Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

At the front of the house the shutters or curtains stayed closed, so that indoors the day had the colour of an appalling hangover or other failure to get up. Electric light combined with diffused sunlight in a sickly glare. All the papers came as usual, in their long, arhythmical collapse onto the doormat, where they lay like a menace and were approached at last with long-armed reluctance. And there they were, the Millionaire MP, his Elegant Wife, his Blonde, or his Blushing Blonde Secretary. "Troubled daughter speaks of minister's affair." It seemed she'd spoken to Russell, and Russell had spoken to an old friend at the Mirror; after that there was no holding it. Oddly enough, in all the pictures "heartbroken Cathy" was smiling with sublime conviction. That was the first day.

On the second day, Gerald, resenting the demeaning scurry through the gardens, where he looked such a fool to the other keyholders, walking their dogs and knocking up on the tennis courts, put on his widest-brimmed fedora and a dark, double-breasted overcoat, and came out of the front door into the film set of the street. Parked vans, spotlights, shoulder-hefted TV cameras, fluffy boom mikes, the ruck of reporters-everything took on life and purpose with his emergence. The freshly whitened house-front reflected the flashbulbs. Gerald seemed as usual to draw strength from their attention. He was the star of this movie, whatever he did. Nick, looking out from behind an upstairs curtain, saw him step on to the pavement and heard him say loudly, "Thank you, gentlemen, I have nothing to say," in a cordial, plummy tone. The Press were in front of him in a half ellipse, of which his hat formed the centre. They called him Sir and Gerald and Mr Fedden and Minister. "Are you leaving your wife?" "This way, Gerald!" "Mr Fedden, are you guilty of insider dealing?" "Where's your daughter?" "Will you be resigning, Minister?" Nick saw how they enjoyed their deadpan mockery, their brief but decisive wielding of power. He found it frightening. He wondered how he himself would ever square up to that. Gerald moved slowly, with heavy patience, sturdy in the interest of his case and confident of knowing the right form, however humiliating the content, towards the Range Rover; which at last he got into, and drove off, almost running down photographers, to the House of Commons, to hand in his resignation.

Nick let the curtain drop, and made his way carefully around the twin guest beds and on to the brighter landing. Rachel was just coming out of her bedroom. "Sorry about this absurd gloom!" she said. "I find I have the greatest reluctance to have my photograph taken." There was a briskness in her tone that warned off any touch of sympathy.

"I understand."

She was wearing a red-and-black wool suit, a necklace, four or five rings, and would certainly have looked good in a photograph. Nick glanced past her into the shadowy white room. There was the first door, into a small anteroom with the bathroom opening off it, and then the second door, which had always sealed the couple away in a grandeur of privacy. Nick saw the end of the bed, a round table with silver-framed pictures of the children. He had hardly ever been in there, since his first summer, when he had walked around noiselessly, with his hands behind his back, an intruder in the temple of marital love; his own love fantasies had taken envious possession of it, like squatters, in the married couple's absence.

"Mm, strange times," said Rachel, again as if talking to someone barely known, and instinctively disapproved of, whom a crisis had thrust her together with: Nick felt for the tender irony which always lined their little phrases, but he wasn't sure he found it. Perhaps she knew that he had known all along about Gerald and Penny, and her dryness was a form of bitter embarrassment.

He said, "I know…" He was painfully sorry for her, but didn't see how to say so; it was a strange inhibition. In a way it was the moment for a new intimacy, and he hoped to bring her round to it. He glimpsed something beautiful for both of them emerging from the wreckage of the marriage: their old alliance, running rings of secret mockery round Gerald's pompous head, would flourish and be a strength to her. He hesitated, but he was ready.

She looked at him, her lips firming and relenting; then she turned away.

She went unnoticing past Norman Kent's portrait of Catherine, though to Nick it played its part in the unfolding moment. "I wish you would go and get Catherine," she said, as she started downstairs.

"Oh… " said Nick, following behind, with a nervous laugh that he regretted.

"She ought to be here with her family," Rachel said, not turning round. "She needs care. I can't tell you how worried I am about her with that man."

"Of course you are," said Nick promptly, "of course you are," feeling he needed a new tone to console a woman twice his age. He felt he learned as he spoke, and saw how all her worries found an outlet in this one worry. He said, "I'm sure she's safe with him, but if you want me to, I'll go over there, gladly," pressing and then faltering behind her in anxious support and respect. The truth was he was frightened of the reporters and photographers: he didn't know how to deal with them, or with anyone who didn't show support and respect. And he was very wary of Russell, who seemed to have brought about his longed-for exposure of Gerald almost by chance, and now was "looking after Cath" in his Brixton flat, and declining to let anyone see her.

Rachel reached the first-floor landing. "I mean, I can't go over there; I'd have the whole press pack at my heels." It was as if she was in danger even coming down to this level. The world outside her door had revealed itself as not only alien but hostile. And her world within doors had abruptly been robbed of comfort. She turned and her face was stiff apart from her moving lips; Nick thought she might be going to cry, and in a way he hoped she would, because it would be a natural thing to do, as well as a sign of trust-he could hold her, which he'd never done before. He saw the quick sensual crush of his chin against the shoulder of her wool suit, her grey-streaked hair across his mouth; she would clutch him, with a shudder of acceptance and release, and after a while he would lead her into the drawing room, where they would sit down and decide what to do about Gerald.

"No, you mustn't…" he said. "Obviously."

He watched her blink rapidly and choose a different sort of release: "I mean, since you're so good at winkling people out!"

Nick didn't counter this gibe, the first he'd ever had from her. He said, "Oh… " almost modestly, looking away at the carpet, the legs of the Sheraton table, the polished threshold of the drawing room. He felt very low, and Rachel went on,

"You know, we do rather count on you to keep an eye on Catherine."

He tried to think when he'd heard the tone before. It was one of her adorable, unexpectedly funny little moments of exasperated candour about some party official, some simpleton at Conference. "Well," he said, "I have tried… as I hope you know." Rachel didn't endorse this. "But, you know, she is an adult, she leads her own life…!" He gave the soft laugh of sensible conviction, which was all it had ever taken to win Rachel's agreement.

"Well, you say that!" she said, with a quite different kind of laugh, a single hard gasp.

Nick leant back on the mahogany banister, and felt his way into the new conditions. He said, very measuredly, "I think I always have been as good a friend to her as she would allow me to be. As you know, friends come and go with her-and they all disappoint her. So I suppose I must have been doing something right if she still trusts me."

"No, I'm sure she's devoted to you," said Rachel, "we all are," in a sharp but conditional tone, as though it didn't much matter. "It's really the question of your doing what's best for her, I mean, not simply… conspiring with her in whatever she wants you to do. She has a very serious illness."