Alan Hollinghurst - The Swimming-Pool Library

I saw no reason not to say. ‘I met him in a rather less grownup and public-spirited way. Do you know an old boy called Charles Nantwich? He introduced me to him-at Wicks’s, I should add: all madly respectable.’

Gavin raised his eyebrows and nodded several times, then took a sip from his wine glass and allowed a faintly sinister pause to continue. ‘I’d no idea you knew Nantwich,’ he then said briskly.

‘I’ve only got to know him over the last few months. He’s terribly nice-and he’s told me a lot about his past…’ (how far should I go?)

Gavin smiled. ‘I’m just surprised that he should want to strike up with one of the Beckwiths.’

‘Well, you did,’ I reasonably observed.

He laughed, overlong, so that I saw his embarrassment and knew I shouldn’t pursue the subject, on which he swallowed further drink and shut up. ‘How is my ugly sister?’ I asked. ‘She’s not here?’

‘No, it’s not really her tasse de thé , is it? Not that it’s much mine,’ he added cautiously.

‘Roops, though, I imagine, would have loved it. It’s right up his street.’

‘Roops, as you rightly surmise, was extremely keen to come. When Philippa told him all the reasons he wouldn’t like it he got very excited: but he had to go round to a children’s party at the Salmons’ instead-it’s Siegfried’s sixth birthday, you see. Roops, being a sophisticated child, naturally holds all the members of the Salmon shoal in unqualified contempt-so it’s been a rather difficult afternoon. Apart from that we’re fine!’

‘You must give them my love.’

Aldo, who had been happily listening in, nodded as though to add his love to mine, and Gavin, good chap that he was, took a nervous gulp of wine and plunged into the unknown waters of male photography: ‘Do you do a lot of modelling?’

‘No, this is the first time I have done it.’

‘Really! I wonder how on earth you get started.’

‘In my case I was very lucky. Mr Staines discovered me.’ Aldo looked modestly down at this, giving the impression that some vast show-business career had sprung from that ordinary but fateful encounter. ‘Do you like the art?’ he appealed.

‘Um, some of them are rather striking, aren’t they? I haven’t really had a chance to see… the ones upstairs…’-he craned round-‘some of them are rather strong meat, perhaps , for me!’

Aldo was rather delighted to be given a cue and produced a remark of the kind that pass for jokes among people who can barely speak the same language: ‘Ah yes, you see, I am a butcher.’

Gavin smiled and I explained that Staines had found him while doing some studies of working people in Smithfield. ‘I was carrying half a cow,’ said Aldo, ‘all covered in blood. Ronnie said I looked like bacon.’

There were a few seconds of puzzlement before I worked it out: ‘I expect he meant that you looked like a Bacon.’ But it was going to take too much explaining. Aldo continued pleasantly with an account of portering opportunities in offal and the many under-the-counter benefits of his trade (some nice heart or brains one day, the next perhaps some good fresh liver). I found my eyes resting with momentary respect on the chalked-up menu of alfalfa-sprout salad, chickpea casserole, lentil and parsnip pie…

‘ Sorry , William, Gavin Croft-Parker, what an honour, Aldo poppet…’-Staines was among us, clutching at hands, emphatically friendly and humble on his great night. ‘Do forgive me. There was that dullest of men from the whatsit, Bright City Lights, whatever it’s called. Apparently everyone’s opinion is simply made by consulting his organ, so you have to be dreamily dreamily compliant and answer all his dreary dreary questions. So ignorant,’ Staines whispered, ‘he’d no idea what a pyx was; and as for a scapular… he said, “Do you mean the collarbone?” I said “I don’t-and anyway it isn’t the collarbone, it’s the shoulderblade.” Clearly he was never a Catholic, and then I’ve ticked him off and he’ll say something vile in his article just because I’ve made him feel small.’ He took a swig from his glass. ‘Still, I suppose it’ll only be half an inch under the “Gay Listings” ’ (a prophecy with which I was bound to agree).

‘I must have a look upstairs,’ said Gavin, weaving away from us, and I nodded to him, realising he was going altogether. When I turned back Staines was negligently fondling Aldo’s muscly shoulder and gazing distractedly around the crowded room. It was probably better to catch him while I could.

‘Excellent show,’ I said.

‘My dear, do you like it. I’m not utterly utterly displeased with it myself. But of course other people’s praise means more to one even than one’s own!’

‘You’ve managed to find some fascinating models. I like your St Peter particularly-but then I have known him for some time.’

‘Old Ashley!-or rather Billy, as he calls himself professionally.’

‘I’d no idea.’

‘Mm-he thought Ashley was too girly, especially after April … But I still think of him as “Old Ash”-Ash on an old man’s sleeve, dear…’

‘Fabulous tits!’

‘ Don’t!’ Staines shivered, and looked at me with a new, suspicious curiosity.

‘There’s one of your models I’m sorry not to see stretched on the rack tonight.’ I looked about and tried to keep my manner sluttish and casual. ‘One of your most intriguing ones, I should say.’

‘My dear, I’m sorry. Not all of my boys were ready, or indeed eager, for divine sacrifice.’

‘He’s called Colin-thin, short curly hair, blue eyes, permanent tan, permanent everything else pretty well too.’

‘Oh, Colin. You like him do you? He is rather extraordinaire. But he’s not really a regular of mine. He doesn’t have the sort of innocence I needed for this… cycle.’

I agreed. ‘He does look pretty naughty.’

‘Oh, he’s wildly naughty.’ Staines lowered his voice. ‘And you know the most ridiculous thing about him. What do you think he does?’

‘Absolutely everything, I should imagine.’

‘True, true,’ Staines almost boasted. ‘But I mean as a job?’

‘He’s not one of your butchers, is he? I don’t know-a florist…’

‘No!’

‘I can’t guess.’

‘My dear, he’s a policeman. Isn’t it wonderful?’ I blinked and then rolled my eyes in a way I would never have done if I had been genuinely amazed. ‘In fact I first spotted him on the beat-you could see at once he was something special. But what I say is, with boys like that in the police force, things can’t be all bad!’ He began to move off, but returned to his subject. ‘Not an eyelash, though, not a teardrop, of innocence. The one I’d have loved to do, the really innocent one, was your little friend Phil…’

I wondered at first if I was going to have to strike a bargain. ‘I’d like to buy one of your studies of Colin.’

Staines had virtually left me, so that he called out to me as Guy Parvis pressed himself upon him, ‘Dear, I’m far too dear!’ And then mouthed, in a kind of grimacing secrecy: ‘I’ll give you one…’

Now I was alone with Aldo again. I wasn’t utterly utterly uninterested in doing something with him afterwards, but the social work was a strain, so I struggled back upstairs. I planned another drink before escaping, and looked round the main gallery too to see if there was anyone else I wanted to escape with. It was as full as it sensibly could be now, and there were some interesting punky-looking boys with public-school voices as well as real leather queens and a sprinkling of those dotty types with monocles and panama hats who seem to exist for ever in some fantastic Bloomsbury of their own.