The Line of Beauty (37 page)

Next day Toby was teaching Nick and Wani how to play boules: they were out on the dusty compacted square of the forecourt.
Wani had been wet about the game until he turned out to be good at it, and now he was absorbed and unironical, tripping after
the ball, yapping and grinning when he bombed the other boules away from the jack-ball, or
cochonnet.
"Bien tire!" said Toby, with a sweeter kind of happiness, at retouching an old friendship through a game, and with comic
disconcertment, since he usually won games himself. Nick was applauded when he made a fluky good throw, but it was really
a tussle between Wani and Toby. Now he'd got the drugs Wani had become more natural and more popular. "Yup, seems to be settling
in," said Gerald, taking the credit himself, like the manager of a hotel renowned for its beneficial regime. "I know . . .
" said Rachel, who had borne the brunt of Wani's princely charm: "he seems to be getting in the holiday mood." A nod went
round which admitted the reservations they'd had before, and a mood of solidarity was discovered, just in time, before the
arrival of the Tippers and Lady Partridge. Nobody but Gerald wanted to see the Tippers, and Nick paced and stood about in
the drive, bored by the game, but already sentimental about their little routines here, and his esoteric success, being deep
in France, in a lovely old house, with his two beautiful boys.

Toby had just flung the
cochonnet
across the court when a big white Audi with Sir Maurice Tipper at the wheel swung in through the gate and ran over it. "Fucking
great," said Toby, and waved and smiled resignedly. In the back were his grandmother and Lady Tipper, who had the passive
air of women of all classes, nattering dutifully as they were driven they hardly knew where. Lady Partridge gestured in a
general way at the house, as if to say she thought it was the right one. Nick ran over to open her door, and in the momentary
release of chilled air the scent of leather and hairspray seemed to carry the story of the whole journey. "I know," said Lady
Partridge, establishing her feet on the ground before pushing herself up, and looking for attention but not for help. "I
have
always caught the train."

"Good flight, Gran?" said Toby, kissing her cheek.

"It was perfectly all right," said Lady Partridge, with her usual indifference to a kiss. "It's quite a trek from the airport.
Sally's been explaining to me all about operas"—and she gave the three boys a shrewd smile.

Sally Tipper said, "The first-class seats were just the same as tourist class, you got proper china, that was all. Maurice
is going to write to John about it." She watched her husband, who came and shook hands with Toby, and said, "Tobias," in a
coldly pitying tone.

"Welcome, welcome!" said Toby, in a weak flourish of good manners, avoiding the eye of the man who might have been his father-in-law,
and going to the boot to take care of the bags. Nick got an inattentive hello from each of them, and the feeling, which he'd
had in the past, of being an element they could neither accept nor ignore. Catherine came out of the house, as if to inspect
some damage.

"Oh, how are you, Cathy?" said Sally Tipper.

"Still mad!" said Catherine.

Then Gerald and Rachel appeared. "Good, good . . ." said Gerald. "You found us . . ."

"We thought at first it was sure to be that splendid chateau up the road," said Lady Tipper.

"Ah no," said Gerald, "we're not at the chateau any more, we muddle along down here." There was a complicated double round
of kisses, ending up with Sir Maurice facing Gerald and saying, "Oh no, not even in France . . . !" and laughing thinly.

The Tippers were not natural holidayers. They came beautifully equipped, with four heavy steel-cornered suitcases, and numerous
other little bags which had to be handled carefully, but something else, unnoticed by them, was missing. They muttered questions
to each other, and gave an impression of covert anxiety or irritation. When they came down on their first afternoon Sir Maurice
said a lot of faxes would be coming through for him, and could they be sure there was enough paper in the machine. He was
clearly looking forward to the arrival of the faxes above all. Wani sucked up to him and said he was expecting some faxes
too, meaning that he would keep an eye on the machine, but Sir Maurice gave him a sharp look and said he hoped they wouldn't
impede his own faxes. It was only four thirty but Gerald was marking his guests' arrival with a Pimm's, and Lady Partridge,
with her son as her licence, accompanied him in a gin and Dubonnet. The Tippers asked for tea, and sat under the awning, glancing
mistrustfully at the view. When Liliane, slow, stoical, and clearly unwell, came out with the tray, Sally Tipper gave her
instructions about different pillows she needed. Sir Maurice talked to Gerald about a takeover they were both interested in,
though Gerald didn't look quite serious with a fruit-choked tumbler in his fist. Lady Tipper complained to Rachel about the
smell of hot dogs in the Royal Festival Hall. Rachel said surely that would all change now they'd got rid of Red Ken, but
Lady Tipper shook her head as if deaf to any such comfort. Nick tried naively to interest Maurice Tipper in local beauty spots
which he hadn't yet seen himself. "You're a fine one to talk!" said Sir Maurice—grinning quickly at Gerald and Toby to show
he wasn't so easily taken in. He was used to total deference, and mere pleasantness aroused his suspicion. The democracy of
house-party life wasn't going to come naturally to him. Nick looked at his smooth clerical face and gold rimmed glasses in
the light of a new idea, that the ownership of immense wealth might not be associated with pleasure—at least as pleasure was
sought and unconsciously defined by the rest of them here.

Sally Tipper had a lot of blonde hair in expensive confusion, and a lot of clicking, rattling, sliding jewellery. She shook
and nodded her head a good deal. It was virtually a twitch—of annoyance, or of almost more exasperated agreement. She had
a smile that came all at once and went all at once, with no humorous gradations. She said before dinner she'd like to have
drinks indoors, which, since the whole point and fetish of the manoir for the Feddens was to do everything possible outside,
didn't promise well. They sat in the drawing room with all the overhead lights on, like a waiting room. Nick had seen the
names "Sir Maurice and Lady Tipper" in gold letters on the donors' board at Covent Garden, and had seen her there in person,
sometimes with Sophie, but never with her husband. He thought they might have a theme for the week, and said quietly that
the recent
Tannhduser
hadn't been very good.

"Very
good . . . I know . . .
I
thought . . . " said Lady Tipper, and shook her head in wounded defiance of all the carpers and whiners. "Now, Judy, that
you really should see," she went on loudly. "You'll know that one, the Pilgrims' Chorus."

Lady Partridge, fortified by being
enfamille
and half-tight, said, "It's no use asking me, dear. I've never set foot in an opera house, except once, and that was thirty
years ago, when . . . my son took me," and she nodded abstrusely at Gerald.

"What did you see, Judy?" said Nick.

"I think it was
Salome,"
Lady Partridge said after a minute.

"How marvellous!" said Lady Tipper.

"I know,
ghastly,"
said Lady Partridge.

"Oh, Ma!" said Gerald, who was listening in with a distracted smile from a chat about shares with Sir Maurice.

"I applaud your taste, Judy," said Nick, with the necessary emphasis to get through, and heard what a twit he sounded.

"Mm, I think it was by Stravinsky."

"No, no," said Nick, "it's by the dreaded . . . : Richard Strauss. Oh, by the way, Gerald, I've found the most marvellous
quote, by Stravinsky, in fact, about the dreaded."

"Sorry, Maurice . . . " murmured Gerald.

"Robert Craft asks him, 'Do you now admit any of the operas of Richard Strauss?' and Stravinsky says"—and Nick beat it out,
conducted it, in the weird overexcitement of the Strauss feud—" T would like to admit all Strauss operas to whichever purgatory
punishes triumphant banality. Their musical substance is cheap and poor; it cannot interest a musician today.'"

"What?" snorted Gerald.

"Well, I'd rather have Strauss than Stravinsky myself, any day! I'm afraid to say!" said Lady Tipper. Sir Maurice looked at
Nick, in the flush of his arcane triumph, with baffled distaste.

At dinner Gerald was already pretty drunk. He seemed to have had an idea of taking Maurice Tipper with him, and making their
first night a rush of high spirits, followed next morning by the rueful bond of a shared hangover. But Sir Maurice drank as
suspiciously as he did business, covering his glass with a dwindling flicker of amusement each time Gerald leant over his
shoulder with the bottle. Gerald's face leaning into the candlelight had a glow of obstinate merriment. He sat down and summarized
for the second time the division of the Perigord into areas called green, white, black and purple. "And we're in the white,"
said Maurice Tipper drily.

The talk came round, as it often did with the Feddens, to the Prime Minister. Nick saw Catherine clench in annoyance when
her grandmother said, "She's put this country on its feet!"—clearly forgetting, in her fervour, which country she was now
in. "She showed them in the Falklands, didn't she?"

"You mean she's a hideous old battleaxe," muttered Catherine.

"She's certainly a manxome foe," said Gerald. Sir Maurice looked blank. "One wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of her."

"Indeed," said Sir Maurice.

Wani somehow got people to look at him, and said, "People say that, but you know, I've always seen a very different side of
her. An immensely kind woman . . ."; he let them see him searching a fund of heart-warming anecdote, but then said discreetly,
"She takes such extraordinary pains to help those she . . . cares about."

Maurice Tipper expressed both respect and resentment in a dark throat-clearing, and Gerald said, "Of course you know her as
a family friend," smiling resolutely as he conceded to Wani the thing, so clearly seen, that he hankered for himself.

"Well . . ." said Wani, "yes . . . !"

"I love her!" exclaimed Sally Tipper, hoping perhaps they would take love to include friendship, as well as surpassing it.

"I know," said Gerald. "It's those blue eyes. Don't you just want to swim in them—what?"

Sir Maurice didn't seem ready to go quite that far, and Rachel said, "Not everyone's as infatuated as my husband," lightly
but meaningly.

Nick looked out over their heads at the vast night landscape, where the lights of farms and roads invisible by day shone in
mysterious prominence. He said very little, holding on to the ignored romance of the place and the hour, the soft gusts in
the trees, the stars that peeped in the grey above the silhouetted woods. It turned out to be Wani who saved the evening.
He clearly admired Maurice Tipper, and tried to amuse him as well as impress him, neither an easy task. He had a significant
lavatory break after the main course, and for the next half-hour supplied a sense of purpose and fun that the others had been
groping for. Even Catherine was laughing at his farfetched imitation of Michael Foot, and Lady Partridge, who kept waking
from brief sleeps with a cough and a furtive stare, laughed too.

In the morning, before it was too hot, the Tippers went down to the pool, she with a clutch of sunscreens and a huge hat,
he with the new Dick Francis in one hand as a decoy for the briefcase in the other. It was the time when Nick liked to do
his fifty lengths—at least he invented this tradition to focus his resentment of the newcomers. When he went down a bit later,
Lady Partridge, a keen but almost unmoving swimmer, was halfway across the shallow end, apparently unaware that Sally Tipper,
beside her in the water, was asking her about her hip replacement: she glanced at her from time to time with mild apprehension.
Maurice Tipper had got a table and chair fixed up under an umbrella and sat in tight biscuit-coloured shorts reading and annotating
a sheaf of faxes. His lips quivered and pinched with the sarcastic alertness that was his own brand of happiness. Nick, dispossessed,
went off to his favourite corner on a lower terrace and read
A Small Boy and Others
in the company of a lizard.

At noon there were calls and voices up above as a party was assembled for lunch. Nick went to see them off. Toby had pulled
up the spare seats in the back of the Range Rover and was checking they were safely bolted; he was taking the extra trouble
that delays a departure and disguises the relief of the person left behind. "We don't want you flying through the windscreen,"
he said to Lady Tipper.

"I think you'll find this restaurant acceptable," Gerald burbled facetiously, gesturing Maurice Tipper to the front seat beside
him.

"He just can't have anything too rich," said Sally. "His wretched ulcers . . ." She twitched while she pulled a long face.
"I'm afraid last night's dinner rather did for him."

"Oh, they'll look after you, they'll do anything for you," said Rachel, with unflinching sweetness. Gerald, ruefully baffled
by his new guests' failure to notice the beauties of the manoir, was taking them to Chez Claude in Perigueux, normally the
last-night treat of the holidays, in the hope of cracking a word of praise out of them.

"See if you agree with us that it merits a third Michelin star," he said.

"We're not big lunchers," said Sally Tipper.

Catherine and Jasper came out last, and Wani squashed in with them excitedly in the third row. Toby closed the doors like
a guard and off they went, with a soft superior roar, perched and crammed, for what Nick pictured as a little outing in hell—not
the starry Chez Claude or the turret-crowned countryside, but the atmosphere they carried with them. Toby put his arm round
Nick's shoulder and they went into the silent house—both of them lightly excited and self-conscious.