The Line of Beauty

by Alan Hollinghurst

  Catherine gave a brief screech, so that people turned round with varying degrees of humour and irritation. She had a look of running on quite fast inside. She held her trembling glass in front of her face. "These champagne flutes are simply enormous!" she said.

  "I know, they're sort of champagne tubas, aren't they," said Nick.

  Some very loud fireworks started going off in the communal gardens, mortars and thunderclaps. The windows rattled and the bangs echoed off the houses. People shouted cheerfully and flinched, but the Prime Minister didn't flinch, she fortified her voice with a firm diapason as if rising to the challenge of a rowdy Chamber. Around her her courtiers started like pheasants.

  "Actually what amazes me," Nick said, "is the fantastic queenery of the men. The heterosexual queenery."

  "I sort of expect that," said Catherine. "You know, having Gerald . . ."

  "Darling, Gerald's like a navvy in overalls, he's a miner on a picket line compared to some of these people. Look at old, um, the Minister for . . . what is he the Minister for?"

  "I don't know, he's the Monster for something. With the pink face. I've seen him on telly."

  It was one of the men standing directly behind the PM, like a showman, both protecting and exhibiting her. From time to time he cast covetous glances at her hair. His own grey curls were oiled back in deep crinkly waves, over which he passed a hand that barely touched. He was one of the few men who were wearing a white tuxedo, and his posture was a superb denial of a possible gaffe. The jacket had swooping lapels, with cream silk facings; a line of flashing blue dress studs climbed to a lolling, surely purple, velvet bow tie. His wing collar kept his head framed at a haughty angle, and a tight silk cummerbund kept him erect and deepened the dyspeptic flush on his face.

  Catherine said, "I can see no self-respecting homosexual would dress like that."

  "Oh, I wouldn't go that far," said Nick, uncertain which of them was being more ironic. "It's just the licensed vanity . . ."

  "He's the Monster of Vanity, darling!" said Catherine with another whoop.

  He went to the first-floor lavatory and had a quick line there. It seemed a bit unnecessary to go all furtively upstairs. He snorted with a thumb against each nostril in turn, and smirked back at Gerald shaking hands with Ronald Reagan. You never felt the old boy knew who Gerald was—he had that look of medium-level benevolence. From outside the music was thumping, it had been Big Band jazz and now it was earlyish rock 'n' roll, such as Rachel and Gerald might conceivably have danced to twenty-five years ago. Fireworks popped and screeched. Beyond the locked door the collective boom of the party could be heard, with its undertone of secret opportunities: there were two men here that he wanted. The door handle rattled, he tidied, checked, flushed, tweaked his bow tie in the mirror, and sauntered out, hardly seeing the policeman waiting.

  The Duchess had taken his place next to Catherine, so he looked about. The crowded drawing room was his playground. He found himself lounging intently towards the PM's sofa. Toby came away like an actor into the wings, still smiling; he couldn't say what she'd said. Lady Partridge had been hovering, and bent and clasped the Prime Minister's hand. She seemed nearly as speechless as Nick would have been on meeting a revered writer. "I love your work" was really all one could say. But in this case, as Lady Partridge was an old woman, a crinkle of wisdom and maternal pride could be seen beside the childlike awe and submission. Nick couldn't quite hear what she was saying . . . something about the litter problem? . . . and he was pretty sure that she herself couldn't hear the PM—but it didn't matter, they hung on to each other's hands, in an act of homage or even of healing which for Judy was a thrilling novelty and for the PM a deeply familiar routine. They were both fairly sozzled, and might almost have been having an argument as they tugged their hands backwards and forwards and raised their voices. There was something in the PM that seemed to say she'd have preferred an argument, it was what she was best at, and as Judy withdrew, crouching blindly backwards, she picked up her empty whisky glass and banged it against the leg of the Monster of Vanity.

  It was the simplest thing to do—Nick came forward and sat, half-kneeling, on the sofa's edge, like someone proposing in a play. He gazed delightedly at the Prime Minister's face, at her whole head, beaked and crowned, which he saw was a fine if improbable fusion of the Vorticist and the Baroque. She smiled back with a certain animal quickness, a bright blue challenge. There was the soft glare of the flash—twice—three times—a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, "Prime Minister, would you like to dance?"

  "You know, I'd like that very much," said the PM, in her chest tones, the contralto of conviction. Around her the men sniggered and recoiled at an audacity that had been beyond them. Nick heard the whole episode already accruing its commentary, its history, as he went out with her among twitches of surprise, the sudden shifting of the centre of gravity, an effect that none of them could have caused and none could resist. He himself smiled down at an angle, ignoring them all, intimately held in what the PM was saying and the brilliant boldness of his replies. Others followed them down the stone stairs and through the lantern-lit passage, to watch, and to play their subsidiary parts. "One's not often asked to dance," said the PM, "by a don." And Nick saw that Gerald hadn't got it quite right: she moved in her own accelerated element, her own garlanded perspective, she didn't give a damn about squares on the wallpaper or blue front doors—she noticed nothing, and yet she remembered everything.

  There was sparse but hectic activity on the parquet when they stepped on to it, to the thump of "Get Off Of My Cloud." Gerald was bopping with a tight-lipped Jenny Groom whilst Barry pushed Penny round the floor in a lurching embrace. Rachel, sedately jiving with Jonty Stafford, had a look of exhausted good manners. And then Gerald saw the PM, his idol, who had said before that she wouldn't dance, but who now, a couple of whiskies on, was getting down rather sexily with Nick. All Nick's training with Miss Avison came back, available as the twelve-times table, the nimble footwork, the light grasp of the upper arm; though with it there came a deeper liveliness, a sense he could caper all over the floor with the PM breathless in his grip. Anyway, Gerald put a stop to that.

  They were up in Nick's bathroom, the three of them, Wani chewing and sniffing, almost shivering, like someone who is ill. He had a look of wide-eyed gloom, racing and lost. He said he was fine, never better. He concentrated on unfolding the square of Forum magazine, and then scraping the girl's dark pubic mound clear of powder. Nick sat on the edge of the bath, sat in the bath, crossways, with his legs hanging out, and watched Tristao taking a hugely protracted piss.

  "Don't put that away," said Wani, which was one of his little jokes.

  Tristao clucked and said, "He likes that."

  "I know," said Nick.

  "I know where I see you now," Tristao said, putting it away none the less, and flushing the lavatory. He washed his hands and talked into the mirror. "Is Mr Toby birthday party. In the big big house. Long time ago."

  "That's right," said Nick, struggling up and taking off his jacket. Tristao took his tail-coat off too, as though it were agreed what they were going to do. The instinctive certainty made Nick smile.

  "You come lookin for me, in the kitchen. I think you was very pissed."

  "Was I?" said Nick vaguely.

  "Then I feel very bad because I say I meet you later, and I never come."

  "We know why," said Wani.

  "Don't worry," said Nick. "I'm sure I forgot too."

  Tristao put a hand on Nick's shoulder, and Nick understood and got out his wallet and gave him £20. Tristao tilted his face and stuck his long fat tongue into Nick's mouth, kissed him systematically for ten seconds, then pulled out and turned away. Wani hadn't noticed, busy with the hill of coke. Tristao went and peered over his shoulder. "I get in big trouble for this," he said.

  "No trouble," said Wani. "Couldn'
t be safer. House under police guard."

  "Yeah, I mean with my boss. Just a short break, yeah?"

  "See how you like it," said Wani, groping back at the waiter's crotch without looking round.

  "I mean, do you need more money?" said Nick.

  "I've just given him fifty fucking quid," said Wani in a loud drawl.

  Tristao mooched about and looked in the mirror again. He said, "So you no bring your wife with you to the party?"

  "She's not my fucking wife, you slut," said Wani cheerfully.

  Tristao grinned at Nick. "I see you dancin with the big lady tonight," he said. "Jumpin around. I think she likes you."

  Wani's head reared in a single laugh. "I'm going to ask her just what she thinks of Nick the next time I see her."

  "You a good friend of hers then, are you?" said Tristao, and grinned at Nick again.

  "A fucking good friend," said Wani, tapping and peering at his work. "An exceedingly good friend . . . There . . ." He turned and stared. "No, don't you love her? Isn't she just beautiful?"

  Tristao made a little moue. "Yeah, she OK. OK for me, anyway. Lots of parties, lots of money. Lots of tips. Hundred pound. Two hundred pound . . ."

  "God, you slut," said Wani.

  Nick went to the basin and drank two glasses of water. "I need a li-ine," he crooned. They were all wired up now and desperate to go on, with the great, almost numbing reassurance of having packets more stuff. It was beyond pleasure, it was its own motor, pure compulsion, though it gave them the delusion of choice, and of wit in making it.

  Tristao bent to snort his line, and Wani felt his cock and Nick felt his arse. "Is good stuff? So where you get this stuff?" he said, stepping back, escaping for a moment, sniffing sharply.

  "I get it from Ronnie," said Wani. "That's his name. Ah, that's better"— pinching his nostrils. "I love Ronnie. He's my best friend. He's really my only friend."

  "Apart from the Prime Minister," said Nick.

  Tristao had the big first smirk on his face. A dozen decisions were already being made for him. He said, "I thought he's your best friend. Him, Nick. No?"

  "Nick? He's just a slut," said Wani. "He takes my money."

  Nick looked round from the first half of his line. "What he means is he's my employer," he said, with necessary pedantry.

  "Not that he does any fucking work," said Wani.

  "Actually that's one kind of work I do do," said Nick pertly.

  "What—fuckin work?" said Tristao, and laughed like an idiot.

  "Anyway," said Nick, "he's a millionaire, so . . ."

  "I'm a mw/tf-millionaire," said Wani, with a sort of airy scowl. "I want you to do your trick now."

  "What is his trick?" said Nick.

  "You'll see," said Wani.

  "I hope this drugs don't make my dicky go soft," said TTristao.

  "If your dicky go soft I'm having my fucking money back," said Wani.

  Tristao dropped his trousers and pants round his knees and sat on the edge of the little cane-seated chair. His dark heavy dick hung down. He put his hands up inside his shirt, pushed his shirt up over his ribs, and twisted his nipples. "You want to help me?" he said.

  Wani tutted and went to stand behind him, leaned over to watch as he pinched and coaxed the waiter's nipples between forefinger and thumb. Tristao sighed, smiled, and bit his parched lip. He looked down intendy, as if it was always a marvel to him, as his cock stirred, and thickened, twitched its way languorously up across his thigh before floating free with a pink smile of its own as the skin slid back a little. "That's what it's all about," said Wani.

  "Is that it?" said Nick.

  "You like?" said Tristao, whose face seemed to Nick suddenly greedy and strange. Of course his penis was the latent idea of the night, of this strange little scene, an idea trailed and discounted and lifting at the end as a large stupid fact. Nick said,

  "So you've seen this before?"

  "Oh, he always want it," said Tristao.

  Wani was down on his knees, trying clumsily to do justice to the thing he always wanted. His pants were undone, but his own little penis, depressed by the blitz or blizzard of coke, was puckered up, almost in hiding. He was lost, beyond humiliation—it was what you paid for. He sniffed as he licked and sucked, and gleaming mucus, flecked with blood and undissolved powder, trailed out of his famous nose into the waiter's lap. Obviously the waiter never got like this himself, he'd learnt the danger from Wani's example. Now he was chatty, like someone among friends. He nodded down at Wani and said, "That's when I see him first. Mr Toby party. He give me coke and I fuck him in the hass."

  "In the house . . . ? Oh, in the arse, I see." Nick smiled with a funny mixture of coldness and hilarity, a certain respect for mischief, however painful. He watched him pushing his hands through his lover's black curls: which he did in a carefree, patient, familiar way, almost as if Wani wasn't sucking him off, as if he was some beautiful pampered child who'd run in among the adults, hungry for praise and confident of it. Tristao stroked his hair, and grinned and praised him. "He always pay the best."

  "I'm sure!" said Nick, and took a condom out of his pocket.

  "Here we go," said Tristao.

  Downstairs the Prime Minister was leaving. Gerald had danced with her for almost ten minutes. He had the glow of intimacy and lightness of success about him as he saw her to her car, careless of the rain. Late fireworks were still going off, like bombs and rifles, and they glanced upwards. Rachel stood in the doorway, with Penny behind her, whilst Gerald, usurping the secret policeman, leant forward and slammed the car door in a happy involuntary bow. The rain gleamed and needled in the street lamps as the Daimler pulled away with a noise like a brusque sigh.

  THE END OF THE STREET

  (1987)

  13

  NICK WENT OUT to vote early, and took Catherine with him in the car. She had been up since six to catch Gerald on Good Morning Britain. In the long month of the election campaign she had refused to watch TV, but now that Gerald and Rachel had both gone up to Barwick she seemed able to do little else.

  "How was he?" Nick said.

  "He was only on for a minute. He said the Tories had brought down unemployment.''

  "That is a bit rich."

  "It's like Lady Tipper saying the 80s are a marvellous decade for staff."

  "Well, it'll soon be over."

  "What? Oh, the election, yes." Catherine stared out into the drizzle. "The 80s are going on for ever."

  In the long tree-tunnel of Holland Park Avenue it was as if the dawn had been deferred, though it was high summer, and hours after sunrise. It was just the discouraging sort of weather that campaigners dreaded.

  "Gerald's bound to get back in, isn't he?" said Nick. At Kensington Park Gardens no one had been able to put this simple question..

  Catherine seemed to look up from the depths of her gloom at an impossible consolation. "It would be just so wonderful if he didn't."

  At the polling station they gave in their cards and the woman smiled and blushed when she saw the name Fedden and the address. Nick felt she was being unduly confident. In '83 Catherine had fouled her paper, and this time she promised to vote for the Anti-Yuppie Visionary Vegetarian candidate. Nick stood in the plywood booth and turned the thick hexagonal stub of pencil in his fingers. Voting always gave him a heightened sense of irresponsibility. They were in the big classroom of a primary school, with children's drawings and a large and unusual alphabet (N was for Nanny, K for Kiwi-fruit) running round the walls. Today was an unearned holiday. Nick had a moment's glimpse of the hundred little rules and routines of the place, and a mood of truancy came over him. Besides, what happened in the booth was an eternal secret. His pencil twitched above the Labour and Alliance candidates, and then he made his cross very frowningly for the Green man. He knew the Conservative was bound to get back in.

  There were doubts, though, in some quarters, and Labour was thought to have had a very good campaign. Nick himself found their press adverti
sements much wittier than the Tories'. "In Britain the poor have got poorer and the rich have got. . . well, they've got the Conservatives" was one that even Gerald had laughed at. In general, Gerald's view was that campaigning was over-rated at the national level, and irksome, even counterproductive, in the constituencies. "You know, the best thing I could have done on May 11, when the election was called, would have been to push off for a month's holiday somewhere," he said to Catherine. "Quite possibly on safari." He got fed up with Catherine saying it was a "TV election." "I don't know why you go on about it, Puss," he said, looking in the hall mirror before a "photo-opportunity" for the local news. "All elections are TV elections. And a bloody good thing too. It means you don't have to go and talk to the voters yourself. In fact if you do try and talk to them they're bored to death because they've heard it all already on TV." ("Mm, that may be why," said Catherine.)

  He was surprised that he hadn't been asked to appear in more of the major broadcasts and televised press conferences, where the Lady herself had retained a tireless dominance. His personal highlight had been a Question Time on BBC1, where he stood in for the indisposed Home Secretary at the last moment but very much took his own line. He did a lot of smarmy joshing with Robin Day, whom he knew socially, and this irritated the Labour defence spokesman, who was fighting an uphill battle on nuclear disarmament. Nick and Rachel watched it at home. Caught on the TV screen in his own drawing room Gerald looked distinctly alien, fattened and sharpened by the studio lights. He played sulkily with his fountain pen while the other panellists were speaking. His breast-pocket handkerchief billowed upwards like the flame of a torch. He came out in favour of Europe, having as he said a house in France where he spent the summer. He said he believed there were tens of thousands of jobs available if only people would get out and look for them (cries, which he relished, of "Shame"). Lively rudeness and childish antagonism were the point of the programme, and also its limitation. Rachel laughed in fond disparagement once or twice. Gerald's special mixture of laziness and ambition seemed to crystallize under the camera into brutal bumptiousness. A questioner from the floor, who looked like Cecil, the Barwick welly-whanger, accused him of being too rich to care about ordinary people; and while Gerald boomingly deplored the statement you could see it sinking and settling in his flushed features as a kind of acclaim.