Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"Now, as you may have heard," Gerald went on, with a delayed quick glance in their direction, "Toby is twenty-one today. I had been going to give you Dr Johnson's well-known lines on 'long-expected one-and-twenty,' but when I looked them up again last night I found I didn't know them quite as well as I thought, or indeed as well as many of you, I'm sure, do." Here Gerald looked down at the card in a marvellously supercilious way. " 'Lavish of your grandsire's guineas,' says the Great Cham, 'Bid the slaves of thrift farewell… When the bonny blade carouses, Pockets full, and spirits high, What are acres? What are houses? Only dirt, or wet and dry.' So: far from suitable advice to the grandson and nephew of great bankers, or for any young person coming of age in our splendid property-owning democracy. And the question of wet versus dry, of course, is one on which indecision is no longer acceptable."

Through the generous laughter Nick caught Toby's eye again, and held it for two or three long seconds, giving him perhaps a transfusion of reassurance. Toby himself would be too nervous to listen to his father's speech properly, and was laughing in imitation of the others, not at the jokes themselves. It was typical of Gerald not to have realized that Dr Johnson's poem was a ruthless little satire. Nick surveyed the room, and was reminded of a college hall, with Gerald and the more influential guests elected to the high table. Or perhaps of some other institution, such as houses like this had often turned into. Up in the arcade of the gallery one or two servants were listening impassively, waiting only for the next stage of the evening. There was a gigantic electrolier, ten feet high, with upward-curling gilt branches opening into cloudy glass lilies of light. Catherine had refused to sit under it, which was why their whole table had apparently been demoted to this corner of the room. If it did fall, Nick realized, it would crush Wani Ouradi. He began to feel a little anxious about it himself.

Gerald was now giving a facetious review of Toby's life, and again it made Nick think of a marriage, and the best man's speech, which everyone dreaded, and the huge heterosexual probability that a twenty-first would be followed soon enough by a wedding. He could only see the back of Sophie Tipper's head, but he attributed similar thoughts to it, transposed into a bright, successful key. "As a teenager, then," Gerald said, "Tobias a) believed that Enoch Powell was a socialist, b) set fire to a volume of Hobbes, and c) had a large and mysterious overdraft. When it came to Oxford, a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics was the irresistible choice." There was more laughter-and Gerald was leading them along very ably: they were drunkish and amenable, even gullible, since making a speech was a kind of trick. At the same time there was a bond among the young people, who were old enough to know that speeches were allowed, and perhaps even supposed, to be embarrassing, and who were rowdy and superior at once, in the Oxford way. Nick wondered if the women were responding more warmly, if they were picking up, as Polly did, on their host's "splendour"; perhaps their laughter would seem to him a kind of submission. Nick himself was lazily exploring the margin between his affection for Gerald and a humorous suspicion, long resisted, that there might be something rather awful about him. He wished he could see Lord Kessler's reactions.

"And now, as you know, Tobias has opted," Gerald said, "at least for the moment, for a career in journalism. I'm bound to admit this made me anxious at first, but he assures me he has no interest in becoming a parliamentary sketch writer. There's been puzzling talk of the Guardian, which we hope will blow over, though for the time being I'm thinking hard before answering any of his questions, and have decided to strenuously deny everything."

Nick glanced round, in a little shrug of amusement, and saw that Tristao, the waiter from Madeira, was standing in the doorway behind him, following the proceedings with a vacant stare. As a caterers' waiter he must have to listen to an abnormal number of speeches, each of them built around private jokes and allusions. What was he thinking? What was he thinking of all of them? His hands were huge and beautiful, the hands of a virtuoso. His dressy trouser-front curved forwards with telling asymmetry. When he saw that Nick was looking his way he gave him the vaguest smile and inclined his head, as if waiting for a murmured order. Nick thought, he doesn't even realize I like him, he thinks I'm just one of these toffs who never look at waiters for their own sake. He shook his head and turned back, and his disappointment was practised and invisible. He saw that Catherine was stuffing things into her bag and flashing irritable looks at Russell, who mouthed, "What?" at her, and was getting irritable in his turn. "So, Toby," Gerald said, raising his voice and slowing his words, "we congratulate you, we bless you, we love you: happy birthday! Will you-all-please raise your glasses: to Toby!"

"Toby!" the overlapping burble went up, followed by a sudden release of tension in cheers and whistles and applause-applause for Toby, not for the speaker, the heightened, unreal acclaim of a special occasion, amongst which Nick lifted his champagne glass with tears in his eyes, and kept on sipping from it to hide his emotion. But Catherine had jumped her little gilt chair back from the table and hurried out, past Tristao, who followed her for a second, to see if he could help. Then Nick and Russell stared at each other, but Toby was getting to his feet, and Nick was damned if he was chasing after her this time, he really did love Toby, more than anyone in this high magnificent room, and he was going to be with him as he spoke.

"No," said Toby, "I'm afraid Pa got that a bit wrong. I tried to get him an interview with the Guardian, but they just weren't interested!" This wasn't quite a witticism, but it drew a loud laugh from his friends, and Gerald, who'd assumed a self-congratulating air, was forced to make a quick moue of humility. " 'Wait till he does something big,' they said." He turned to his father. "Of course I told them they wouldn't have to wait long."

There was something artless in Toby's delivery; he was working in the family tradition of teasing, but he was too relenting and couldn't yet match Gerald's heavy archness. When he had stood up he was strikingly pale, like someone about to faint, but when he relaxed a little the colour suddenly burned in his cheeks, and his grin was a nervous acknowledgement of his blush. He said, "I'm not going to say much -" vague groans of disappointment-"but above all I want to thank my dear sweet generous Uncle Lionel for having us all here tonight. I can't imagine anything more wonderful than this party-and I have a horrible feeling that after this the rest of my life is going to be one long anticlimax." This brought cheers and applause for Lord Kessler, who was surely used to being thanked, but not to such public declarations of love. Again the family note was strong and sentimental, and a little surprising. Nick was smiling at Toby in an anxious trance of lust and encouragement. It was like watching a beautiful actor in a play, following him and wanting him.

"I'm also really touched," Toby said, "that my old friends Josh and Caroline have come all the way from South Africa. Oh, and I understand they're also squeezing in a wedding ceremony while they're here." There was good-natured applause, though no one really knew who Josh and Caroline were. Nick found himself listening almost abstractly to Toby's voice, hearing its harmless pretensions, which were the opposite of Gerald's. Gerald was a knowing, self-confident speaker, trained at the Oxford Union, polished at innumerable board meetings, and his tone combined candour and insincerity to oddly charming effect. Toby, like many of his friends, spoke in the latest public-school accent, an inefficient blur of class denial. Now he was a bit drunk, and under pressure, and older vowels were showing through as he said that it was "awfully good of" his parents to have tolerated him. He too seemed not to know what the point of his speech was; he came over like a cross between a bridegroom and the winner of an award, with a list of people to thank. His boyish technique was to deflect attention from himself onto his friends, and in this he was also the opposite of his father. He made various jokes such as "Sam will need two pairs of trousers" and "No more creme de menthe for Mary," which clearly alluded to old disgraces, and began to bore the MPs. Nick sensed a touching nostalgia for the Oxford years, on which a door, an oak perhaps, seemed gently but firmly to have closed. He himself was not referred to; but he took this as a sign of intimacy. His gaze embraced Toby, and from behind his helpless grin and raised applauding hands he saw his dream-self run forwards to hold him and kiss his hot face.