The Line of Beauty (48 page)

"Oh, I see," said Nick.

"I mean a landslide's a disaster, it changes everything."

"So you thought . . . " Nick thought he saw that Catherine, in her inattentive but literal way, had convinced herself it was
a Labour landslide. "It's a dead metaphor, darling. It just means a crushing victory."

"Oh god," said Catherine, almost tearfully.

"I mean, the land did slide once, as we all know. And it looks very much as though it's going to stay slidden."

Barwick came up half an hour later. There was a buzz in the studio, as if they knew something was about to happen. Nick and
Catherine sat forward on the sofa. "Welcome to Barwick," said the bearded young reporter: "where we're in the splendid Market
Hall built by Sir Christopher Wren." ("No, you are
not,"
said Nick.) "We're expecting the declaration in the next minute. Barwick of course held by Gerald Fedden since the last election—a
minister in the Home Office—something of a maverick, but could be looking at a Cabinet post in the next government—he had
a majority of over eight thousand in '83, but we're expecting to see a big increase in the Alliance vote here—Muriel Day,
a very popular figure locally . . . " The camera found the two rivals, each in discussion with their people, Gerald chaffing
as if nothing was going on, Muriel Day already rehearsing the smile of a good loser. The Labour man, perhaps under a delusion
about the outcome, was running over a three-page speech.

Nick flopped back in the sofa with a laugh, to break the mood. Staring at the screen he felt awkwardly responsible, as if
the place he'd come from, the very room that he'd measured and drawn as a schoolboy, was about to deliver its verdict on the
room he was sitting in now. It was embarrassing, but there was nothing he could do. He watched the event quickly clarify,
the intent activity was finished, the people redeployed themselves, officials were briefly in conference, and out of the toil
of the day, metal boxes and rented tables, pure process without poetry, a kind of theatre emerged, so thick with precedent
that it looked instinctual.

Old Arthur State was saying, extremely slowly, "I, Arthur Henry State, being the returning officer for the parliamentary constituency
of Barwick in the county of Northamptonshire . . . " and surely expanding his text with various quaint heraldic clauses, while
Catherine eyed her father on the podium behind him. Nick glanced at her in profile. She had a look of exhaustion, as at an
object constantly but inexplicably in her way; but a twitch of excitement too: she was powerless, but tonight there were other
powers stirring. Something might happen. The Labour man was called Brown and so came first—he'd got eight thousand, three
hundred and twenty-one votes ("that's more than three thousand up on last time"), and was cheered defiantly. Next was Muriel
Day, and her vote too was well up on that of her predecessor, two and a half thousand up, at eleven thousand, five hundred
and seven. She took the applause with a grateful but distracted smile, almost hushing her supporters to let them hear the
rest—since Arthur always waited for total silence, and went back to the start of any sentence that was interrupted. It was
a serious figure, and Gerald had a look Nick knew well, the condescending simper that covered a process of mental arithmetic.
The suspense was made worse by the unignorable but somehow forgotten figure of Ethelred Egg ("Monster Raving Loony Party"),
who'd only polled thirty-one votes but seemed to have a hall-full of supporters. He plucked off and waved his green top hat
and capered about in his clown's suit. You couldn't help seeing some slight kinship between him and Gerald, whose white collar
and pink tie were half hidden by a vast blue rosette with long tabs or streamers below and the breast-pocket handkerchief
struggling above. "Oh lose, lose . . ." muttered Catherine. "Fedden," said Arthur State, "Gerald John" ("Conservative . .
."), and because there was a klaxon squawk he repeated it, the strange momentary levelling and exposure of the cited second
name, "eleven thousand, eight hundred and ninety-three"—so that Gerald grinned and coloured for a second, and perhaps thought
he'd lost after all. The cheer that followed was a funny sound, because it had a loud "Woo-oo" mixed in with it, at the luck
of a man who had just got away with something.

Nick topped up his drink and went out onto the balcony. He rallied to the surprising chill out there. Gerald's close shave
at the ballot box was a drama and an embarrassment, and it was going to be hard to know what to say when he got home. Congratulations
might sound sarcastic or unduly blithe, even to Gerald. Anyway, he was in, and everything could go on as planned. His gleaming
grin floated against the dark trees for a while, and then faded, as perishable as all news. Slowly the trees themselves took
on shape and detail in the light from the houses and from the softly reflecting night clouds. Nick loved the gardens; when
he strolled between the house and the gardens through the private gate he seemed to glance up at his own good luck, in the
towering planes on one side and the white-stuccoed cliff on the other. It would be good to be out there now; but it was too
dripping and cold. There were wonderful expanses of summer ahead, no need to panic.

He remembered taking Leo there, in a jitter of nerves and shadows, the night they'd finally met; and quite a few other men
too, the summer before last, on the sand path behind the workmen's hut—it had been his trick, done confidently, dwindling
a little in charm and danger. Something basic and unsocial about it, no giving them a drink or a shower: it was good. And
perhaps it had been a secret tribute to Leo, a memory honoured and scuffed over in each careless encounter. Leo never knew
how much Nick had imagined him, before he'd met him; or how the first kiss, the first feel of his body, had staggered a boy
who till then had lived all in his mind. Leo wasn't imaginative: that was part of the point and the beauty of him. But he
had a kind of genius, as far as Nick was concerned. That big red tick on his letter had bounced him into life.

He swilled round the whisky in his glass and shivered. There was a mood of homage and forgiveness: how could you begrudge
the dead? And there was something else, a need to be forgiven himself, though he frowned the thought away. When Rosemary had
asked him about the last time he'd seen her brother, he had blinked at her through the bleak little image of a parting on
Oxford Street. The dense blind crowd, which could hide all kinds of intimacy in its rush, had this time made things impossible.
Leo pushed away on his bike, crept through the red light and round the corner, without looking back. In fact the crowd almost
hid the thing that Nick was remembering—the latest of several unhappy goodbyes not marked in any way as the last of all. In
the following weeks he'd had to rescue that routine sequence of actions, and clarify it in the light of what it had turned
out to be. At the time it was just an impatient escape into the traffic.

But then, far more recently, three or four months ago, on a wet late February night, something else had happened, which he
hadn't quite thought of this morning. Wani must already have been in Paris, and Nick had gone into the Shaftesbury on a sudden
urge to pick up, the glow in his chest and the ache in his thighs. He went in through the little back bar, with its gas fire
and non-combatant atmosphere, where you got served quicker. He noticed a couple of friends in his first half-sociable push
through the crowd, and took in, while he waited to be served, the little black guy in a woolly hat, with his back to him,
talking to a middle-aged white man. He saw how his beltless jeans stood away from his waist to give a glimpse of blue underwear,
and had a moment's sharp unexpected recall of Leo, the double curve of his lower back and muscular bottom. There was sadness
in the likeness, but the image lay quiet; it had more of the warmth of a blessing than the chill of a loss. Nick was pleased
at that. The pub was all potential—he gazed busily over the counter into the main bar, which was jostling with sexy self-regard.
This little guy was much too skinny, really, to excite him, and too odd: he had a beard that was so bushy you could see it
from behind, the black touched with grey beside the ears. Still, Nick looked at the chap he was talking to, caught his eye
for a second, with a tiny smile of collusion. Then instead of ordering the usual practical pint, he asked for a rum and Coke.

He moved away with it, spoke to someone he knew, glancing off to check his own looks in one of the pub's many mirrors, and
saw the black man in profile, turning briefly, unconsciously, to full face, and turning back again to answer his friend. Even
then, the nostalgic idea that he was like Leo held off for a second or two the recognition that he was Leo. The greying beard
hid the gauntness of his features, and the hat was rolled down to his eyebrows. Even after that Nick shunned the possibility,
looked away, in case the man should meet his eye in the mirror with an answering slide into shock, and then glanced back,
already hardened in the fiction that he hadn't recognized him. He pressed through into the other room. There was a party of
French boys, there was a man he'd fancied at the Y, the whole bar was a fierce collective roar, and he edged and smiled politely
through it like a sober late arrival at a wild party. His heart was thumping, and the expectant glow in his chest had become
some neighbouring sensation, a clench of guilt and regret. It was simply an instinct, a reflex, that had made him turn away.
A minute later he saw it could just as easily have thrown him towards Leo; but he was a coward. He was frightened of him—afraid
of being rebuffed and full of grim doubts about what was happening to him. Perhaps he should go back in and check that it
really was him—he was suddenly happy at the thought that it couldn't have been. He shouldered back through the crowd, sensing
their vague annoyance at moving for him again; but stopped and got talking to the man from the Y, boldly but inattentively.
He knew he had a bluebird tattooed on his left buttock, and he'd seen him with a sensible erection in the showers, but these
cute memories seemed steadily more meaningless. He knocked back his drink in distracted gulps. Then he went downstairs to
the Gents, and found, when he peeped sideways along the reeking trough, that the man had followed him; so they stood there
for a bit, in a tense delay whilst other people came and went, until the man nodded towards the empty lock-up. Nick said it
was too risky, felt almost annoyed that this was happening, yet curiously timid and grateful too. The man said he lived in
Soho, they could go there, five minutes' walk, and Nick said OK. It was a kind of shield. Actually it was a brilliant quick
success, a fantasy granted, but Nick couldn't feel it. "We'll go out the side way," said the man, who also gave his name,
Joe. "Oh, OK," said Nick. They went through the back bar, Nick with his hand on Joe's broad shoulder, sticking cheerfully
close to him and turning a blank gaze across the room to find the little woolly-hatted figure, utterly unknown to Joe, who
had once been his lover.

15

"
O
H MY
!" said Treat. "Pansy salad!"
"It's really rather good," said Nick.

Treat watched him, over his cocktail glass, to see if he was joking. "Is it all pansies?"

"What's that?" said Brad.

"It's mostly rather butch lettuce," said Nick. "They just put one or two pansies on top."

"Butch lettuce . . . !" said Treat, full of flirty reproach.

"They're token pansies," said Nick.

"I'm going to have to try it," said Treat.

"You should certainly have it once," said Nick.

"What's that?" said Brad.

"Treat wants to try the pansy salad," said Nick.

"Oh . . . oh, I see, 'pansy salad': oh my!"

"I just said that," said Treat.

Nick smiled round the restaurant, relieved to see two famous writers at one table, and a famous actress at another. Brad Craft
and Treat Rush, till now mere muscular spondees of American suggestion, had turned out to be a socially hungry pair. Brad
was indeed big and muscular, handsome and pleasant, if rather slow on the uptake. Treat was the talker, about Nick's height,
with a shiny blond fringe that he kept in line with a pointed little finger. They had come over for Nat Hanmer's wedding,
and were spending the whole of October in England ("Anything to escape the New England fall!" said Treat). Today there was
the film to talk about, but they were clearly working, with one eye always on the square beyond, at a thorough penetration
of London, and were full of slapdash questions about people and titles. The point seemed to be to ask questions; they didn't
bother much with the answers. They held out the threat of being easily bored. Nick hoped Gusto would amuse them. He saw Treat
watching the kitchen through the blue glass wall, which turned the chef and his sweating minions into a faintly erotic cabaret
of hard work.

"Do you know this guy Julius Money?" said Brad.

"Well, I've met him," said Nick.

"Isn't that a great name? And kind of appropriate, I guess, right?"

"Oh yes," said Nick. "They have this huge Jacobean house in Norfolk, with a fabulous collection of paintings. Actually, I've
always thought —"

"Oh, what about Pomona Brinkley!" said Treat. "We met her. Now what's
she
all about?"

"I don't know her," said Nick.

"She was great," said Treat.

"Oh, yeah, we met this guy Lord John . . .
Fanshaw?"
said Brad. "He knows all about you! He said you were the most charming man in London."

"Yeah," said Treat, and looked lingeringly at Nick again.

"I feel he must have been thinking of someone else," said Nick coyly, and didn't come clean that he'd never heard of his lordship.

"You know Nat really well, right?" said Treat.

"Oh yes," said Nick, with suaver confidence. "We were at Oxford together. Though these days I suppose I see more of his mother
than him.

She's a great friend of my friend Rachel Fedden." He watched the name make its frail bid for recognition.

"He's so sweet."

"No, he's lovely. He's had, you know, he's had a lot of problems."

"Yeah . . . ?" said Treat. "It's such a shame he's not
family."

"Well . . ." said Nick. "Where did you two meet him?"

"Oh, we met him at the Rosenheims' last fall, in East Hampton? Which of course is when we also met . . . Antoine."

"And Martina," said Brad.

"Yes, Martine," said Nick.

"Yes, Brad loved Antoine," said Treat. He put the straw to his lips and sucked pointedly at the reddish brown liquid.

Brad said, "Yeah, what a lovely guy."

"So you haven't seen him since?" Nick knew he should warn them, but didn't know how to start.

"So Nat's some kind of lord, right?" said Brad.

"Yes," said Nick. "He's a marquess."

"Oh my god . . . !" said Treat under his breath.

"What, so he's Marquess . . . is it
Chirk?"

"Chirk is the family name. His title is Marquess of Hanmer."

"Brad . . . ? You see who's over there?"

"So what do we call his old man?" said Brad, shaking his head as he turned in his chair.

"His father's the Duke of Flintshire. I should just call him sir."

"Treat, my god, you're right . . . it's Betsy!"

"I want
her
to be in my film," said Treat. "She's such a great British actress."

"I don't know if you will meet the Duke," Nick went on, uncertain how much pomp he was borrowing from mere use of the word.
He aimed to speak of the aristocracy in a factual tone, because of his shame at his father's tally of earls. "I've only met
him once. He never leaves the Castle. You know he's a cripple."

"You British . . . " said Treat, only half-relinquishing his childlike gaze at Betsy Tilden. She seemed to loom for him as
a marvel and a dare, and Nick could see him going over to her. She was much too young for Mrs Gereth, and quite wrong for
Fleda Vetch. "You're so brutal!"

"Mm . . . ?" said Nick.

"You know, 'he's a cripple'—really."

"Oh . . . " said Nick, and blushed as if it was his lurking snobbery that had been criticized and not whatever this was. "I'm
sorry, but that's actually what the Duke calls himself. He hasn't walked since he was a boy." He was slightly winded to be
called on a point of delicacy—and one that impinged, obliquely but perceptibly, on their lunch. He cleared his throat and
said, "You know, there's something I should tell you . . . Ah, here we are." He raised a hand as Wani appeared at the desk
by the door, and as he got up he heard both Americans murmuring, "Oh my god . . ."

He went over to him, smiling and capable but in a fluster of emotions—pity, defiance, a desire to support him, and a dread
of people seeing him. The girl held his stick for him as she helped him off with his coat. "Hello," said Wani; he didn't seem
to want Nick to kiss him. He took his stick again, which was an elegant black one with a silver handle, and tapped across
the marble floor with it. He still wasn't quite convincing with the stick; he was like a student actor playing an old man.
The stick itself seemed both to focus and repel attention. People looked and looked away.

The Americans stood up, Treat clutching his napkin to his chest. "Hey, Antoine, great to see you!"

"How
are
you!" said Brad, in a sporting wheeze. He laid his hand for a moment on Wani's back, and Nick on his other side was doing
the same, so that they seemed to congratulate him; though what they felt was the knobs of his spine through the wool of his
suit. Wani sat down, smiling with distant courtesy, as if this was a weekly meeting, with a known format and outcome. There
was a brief pause of silent adjustment. Nick smiled at Wani, but the shock was refreshed by the presence of their guests and
a bubble rose in his throat.

"So what were you talking about?" said Wani. His voice was if anything more languid than before, though with a hint that it
couldn't be forced.

"I was just explaining to Brad and Treat about the Chirks," said Nick.

"Ah yes," said Wani, as if this was a very old and silly story. "It's only a nineteenth-century dukedom, of course."

"Right . . . " said Brad, peeping at him and seeming to share, out of mere nerves and inattentiveness, the view that this
was absurdly recent.

Treat laughed brightly and said, "That's old enough for me. That'll do just fine."

Nick said, "It was really Sharon who saved the day—the Duchess . . ." and offered the story to Wani.

"Yes, a life-saving transfusion of vinegar," said Wani; they all laughed loudly, as at the joke of a tyrant; and there did
seem to be a trace of cruelty in the remark, against himself and thus obscurely against them. "Shall we order straight away."
Wani turned and raised a hand to Fabio and as he did so Brad and Treat looked at each other with expressionless clarity for
three or four seconds. Fabio was with them at once, and as always seemed to guess and applaud their decisions, to echo and
confide to memory each item they mentioned; and perhaps it was only Nick who felt the new briskness in his tone and the quick
decay of his laugh. Brad asked about the pansy salad and Fabio obliged with a noncommittal joke, and moved round the table
holding the reclaimed menus flat against his chest. Nick said how well the restaurant was doing and smiled to insist on their
part in its success, since Wani and he had been guests at its opening last year and had made it their local; and Fabio said,
"We can't complain . . . er, Nick, we can't complain," just glancing at Wani on the second
complain
with something cold in his eyes, and then at the new arrivals at the door, who typically were the Stallards. Nick watched
Fabio go to greet them and the coldness had gone—he heard the usual mutual primping of head waiter and fashionable customers.
Well, Fabio must have been shaken to see Wani so changed; but there was something else in his reaction, fear and displeasure,
as if Wani's presence was no longer good for business.

Sophie and Jamie came over, Jamie slapping Wani on the shoulder and Sophie wrinkling her nose across the table rather than
kissing him. Jamie had just played the romantic lead in a low-budget Hollywood comedy, and had been praised for his uncanny
re-creation of a dim but handsome Old Etonian with floppy hair. Sophie was pregnant, and thus resting, though thick packets
that could well have been film scripts lay in the cradle-like basket she was carrying. Treat and Brad were thrilled to meet
them, since Jamie was still a possible for Owen Gereth in
Spoils;
cards were exchanged, and social visits that were never going to happen were delightedly agreed on. Nothing was said about
Wani's health, though Sophie, as they went off to their table, looked back with a finger-wave and a cringing smile of condolence.

"Wow, what a sweet guy," said Brad.

Nick, taking praise for the introduction, said, "Old Jamie . . . ?Yeah. . ."

"You guys go way back?"

"Yes—well, again we were all at Oxford together. He's really much more a friend of Wani's."

But Wani seemed to disown any further intimacy. He sat very still, with his slender hands on the tablecloth. His square-shouldered
jacket was buttoned but stood forward like a loose coat. He commanded attention now by pity and respect as he once had by
beauty and charm. The claim to attention was constant, but it had turned fiercer and quieter. Nick thought he still looked
wonderful in a way, though to admit it was to make an unbearable comparison. He was twenty-five years old. He said, "Stallard
has always been an absurd figure, and he's found the perfect partner in the lovely Miss Tipper."

"Oh . . ." said Brad. "Is she . . . er . . ."

"It was a good match for him. She's the daughter of the ninth richest man in Britain, and he's the son of a bishop."

"Bishops don't make that much, I guess," said Treat, and took another pull on his cocktail straw.

"Bishops make absolutely nothing," said Wani; and after a second he flashed a smile round the table at the imbecility of bishops.
Everyone else smiled too, in nervous collusion. Wani's face, gaunt and blotched, had taken on new possibilities of expression—the
repertoire of someone not only older but quite different, someone passed unknown in the street, was unexpectedly his. He must
have looked at himself in the mirror, winced and raised his eyebrows, and seen this unbearable stranger mugging back at him.
Clearly he couldn't be held responsible for the latest ironies and startlements of his face, though there were moments when
he seemed to exploit them. The cheekbones were delicate, the frontal bone heavy, even brutal—it was his father's look, brought
out sometimes in the past by candlelight and now exposed to the light of day.

Nick said, "You know Wani's father's been made a lord," not sure whom he was pandering to.

"Oh wow," said Brad. "Does that mean you'll be a lord one day too?" There were several seconds of silence till Wani said,
"It's not hereditary. What on earth are you drinking, by the way, Treat?"

"Don't ask . . . !" said Brad, eager with embarrassment.

"It's. . . what's he called? . . . Humphrey? Humphrey's latest invention. It's a Black Monday."

Wani gave his grin again, bright and sarcastic in effect. "That didn't take long," he said. Humphrey was Gusto's venerable
barman, keeper (up to a point) of long tabs and starlets' secrets. "He trained on the
Queen Mary.
There's nothing he doesn't know about cocktails."

"Well it's, what is it? It's dark rum, and cherry brandy, and sambuca. And loads of lemon juice. It tastes like a
really
old-fashioned laxative," said Treat.

"I can't drink any more," said Wani, "but when I hear that, I don't mind."

There was a brief pause. Treat ran his finger along his fringe, and Brad sighed and said, "Yeah . . . I wanted to ask . .
. " They both of them, nicely enough, seemed relieved the subject had been brought up.

Wani tucked in his chin. "Oh, a disaster," he said, frowning from one to the other. "Quite unbelievable. One of my bloody
companies lost two-thirds of its value between lunchtime and teatime."

"Oh . . . oh, right," said Brad, and gave an awkward laugh. "Yeah, we had it real bad too."

"Fifty billion wiped off the London stock exchange in one day."

Treat looked at him levelly, to show he'd registered but wouldn't challenge this evasion, and said, "Hey, the Dow was down
five hundred points."

"God, yes," said Wani, "well, it was all your fault."

Brad didn't argue, but said job losses on Wall Street were terrible.

"Oh, fuck that," said Wani. "Anyway, it bounces back. It has already. It always recovers. It always recovers."

"It's a worrying time for all of us," said Nick responsibly.

Wani gave a mocking look and said, "We'll all be absolutely fine." And after that it was impossible to approach him on the
subject of his fatal illness. Nick saw it was perplexing for the Americans, who had met him as a man about to get married.
Now natural concern was mixed with furtive thinking back.