Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

He opened a door from the hall into a small drawing room where a man in shirtsleeves got up and said, "I'm sorry, sir," and came towards him unsmilingly.

"I'm so sorry," Nick said, "I'm on the wrong side," and he went out again and pulled the door closed with a boom.

He could hear the music in the distance, and the burble and laughter from the library, and a high ringing in his own ears. Up above, the hundred lilies of the electrolier glowed and twitched-there was a hesitant animation to things, all beating to his own pulse. He went sidling and parading through a suite of lit rooms, abandoned, amusing, a bolster or pulled-back curtain like a glimpse of a person in hiding. Stopped and stooped now and then to appreciate a throbbing little bronze or table that revolved as you looked away from it. Leant caressingly, a little heavily, on the escritoire of the dear old Marquise de Pompadour, which creaked-he was a lover of that sort of thing, if anyone was watching… He went into the dining room where they'd had lunch, found the light switches and looked very closely at the landscape by Cezanne, which pulsed as well, with secret geometries. Why did he talk to himself about it? The imaginary friend was at his shoulder, the only child's devoted companion, needing his guidance. The composition, he said… the different greens… He had a keen idea, which he was cloaking and avoiding, and then licensing step by step as he opened a side door into a brown passageway, that turned a corner, and had other doors off it, and then came in a quickening cool draught to an open back door with the service yard beyond, glittering in drizzle. The glare was bright and unsentimental here. No enriching glow of candles or picture lights. Men in jeans were stacking and crashing things, and carried on shouting to each other as they passed Nick, so that he felt like a ghost whose "Thanks!" and "Sorry!" were inaudible. Tristao was washing glasses in a pantry and he walked in behind him with his heart suddenly thumping, smiling as if they were more than friends, and aware none the less that Tristao was working, it was one in the morning, and he himself was just a bow-tied drunk, a walking wrong note of hope and need.

"Hi there!"

Tristao looked round and sighed, then turned back to his work. "You come to help?" The glasses came in on metal trays, half full, lipstick-smeared, fag ends in claret, jagged edges on stems.

"Urn… I'm sure I'd break everything," Nick said, and gazed at him from behind with wonder and a sense of luck and again the suspicion of a rebuff.

"Oof…! I'm tired," Tristao said, and came across the room so that Nick felt in the way. "I been up on my feet nine hours now."

"You must be," said Nick, leaning towards him with a friendly stroke or pat, which fell short and was ignored. He wondered if he might be going to fall over. "So… When do you finish?"

"Oh, we go on till you go off, baby." He dried his hands on a tea towel, and lit himself a cigarette, half offering one to Nick as an afterthought. Nick hated tobacco, but he accepted at once. The first sharp drag made his head fizz. "You enjoying the party, anyway?" Tristao said.

"Yeah…" said Nick, and gave a shrug and a large ironical.laugh. He wanted to impress Tristao as a Hawkeswood guest, and to mock at the guests as well. He wanted to suggest that he was having a perfectly good time, that the staff, certainly, could not have done more, but that he could take it or leave it; and besides (here he half closed his eyes, suavely and daringly) he had a better idea about how to have fun. Tristao perhaps didn't get all that at once. He looked at Nick moodily, as at a kind of problem. And Nick looked back at him, with a simmering drunk smile, as if he knew what he was doing.

Tristao had lost his bow tie, and the top two buttons of his shirt were open over a white singlet. His sleeves were rolled up, there were streaked black hairs on his forearms, but from his heart to his knees he wore a white apron tied round tight, which made a secret of what had been such a heavy hint before. The pantry was lit by a single fluorescent tube, so that his tired sallow face was shown without flattery. He looked quite different from what Nick had remembered, and it took a little effort of lustful will to find him attractive-there seemed almost to be an excuse for giving up on him and going back to the party. "A lot of people here, yeah?" said Tristao. He glanced sourly at the trays of glasses and debris, and blew out smoke in that same critical sibilant way that Polly had, like a sign of some shared expertise. And then Nick found himself bitterly jealous at the idea of Polly getting Tristao, and knew that he had to stay. "Yeah, he got a lot of friends, this Mr Toby… I like him. He's like a hactor, no?"-and Tristao made a gesture, long fingers spread like a fan beside his face to indicate the general eclat of Toby's features, bone structure, complexion.

"Yes, he is," said Nick, with a chuckle and a puff of smoke. Toby's face seemed to hover for a moment in front of the waiter's, which was less beautiful in each respect… But wasn't the fact that he didn't admire Tristao so much a part of the lesson, what he thought of as the homosexual second-best solution? This backstairs visit was all about sex, not nonsensical longings: he wasn't going to get what he wanted elsewhere. There was a challenge in the boy's deep-set eyes and something coded in his foreignness-were Madeirans in fact susceptible to casual sex? Nick couldn't see why they shouldn't be…

"So how much you had to drink?" Tristao said.

"Oh, masses," said Nick.

"Yeah?" said Tristao.

"Well, not as much as some people," said Nick. He smoked, and held his cigarette by his lapel, and felt that his smoking was unpractised and revealing. Of course the wonderful thing about his date with Leo had been that it was a date-they both knew what they were there for. Whereas the Tristao thing might well be all in his own head. He wasn't sure if the thinness of their conversation showed how futile it was, or if it was a sign of its authenticity. He suspected chat-ups should be more colourful and provocative. He said, "So you're from Madeira, I gather," with the flicker of an eyebrow.

Tristao narrowed his eyes and gave his first little smile. "How you know that?" he said. Nick took the moment to hold his gaze. "Oh, I know, the big guy tell you."

"Huge," said Nick-"well, round the middle anyway!"

Tristao looked inside his packet of cigarettes, where he'd stowed Polly's card. "That him?" he said. Nick glanced dismissively at the card but felt he'd been taught a lesson by it. Dr Paul Tompkins, 23 Lovelock Mansions … so established already, like a consulting room, with the boys coming through. He turned the card over, where Polly had scribbled Sep 4, 8pm sharp! "Why he say sharp?" said Tristao.

"Oh, he's a very busy man," said Nick, and feeling it was the moment he made a sudden movement forwards, two steps, his arms out, and a smirk of ineffable irony about Polly on his lips.

"Sorry, mate -": a red-faced man looked in at the door, then tucked in his chin and gave a confident dry laugh. "Wondered what was going on there for a moment!" Nick reddened and Tristao had the proper provoking presence of mind to snort quietly and say, "Bob, how's things?"

Bob gave him some instructions about the different rooms, "his lordship" was referred to a couple of times, with servants' irony as well as pitying respect, and Nick swayed from side to side with a tolerant smile, to convey to the men that he knew Lord Kessler personally, they'd had lunch together and he'd shown him the Moroni. When Bob had gone, Tristao said, "What am I going to do with you?" without much warmth or sense of teasing.

"I don't know," said Nick, chirpily, half numbed by drink to the looming new failure.