though, I'm afraid."

  And it was true that as the crowd quickly doubled and trebled on the terrace it took on more and more the air of an efficiently reproductive species. The boys, most of them Nick's Oxford contemporaries, all in their black and white, glanced across at politicians and people on the telly, and caught a glimpse of themselves as high-achieving adults too—they had that canny glint of self-discovery that comes with putting on a disguise. They didn't mingle unnecessarily with the girls. It was almost as if the High Victorian codes of the house, with its smoking room and bachelors' wing, still guided and restrained them. But the girls, in a shimmer of velvet and silk, and brilliantly made-up, like smaller children who had raided their mothers' dressing tables, had new power and authority too. As the sunlight lowered it grew more searching and theatrical, and cast intriguing shadows.

  Paul said, "I should warn you, Wani Ouradi's got engaged."

  "Oh, no," said Nick. It was such a snub, an engagement. "He might have thought about it a bit longer." He could picture a happy alternative future for himself and Wani—who was sweet-natured, very rich, and beautiful as a John the Baptist painted for a boy-loving pope. His father owned the Mira supermarket chain, and whenever Nick went into a Mira Mart for a bottle of milk or a bar of chocolate he had a vague erotic sense of slipping the money into Wani's pocket. He said, "I think he's coming tonight."

  "He is, the old tart, I saw that vulgar motor car of his in the drive." Tart was Paul's word for anyone who had agreed to have sex with him; though as far as Nick was aware, he had never got anywhere with Wani. Wani, like Toby, remained in the far pure reach of fantasy, which grew all the keener and more inventive to meet the challenge of his unavailability. He felt the loss of him as though he had really stood a chance with him, he'd gone so far with him in his mind, as he lay alone in bed. He saw the great heterosexual express pulling out from the platform precisely on time, and all his friends were on it, in the first-class carriage—in the wagons-lits! He clung to what he had, as it gathered speed: that quarter of an hour with Leo by the compost heap, which was his first sharp taste of coupledom. "Are you and I the only homos here?" he said.

  "I doubt it," said Paul, who didn't look keen to become Nick's partner for the night on the strength of that chance connection. "Oh my god, it's the fucking Home Secretary. I must wiggle. How do I look?"

  "Fantastic," said Nick.

  "Oh, I knew it." He knuckled his hair, with its oily fringe, like a vain schoolboy. "Gotta go, girl!" he said, silly but focused, an outrageous new seduction in view. And off he went, eagerly striding and hopping over the little low hedges. Nick saw him reach the group where Gerald was introducing his son to the Home Secretary: it was almost as if there were two guests of honour, each good-humouredly perplexed by the presence of the other. Polly hovered and then pushed in shamelessly; Nick caught his look of unironic excitement as the group closed round him.

  "So what's he like?" said Russell. "Her old man. What's he into?" He glanced at Catherine, across the table, before his eyes drifted back down the room to Gerald, who was smiling at the blonde woman beside him but had the fine glaze of preoccupation of someone about to make a speech. They were in the great hall, at a dozen tables. It was the end of dinner, and there was a mood of noisy expectancy.

  "Wine," said Nick, who was drunk and fluent, but still wary of Russell's encouraging tone. He twirled his glass on the rucked tablecloth. "Wine. His wife . . . um . . ."

  "Power," said Catherine sharply.

  "Power . . ."—Nick nodded it into the list. "Wensleydale cheese he's also very keen on. Oh, and the music of Richard Strauss—that particularly."

  "Right," said Russell. "Yeah, I like a bit of Richard Strauss myself."

  "Oh, I'd always prefer a bit of Wensleydale cheese," said Nick.

  Russell blinked at him in a way that suggested he didn't understand him or was about to punch him in the face. But then he smiled reluctantly. "So he's not into anything kinky at all."

  "Power," said Catherine again. "And making speeches." As the glass tinkled and the hubbub quickly died a lot of people heard her saying, "He loves making speeches."

  Nick pushed his chair back to get a clear view of Gerald, and also of Toby, who had coloured up and was looking round with a tight grin of apprehension. There were ten minutes of oddly relished ordeal ahead of him, being teased and praised by his father and cheered by his drunk friends—his contemporaries. Nick grinned back at him, and wanted to help him, but was powerless, of course. He was blushing himself with the anxiety and forced eagerness of awaiting a speech by a friend.

  Gerald had donned his rarely seen half-moon spectacles, and held a small card at arm's length. "Your Grace, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen," he said, offering the old formula with an ironic negligence which had the clever effect of making you think—yes, the Duchess, of course, and her son were here, as well as Lord Kessler and fat young Lord Shepton, a Martyrs' Club pal of Toby's. "Distinguished guests, family and friends. I'm very happy to see you all here tonight, in this truly splendid setting, and very grateful indeed to Lionel Kessler for giving the Worcester College First XV the run of his world-famous porcelain collection. Well, as the sign in Selfridge's says, or used to say, 'all breakages must be paid for.' " This drew a few titters, though Nick wasn't sure it struck the right tone. "We're honoured by the presence of statesmen, and film stars, and I suspect Tobias is thoroughly flattered that so many members of Her Majesty's government were able to be here. My witty daughter, I understand, has said that it's 'not so much a party as a party conference.'" Uncertain laughter, through which, with good timing: "I only hope I get to play an equally important role when we meet at Blackpool in October." The MPs chuckled amiably at this, though the Home Secretary, who'd taken the epithet of statesman more gravely than the rest, smiled inscrutably at the coffee cup in front of him. Russell said "Good girl!" quite loudly, and clapped a couple of times.

  "Now, as you may have heard," Gerald went on, with a delayed quick glance in their direction, "Toby is twenty-one today. I had been going to give you Dr Johnson's well-known lines on 'long-expected one-and-twenty,' but when I looked them up again last night I found I didn't know them quite as well as I thought, or indeed as well as many of you, I'm sure, do." Here Gerald looked down at the card in a marvellously supercilious way. " 'Lavish of your grandsire's guineas,' says the Great Cham, 'Bid the slaves of thrift farewell. . . When the bonny blade carouses, Pockets full, and spirits high, What are acres? What are houses? Only dirt, or wet and dry.' So: far from suitable advice to the grandson and nephew of great bankers, or for any young person coming of age in our splendid property-owning democracy. And the question of wet versus dry, of course, is one on which indecision is no longer acceptable."

  Through the generous laughter Nick caught Toby's eye again, and held it for two or three long seconds, giving him perhaps a transfusion of reassurance. Toby himself would be too nervous to listen to his father's speech properly, and was laughing in imitation of the others, not at the jokes themselves. It was typical of Gerald not to have realized that Dr Johnson's poem was a ruthless little satire. Nick surveyed the room, and was reminded of a college hall, with Gerald and the more influential guests elected to the high table. Or perhaps of some other institution, such as houses like this had often turned into. Up in the arcade of the gallery one or two servants were listening impassively, waiting only for the next stage of the evening. There was a gigantic electrolier, ten feet high, with upward-curling gilt branches opening into cloudy glass lilies of light. Catherine had refused to sit under it, which was why their whole table had apparently been demoted to this corner of the room. If it did fall, Nick realized, it would crush Wani Ouradi. He began to feel a little anxious about it himself.

  Gerald was now giving a facetious review of Toby's life, and again it made Nick think of a marriage, and the best man's speech, which everyone dreaded, and the huge heterosex
ual probability that a twenty-first would be followed soon enough by a wedding. He could only see the back of Sophie Tipper's head, but he attributed similar thoughts to it, transposed into a bright, successful key. "As a teenager, then," Gerald said, "Tobias a) believed that Enoch Powell was a socialist, b) set fire to a volume of Hobbes, and c) had a large and mysterious overdraft. When it came to Oxford, a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics was the irresistible choice." There was more laughter—and Gerald was leading them along very ably: they were drunkish and amenable, even gullible, since making a speech was a kind of trick. At the same time there was a bond among the young people, who were old enough to know that speeches were allowed, and perhaps even supposed, to be embarrassing, and who were rowdy and superior at once, in the Oxford way. Nick wondered if the women were responding more warmly, if they were picking up, as Polly did, on their host's "splendour"; perhaps their laughter would seem to him a kind of submission. Nick himself was lazily exploring the margin between his affection for Gerald and a humorous suspicion, long resisted, that there might be something rather awful about him. He wished he could see Lord Kessler's reactions.

  "And now, as you know, Tobias has opted," Gerald said, "at least for the moment, for a career in journalism. I'm bound to admit this made me anxious at first, but he assures me he has no interest in becoming a parliamentary sketch writer. There's been puzzling talk of the Guardian, which we hope will blow over, though for the time being I'm thinking hard before answering any of his questions, and have decided to strenuously deny everything."

  Nick glanced round, in a little shrug of amusement, and saw that Tristao, the waiter from Madeira, was standing in the doorway behind him, following the proceedings with a vacant stare. As a caterers' waiter he must have to listen to an abnormal number of speeches, each of them built around private jokes and allusions. What was he thinking? What was he thinking of all of them? His hands were huge and beautiful, the hands of a virtuoso. His dressy trouser-front curved forwards with telling asymmetry. When he saw that Nick was looking his way he gave him the vaguest smile and inclined his head, as if waiting for a murmured order. Nick thought, he doesn't even realize I like him, he thinks I'm just one of these toffs who never look at waiters for their own sake. He shook his head and turned back, and his disappointment was practised and invisible. He saw that Catherine was stuffing things into her bag and flashing irritable looks at Russell, who mouthed, "What?" at her, and was getting irritable in his turn. "So, Toby," Gerald said, raising his voice and slowing his words, "we congratulate you, we bless you, we love you: happy birthday! Will you—all—please raise your glasses: to Toby!"