Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"Aha… So who is it at the house, just you and them and the Sleeping Beauty?"

Nick loved hearing Toby described like that, the praise in the mockery. "I'm afraid the Sleeping Beauty isn't there much any more, you know he's been given his own flat. But there's Catherine, of course."

"Oh, yes, I love Catherine. I just caught her smoking a joint about a yard long with a very dodgy-looking man. She's quite a girl."

"She's certainly a very unhappy one," Nick said, swelling for a moment with his portentous secret knowledge of her.

Paul's eyebrow suggested that this was a wrong note. "Really? Every time I see her she's got a new man. She really should be happy, she must have everything a girl could want."

"You sound just like her father, I've heard him say exactly the same thing."

"Ah, there you are!" said Paul. He grinned and stamped out his half-smoked cigarette on the path. "There's Toby now." He nodded towards the door from the drawing room, where Toby was emerging with Sophie on his arm, more like a wedding than a birthday party. "Christ, the jammy bitchl" Paul murmured, in an oddly sincere surrender to the sheer dazzle of the couple.

"I know, I do hate her."

"Oh, she's marvellous. She's good-looking, she's as thick as a jug-and of course she's a highly promising actress."

"Exactly."

Paul smiled at him, as if at a country cousin. "My dear, don't take it so seriously. Anyway, they're all tarts, these boys, they've all got a price. Get Toby at two in the morning, when he's had a bottle of brandy, and you'll be able to do what you want with him. I promise you."

This idea was so wildly, almost grimly, exciting to Nick that he could hardly smile. It was clever of old Polly to tamper so intimately with his feelings. Nick said, "Mm, this is rather a festival of the girlfriend, though, I'm afraid."

And it was true that as the crowd quickly doubled and trebled on the terrace it took on more and more the air of an efficiently reproductive species. The boys, most of them Nick's Oxford contemporaries, all in their black and white, glanced across at politicians and people on the telly, and caught a glimpse of themselves as high-achieving adults too-they had that canny glint of self-discovery that comes with putting on a disguise. They didn't mingle unnecessarily with the girls. It was almost as if the High Victorian codes of the house, with its smoking room and bachelors' wing, still guided and restrained them. But the girls, in a shimmer of velvet and silk, and brilliantly made-up, like smaller children who had raided their mothers' dressing tables, had new power and authority too. As the sunlight lowered it grew more searching and theatrical, and cast intriguing shadows.

Paul said, "I should warn you, Wani Ouradi's got engaged."

"Oh, no," said Nick. It was such a snub, an engagement. "He might have thought about it a bit longer." He could picture a happy alternative future for himself and Wani-who was sweet-natured, very rich, and beautiful as a John the Baptist painted for a boy-loving pope. His father owned the Mira supermarket chain, and whenever Nick went into a Mira Mart for a bottle of milk or a bar of chocolate he had a vague erotic sense of slipping the money into Wani's pocket. He said, "I think he's coming tonight."

"He is, the old tart, I saw that vulgar motor car of his in the drive." Tart was Paul's word for anyone who had agreed to have sex with him; though as far as Nick was aware, he had never got anywhere with Wani. Wani, like Toby, remained in the far pure reach of fantasy, which grew all the keener and more inventive to meet the challenge of his unavailability. He felt the loss of him as though he had really stood a chance with him, he'd gone so far with him in his mind, as he lay alone in bed. He saw the great heterosexual express pulling out from the platform precisely on time, and all his friends were on it, in the first-class carriage-in the wagons-lits! He clung to what he had, as it gathered speed: that quarter of an hour with Leo by the compost heap, which was his first sharp taste of coupledom. "Are you and I the only homos here?" he said.

"I doubt it," said Paul, who didn't look keen to become Nick's partner for the night on the strength of that chance connection. "Oh my god, it's the fucking Home Secretary. I must wiggle. How do I look?"

"Fantastic," said Nick.

"Oh, I knew it." He knuckled his hair, with its oily fringe, like a vain schoolboy. "Gotta go, girl!" he said, silly but focused, an outrageous new seduction in view. And off he went, eagerly striding and hopping over the little low hedges. Nick saw him reach the group where Gerald was introducing his son to the Home Secretary: it was almost as if there were two guests of honour, each good-humouredly perplexed by the presence of the other. Polly hovered and then pushed in shamelessly; Nick caught his look of unironic excitement as the group closed round him.

"So what's he like?" said Russell. "Her old man. What's he into?" He glanced at Catherine, across the table, before his eyes drifted back down the room to Gerald, who was smiling at the blonde woman beside him but had the fine glaze of preoccupation of someone about to make a speech. They were in the great hall, at a dozen tables. It was the end of dinner, and there was a mood of noisy expectancy.

"Wine," said Nick, who was drunk and fluent, but still wary of Russell's encouraging tone. He twirled his glass on the rucked tablecloth. "Wine. His wife… um…"

"Power," said Catherine sharply.

"Power…"-Nick nodded it into the list. "Wensleydale cheese he's also very keen on. Oh, and the music of Richard Strauss-that particularly."

"Right," said Russell. "Yeah, I like a bit of Richard Strauss myself."

"Oh, I'd always prefer a bit of Wensleydale cheese," said Nick.

Russell blinked at him in a way that suggested he didn't understand him or was about to punch him in the face. But then he smiled reluctantly. "So he's not into anything kinky at all."

"Power," said Catherine again. "And making speeches." As the glass tinkled and the hubbub quickly died a lot of people heard her saying, "He loves making speeches."

Nick pushed his chair back to get a clear view of Gerald, and also of Toby, who had coloured up and was looking round with a tight grin of apprehension. There were ten minutes of oddly relished ordeal ahead of him, being teased and praised by his father and cheered by his drunk friends-his contemporaries. Nick grinned back at him, and wanted to help him, but was powerless, of course. He was blushing himself with the anxiety and forced eagerness of awaiting a speech by a friend.

Gerald had donned his rarely seen half-moon spectacles, and held a small card at arm's length. "Your Grace, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen," he said, offering the old formula with an ironic negligence which had the clever effect of making you think-yes, the Duchess, of course, and her son were here, as well as Lord Kessler and fat young Lord Shepton, a Martyrs' Club pal of Toby's. "Distinguished guests, family and friends. I'm very happy to see you all here tonight, in this truly splendid setting, and very grateful indeed to Lionel Kessler for giving the Worcester College First XV the run of his world-famous porcelain collection. Well, as the sign in Selfridge's says, or used to say, 'all breakages must be paid for.' " This drew a few titters, though Nick wasn't sure it struck the right tone. "We're honoured by the presence of statesmen, and film stars, and I suspect Tobias is thoroughly flattered that so many members of Her Majesty's government were able to be here. My witty daughter, I understand, has said that it's 'not so much a party as a party conference.'" Uncertain laughter, through which, with good timing: "I only hope I get to play an equally important role when we meet at Blackpool in October." The MPs chuckled amiably at this, though the Home Secretary, who'd taken the epithet of statesman more gravely than the rest, smiled inscrutably at the coffee cup in front of him. Russell said "Good girl!" quite loudly, and clapped a couple of times.