The Line of Beauty (22 page)

"So what do you do?" said Leslie.

"I've got my own film-production company," Wani said.

"Oh . . ." said Leslie, crushed and intrigued at once. And then, in a rather roundabout response, "Did you see
A Room with a View?
I wonder what you thought of that, if you're in the film world."

"I didn't, I'm afraid," said Wani, with another tiny but chilling smile.

"Didn't I see you in the Volunteer last week?" Leslie said after a bit—at which Wani looked quite blank, but the question
was aimed at the dark-eyed man, who all this time had been lying back on his elbow, with one knee raised and his tackle slumped
unignorably towards them. It was difficult to tell if his vague smile was a reaction to their conversation, or even if he
was looking at them. His eyes seemed to work on some scene of imminent gratification, unfolding on a screen that hung between
himself and the afternoon. There was something confidently patient about him, no lecherous effort or rush. But when he was
spoken to it was as if they'd already been talking, and there was an understanding between them. Nick gazed at him, feeling
he allowed and absorbed gazes, and at the glinting water beyond, with a twinge of sadness that when they stopped talking they
would have to leave the little sun-struck oblong of the raft and swim back to the solid world. Wani was looking at the man
again too, but also at the waiting ladder of the jetty, with the flicker of someone calculating his escape.

When they were getting dried and dressed in the compound Wani nodded and said, "There's our friend Ricky again." Nick looked
over his shoulder and saw the sexy man emerging round the fence of the nudist yard and pulling carelessly at the draw-string
of his trunks.

"Oh, yes. I didn't know he was called Pdcky," Nick said.

"Well, he looks like a Ricky," said Wani, while getting out of his trunks sitting down and wrapped in a towel.

"Have you got an erection or something?" said Nick.

"Don't be puerile," Wani said. He gave Nick a look that was part challenge and part broody supplication. "Why don't you ask
him if he'd like to come home with us?"

"What, 'Ricky'?"

"Isn't that what goes on at this sort of place? I didn't imagine we'd come here for the exercise."

Nick sniggered. "You don't have to go mad," he said, "the first time I take you out."

Wani coloured a little but he held his gaze. "It could be a lot of fun," he said. "I should have thought. He's very common."

Nick glanced round again at Ricky, who was loitering amiably by the path to the toilets, and loitered too of course in his
memory, as unexplored potential. At the same time he felt a little clutch of warning. Wani didn't know what he might be getting
them into, and nor did Nick. When he looked back Wani was standing up in his underpants and tugging on his jeans. "I'm sure
it could be," Nick said drily. At which Wani, with a twitch of his eyebrows and a sour compression of his lips, seemed to
shrug the thing off. He took his watch from his pocket and put it on.

"If you don't ask him soon," he said, "we won't have time. I'm sorry, I thought you liked him."

"Yes, he's hot," said Nick, and found he was describing himself, in his unexpected anxiety. He hated to see Wani's beautiful
mouth curl like that, and to feel his disdain, so amusing and exciting when applied to others, fall on him. He wanted only
love, and today perhaps a kind of obedience, from Wani, who knew that the local tactics of argument and persuasion confused
and upset him. "All right, I'll go and get him," he said, pretending that for him as well to ask was naturally to get, and
knowing that he could never allow Wani to ask him himself.

"I mean I know he's not one of your nig-nogs."

"Oh, fuck off," Nick said, and marched away, in his jeans, but still shirtless, towards the toilet. He felt the disadvantage
of the clothed among the naked; and the floor of the lavatory, when he entered it, was unpleasantly wet under his bare feet.

The door of one of the two cubicles was shut, and at the raised tin trough of the urinal the man was standing, his big sleek
back and arse to the room, but turning his head, in his odd expressionless way, to see who had come in. And that look, and
the smell of the place, piss and disinfectant, the atmosphere of permission, the rules all changed by keen but furtive consent,
gripped Nick and melted him. He went over and stood beside the man and a few seconds later the spray from the excited fizz
of the flush was coldly tickling the tips of their two erections. Nick slid his foreskin slowly backwards and forwards and
gazed at the other man's blunt-headed shaft. Then he looked into his eyes, and it was like when they had chatted on the raft,
totally expected, the reason they were here, as commonplace as it was deep. He seemed to swim in that dark gaze, with little
flickers of conjecture. The man tilted his head towards the open cubicle, so that Nick wondered if he could do that, quickly
or partially, before "getting" him, or trying to get him, to come home with them, but there was the snap of the bolt, the
other door opened halfway and little Andy, the Malaysian handful, slipped out, and crossed the room to wash his hands. In
the mirror Nick saw the mischief in his eyes fade into blankness. Then as if by magic the flush sounded, the door opened wide,
and a grey-haired man, who was not his friend Leslie and not his rough-voiced admirer either, emerged and made off with a
preoccupied look.

Now they were alone, and Nick felt there was something almost romantic in their patience, and in the man's delayed grab at
his penis, and his own half embrace of the man's waist, his hand between his buttocks. The man was breathing in his face and
Nick muttered, "Wait. . . wait . . . what's your name?"

"Ricky," said the man, and tried to kiss him again.

Nick giggled as he pulled back his head. "I just wondered if you wanted to come home with me and my friend? You know, have
a bit of fun . . ."

" Well . . . " Ricky clearly thought it was a lot of bother when he had him here already. "How far is it?"

"Only . . . Kensington!"

"Kensington? Fuck—I don't know, mate." And he pressed against Nick with another impatient nod at the waiting lockup. Nick
hugged him clumsily, and grunted at how much he would like to have him right here; but it would be a scandal with Wani waiting
round the corner. He said,

"We've got a fantastic car."

"Yeah?" said Ricky. "Which is he, anyway, your friend? Sort of dark curly hair?" He gently pinched and twisted Nick's nipple,
and Nick gasped as he said,

"You saw him . . ."

Ricky pondered and nodded and let Nick free himself. They took a moment to make themselves decent. "He's a bit stuck-up, is
he, that one? Butter wouldn't melt in his arse?"

"I wouldn't say that . . . He's a bit shy," said Nick.

"We'll see about that, then," said Pdcky.

As they went out Nick said, "Can you do us a favour?"

"I bloody well hope so."

Nick winced. "Can you pretend you're married—or at least you've got a girlfriend . . ."

Ricky shrugged and shook his head. "I have got a girlfriend."

"Have you?" Nick stopped for a second with his chin tucked in, while Ricky stared at him and then winked.

"Quick on the uptake, aren't I?"

Nick tutted and blushed. "I must say you're fucking quick," he said, almost in Ricky's voice.

Outside on the path Wani hurried ahead with the preoccupied look of a famous person, while Nick and Ricky followed behind.
Ricky clearly never hurried, he was his own lazy happening. He kept his eyes on the pretty back view of Wani, which made Nick
proud and also apprehensive. He wondered just what they were going to do, and couldn't distinguish the nerves that are a part
of excitement from a kind of resentment. Wani's nerves showed in his cool dissociating manner. They went along beside the
wide grass bank, and one of the sunbathing men called out something to Ricky, who gave him a nod and a dirty smile back—Nick
smiled too, as if he knew what was going on.

In the lane above, Wani, who was playing with the car keys, flipping the leather fob about, said, "You can drive, Nick," and
threw them over to him. It was typical of Wani to dress up a command as a treat. Nick had often been the passenger in WHO
6, but he had only driven it once before, by himself, a short hop from the river back to Kensington that became a whole glittering
evening of darting about, the Brompton Road, Queen's Gate, along by the Park, round and round, and with the curious feeling
(with the roof down and the coldish air blustering in) of passing for Wani, of being WHO, that glamorous enigma. All of which
rather withered as he slid back into the driving seat. The car was parked in close to the rustic fence, under the lime trees,
and their sticky exudations had already stippled the windscreen. He held down the button to retract the roof and watched in
the mirror as it lifted and folded away behind him and sunlight through the leaves fell in glancingly on the dials and knobs
and amber walnut. The other two stood waiting for him to pull out, but not talking. Then Wani gestured Ricky into the back,
where he sat with his knees wide apart, since there was very little legroom. "You all right there?" said Nick, looking over
at the squashed contour of his packet and feeling oddly apologetic about both the splendour and the inconvenience of the car.

"I'm all right," said Ricky, as if he was driven about like this every day.

They started on the steep hill towards Highgate and Nick was amazed all over again by the power leaping up under the ball
of his foot. They seemed to wolf up the lane, in four thoughtless growls. He caught Ricky's eye in the mirror and said, "So
what time's your girlfriend getting back?"

Ricky said, "She won't be back till really late, actually," more clearly than when he told the truth, and then added, "She's
gone round to see her Uncle Nigel," with a tolerant cluck. This bit of business acted visibly on Wani, who cleared his throat
and half-turned in his seat to say,

"That's good." The absurdity of the situation, something quite uncomfortable, tied a sudden knot in Nick, and at the top of
the lane, instead of turning right down the hill towards town he turned the other way and climbed again towards Highgate village.
He probably didn't need to explain, since as far as Wani was concerned they could have been in Lincolnshire, and Ricky would
sit there with his half-smile of anticipation wherever they went, but he said,

"There's something I want to have a quick look at." At the top he made an abrupt left into the long shady row that he knew
must be The Grove. He was fairly sure he'd never been here before, it was something he'd imagined doing, a piece of research,
historical, emotional. . . but as he peered through the line of trees at the beautiful old brick houses behind high railings,
the house where Coleridge had lived and died, and then, as they crept along, bigger Georgian houses with flights of steps
and carriage yards, he had the ghostly impression that he had been here, had been brought here on some unlocatable evening
for some irrecoverable event. "This is where Coleridge lived," he said, with a glow of piety intended to stir Wani too, and
then protracted to defy his evident lack of interest.

"OK," said Wani.

"I just want to see where the Feddens used to live. Some old friends of mine," he explained to Ricky. "I know it was number
thirty-eight . . ."

"This is sixteen," said Wani.

It was one of the Feddens' sentimental routines to refer to their "Highgate days," and Gerald would evoke the house where
they had first lived in a tone of nostalgia and self-ridicule, as if remembering student digs. Rachel usually said it was
"a darling house," it was where she had raised her children, and a snapshot of Toby and Catherine, aged ten and eight, sitting
on the front steps, remained in a silver frame on her dressing table. To Nick the place had an obscure proxy romance, as the
first home of his second family. When they got to it there was a skip outside piled high with splintered timber, and a blue
Portaloo in the front garden.

"Hm," said Wani. "OK . . . " And he turned and gave Ricky an encouraging glance, in case he was getting bored. "Not much left."

The house was having a restoration so thorough it looked like demolition. The roof was like another house, made of scaffolding
and sheeting. Most of the stucco had been hacked from the walls, and you could see the buried arcs of brick over each window.
Through the front door you saw the garden at the back. On the surviving white-stucco pier by the side gate there was a painted
black finger and the words TRADESMEN'S ENTPJVNCE; underneath which, in red spray-paint, a wit had written CUNTS EN-TPJVNCE,
with an arrow pointing the other way.

"So much for that," said Wani. A workman in overalls and a blue helmet came out through the aperture of the front door and
stared at them like a janitor, trying to decide if they mattered. They were one of a thousand carloads of easy wealth that
roared and fluttered round London, knocking things down and flinging things up. They might be due for deference or contempt,
or for the sour mixture of the two aroused by young money. Nick nodded affably at the man as he pulled away. Mixed in with
his unease, and the rueful lesson of the skip and the scaffolding, was a feeling that the builder knew just what they would
be getting up to half an hour from now.

Though half an hour later they were creeping down Park Lane. The decisive plunge from the heights had slowed and stalled in
the inexhaustible confusion of traffic and roadworks and construction. The wolfish bites had turned into thwarted snaps, the
squeals of half a dozen near-collisions. Shuddering lorries squeezed them and dared them and flushed their reeking fumes through
the coverless car, as four lanes funnelled into one outside the Hilton Hotel. Wani had whisked Nick up one night to the top-floor
bar of the Hilton, perhaps not fully aware of its glassy vulgarity—it was a place his father liked to take guests to, and
there was something touchingly studied in the paying for the cocktails and the lordly gaze out over the parks and the palace
and the fur and diamonds of the London night. And now here they were, trapped, motionless, half asphyxiated on the roadway
outside. Since Nick was driving he felt guilty and clumsy, as if it were his fault, as well as angry and slightly nauseous.
Wani's face tightened and his lips were pursed with blame. Even Ricky was letting out puffing sighs. Wani reached over and
put a hand on Packy's thigh and Nick kept an eye on them in the mirror. He tried to make normal conversation, but Ricky had
no views on any current topic, and was marvellously incurious about his new friends. He'd given up his job at a warehouse
in favour of doing nothing, and now obviously he couldn't find a job even if he wanted to, with three and a quarter million
out of work: he smiled at that. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, and he never read books. "Perhaps we'll put you in a film,"
said Wani archly, and Ricky said, "All right." He seemed to have forgotten he had a girlfriend, until Nick asked another question
about her. At last they rushed out into Hyde Park Corner, and jostled their way round into Knightsbridge. Wani said, "What's
your girlfriend's name?"