The Line of Beauty (43 page)

"Oh, well that was Gerald's idea, you bet. But of course Uncle Lionel won't have the Other Woman there."

"Right . . ."

"It's rather funny," said Catherine coldly. "He's had this dream of getting her there. It's almost what's kept him going.
And it's the one thing which simply can't happen."

"I don't quite see why Lionel . . ."

"Oh, it's all the vandalism she's done to everything. Anyway, that's why he's having this rewiring done, so that no one can
get in the house."

Nick laughed protestingly, because he knew Catherine's neat deep readings of the family narrative, but she said, "Oh, god,
yes—why do you think he gave them that painting."

"I don't know. You mean, to make up for it," said Nick, considering the idea, which did make sense of his earlier rough impression,
that Gerald hadn't liked being given the Gauguin. Perhaps he saw it as the confirmation of a mysterious snub.

"God, that Miss Moneypenny's a pain," said Catherine, for whom the lens of the drawing-room window seemed to focus a world
of irritants.

Penny was now taking some impromptu dictation from Gerald, while clutching her briefcase between her knees. "I suppose she
must be madly in love with him, mustn't she?"

"Oh, in the noblest, purest way," said Nick.

"She'd have to be, darling, to type all that tripe."

"Some people just live for their work. Norman's an obsessive worker, as we know all too well, and she's got it from him. They're
happiest when they're hard at it."

Catherine snorted. "God, the idea . . ."

"Mm . . . ?"

"Well—Gerald and Penny hard at it."

"Oh . . . " Nick tutted and coloured.

"Now I've shocked you," Catherine said.

"Hardly," said Nick.

"Actually, she's got herself a boyfriend, you know."

"Really?" murmured Nick, with a dart of treacherous sympathy for Gerald, the doomed older man. "Have you met him?"

"No, but she told me all about him."

"Ah, I see . . ."

Geoffrey Titchfield moved off, and as Gerald called some friendly command to him he looked back and gave a half-serious salute.
Penny and Gerald were left alone. It was a moment when Nick saw they might do something incautious—kiss, or touch in a light
but revealing way that would give Catherine's scurrilous joke the chill of reality. It was another of the secrets of the house
that he kept, like a sleepy conscience. Gerald looked up as he talked, from floor to floor, and Nick waved to show him they
were being watched.

In the hours before the party the atmosphere thickened uncomfortably. The caterers had taken over the kitchen, and made faces
behind Elena's back as she went stubbornly about her business; loud squawks and whines came out of the marquee in the garden,
where the sound system was being tested; in the dining room the chairs were clustered knee to knee, waiting for orders. Gerald's
manner became bright and fixed, and he mocked others for their nervousness. Catherine said she couldn't bear the sight of
a cardboard box in a room, and went out to "look at properties" with Jasper. Even Rachel, who delegated with aristocratic
confidence, was biting her cheek as Gerald described to her where the Lady would sit, whom she would talk to, and how much
she would have to drink. He almost let it seem that the climax of the evening would be when he danced with the Prime Minister.
Rachel said, "But you and I will lead off the dancing, won't we, Gerald," so that he said to her, from a rapidly covered distance,
"But my love of course we will!" and gave her a blushing hug, and stumbled her through a few unexpected steps.

About six Nick slipped out for a walk. The evening was gloomy and damp. Wet leaves smeared the pavement. He was infected with
the house nerves about the PM, wondering what to say to her, and already imagining tomorrow morning, when the party was over,
and the enjoyable phase of remembering it and analysing it could begin. The shrieks and bangs of fireworks sounded from the
neighbourhood gardens. Sometimes a rocket streaked up over the housetops and shed its stars into the low-hanging cloud. Duffel-coated
children were hurried through the murk. Nick's route was an improvised zigzag, an intention glimpsed and disowned; no one
watching him could have guessed it, and when he turned the corner and trotted down the steps into the station Gents he wore
a frown as if the whole thing was a surprise and a nuisance even to himself.

Walking briskly back down Kensington Park Road he was frowning again, at having done something so vulgar and unsafe—it was
suddenly late, the waiting and wondering and then the intent speechless action swallowed up time; his lateness accused him
. . . Nothing "unsafe" in the new sense, of course; but reckless and illegal. It would have made a bad start to the evening
to be caught. Simon at the office had said "Rudi" Nureyev used to cruise that particular lav, long ago no doubt, but the prospect
of some starry pas de deux seemed to Nick to haunt and redeem the place, every time he went in. Now he was sour and practical,
the warmth of a secret naughtiness faded in the November air. He went quickly upstairs, his haste was his apology, and the
house had a brilliant quietness to it, a genuine brilliance, planned and paid for and brought to the point.

When he came down there was still a bit of time before the guests arrived. He went out into the dance tent and circled the
creaky square of parquet, where suspended burners made pools of heat in the empty chill. The tent was a dreamlike extension
to the house-plan. He came back in, across the improvised bridge, through the garlanded and lanterned back passage, and wandered
from room to room, among the lights and candles and smell of lilies, with a sense almost of being in church, or at least of
the memory of a ceremony. In the hall mirror he was lustre and shadow in his new evening suit and shiny shoes. He greeted
Rachel and Catherine in the drawing room, and they chatted as if they were all guests, happily denatured, transformed by silk
and velvet, jewels and makeup, into drawing-room creatures. The bangs of fireworks made them skittish. From downstairs came
repeated stifled explosions of champagne corks, as the waiters got ready. "Shall I get us a drink?" said Nick.

"Yes, do. And you might find my husband," said Rachel.

He looked into the dining room, crowded like a restaurant with separate tables, where Toby was standing with a card in his
hand. He was silently rehearsing his speech. "Keep it short, darling," Nick said.

"Nick . . . Fuck . . . !" said Toby, with a worried grin. "You know it's one thing making a speech to your aunts and uncles
and, you know, your mates, but it's quite another making a speech to the fucking Prime Minister."

"Don't panic," said Nick. "We'll all shout, 'Hear, hear!'"

Toby laughed gloomily. "You don't suppose she might have to go to a summit or something at the last moment?"

"This is the summit, I'm afraid. It certainly is for your papa." Nick edged between the tables, each place with its mitred
napkin and black-inked card. No titles, of course. He leant on the chair-to-be of Sharon Flintshire. "I love these pictures
of the happy couple."

"I know," said Toby. "The Cat's done a bit of art."

Catherine had propped up on the sideboard a thing like a school project, where blown-up photographs of Gerald and Rachel before
they were married flanked a formal wedding photo, with later family pics below. It looked rather like the placards of the
cast outside a long-running West End farce.

"Your mother was so beautiful," Nick said.

"I know. And Dad."

"They're so young."

"Yeah, Dad's not that keen on it actually. He doesn't want the Lady seeing him in his hippy phase." To judge from the photos
Gerald's hippy phase had reached its counter-cultural extreme in a pair of mutton-chop whiskers and a floral tie.

"I can't work out how old they were."

"Well, Dad'll be fifty next year, so he was . . . twenty-four; and Ma's a couple of years older, of course."

"They're our age," said Nick.

"They didn't waste any time," said Toby with a sad little smile.

"They certainly didn't waste any time having you, dear," Nick said, making the amusing calculation. "You must have been conceived
on the honeymoon."

"I think I was," said Toby, both proud and embarrassed. "Somewhere in South Africa. Ma was a virgin when she was married,
I know that, and three weeks later she was pregnant. No playing around there."

"No, indeed," said Nick, thinking of the years his parents had taken to have him, and with an inward smile at his own freedoms.

Toby looked at his speech again, and bit his lip. Nick watched him affectionately: unbuttoned jacket over crimson cummerbund,
heavy black shoes, hair cut short so that he looked fatter-faced, like an embarrassed approximation of his father, but his
father as he was now, not when he was twenty-four. On a slow impulse Nick said, "I may have just what you need. If you'd like
a little, er, chemical help."

"Have you . . . ?" said Toby, startled but interested.

And Nick murmured to him that he'd managed to get hold of a bit of charlie.

"God, amazing, thanks a lot!" said Toby, and then smiled round guiltily.

They sent a waiter to the drawing room with champagne, and went on up, with a little flutter about "rehearsing." For Nick
the flutter was that of sharing the secret. They went into Toby's old bedroom, and locked the door. "The place is crawling
with fuzz," Toby said.

"So what are you going to say in your speech?" said Nick, tipping out some powder on the bedside table. The room had a special
mood of desertion, not the mute patience of a spare bedroom but the stillness of a place a boy has grown up in and abandoned,
with everything settling into silence just as it was. There was a chest of drawers in mahogany and a gilt-framed mirror, very
nice pieces, and Toby's school and team photos, a young unguarded class sense to everything; and the wardrobe of clothes Nick
had once daringly dressed up in, which had lost their meaning, even to him.

"I thought I might make a joke about the Conference," said Toby. "You know, the Next Move Forward, and Mum and Dad going on
for ever, like the Lady."

"Mm." Nick frowned over the busy credit card. "I think the thing is, darling, you should make the speech just as if the Lady
wasn't there. And everything you say should be about . . . your father and your mother. It's their day, not hers, and not
just Gerald's."

"Oh," said Toby.

"You might even make it more about Rachel."

"Right. . . God, I wish you'd write it." Toby slouched anxiously about the room. From downstairs the doorbell was heard and
the first guests arriving. "I mean, what can you say about the old girl?"

"You could say what a lot she's had to put up with in Gerald," said Nick, with a dark sense of her not knowing the half of
it. "Actually, don't say that," he added prudently; "just keep it short." He pictured Toby standing and speaking, his anxiety
grinning through to a crowd that would be warmed with drink into roughness as well as affection. "Remember, everyone loves
you," he said, to help him overlook the various monsters who were coming.

Toby stooped and sniffed up his line and stood back; Nick waited and watched for the amorous dissolve, not knowing quite what
colour it would take in him. "Haven't done this for yonks," Toby said, half protest, half apology. Then, "Mm, that's very
nice . . ." And a minute later, in beaming surrender, "This is great stuff, Nick, I must say. Where the hell did you get it?"

Nick snorted briskly and wiped the table with the flat of his finger. "Oh, I got it off Ouradi, actually."

"Right," said Toby. "Yah, Ouradi always gets great stuff."

"You used to do it with him in the old days."

"I know, we did once or twice. I didn't know you ever did it, though." Toby pranced towards him, and it was all Nick could
do not to kiss him and feel for his dick, as he would have done with Wani himself. Instead he said, "Here, why don't you take
the rest of this." It was about a third of a gram.

"God, no, I couldn't," said Toby, with the gleam of possession at once in his face.

"Yeah, go on," said Nick. "I've had enough, but you might need some more." He held out the tiny billet-doux, which as always
with Ronnie was made from a page of a girlie mag; a magnified nipple covered it like a seal. Toby took it and put it, after
a moment's thought, deep in his breast pocket. "God, that's fantastic!" he said. "Yah, I think tonight'll be all right, you
know, I'm just going to keep it short," and he went prattling on in the simple high spirits of a first hit of cocaine. On
the way downstairs he said, "Of course, darling, tell me if you want some more—I won't use all this."

"I'll be fine," said Nick.

They sashayed into the drawing room, where Lady Partridge was asking a man from the Treasury about muggers, and Badger Brogan
was flirting gingerly with Greta Timms, pregnant with her seventh child. Nick circled through the room, smiling and almost
immune to the anxiety he noticed in others, the booming joviality, the glancing inattentiveness, the sense of a lack that
was waiting to be filled by the famous arrival. He looked round for a drink. The coke trickle in his throat made him doubly
thirsty. Two waiters came in with laden trays, which made him laugh: they were just the answer to a double thirst. He chose,
on grounds of beauty, the dark, full-lipped one, "Thanks—oh, hello," Nick said, over his raised glass, knowing the waiter
before he knew who he was—just for a second, while everything was shining and suspended, their eyes engaged, the bubbles sailing
upwards in a dozen tall glasses. "I remember you," he said then, rather drily, as if he were a waiter who had memorably dropped
something.

"Oh . . . good evenin," the waiter said, pleasantly, so that Nick felt forgiven; and then, "Where do I see you before?"—so
that he guessed he was in fact forgotten.

There was a commotion at the window, and Geoffrey Titchfield said, "Ah, the Prime Minister's car has arrived," like an old
flunkey, steeped in the grandeur of his masters. He moved towards the door, too exalted by his own words to share in the fuss
that they had triggered. Guests glanced into each other's faces for reassurance, one or two seemed already to give up, and
withdrew into corners, and among the men there was some thinly amiable jostling. Nick followed through onto the landing, with
the sense that the PM was beyond discretion, she'd be piqued if there wasn't a throng, a popular demonstration. He was pressed
against the banister at the first turn of the stair, smiling down like an eye-catching unnamed attendant in a history painting.
The door was standing open and the damp chill from outside gave an edge to the excitement. The women shivered with happy discomfort.
The night was the fractious element they had triumphed against. The Mordant Analyst scurried in, almost tripped, amid laughs
and tuts. Gerald was already in the street, in humble alignment with the Special Branch boys. Rachel stood just inside, haloed
by the drizzly light and the diaphanous silver sheath of her dress. The well-known voice was heard, there was a funny intent
silence of a second or two, and then there she was.