The Line of Beauty (45 page)

The Duchess had taken his place next to Catherine, so he looked about. The crowded drawing room was his playground. He found
himself lounging intently towards the PM's sofa. Toby came away like an actor into the wings, still smiling; he couldn't say
what she'd said. Lady Partridge had been hovering, and bent and clasped the Prime Minister's hand. She seemed nearly as speechless
as Nick would have been on meeting a revered writer. "I love your work" was really all one could say. But in this case, as
Lady Partridge was an old woman, a crinkle of wisdom and maternal pride could be seen beside the childlike awe and submission.
Nick couldn't quite hear what she was saying . . . something about the litter problem? . . . and he was pretty sure that she
herself couldn't hear the PM—but it didn't matter, they hung on to each other's hands, in an act of homage or even of healing
which for Judy was a thrilling novelty and for the PM a deeply familiar routine. They were both fairly sozzled, and might
almost have been having an argument as they tugged their hands backwards and forwards and raised their voices. There was something
in the PM that seemed to say she'd have preferred an argument, it was what she was best at, and as Judy withdrew, crouching
blindly backwards, she picked up her empty whisky glass and banged it against the leg of the Monster of Vanity.

It was the simplest thing to do—Nick came forward and sat, half-kneeling, on the sofa's edge, like someone proposing in a
play. He gazed delightedly at the Prime Minister's face, at her whole head, beaked and crowned, which he saw was a fine if
improbable fusion of the Vorticist and the Baroque. She smiled back with a certain animal quickness, a bright blue challenge.
There was the soft glare of the flash—twice—three times—a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot
of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, "Prime Minister, would you like
to dance?"

"You know, I'd like that
very much,"
said the PM, in her chest tones, the contralto of conviction. Around her the men sniggered and recoiled at an audacity that
had been beyond them. Nick heard the whole episode already accruing its commentary, its history, as he went out with her among
twitches of surprise, the sudden shifting of the centre of gravity, an effect that none of them could have caused and none
could resist. He himself smiled down at an angle, ignoring them all, intimately held in what the PM was saying and the brilliant
boldness of his replies. Others followed them down the stone stairs and through the lantern-lit passage, to watch, and to
play their subsidiary parts. "One's not often asked to dance," said the PM, "by a don." And Nick saw that Gerald hadn't got
it quite right: she moved in her own accelerated element, her own garlanded perspective, she didn't give a damn about squares
on the wallpaper or blue front doors—she noticed nothing, and yet she remembered everything.

There was sparse but hectic activity on the parquet when they stepped on to it, to the thump of "Get Off Of My Cloud." Gerald
was bopping with a tight-lipped Jenny Groom whilst Barry pushed Penny round the floor in a lurching embrace. Rachel, sedately
jiving with Jonty Stafford, had a look of exhausted good manners. And then Gerald saw the PM, his idol, who had said before
that she wouldn't dance, but who now, a couple of whiskies on, was getting down rather sexily with Nick. All Nick's training
with Miss Avison came back, available as the twelve-times table, the nimble footwork, the light grasp of the upper arm; though
with it there came a deeper liveliness, a sense he could caper all over the floor with the PM breathless in his grip. Anyway,
Gerald put a stop to that.

They were up in Nick's bathroom, the three of them, Wani chewing and sniffing, almost shivering, like someone who is ill.
He had a look of wide-eyed gloom, racing and lost. He said he was fine, never better. He concentrated on unfolding the square
of Forum
magazine, and then scraping the girl's dark pubic mound clear of powder. Nick sat on the edge of the bath, sat in the bath,
crossways, with his legs hanging out, and watched Tristao taking a hugely protracted piss.

"Don't put that away," said Wani, which was one of his little jokes.

Tristao clucked and said, "He likes that."

"I know," said Nick.

"I know where I see you now," Tristao said, putting it away none the less, and flushing the lavatory. He washed his hands
and talked into the mirror. "Is Mr Toby birthday party. In the big big house. Long time ago."

"That's right," said Nick, struggling up and taking off his jacket. Tristao took his tail-coat off too, as though it were
agreed what they were going to do. The instinctive certainty made Nick smile.

"You come lookin for me, in the kitchen. I think you was very pissed."

"Was I?" said Nick vaguely.

"Then I feel very bad because I say I meet you later, and I never come."

"We know why," said Wani.

"Don't worry," said Nick. "I'm sure I forgot too."

Tristao put a hand on Nick's shoulder, and Nick understood and got out his wallet and gave him £20. Tristao tilted his face
and stuck his long fat tongue into Nick's mouth, kissed him systematically for ten seconds, then pulled out and turned away.
Wani hadn't noticed, busy with the hill of coke. Tristao went and peered over his shoulder. "I get in big trouble for this,"
he said.

"No trouble," said Wani. "Couldn't be safer. House under police guard."

"Yeah, I mean with my boss. Just a short break, yeah?"

"See how you like it," said Wani, groping back at the waiter's crotch without looking round.

"I mean, do you need more money?" said Nick.

"I've just given him fifty fucking quid," said Wani in a loud drawl.

Tristao mooched about and looked in the mirror again. He said, "So you no bring your wife with you to the party?"

"She's not my fucking wife, you slut," said Wani cheerfully.

Tristao grinned at Nick. "I see you dancin with the big lady tonight," he said. "Jumpin around. I think she likes you."

Wani's head reared in a single laugh. "I'm going to ask her just what she thinks of Nick the next time I see her."

"You a good friend of hers then, are you?" said Tristao, and grinned at Nick again.

"A fucking good friend," said Wani, tapping and peering at his work. "An exceedingly good friend . . . There . . ." He turned
and stared. "No, don't you love her? Isn't she just beautiful?"

Tristao made a little moue. "Yeah, she OK. OK for me, anyway. Lots of parties, lots of money. Lots of tips. Hundred pound.
Two hundred pound . . ."

"God, you slut," said Wani.

Nick went to the basin and drank two glasses of water. "I need a li-ine," he crooned. They were all wired up now and desperate
to go on, with the great, almost numbing reassurance of having packets more stuff. It was beyond pleasure, it was its own
motor, pure compulsion, though it gave them the delusion of choice, and of wit in making it.

Tristao bent to snort his line, and Wani felt his cock and Nick felt his arse. "Is good stuff? So where you get this stuff?"
he said, stepping back, escaping for a moment, sniffing sharply.

"I get it from Ronnie," said Wani. "That's his name. Ah, that's better"— pinching his nostrils. "I love Ronnie. He's my best
friend. He's really my only friend."

"Apart from the Prime Minister," said Nick.

Tristao had the big first smirk on his face. A dozen decisions were already being made for him. He said, "I thought he's your
best friend. Him, Nick. No?"

"Nick? He's just a slut," said Wani. "He takes my money."

Nick looked round from the first half of his line. "What he means is he's my employer," he said, with necessary pedantry.

"Not that he does any fucking work," said Wani.

"Actually that's one kind of work I do do," said Nick pertly.

"What—
fuckin
work?" said Tristao, and laughed like an idiot.

"Anyway," said Nick, "he's a millionaire, so . . ."

"I'm a mw/tf-millionaire," said Wani, with a sort of airy scowl. "I want you to do your trick now."

"What is his trick?" said Nick.

"You'll see," said Wani.

"I hope this drugs don't make my dicky go soft," said T
Tristao.

"If your dicky go soft I'm having my fucking money back," said Wani.

Tristao dropped his trousers and pants round his knees and sat on the edge of the little cane-seated chair. His dark heavy
dick hung down. He put his hands up inside his shirt, pushed his shirt up over his ribs, and twisted his nipples. "You want
to help me?" he said.

Wani tutted and went to stand behind him, leaned over to watch as he pinched and coaxed the waiter's nipples between forefinger
and thumb. Tristao sighed, smiled, and bit his parched lip. He looked down intendy, as if it was always a marvel to him, as
his cock stirred, and thickened, twitched its way languorously up across his thigh before floating free with a pink smile
of its own as the skin slid back a little. "That's what it's all about," said Wani.

"Is that it?" said Nick.

"You like?" said Tristao, whose face seemed to Nick suddenly greedy and strange. Of course his penis was the latent idea of
the night, of this strange little scene, an idea trailed and discounted and lifting at the end as a large stupid fact. Nick
said,

"So you've seen this before?"

"Oh, he always want it," said Tristao.

Wani was down on his knees, trying clumsily to do justice to the thing he always wanted. His pants were undone, but his own
little penis, depressed by the blitz or blizzard of coke, was puckered up, almost in hiding. He was lost, beyond humiliation—it
was what you paid for. He sniffed as he licked and sucked, and gleaming mucus, flecked with blood and undissolved powder,
trailed out of his famous nose into the waiter's lap. Obviously the waiter never got like this himself, he'd learnt the danger
from Wani's example. Now he was chatty, like someone among friends. He nodded down at Wani and said, "That's when I see him
first. Mr Toby party. He give me coke and I fuck him in the hass."

"In the house . . . ? Oh, in the
arse,
I see." Nick smiled with a funny mixture of coldness and hilarity, a certain respect for mischief, however painful. He watched
him pushing his hands through his lover's black curls: which he did in a carefree, patient, familiar way, almost as if Wani
wasn't sucking him off, as if he was some beautiful pampered child who'd run in among the adults, hungry for praise and confident
of it. Tristao stroked his hair, and grinned and praised him. "He always pay the best."

"I'm sure!" said Nick, and took a condom out of his pocket.

"Here we go," said Tristao.

Downstairs the Prime Minister was leaving. Gerald had danced with her for almost ten minutes. He had the glow of intimacy
and lightness of success about him as he saw her to her car, careless of the rain. Late fireworks were still going off, like
bombs and rifles, and they glanced upwards. Rachel stood in the doorway, with Penny behind her, whilst Gerald, usurping the
secret policeman, leant forward and slammed the car door in a happy involuntary bow. The rain gleamed and needled in the street
lamps as the Daimler pulled away with a noise like a brusque sigh.

T
HE
E
ND
OF THE
S
TREET
(1987)

13

N
ICK WENT OUT
to vote early, and took Catherine with him in the car. She had been up since six to catch Gerald on
Good Morning
Britain.
In the long month of the election campaign she had refused to watch TV, but now that Gerald and Rachel had both gone up to
Barwick she seemed able to do little else.

"How was he?" Nick said.

"He was only on for a minute. He said the Tories had brought down unemployment.''

"That is a bit rich."

"It's like Lady Tipper saying the 80s are a marvellous decade for staff."

"Well, it'll soon be over."

"What? Oh, the election, yes." Catherine stared out into the drizzle. "The 80s are going on for ever."

In the long tree-tunnel of Holland Park Avenue it was as if the dawn had been deferred, though it was high summer, and hours
after sunrise. It was just the discouraging sort of weather that campaigners dreaded.

"Gerald's bound to get back in, isn't he?" said Nick. At Kensington Park Gardens no one had been able to put this simple question..

Catherine seemed to look up from the depths of her gloom at an impossible consolation. "It would be just so wonderful if he
didn't."

At the polling station they gave in their cards and the woman smiled and blushed when she saw the name Fedden and the address.
Nick felt she was being unduly confident. In '83 Catherine had fouled her paper, and this time she promised to vote for the
Anti-Yuppie Visionary Vegetarian candidate. Nick stood in the plywood booth and turned the thick hexagonal stub of pencil
in his fingers. Voting always gave him a heightened sense of irresponsibility. They were in the big classroom of a primary
school, with children's drawings and a large and unusual alphabet (N was for Nanny, K for Kiwi-fruit) running round the walls.
Today was an unearned holiday. Nick had a moment's glimpse of the hundred little rules and routines of the place, and a mood
of truancy came over him. Besides, what happened in the booth was an eternal secret. His pencil twitched above the Labour
and Alliance candidates, and then he made his cross very frowningly for the Green man. He knew the Conservative was bound
to get back in.

There were doubts, though, in some quarters, and Labour was thought to have had a very good campaign. Nick himself found their
press advertisements much wittier than the Tories'. "In Britain the poor have got poorer and the rich have got. . . well,
they've got the Conservatives" was one that even Gerald had laughed at. In general, Gerald's view was that campaigning was
over-rated at the national level, and irksome, even counterproductive, in the constituencies. "You know, the best thing I
could have done on May 11, when the election was called, would have been to push off for a month's holiday somewhere," he
said to Catherine. "Quite possibly on safari." He got fed up with Catherine saying it was a "TV election." "I don't know why
you go on about it, Puss," he said, looking in the hall mirror before a "photo-opportunity" for the local news. "All elections
are TV elections. And a bloody good thing too. It means you don't have to go and talk to the voters yourself. In fact if you
do try and talk to them they're bored to death because they've heard it all already on TV." ("Mm, that may be why," said Catherine.)

He was surprised that he hadn't been asked to appear in more of the major broadcasts and televised press conferences, where
the Lady herself had retained a tireless dominance. His personal highlight had been a
Question
Time
on BBC1, where he stood in for the indisposed Home Secretary at the last moment but very much took his own line. He did a
lot of smarmy joshing with Robin Day, whom he knew socially, and this irritated the Labour defence spokesman, who was fighting
an uphill battle on nuclear disarmament. Nick and Rachel watched it at home. Caught on the TV screen in his own drawing room
Gerald looked distinctly alien, fattened and sharpened by the studio lights. He played sulkily with his fountain pen while
the other panellists were speaking. His breast-pocket handkerchief billowed upwards like the flame of a torch. He came out
in favour of Europe, having as he said a house in France where he spent the summer. He said he believed there were tens of
thousands of jobs available if only people would get out and look for them (cries, which he relished, of "Shame"). Lively
rudeness and childish antagonism were the point of the programme, and also its limitation. Rachel laughed in fond disparagement
once or twice. Gerald's special mixture of laziness and ambition seemed to crystallize under the camera into brutal bumptiousness.
A questioner from the floor, who looked like Cecil, the Barwick welly-whanger, accused him of being too rich to care about
ordinary people; and while Gerald boomingly deplored the statement you could see it sinking and settling in his flushed features
as a kind of acclaim.

When it came to canvassing in Barwick, Gerald felt there was less need than ever to put oneself out. He pooh-poohed the polls.
All the Northamptonshire seats were Tory strongholds, even Corby, with its closed-down steelworks. "Even the unemployed know
they're better off with us," Gerald said. "Anyway, they've got a computer in the office up there now, and if they can find
out how to work it they'll be able to pinpoint any dodgy waverers and bombard them with stuff." "What?" Catherine wanted to
know. "Well, pictures of me!" said Gerald. Nick wondered if his cavalier tone was a way of preparing for possible defeat.
In the final week there was something called Wobbly Thursday, when everyone at Central Office panicked. The polls showed Labour
barging ahead. Toby remarked that his father seemed very unconcerned. "One has merely to cultivate," replied Gerald, "the
quality that M. Mitterrand has attributed to the Prime Minister, and which he sees as the supreme political virtue."

"Oh yes, what's that?" said Toby.

"Indifference," said Gerald, almost inaudibly.

" Right . . . " said Toby; and then, with a certain canny persistence, "But I thought she was climbing up the wall."

"Climbing up the wall, nonsense."

"It's like the adverb game," said Catherine. "Task:
Climb up the wall.
Manner:
Indifferently."
At which Gerald went off with a pitying smile to correct his diary.

At the office Nick looked through the mail and dictated a couple of letters to Melanie. In Wani's absence he'd grown fond
of dictating, and found himself able to improvise long supple sentences rich in suggestion and syntactic shock, rather as
the older Henry James, pacing and declaiming to a typist, had produced his most difficult novels. Melanie, who was used to
Wani's costive memos, and even to dressing up the gist of a letter in her own words, stuck out her tongue with concentration
as she took down Nick's old-fashioned periods and perplexing semicolons. Today he was answering a couple of rich American
queens who had a film-production company perhaps as fanciful, as nominal, as Ogee was, and who were showing interest in the
Spoils of Poynton
project—though with certain strong reservations about the plot. They felt that it needed an injection of sex—smooching and
action as Lord Ouradi had put it. The queens themselves sounded rather like porn actors, being called Treat Rush and Brad
Craft. "Dear Treat and Brad," Nick began: "It was with no small interest that we read your newest proposals comma with their
comma to us comma so very open brackets indeed comma so startlingly close brackets novel vision of the open quotes sex-life
close quotes of italics capital S Spoils
semicolon
—"

A small commotion at the door, Simon looking up, going over, Melanie setting down her pad. A crop-headed black girl, like
a busty little boy, and a skinny white woman with her . . . it was usually a mistake, or they were market kids trotting round
cheap Walkmans, cheap CDs. No one much, sad to say, arrived by design at the Ogee office. Melanie came back. "Oh, Nick, it's
a, um, Rosemary Charles to see you. Sorry . . . " Melanie twitched with her own snobbery, part apology, part reproach—she
stood in the way, box-shouldered, high-heeled, so that Nick leant back in his chair to look round her, down the length of
the office, and with a view of the two words Rosemary Charles bobbing on the air, weightless signifiers, that took on, over
several strange seconds, their own darkness and gravity. He stood up and went towards her, her and the other woman, who seemed
to be here as a witness of his confusion. It was a momentary vertigo, a railing withdrawn. He gave them a smile that was welcoming
and showed a proper unfrivolous regard for the occasion, and well . . . he was afraid he knew why they'd come, more or less.
He felt something like guilt showed in his pretence that he didn't. He grasped Rosemary's hand and looked at her with allowable
pleasure and curiosity—she was still coming clear to him, from four years back, when she was pretty and fluffy and her eyes
were sly: and now she was beautiful, revealed, the drizzle silvering the fuzz of her crown, her jaw forward in the tense half-smile
of surprise that her brother had had when he'd called for Nick one morning, unannounced, and changed his life.

"Yes, hello," she said, with a hint of hostility, perhaps just the hard note of the resolve that had brought her here. Of
course she was looking for him too, down this four-year tunnel: how he used to be and how he'd changed. "This is Gemma."

"Hi," said Nick warmly. "Nick."

"I hope you don't mind," said Rosemary. "We went to your house. The woman there told us where you were."

"It's wonderful to see you!" said Nick, and saw the phrase register with them like some expected annoyance. They had something
dreadful about them, with their undeclared purpose and their look of supporting each other for some much bigger challenge
than Nick was ever going to offer them. "Come in, come in."

Gemma peered round the room. "Is there somewhere private where we could talk?" she said. She was Yorkshire, older, blue-eyed,
hair dyed black, black T-shirt and black jeans and Doc Martens.

"Of course," said Nick. "Why don't you come upstairs."

He took them out and in again and up to the flat, with a responsible smile that threatened to warp into a smirk, as if he
was proud of this kitsch apartment and its possible effect on the two women. He saw it all with fresh eyes himself. They sat
down in the "Georgian-revival''-revival library.

"Look at all these books . . . " said Gemma.

On the low table all the papers were laid out, as in the reading room of a club. CHUCK HER OUT, begged the
Mirror.
THREE TIMES A LADY, bawled the
Sun.

Rosemary said, "It's about Leo."

"Well, I thought . . ."

She looked down, she wasn't settled in the room, on the sofa's edge; then she stared at him for a second or two. She said,
"Well, you know, my brother died, three weeks ago." Nick listened to the words, and heard how the West Indian colour and exactness
in her tone claimed it as a private thing. It had been one of Leo's tones too: the cockney for defence, the Jamaican crackle
and burn for pleasure, just sometimes, rare and beautiful like his black blush.

"Nearly four weeks now, pet," said Gemma, with her own note of bleak solidarity. "Yes, May the sixteenth." She looked at Nick
as though the extra days made him more culpable, or useless.

"I'm so sorry," Nick said.

"We're trying to contact all his friends."

"Well, because, you know . . . " said Gemma.

"All his lovers," said Rosemary firmly. Nick remembered that she was, or had been, a doctor's receptionist; she was used to
the facts. She unzipped her shoulder bag and delved into it. He found it screened them both, this angular attention to business—he
was flinching at the frighteningly solemn thing she had just told him, and she twitched too at the power of her words, even
if (as he thought he saw) they had a certain softness or drabness for her now from use, from their assertion of something
that was shifting day by day from the new into the known. He said, with a sense of good manners that took him back to their
long-ago meeting,

"How is your mother?"

"OK," said Rosemary. "OK . . ."

"She has her faith," said Gemma.

"She's got the church," said Nick; "and she's also got you."

"Well . . . " said Rosemary. "Yes, she has."

The first thing she passed him was a small cream-coloured envelope addressed to Leo in green capitals. He felt he knew it
and he didn't know it, like a letter found in an old book. It had a postmark of August 2, 1983. She nodded, and he opened
it, while they watched him; it was like learning a new game and having to be a good sport as he lost. He unfolded a little
letter in his own best handwriting, and the photo slipped out into his lap. "That's how we knew where to find you," Rosemary
said. He had sent it in the blank envelope to
Gay Times,
doubting how it could survive, how his own wish could take on form and direction, and someone there with a green biro had
sent it on—he was seeing the history of his action, and seeing it as Leo himself had seen it, but distant and complete. He
picked up the photo with the guarded curiosity he had for his earlier self. It was an Oxford picture, a passport-size square
cut out from a larger group: the face of a boy at a party who somehow confides his secret to the camera. He only glanced at
what he'd written, on the Feddens' embossed letterhead—the small size, meant for social thank-yous, because he hadn't had
much to say. The writing itself looked quaint and studied, though he remembered Leo had praised it: "Hello!" he'd begun, since
of course he hadn't yet known Leo's name. The cross-stroke of the H curled back under the uprights like a dog's tail. He saw
he'd mentioned Bruckner, Henry James, all his Interests—very artlessly, but it hadn't mattered, and indeed they had never
been mentioned again, when the two of them were together. At the top there was Leo's annotation in pencil:
Pretty. Rich?
Too young?
This had been struck through later by a firm red tick.