The Line of Beauty (5 page)

Leo shrugged. "It's not practical," he said.

"I can jump on the bus," said Nick, who had studied the London
A-Z in
absorbed conjecture about Leo's street, neighbourhood, historic churches, and access to public transport.

"Nah—" Leo looked away with a reluctant smile and Nick saw that he was embarrassed. "My old lady's at home." This first hint
of shyness and shame, and the irony that tried to cover it, cockneyfied and West Indian too, made Nick want to jump on him
and kiss him. "She's dead religious," Leo said, with a short defeated chuckle.

"I know what you mean," said Nick. So there they were, two men on a summer night, with nowhere to call their own. There was
a kind of romance to that. "I've got an idea," he said tentatively. "If you don't mind, um, being outside."

"I don't care," said Leo, and looked lazily over his shoulder. "I'm not dropping my pants in the street."

"No, no . . ."

"I'm not that sort of slut."

Nick laughed anxiously. He wasn't sure what people meant when they said they'd had sex "in the street"—even "on Oxford Street,"
he'd once heard. In six months' time perhaps he would know, he'd have sorted out the facts from the figures of speech. He
watched Leo twist and lift a knee to clamber free of the bench—he looked keen to get on with it, and he acted of course as
if Nick knew the procedure. Nick followed him with a baked smile and a teeming inward sense of occasion. He was consenting
and powerless in the thrust of the event, the rich foregone conclusion of the half-hour that opened ahead of them: it made
his heart race with its daring and originality, though it also seemed, as Leo squatted to unlock his bike, something everyday
and inevitable. He ought to tell Leo it was his first time; then he thought it might bore him or put him off. He gazed down
at his strictly shaved nape, the back of a stranger's,head, which any minute now he would be allowed to touch. The label of
Leo's skimpy blue shirt was turned up at the collar and showed the temp's signature of Miss Selfridge. It was a little secret
given away, a vanity exposed—Nick was light-headed, it was so funny and touching and sexy. He saw the long muscles of his
back shifting in its sleek grip, and then, as Leo hunkered on his heels and his loose jeans stood away from his waist, the
street lamp shining in on the brown divide of his buttocks and the taut low line of his briefs.

He unlocked the gate and let Leo go in ahead of him. "Cycling isn't permitted in the gardens, but I dare say you can walk
your bike."

Leo hadn't learnt his mock-pompous tone yet. "I dare say bumshoving isn't permitted either," he said. The gate closed behind
them, an oiled click, and they were together in the near-darkness of the shrubbery. Nick wanted to hold Leo and kiss him at
once; but he wasn't quite certain. Bumshoving was unambiguous, and encouraging, but not romantic exactly . . . They strolled
cautiously forward, leaning against each other for a step or two as they steered for the path. There was the slightest chill
in the air now, but Nick shivered wildly in a spasm of excitement. His fingers felt oddly stiff, as though he was wearing
very tight gloves. Even in the deep shadow he wanted to conceal his weird smirk of apprehension. He did so hope it would be
him who got to do the shoving, but didn't know how you arranged that, perhaps it all just became clear. Perhaps they both
had to have a go. He led Leo through on to a wide inner lawn, the bike bouncing out beside them, controlled only by a hand
on its saddle—it seemed to quiver and explore just ahead of them. To the right rose a semicircle of old planes and a copper
beech whose branches plunged to the ground and made a broad bell-tent that was cool and gloomy even at midday. Away to the
left ran the gravel walk, and beyond it the tall outline of the terrace, and the long, intermitted rhythm of glowing windows.
As they skirted the lawn Nick counted confusedly, searching for the Feddens'. He found the first-floor balcony, the proud
brightness of the room beyond the open French windows.

"Yeah, how far is it?" said Leo.

"Oh, just over here . . ."—Nick giggled because he didn't know if Leo's grumpiness was real. He went ahead a bit, anxiously
responsible. As his eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness nowhere seemed private enough—there was more show-through from the
street lights, voices on the pavement were unnervingly close. And of course on a summer night there were keyholders still
at large, picnickers charmed into long late reminiscence, walkers of white dogs. He stooped under the copper beech, but the
branches were rough and confusing and the mast crackled underfoot. He backed out again, bashing into Leo and gripping his
waist for a moment to steady himself. "Sorry . . . " The feel of his warm hard body under the silky shirt was almost worryingly
beautiful, a promise too lavish to believe in. He prayed that Led didn't think he was a fool. The other men in Leo's life,
anonymous partners, answerers of ads, old boyfriends, old Pete, massed impatiently behind him—as if a match had flared he
saw their predatory eyes and moustaches and hardened sex-confidence. He led the way quickly to the little compound of the
gardener's hut.

"All right, this'll do," said Leo, propping his bike against the larch-lap screen. For a moment it seemed he was going to
chain it up again, then he stopped himself and left it there with a regretful laugh. Nick tried the door of the hut even though
it was padlocked. Beside it there was a shadowy area where a flatbedded barrow was kept, and a broken bench; there were laurels,
and a yew tree hanging over; the dusty sour smell of the yew was mixed with the muted sweetness of a huge compost heap, a
season's grass cuttings mounded high in a chicken-wire coop. Leo came up to Nick and hesitated for a second, looking away,
trailing his fingers over the warm cuttings. "You know, these composts get really hot inside," he said.

"Yes . . . " Nick had known this all his life.

"Too hot to touch—like a hundred degrees."

"Is that right . . . ?" He reached out like a tired child.

"Anyway," Leo said, letting Nick's hand slide round his waist, putting his arm, his elbow, round Nick's neck to pull him close
against him. "Anyway . . . " His face slipped sideways across Nick's as he breathed the word, the unguessed softness of his
lips touched his cheeks and neck, while Nick sighed violently and ran his hand up and down on Leo's back. He pushed his mouth
towards Leo's, and they met, and hurried into a kiss. To Nick it felt simply like a helpless admission of need, and the shocking
thing was the proof of Leo's need, in the force and thoroughness with which he worked on him. They pushed apart, Leo faintly
smiling, Nick gasping and tormented just by the hope that they would do it again.

They kissed for a minute more—two minutes, Nick wasn't counting, half-hypnotized by the luscious rhythm, the generous softness
of Leo's lips and the thick insistence of his tongue. He was gasping from the rush of reciprocity, the fact of being made
love to. Nothing at the pub, in their aimless conversation, had even hinted at it. He'd never seen it described in a book.
He was achingly ready and completely unprepared. He felt the coaxing caress of Leo's hand on the back of his head, roaming
through the curls there, and then lifted his other hand to stroke Leo's head, so beautifully alien in its hard stubbly angles
and the dry dense firmness of his hair. He thought he saw the point of kissing but also its limitations—it was an instinct,
a means of expression, of mouthing a passion but not of satisfying it. So his right hand, that was lightly clutching Leo's
waist, set off, still doubting its freedom, to dawdle over his plump buttocks and then squeeze them through the soft old denim.
The prodding of Leo's angled erection against the top of Nick's thigh seemed to tell him more and more clearly to do what
he wanted, and get his hand inside his waistband and inside the stretched little briefs. His middle finger pushed into the
deep divide, as smooth as a boy's, his fingertip even pressed a little way into the dry pucker so that Leo let out a happy
grunt. "You're a bad boy," he said.

He moved away from Nick, who clung to him, then let him go with a sulky laugh. "I'm coming back," Leo said, and edged off
past the shed. Nick stood for a little while, holding himself and sighing, alone again, aware of the unending soft roar of
London and a night breeze hardly dipping the dark leaves of the laurel. What was Leo doing? He was getting something from
the slim side pannier of his bike. He was amazing with his habits, he was fabulous, but then Nick's skin prickled for a moment
at the thought of himself out here in the dark with a stranger, the risk of it, silly little fool, anything could happen.
Leo felt his way back, shadow among shadows. "I think we might be needing this," he said, so that the rush of risk flowed
beautifully into the mood of adventure.

Next day Nick wandered for lost half-hours through what he'd done, taking the tube of gel, that was folded back neatly, three-quarters
empty, and peering at it in the gloom with relief and embarrassment; turning Leo round in his arms and unbuttoning his jeans
as if they were his own, and prising his broad blunt hard-on from his pants as he eased them down, and pushing him forward
to hold on to the bench as he knelt behind him and paid the kind of homage with his tongue and lips that he'd dreamed of paying
for years to a whole night-catalogue of other men. He loved the scandalous idea of what he was doing more perhaps than the
actual sensations and the dull very private smell. He twisted his own pants down to his knees, and smiled at the liberated
bounce of his dick in the cool night air, and kissed his smile into Leo's sphincter. Then when he fucked Leo, which was what
he did next, a sensation as interesting as it was delicious, he couldn't help laughing quietly. "I'm glad you think it's funny,"
Leo muttered. "No, it's not that," said Nick; but there was something hilarious in the shivers of pleasure that ran up his
back and squeezed his neck, and ran down his arms to his fingers—he felt he'd been switched on for the first time, gently
gripping Leo's hips, and then reaching round him to help unbutton his shirt and get it off and hold his naked body against
him. It was all so easy. He'd worried a lot the night before that there might be some awful knack to it—

"Mind that shirt," Leo said: "it's my sister's."

That made Nick love him much more, he couldn't say why. "Your arse is so smooth," he whispered, while his hands stroked hungrily
through the short rough hair on his chest and belly.

"Yeah . . . shave it . . ." said Leo, between grunted breaths as Nick got quicker and bolder, "get arse-knit. . . fucking
murder . . . on the bike . . . " Nick kissed the back of his neck. Poor Leo! With his arse-knit and his ingrowing beard he
was a martyr to his hair. "Yeah, like that," he said, with a sweet tone of revelation. He was leaning forward on one arm now,
and masturbating in a pounding hurry. Nick was more and more seriously absorbed, but then just before he came he had a brief
vision of himself, as if the trees and bushes had rolled away and all the lights of London shone in on him: little Nick Guest
from Barwick, Don and Dot Guest's boy, fucking a stranger in a Notting Hill garden at night. Leo was right, it was so bad,
and it was so much the best thing he'd ever done.

Later Nick sat for a minute on a bench by the gravel walk, while Leo took a piss on the lawn. It wasn't clear whether the
tall stooping figure in wlnte shirtsleeves had seen this. Leo sat down beside Nick and there was a sense that some last, more
formal part of their date was to be enacted. Nick felt abruptly heavy-hearted, and thought perhaps he had been silly to let
Leo see how happy he was—he couldn't stifle his sense of achievement, and his love-starved mind and body wanted more and more
of Leo. The air seemed to jostle with nothing but the presence and names of Nick and Leo, which hung in a sad sharp chemical
tang of knowledge among the sleeping laurels and azaleas. The tall man walked past them, hesitated, and turned.

"You do know it's keyholders only."

"I'm sorry?"

The mingled light from the backs of the houses revealed a flushed summer-holiday face, soft and weak-chinned, perched at an
altitude under thin grey hair. "Only this is a private garden."

"Oh, yes—we're keyholders," the phrase subsuming Leo, who made a little grunt, not of lust this time but of indignant confirmation.
He set his hands on his knees in a proprietary attitude, his knees wide apart, sexy and insolent too.

"Ah, fine . . . " The man gave a squinting half-smile. "I didn't think I'd seen you before." He avoided looking at Leo, who
was obviously the cause of this edgy exchange—and that for Nick was another of the commonplace revelations of the evening,
of being out with a black man.

"I'm often here, actually," Nick said. He gestured away behind him towards the Feddens' garden gate. "I live at number 48."

"Fine . . . fine . . ."—the man walked on a couple of steps, then looked back, doubtful but eager. "But then you must mean
at the Feddens' . . ."

Nick said quietly, "Yes, that's right."

The news affected the man visibly—in the softly blotted glare, which reminded Nick for a moment of plays put on in college
gardens, he seemed to melt into excited intimacy. "Goodness. . . you're living there. Well, isn't it all splendid! We couldn't
be more delighted. I'm Geoffrey Titchfield, by the way, number 52—though we only have the garden flat, unlike . . . unlike
some!"

Nick nodded, and smiled noncommittally. "I'm Nick Guest." Some solidarity with Leo kept him from standing up, shaking hands.
Of course it was Geoffrey's voice he had heard from the balcony on the night he had put Leo off, and Geoffrey's guests whose
regular tireless laughter had heightened his loneliness, and now here he was in person and Nick felt he'd got one past him,
he'd fucked Leo in the keyholders' garden, it was a secret victory.

"Aah . . . aah . . . " went Geoffrey. "It's
such
good news. We're on the local association, and we couldn't be more thrilled.
Good old Gerald."