The Line of Beauty (33 page)

Nick had inculcated his parents with Gerald's form
the Lady,
but was embarrassed to hear them use it in front of him. He seemed to take it as a tribute, however, both to her and to himself.
"What, four hours a night?" he said, with an admiring chuckle. "Yes, but the PM's a phenomenon—
terrifying
energy!
I'm a mere mortal, I need my beauty sleep, I'm not ashamed to say."

"She looks beautiful without any sleep, then," said Dot piously, and Don nodded his agreement, too shy, as yet, to ask the
question that burned in them both: what was she like?

Gerald, knowing they wanted to ask that, showed he hadn't lost sight of the original question. "But you're right, of course."
He took them into his confidence. "The paperwork can be quite overwhelming at times. I'm lucky in that I'm a fast reader.
And I've got a memory like an ostrich. I can gut the
Telegraph
in ten minutes and the
Mail
in four—you just get a knack for it."

"Ah," said Dot, and nodded slowly. "And how is your daughter?" She was being attentive and courteous, and Nick saw that she
would run through things that troubled her, and hope to get a better answer out of Gerald than she could out of him. "I know
you've been worried about her, haven't you?"

"Oh, she's fine," said Gerald breezily; and then seeing some use in the idea of being worried, "She's had her ups and downs,
hasn't she, Nick—the old Puss? It's not easy being her. But you know, this thing called librium that she's on has been an
absolute godsend. Sort of wonder drug . . ."

"Mm . . . lithium," said Nick.

"Oh yes . . . ?" said Dot, looking uneasily from one to the other.

"She's just a much happier young pussycat. I think we've turned the corner."

Nick said, "She's doing some great work now, at St Martin's."

"Yes, she's doing marvellous collages and things," said Gerald.

"Ah, modern art, no doubt," said Don, with a dreary ironic look at Nick.

"Don't pretend to be a philistine, Dad," said Nick, and saw him unable to separate the praise from the reproach; the French
pronunciation of
philistine
didn't help.

"It seems to work for her, anyway," said Gerald, who liked the therapeutic excuse for Catherine's large abstract efforts.
"And she's got a super boyfriend, that we're all very happy about. Because we haven't always had good luck on that front."

"Oh . . . " said Dot, and looked down at her drink as if to say that neither, indeed, had they.

"Mm, we're jolly proud of her, in fact," said Gerald grandly, so that he seemed slightly ashamed. "And we're all going to
be together in France this year, which Rachel and I are delighted about. First time for some years. And Nick too, as you know,
will be joining us . . . at least for a bit . . . long overdue . . ." and Gerald guzzled the rest of his gin-and-tonic.

"Oh," said Dot, "you didn't say, dear."

"Oh, yes," said Nick. "Well, I'm going with Wani Ouradi, you know, who I'm working with on this magazine—we're going to Italy
and Germany to look at things for that, and then we hope to drop in at . . . the manoir, for a few days on the way back."

"That'll be a wonderful experience for you, old boy," Don said. And Nick thought, really the poor old things, they do as well
as they can; but for a minute he almost blamed them for not knowing he was going to Europe with Wani, and for making him tell
them a plan so heavy with hidden meaning. It wasn't their fault that they didn't know—Nick couldn't tell them things, and
so everything he said and did took on the nature of a surprise, big or little but somehow never wholly benign, since they
were aftershocks of the original surprise, that he was, as his mother said, a whatsit.

"Because you normally have Nick to look after the house for you, don't you," she said. "When you're away." She clung to this
fact, as a proof of his trustworthiness to important others, who apparently didn't care about his being a whatsit one way
or the other.

"Poor old Nick, he has got rather landed with that in the past. This year we'll have our housekeeper and her daughter move
in, and they can do a massive clean-up of the house without us getting under their feet. It makes a bit of a holiday for them."
Gerald gestured liberally with his empty glass.

"That sounds like the sort of holiday I'm used to!" said Dot, who longed for the spoiling of a hotel, but was subjected to
her sister-in-law's cottage at Holkham each September.

Don brought Gerald a refill, and had a tiny one himself; they tended not to go at quite that pace. He said, "He's a good chap,
is he, this Ouradi?"

"You haven't met him . . . no . . . Oh, he's a charmer, absolutely. My son Tobias and he were great friends at Oxford—well,
you all were, weren't you, Nick."

"I didn't get to know him well until a bit later," Nick said carefully, remembering the bathroom of the Flintshires' Mayfair
house, the way the coke numbed their lips as they kissed. It gave him a tingle now, the thought of the other world that was
waiting for him.

"Someone in his position can't help but do well," said Don.

"I have the feeling . . . " said Gerald, with a condescending twinkle. "I know high hopes are riding on him. The father's
quite a character, of course."

"He's the supermarket chappie, isn't he."

"Bertrand? Oh,
a. great
man!" said Gerald, who used the word very freely, as if hoping it might stick as easily to himself. "I mean, an outstanding
businessman, obviously . . . Awfully sad, I didn't know till the other day, but you know, they lost their first son."

"Oh, really . . ."

"Yup, he was knocked down by a lorry in the street, in Beirut of course. The child and his nanny or whatever they call them
were both killed. Bertrand Ouradi was telling me about it only the other day."

Nick had to pretend he already knew7 this, and nodded sombrely to confirm it to his parents, who murmured in sympathy but
seemed not to care much, as if a death in Beirut were only to be expected. "Yes, it was an awful thing," Nick said. It was
a total surprise. His first thought was that his smug reckonings of intimacy with Wani looked very foolish. It was the family
mystery, hardly glimpsed, far stronger and darker than their little sexual conspiracy. And Wani was carrying that burden .
. . He seemed instantly more touching, more glamorous and more forgivable.

"His fiancee looks a sweet little thing," said Dot. "I've seen her at the hairdresser's."

"Really . . ."

"In the
Tatler,
I mean!"

"Ah, yes . . ."

"Of course Nick was in the
Tatler,
after that marvellous party of yours. We dined out on that for months." This was one of his mother's favourite boasts, and
strictly a figure of speech, since they only dined out about three times a year. "Who's the other one we see? That great big
fat one, that Nick knows?—Lord Shepton: he's always in."

"What about this little runaround of Nick's?" said Don, with anxious enthusiasm.

"Mm, she's a lively little thing," said Gerald.

"Did you say he'd
given
the car to you, dear, I didn't quite understand . . ."

"I told you, Mum," Nick said, "it's like a company car. I can drive it while I'm working for him."

"He must think very highly of you," Dot said doubtfully. "Well, it's all another world, isn't it?" No one quite assented to
this, and after a moment she went on, "And how's your son?"

"Oh, he's in great shape. Set up his own little company now, we'll see how he gets on."

"We used to see his name in the paper a lot!" said Don, as if Toby's back-half paragraphs on share prospects had been the
highlight of their days.

"Mm, I think that was a bit of a wrong turning. He's an outdoor sort of chap, you know, far too confined by office life .
. . Well, it only lasted five minutes; and good on him for giving it a go."

"Oh, absolutely . . ."

"It was a bit more than that," said Nick.

"Mm? Nick's probably right," said Gerald. "What was it, six months on the
Guardian,
where I don't think he felt at
all
at home, and then a year or so on the
Telegraph,
on the City desk . . . yah."

"Some of Nick's university friends seem to have made their fortunes already," said Dot. "Who was it, dear, you said had bought
a castle or something?"

"Oh . . . " said Nick, regretting having bragged about this. "Yes, one of them has. It's quite a small castle . . . ! But
he's in reinsurance, you know."

"Ah," said Dot. Nick hoped she wouldn't ask him what reinsurance was. "They go so fast these days, don't they!" she said,
as if Gerald might be equally breathless at the thought.

"Lord Exmouth's son's doing jolly well," said Don.

"Ah yes," said Gerald. "One of our local blue-bloods!" He had suddenly become a Barwick man at the mention of the indigenous
aristocracy.

"That's right," said Don. "Well, I look after the clocks at Monksbury, so I've seen young Lord David on and off since he was
a little boy."

"Really . . . ?" Gerald gave him a narrow look over the rim of his glass. "You don't go to the Noseleys, I suppose?"

"Not since the old lady died," said Don. "I did a lot of work out there, ooh, ten years ago now I suppose. Of course they
had death-watch beetle at Noseley Abbey. They had a devil of a job getting rid of the little tinkers!"

Nick got up to pass round a dish of stuffed olives and made small waiterly noises to distract his father from saying what
he knew was coming next. "Thanks so much," said Gerald.

"No, it's a pleasure doing things at these great houses," Don said. "Even if they're not very quick at settling their accounts."
He looked round fondly. "We've got so many of them round here. Nick's tired of hearing this, but I've got two earls, one viscount,
one baron and two baronets on my books!"

"Quite a tally," said Gerald. "We'll have to see if we can find you a duke."

"Of course, the fabulous thing," said Nick, in a rush of shame, "is the quality of the furniture in all these houses. Things
that have been there for centuries."

"Quite so . . ." Gerald nodded, as if he took that point very seriously himself. He raised and lowered his eyebrows, in perplexity
at his empty glass.

Don said, "Nick tells me you have some lovely pieces at your London house."

"Oh . . ."

"A fair bit of French work, I believe?"

"Quite
a bit of French work, yes," said Gerald, who didn't have a clue where most of it came from.

"And some lovely paintings too."

Gerald gave them a look of thoughtful beneficence, just coloured with impatience, even a kind of disdain—or so it seemed to
Nick, who felt for both parties, as though he were witnessing an argument with himself. "You know you really should come and
see us, shouldn't they, Nick?—or come even when we're away. Come when we're in France and make yourselves at home. Have the
run of the place. You could have a look at all our stuff, while you're about it, and tell us what's what."

"Well, that's immensely kind," said Don, smiling at the seduction of the idea.

"Oh, I don't think we could," said Dot, whose fear of liberties in general included even those that might be allowed to herself.
"I mean, it's awfully nice of you, of course . . ." She looked crushed by the offer, and bit her cheek as she peered at Don.
Nick thought his mother sometimes obtuse and narrow-minded, he deplored her sillinesses, and at the same time he was so attuned
to her moods, to the currents of implication between a mother and an only child, that he could trace the lines of her anxiety
without effort. To come to Kensington Park Gardens, to stay in the house and rootle hesitantly around in it, would satisfy
a curiosity; but it would also give unforgettable shape and detail to the world in which Nick lived, with its tolerance and
its expenditure, its wine cellars and its housekeepers who hardly spoke English, and the Home Secretary ringing up just like
that, which Nick said sometimes happened. It would be a flood of knowledge, and in general, as she said, she would rather
not know anything more.

"Give it some thought, anyway," said Gerald; and Nick knew, as his parents murmured and glowed, that it would never be mentioned
again.

He drove into the Market Square and slowed down as they approached
CLOCKS
D. N. GUEST
ANTIQUES
: "There's our shop!"—he raised
an arm, as if showing him the Doge's Palace or some other great thing he was about to visit.

"Absolutely!" said Gerald. Nick could only glance at it, but it had a presence for him, like a surprise he had prepared for
someone else who could never feel it as keenly as he did himself. That side of the square was in shadow now, though the sun
still glared on the other side, on the white stucco front of the Crown Hotel. A cloudless sky above the roofs, the shops all
shut, emptiness of a country town on a high summer evening; not quite empty, as weekenders strolled before dinner, peering
into the locked shops, with a look of hoping to get the best from the place, and some lads, or "louts," roamed about under
the arches of the market hall. The market hall was the jewel of the town, a cage of glass and stone on a high arcade, still
locally claimed, against all the evidence, as a work of Sir Christopher Wren. It had been the pride of Nick's childhood, he
had done a project about it at school with measured plans and elevations, at the age of twelve it had ranked with the Taj
Mahal and the Parliament Building in Ottawa in his private architectural heaven. The moment of accepting that it was not by
Wren had been as bleak and exciting as puberty. Now he revved round it, the lads looked up, and he savoured the triumph of
coming home in a throaty little runaround. It was as though the achievements of sex and equities and titles and drugs blew
out in a long scarf behind him. No, it was real superiority, it was almost lonely, a world of pleasures and privileges these
boys couldn't imagine, and thus beyond their envy. He pulled up in front of the Crown and Gerald sprang out, pushing a hand
through his hair, torn between his sporty show-off self and a hint of compromised dignity, even of some worse anomaly in being
seen in such a car with a young gay man. Penny was waiting, with her blush and her tight smile, her obedient strictness, and
he went gratefully towards her. "Have fun!" said Nick, and roared off half round the square again, thinking just how much
he would like to do so himself.