The Line of Beauty

by Alan Hollinghurst

  "Penny!" said Nick. He dawdled for a moment with a shrug and a helpful half smile. Catherine was already in the lift, narrow-eyed, breathing audibly. Nick, feeling like a silly ass and then also feeling the loose smugness of having discovered something without knowing what it was, grinned, and said considerately, "How are you?"

  Penny had stopped and turned round, with a look both peevish and frightened. She went very white; and then a rich hot pink started up in her round cheeks and spread (in the three or four seconds while Catherine stamped and said, "Nick, come on!") into her neck and throat and ears. "Um, Nick," she said, in bossy defiance of her blush, "actually, I shouldn't, um . . .

  Nick, confused, reluctant to be rude, but enjoying Penny's blush, in itself and for not being one of his own, had a foot in the lift, and blocked the thrust of the door with his arm—it kept stolidly reasserting itself. "How's

  Gerald?" he said.

  "Nick, come on!" Catherine said again.

  He stood back into the lift and Penny, shaking her head and stepping forward, said, "He's not here, Nick, he's not here —" as the doors closed.

  "Well. . . !" said Nick. He glanced at Catherine, then at the mirror wall, where they seemed to stand like self-conscious strangers. Even in a stuffy old mansion block like this a slanting FUCK had been scratched on the brushed-steel door. He thought of Badger flirting relentlessly with Penny, years ago now, when Gerald had first taken her on. It was that awful, rivalrous straight thing, taking the girl not only from Nick, who didn't care, but from his best friend, who clearly would. He found himself smirking, looked in the mirror, and said, "God, darling, Badger's going to be furious. We're obviously not supposed to know." But the lift stopped and Catherine slipped out past him with a mocking frown, as if surely she couldn't have anyone so dim or so chicken as a friend.

  He followed her along a red-carpeted hallway past brown-varnished doors with bells and nameplates; on one side brown-and-yellow leaded windows gave on to inner light wells, lit now only by the dim back windows of other flats. A telly could be heard from one flat, but otherwise sound was dampened as by the gravest discretion. The subliminal sense of gaslight, of stepping back through time into the depths of this monstrous building, was oppressive but also, for Nick at least, beguiling: his mind ran away for a moment along the panelled dado, the swan's-neck curves of the light fittings. The last door on the left was slightly ajar, waiting perhaps for Penny's return. Catherine pinged the bell, and they stood looking at the card in the brass frame that said "D. S. Brogan Esq." A deeply familiar voice shouted, "It's open," and Catherine stared into Nick's face with a gleam of vindication before she put her arm through his. It was much worse than Nick had thought. He didn't want to go in, and would have run away fast if he hadn't been tightly held there. There was a loud sigh, a soft thump of footsteps, and Gerald plucked open the door. He wasn't wearing shoes or a jacket and tie, and his front stud was undone, so that the white collar stood up skew-whiff. In his left hand he held a cigarette. Nick said, "Oh, hello, Gerald!" and Catherine, gleaming with indignation, said, "Dad! You said you'd given up!"

  17

  (i)

  It didn't take the photographers long to work out about the communal gardens, though they were stretched to cover all four gates. They put up their stepladders and looked over the railings and peripheral shrubbery through binoculars or through their telephoto lenses, dreaming of shots. The falling leaves were in their favour. It was news, but it was also a matter of patience. They talked confidently on mobile phones. They were rivals who'd met so often they were friends, sharing their indifference to their victims in companionable Thermos caps of tea. They toasted them sardonically in milk and sugar. Then the house gate would open and Toby, perhaps, would come out, who for a while had worked with these guys and now was dodging them, making towards one exit and then switching and jogging to another—the photographen went swearing and clattering round the long way; one or two jumped in cars. Soon Geoffrey Titchfield was making hourly patrols of the gardens, after several of the buzzards, as he called them, had simply used their ladders to climb in. "You are not keyholders," he said. "I must ask you to leave immediately." Sir Geoffrey was deeply vexed by the whole episode. The exposure of his idol, terribly shocking to him, was brought home, like the threat of a larger disorder, by these incursions on the gardens.

  At the front of the house the shutters or curtains stayed closed, so that indoors the day had the colour of an appalling hangover or other failure to get up. Electric light combined with diffused sunlight in a sickly glare. All the papers came as usual, in their long, arhythmical collapse onto the doormat, where they lay like a menace and were approached at last with long-armed reluctance. And there they were, the Millionaire MP, his Elegant Wife, his Blonde, or his Blushing Blonde Secretary. "Troubled daughter speaks of minister's affair." It seemed she'd spoken to Russell, and Russell had spoken to an old friend at the Mirror; after that there was no holding it. Oddly enough, in all the pictures "heartbroken Cathy" was smiling with sublime conviction. That was the first day.

  On the second day, Gerald, resenting the demeaning scurry through the gardens, where he looked such a fool to the other keyholders, walking their dogs and knocking up on the tennis courts, put on his widest-brimmed fedora and a dark, double-breasted overcoat, and came out of the front door into the film set of the street. Parked vans, spotlights, shoulder-hefted TV cameras, fluffy boom mikes, the ruck of reporters—everything took on life and purpose with his emergence. The freshly whitened house-front reflected the flashbulbs. Gerald seemed as usual to draw strength from their attention. He was the star of this movie, whatever he did. Nick, looking out from behind an upstairs curtain, saw him step on to the pavement and heard him say loudly, "Thank you, gentlemen, I have nothing to say," in a cordial, plummy tone. The Press were in front of him in a half ellipse, of which his hat formed the centre. They called him Sir and Gerald and Mr Fedden and Minister. "Are you leaving your wife?" "This way, Gerald!" "Mr Fedden, are you guilty of insider dealing?" "Where's your daughter?" "Will you be resigning, Minister?" Nick saw how they enjoyed their deadpan mockery, their brief but decisive wielding of power. He found it frightening. He wondered how he himself would ever square up to that. Gerald moved slowly, with heavy patience, sturdy in the interest of his case and confident of knowing the right form, however humiliating the content, towards the Range Rover; which at last he got into, and drove off, almost running down photographers, to the House of Commons, to hand in his resignation.

  Nick let the curtain drop, and made his way carefully around the twin guest beds and on to the brighter landing. Rachel was just coming out of her bedroom. "Sorry about this absurd gloom!" she said. "I find I have the greatest reluctance to have my photograph taken." There was a briskness in her tone that warned off any touch of sympathy.

  "I understand."

  She was wearing a red-and-black wool suit, a necklace, four or five rings, and would certainly have looked good in a photograph. Nick glanced past her into the shadowy white room. There was the first door, into a small anteroom with the bathroom opening off it, and then the second door, which had always sealed the couple away in a grandeur of privacy. Nick saw the end of the bed, a round table with silver-framed pictures of the children. He had hardly ever been in there, since his first summer, when he had walked around noiselessly, with his hands behind his back, an intruder in the temple of marital love; his own love fantasies had taken envious possession of it, like squatters, in the married couple's absence.

  "Mm, strange times," said Rachel, again as if talking to someone barely known, and instinctively disapproved of, whom a crisis had thrust her together with: Nick felt for the tender irony which always lined their little phrases, but he wasn't sure he found it. Perhaps she knew that he had known all along about Gerald and Penny, and her dryness was a form of bitter embarrassment.

  He said, "I know . . ." He was painfully sorry for her, but didn't see how to say so; it was a strange inhibition. In a way
it was the moment for a new intimacy, and he hoped to bring her round to it. He glimpsed something beautiful for both of them emerging from the wreckage of the marriage: their old alliance, running rings of secret mockery round Gerald's pompous head, would flourish and be a strength to her. He hesitated, but he was ready.

  She looked at him, her lips firming and relenting; then she turned away.

  She went unnoticing past Norman Kent's portrait of Catherine, though to Nick it played its part in the unfolding moment. "I wish you would go and get Catherine," she said, as she started downstairs.

  "Oh . . . " said Nick, following behind, with a nervous laugh that he regretted.

  "She ought to be here with her family," Rachel said, not turning round. "She needs care. I can't tell you how worried I am about her with that man."

  "Of course you are," said Nick promptly, "of course you are," feeling he needed a new tone to console a woman twice his age. He felt he learned as he spoke, and saw how all her worries found an outlet in this one worry. He said, "I'm sure she's safe with him, but if you want me to, I'll go over there, gladly," pressing and then faltering behind her in anxious support and respect. The truth was he was frightened of the reporters and photographers: he didn't know how to deal with them, or with anyone who didn't show support and respect. And he was very wary of Russell, who seemed to have brought about his longed-for exposure of Gerald almost by chance, and now was "looking after Cath" in his Brixton flat, and declining to let anyone see her.

  Rachel reached the first-floor landing. "I mean, I can't go over there; I'd have the whole press pack at my heels." It was as if she was in danger even coming down to this level. The world outside her door had revealed itself as not only alien but hostile. And her world within doors had abruptly been robbed of comfort. She turned and her face was stiff apart from her moving lips; Nick thought she might be going to cry, and in a way he hoped she would, because it would be a natural thing to do, as well as a sign of trust—he could hold her, which he'd never done before. He saw the quick sensual crush of his chin against the shoulder of her wool suit, her grey-streaked hair across his mouth; she would clutch him, with a shudder of acceptance and release, and after a while he would lead her into the drawing room, where they would sit down and decide what to do about Gerald.

  "No, you mustn't . . ." he said. "Obviously."

  He watched her blink rapidly and choose a different sort of release: "I mean, since you're so good at winkling people out!"

  Nick didn't counter this gibe, the first he'd ever had from her. He said, "Oh . . . " almost modestly, looking away at the carpet, the legs of the Sheraton table, the polished threshold of the drawing room. He felt very low, and Rachel went on,

  "You know, we do rather count on you to keep an eye on Catherine."

  He tried to think when he'd heard the tone before. It was one of her adorable, unexpectedly funny little moments of exasperated candour about some party official, some simpleton at Conference. "Well," he said, "I have tried . . . as I hope you know." Rachel didn't endorse this. "But, you know, she is an adult, she leads her own life . . . !" He gave the soft laugh of sensible conviction, which was all it had ever taken to win Rachel's agreement.

  "Well, you say that!" she said, with a quite different kind of laugh, a single hard gasp.

  Nick leant back on the mahogany banister, and felt his way into the new conditions. He said, very measuredly, "I think I always have been as good a friend to her as she would allow me to be. As you know, friends come and go with her—and they all disappoint her. So I suppose I must have been doing something right if she still trusts me."

  "No, I'm sure she's devoted to you," said Rachel, "we all are," in a sharp but conditional tone, as though it didn't much matter. "It's really the question of your doing what's best for her, I mean, not simply . . . conspiring with her in whatever she wants you to do. She has a very serious illness."

  "Yes, of course," Nick murmured, while his face grew fixed at the rebuke. Rachel was waiting, as if taking the pulse of her feelings; he peeped at her, saw her blink again and draw breath but then only give out a sharp resentful sigh. Nick said, "I left her with Gerald . . . the other night. That should have been safe enough."

  "Ah, safe," she said, "yes. She should never have been there in the first place."

  "I promise you, I didn't know where she was taking me . . ."

  "She wasn't taking you anywhere. You were taking her, if you remember, in your horrible little car."

  "Oh . . . !"

  "I'm sorry," she said, and Nick wasn't sure if she was instantly retracting or grimly confirming her remark. His impulse was to forgive her, he frowned tenderly, the reflex of a boy who couldn't bear to be in the wrong. "You know the state she was in. Who knows what's happening to her now, if she hasn't got her librium with her."

  "Mm . . . her lithium . . ."

  "There's just rather a question of responsibility, you know? I mean, we'd always supposed you understood your responsibilities to her—and to us, of course."

  "Oh, well, yes . . . !" He flashed a smile at the sting of this.

  "We'd imagined you'd tell us if, for instance, anything went seriously wrong." Her steady tone, her emphasizing twitches, were new to Nick; they seemed to signal a change in their relations that wouldn't easily be reversed. He was used to her easy assents, her oddly contented demurrals . . . "We didn't know until last night, for instance, about this very serious episode four years ago."

  "What do you mean?" said Nick, shaking his head. The "we" was fairly unnerving, the apparent solidarity with Gerald.

  "I think you know very well what I mean." She peered at him, with an effect of complex distaste; which extended in a reluctance to put it in words. "We had no idea she'd tried to . . . harm herself while we were away."

  "I don't know what you've been told. She didn't harm herself, anyway. She asked me to stay with her—which I did—and she was fine, you know, she'd just had one of her bad moments."

  "You didn't tell us about it," said Rachel, pale with anger.

  "Please, Rachel! She didn't want to upset you, she didn't want to spoil your holiday." The half-forgotten alibis came back, and the squeezing sensation of being out of his depth. "I stayed with her, I talked her through it." It was a bleat of a boast.

  "Yes, she said you were wonderful," said Rachel. "Apparently, she quite raved about you to Gerald the other night." Nick looked at the floor, and at the rhythm of the black-and-gilt S-shaped balusters. Then beyond them, and below, he heard the scratch of the front door being unlocked, a voice from the street saying, "Over here, love!" and the jump of the knocker as the door slammed shut again.

  Rachel stood where she was, in her own house and her indignation, and Nick edged away from her, still reluctantly holding the thread of her accusation, and went down a few steps to look over the banister. But it wasn't Catherine. It was Eileen, Gerald's "old" secretary. She gazed up into the stairwell. She was wearing a dark overcoat and holding a black handbag. She looked like someone who'd come for a smart party on the wrong night. Nick thought she must have wanted to look good for the press. "Hello, Eileen," he said.

  "I thought I'd better come in and see to things."

  "Good idea," said Nick.

  "I've said I'll keep an eye on things."

  "Well, that's marvellous." Nick smiled with the real but finite politeness of someone who's been interrupted; he put a clinching warmth into it. The joke in the family had always been that Eileen had a crush on Gerald, who kept up an unseemly mockery of her efficiency and forethought. She was part of Nick's earliest idea of the house, in that first magic summer of possession which Rachel was now turning over like a stone. She'd been keeping an eye on things then. She came forward and put her hand on the tight bottom curl of the stair rail.

  "I've brought the Standard," she said. She'd been gripping it in her other hand, almost behind her, shielding them from it. "I don't know that you'll like it very much." She came up a few steps and Nick came down
, with a vague sense of receiving a summons, and took it from her. He felt he should be specially diligent, and take the brunt of it on Rachel's behalf. He stood capably, with one foot on the stair above, and shook the paper flat. He saw the picture of himself, and thought, I'll come back to that in a second, and looked at the headline, which didn't make sense, and looked at the picture again and the one beside it of Wani. There was hardly any room for the article itself. The words and the pictures crowded out any sense of what they might mean. He felt oddly sorry for Bertrand: "Peer's Playboy Son Has AIDS". That was the subheading. "Gay Sex Link to Minister's House." Hard to get all that in. Didn't flow very well. Nick had a strange subliminal sensation that the banister wasn't there, and that the hall floor had hurtled up to meet him, like fainting but remaining fully conscious. He could tell it was very bad news. Then he realized where it had come from, and started to read the article, with a feeling like a thump in the sternum.

  (ii)

  "Bloody hell, Nick . . . !" said Toby next morning.

  Nick chewed his cheek. "I know . . ."

  "I had absolutely no idea about this. None of us did." He pushed his copy of Today away from him, across the dining-room table, and fell back in his chair.

  "Well, the Cat did, obviously. She twigged when we were all in France last year." He used the family nickname with a sense that his licence to do so had probably expired.

  Toby gave him a wounded look which seemed to search and find him back at the manoir, under the awning, or by the pool, where they'd got drunk alone together that long hot afternoon. "You could have told me, you know, you could have trusted me." Toby had told his own secrets that day, his problems with intimacy—he'd entered into Nick's realm of examined feelings, it had been a triumph of intimacy in itself for him. "I mean, two of my best mates, you know? I feel such a blasted idiot."