The Line of Beauty (41 page)

"I mean how can he bear it?"

"The secrecy, you mean? Or me?"

"Ha, ha."

"Well, the secrecy . . . " Often in life Nick felt he hadn't mastered the arguments, and could hardly present his own case,
let alone someone else's; but on this particular matter he was watertight, if only from the regular need to convince himself.
He checked off the points on his fingers: "He's a millionaire, he's Lebanese, he's the only child, he's engaged to be married,
his father's a psychopath."

"I mean how did it start?" said Catherine, finding these points either too obvious or too involved to take up. "How long's
it been going on? I mean—god, really, Nick!"

"Ooh, about six months."

"Six months!"—and again Nick couldn't tell if this was too long or not long enough. She stared at him. "I'm going to write
that poor long-suffering French girl a letter!"

"You're to do nothing of the kind. A year from now that poor French girl will be blissfully married."

"To a Lebanese poofter with a psychopath for a father . . ."

"No, darling, to a very beautiful and very rich young man, who will make her very happy and give her lots of beautiful rich
children." It was a tiringly ample prospect.

"And what about you?"

"Oh, I'll be all right."

"You're not going to carry on bumshoving him when he's married to the poor little French girl, I hope?"

"Of course not," said Nick, with a glassy smile at the one thing he didn't want to think about. "No—I shall move on!"

Catherine shook her head at him, she had the moral she wanted: "God, men!" she said. Nick laughed uneasily, as an object of
both sympathy and attack.

"But really, swear not to say a word to anybody."

She weighed this up, teasingly, and teasing meant more to her than to Nick. She was on the side of dissidence and sex, but
she was still huffy with her discovery, with having been tricked and not trusted. In the pause that followed they heard the
faint scratch of footsteps on the stairs and then the clip of hard-soled slippers, which Nick knew at once, along the tiled
hallway. He bit his lip, winced, and curled his head forward as if he was praying, to enjoin silence. Wani was coming up to
his room, to change probably, which he did more often than anyone else, as if strictly observing an etiquette the others had
let slide. And for another reason too, so that his reappearance in pressed white linen trousers or bright silk shirt was a
cover and almost an explanation for his new liveliness; as if he sprang back to noiseless applause. He went into his room,
and they could see him hesitate, the shadow on the gleam of the tiles under Nick's door, which wasn't normally closed. Then
he closed his own door, and seconds later the catch jumped and settled. The door catches here had a life of their own, and
kicked and rattled with stored energy, in accusing jumps.

As they sat there, compromised, staring attentively, but not at each other, waiting for Wani to be done, Nick pictured him
having a line, his air of cleverness and superiority, and almost hoped that they would hear him, and that that secret would
come out too. To hear it, like a lovers' rendezvous, a rhythm, a ritual: evidence of the other great affair in Wani's life.
But he was probably in his bathroom. A light aircraft droned and throbbed in the heights, a summer sound, that came and went
on the mind.

When he'd gone downstairs again, Catherine said, "Of course switchers are a nightmare. Everyone knows that."

"I don't suppose everyone knows it," said Nick.

"God, you remember Roger?"

"He was Drip-Dry, wasn't he?" Nick felt annoyed, slighted, but undeniably relieved that Catherine had decided to show him
up with talk about her own boyfriends. "Always something just a
little
bit funny about the sex—as if he wished you had a hairy chest . . . you know. And the feeling that you never had his absolutely
undivided attention."

"I'm not sure one wants that, does one," said Nick, not quite meaning it, but seeing as he said it that it could be a helpful
kind of wisdom, if you shared your lover with a woman as well as a drug.

"They say they love you, but there's more reason than usual to disbelieve them." In fact Wani had never said that, and Nick
had stopped saying it, because of the discomforting silence that followed when he did. "I'm surprised, actually, I wouldn't
have thought he was your type."

"Oh!" said Nick, and gasped at the thought of him.

"I mean, he's not black, really, he's been to university."

Nick smiled disparagingly at this sketch of his tastes. He felt embarrassed—not at sex talk, which was always an enjoyable
surrender, a game of risked and relished blushes, but at the exposure of something more private than sex and weirdly chivalrous.
He said, "I just think he's the most beautiful man I've ever met."

"Darling,"
said Catherine, in a protesting murmur, as if he'd said something very childish and untenable. "You can't really?" Nick looked
at his desk and flinched irritably. "I can sort of see what you mean," Catherine said. "He's like a parody of a good-looking
person, isn't he." She smiled. "Give me your pen": and on the top of Nick's notepad she made a quick drawing, a few curves,
cheekbones, lips, lashes, heavily inked squiggles of hair. "There! No, I must sign it"—and she scrawled "Wonnie by Cath" underneath.
Nick saw how accurate it was, and said, "He doesn't look like that at all."

"Hmm?" said Catherine teasingly, feeling she'd made a point but not knowing where it had got her.

"All I can say is, when he comes into the room—like when he got back late for lunch the other day, when we'd been gossiping
about him, and I was playing along with you, sort of agreeing, actually—when he came in, I just thought, yes, I'm in the right
place, this is enough."

Catherine said, "I think that's awfully dangerous, Nick. Actually I think it's mad."

"Well, you're an artist," said Nick, "surely?" Whenever he'd imagined telling someone this, the story, the idea, had met with
a thrilled concurrence and a sense of revelation. He had never expected to be contested on every point of his own beliefs.
He said, "Well, I'm sorry, that's how I am, you should know that by now."

"You'd fall in love with someone just because they were beautiful, as you call it."

"Not anyone, obviously. That
would
be mad." He resented her way, now she'd gained access to his fantasy, of belittling the view. It was like her attitude to
the room they were sitting in. "It's not something we can argue about, it's a fact of life."

Catherine cast her mind back helpfully. "I mean, no one could have called Denton beautiful, could they?"

"Denny had a beautiful bottom," Nick said primly. "That was what mattered at the time. I wasn't in love with him."

"And what about little thing? Leo? He wasn't beautiful exactly, I wouldn't have thought. You were crazy about him." She looked
at him interestedly to see if she'd gone too far.

Nick said solemnly but feebly, "Well, he was beautiful to me."

"Exactly!" said Catherine. "People are lovely because we love them, not the other way round."

"Hmm."

"Did you hear anything more from him, by the way?"

"No, not since spring of last year," said Nick, and got up to go to the lavatory.

The bathroom window looked out across the forecourt and the lane at the other, unmentioned view, northwards: over rising pastures
towards a white horizon—and beyond that, in the mind's distance, northern France, the Channel, England, London, lying in the
same sunlight, the gate opening from the garden to the gravel walk, and the plane trees, and the groundsmen's compound with
the barrow and the compost heap. It came to Nick in a flash of acute nostalgia, as though he could never visit that scene
of happiness again. He waited a minute longer, in the heightened singleness of someone who has slipped out for a minute from
a class, a meeting, ears still ringing, face still solemn, into another world of quiet corridors, the neutral gleam of the
day. He couldn't unwind the line of beauty for Catherine, because it explained almost everything, and to her it would seem
a trivial delusion, it would seem mad, as she said. He wouldn't be here in this room, in this country, if he hadn't seen Toby
that morning in the college lodge, if Toby hadn't burnt in five seconds onto the eager blank of his mind. How he chased Toby,
the covert pursuit, the unguessed courage, the laughable timidity (it seemed to him now), the inch or two gained by pressure
on Toby's unsuspecting good nature, the sudden furlongs of dreamlike advance when Toby asked him up to town—he could never
tell her that. Her own view was that Toby was a "vacuous lump."

When he went back into the room she had found the
Spartacus
guide, and was looking at it, and then over it at him, with a mocking gape, as if this was the silliest thing of all. "It's
too hysterical," she said.

"Marvellous, isn't it," said Nick, slightly prickly, but glad of the distraction.

"Hang on . . . Paris . . . I'm just looking up Paraquat. I don't
believe
this book." She studied the page, in her illiterate excitable way.

"I shouldn't think there's much there," said Nick, who had already looked it up and imagined with mingled longing and satire
the one disco and the designated park.

"Well, there's a disco, darling. Wed to Sat, 11 to 3. L'An des Roys," she said, in her plonking French accent. "We must go!
How
hilarious."

"I'm glad you find it so amusing."

"We'll suggest it to Ouradi, and see what he says . . . God, there's everything in here."

"Yes, it's very useful," said Nick.

"Cruising areas, my god! Look at this, rue St Front—we went there with the Tippers yesterday. If only they'd known . . . What
does AYOR mean?"

"AYOR? At Your Own Risk."

"Oh . . . right . . .
Right . . .
And it's the whole world!"

"Look up Afghanistan," said Nick, because there was a famous warning about the roughness of Afghan sex. But she carried on
flicking through. Nick disguised his interest, the vague comical rakishness he seemed to admit by having the book, and went
and sat on the bed.

"I'm just looking up Lebanon," she said, after a minute.

"Oh yes . . ." said Nick.

"It sounds marvellous. Mediterranean climate, well we knew that, and it says homosexuality is a delight."

"Really," said Nick.

"It does. 'L'homosexualite est un delit,' " she read, sounding like General de Gaulle.

"Yes,
delit
is a crime, unfortunately."

"Oh, is it?"

"Delight is
delice, delit
is a misdemeanour."

"Well, it's bloody close . . ."

"Well, they often are," said Nick, and felt rather pleased with himself. Catherine was bored with the book. She held Nick's
eye, and said, "So what's he into, old Ouradi?"

"He's into me."

"Well, yes," said Catherine, as if she could see round this.

"OK, he likes to get fucked," said Nick briskly, and got up as if that was really all she was going to get out of him.

"I always thought he must be into some pretty weird sort of gay stuff."

"You didn't even know he was gay till ten minutes ago."

"I knew deep down."

Nick smiled reproachfully. Telling the story for the first time he saw its news value, already wearing off on Catherine, the
quick fade of a shock, and felt the old requirement not to disappoint her. It was their original game of talking about men,
boasting and mocking, and he knew its compulsion, the quickened pulse of rivalry and the risk of trust. There were phrases
about Wani that he'd carried and polished for some occasion like this and he imagined saying them now, and the effect on himself
as much as on her, mere reluctant admission melting into the relief of confession. There was nothing, exactly, to confess.
The secrecy of the past six months was not to be mistaken for the squeeze of guilt. He thought, I won't tell her about the
hotel pom. He sat down again, to mark a wary transition to frankness.

"Well, he's quite into threesomes," he said.

"Mm, not my cup of tea," said Catherine.

"OK, we won't ask you."

She gave a tart smile. "So who do you have threesomes with?"

"Oh, just with strangers. He gets me to pick people up for him. Or we get a rent boy in, you know. A
Strieker.
"

"A what?"

"That's what they call them in Munich."

"I see," said Catherine. "Isn't that a bit risky, if he's so into secrecy?"

"Oh, I think the risk's quite the thing," said Nick. "He likes the danger. And he likes to submit. I don't quite understand
it myself, but he likes having a witness. He likes everything that's the opposite of what he seems."

"It all sounds rather pathetic, somehow," said Catherine.

Nick went on, not knowing if it was evidence for the defence or the prosecution, "He's quite a screamer, actually."

"A screaming queen, you mean?"

"I mean he makes a lot of noise." It would probably be better not to tell her about that morning in Munich. "It was hilarious
one morning in Munich," he said. "He made so much noise in the room, I don't think he noticed, but the chambermaids were all
laughing about us in the corridor outside."

Catherine snuffled. "Russell always liked me to shout a lot," she said.

Again Nick allowed the allusion; he smiled thinly through it, and thought and said with a wince, "He's got this rather awful
thing for porn, actually." "Oh ?"

"I mean, nothing wrong with porn, but you sometimes feel it's the real deep template for his life."

Catherine raised her eyebrows and gave a deep sigh. "Oh dear . . ." she said.

Nick looked away, at the open window, and the closed door. "It just got a bit out of hand, actually, in Germany. You know,
there's endless porn on the hotel TV."

"Oh . . ." said Catherine, to whom porn was a blankly masculine mystery.

"He lay there all evening watching it—straight stuff, of course, which he likes just as much, if not more. One night, I'm
afraid, I had to go off to dinner by myself. He just wouldn't turn it off."