Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"Mm… perfectly harmless," murmured Gerald.

"Yah-it's just a kids' thing," said Nick, hovering to interpret and deflect. He wasn't much use as a guide to his own youth culture, but he knew it wasn't just a kids' thing. They paused at a fashion spread that showed some sexy half-naked models in a camp pretence of a pillow fight. Gerald frowned faintly, to deny any interest in the women, and Nick realized his paradigm for this inspection was some difficult encounter with his own parents, who would have blushed at the sexualized style of the whole magazine, and called it "daft" or "rubbish" because they couldn't mention the sex thing itself Nick looked at the sprawling beautiful men and blushed appallingly too. He said, "I always think the typography's rather a nightmare."

"Isn't it a nightmare?" said Rachel gratefully. "One feels quite lost." They all started reading an article which began, " 'Get that motherfucker out of here!' says Daddy Mambo of Collision."

"OK," said Gerald, with a dismissive drawl, flicking through pages of advertisements for clubs and albums. He seemed vaguely distressed, not at the magazine itself, but that Rachel should have seen it. "This doesn't have the young genius's work in it…?"

"Urn-yes, he did the cover on this one."

"Ah…" Gerald peered at it in an affectedly donnish way. "Oh yes, 'photo Russell Swinburne-Stevenson.'"

"I didn't know he had a surname," said Rachel.

"Much less two," said Gerald-as if perhaps he might not be such a bad sort.

They looked at Boy George's carmine smile and unusual hat. He wasn't at all sexy to Nick, but he carried a large sexual implication.

"Boy George is a man, isn't he?" said Rachel.

"Yes, he is," said Nick.

"Not like George Eliot."

"No, not at all."

"Very fair question," said Gerald.

The doorbell rang-it was a quick brassy rattle as much as a ping. "Is that Judy already?" said Rachel, fairly crossly. Gerald went into the hall and they heard him pluck open the front door and boom "Hello" in a peremptory and discouraging way he had. And then, in another timbre that made Nick's heart thump and the still air in the house shiver and gleam, Leo saying, "Good morning, Mr Fedden, sir. I was wondering if young Nicholas was at home."

"Urn, yes, yes he is… Nick!" he called back-but Nick was already coming through, with a strange stilted walk, it seemed to himself, of embarrassment and pride. It was abrupt and confusing but he couldn't stop smiling. It was the first time in his life he'd had a lover call for him, and the fact had a scandalous dazzle to it. Gerald didn't ask Leo in, but stood back a little to let Nick pass and to see if there was going to be any kind of trouble.

"Hello, Nick," said Leo.

"Leo!"

Nick shook his hand and kept holding it as he stepped out onto the shallow porch, between the gleaming Tuscan pillars.

"How's it going?" said Leo, giving his cynical little smile, but his eyes almost caressing, passing Nick a secret message, and then nodding him a sign that Gerald had withdrawn; though he must have been able to hear him saying, "… some pal of Nick's…" and a few moments later, "No, black chappie."

"I'm so pleased to see you," Nick said, with a certain caution because he didn't want to look mad with excitement. And then, "I've been thinking of you. And wondering what you were up to," sounding a bit like his mother when she was fondly suppressing a critical note. He looked at Leo's head as if he had never seen anything like it before, his nose, his stubble, the slow sheepish smile that admitted his own vulnerability.

"Yeah, got your message," Leo said. He gazed down the wide white street, and Nick remembered his authentic but mysterious phrase about how he'd been round the block a few times. "Sorry I didn't get back to you."

"Oh, that's all right," said Nick, and he found the weeks of waiting and failure were already half forgotten.

"Yeah, I've been a bit off colour," Leo said.

"Oh, no." Nick poured himself into believing this, and felt the lovely new scope it gave him for sympathy and interference. "I'm so sorry…"

"Chesty thing," said Leo: "couldn't seem to shake it off."

"But you're better now…"

"Ooh, yeah!" said Leo, with a wink and a squirm; which made Nick think he could say,

"Too much outdoor sex, I expect." Really he didn't know what was allowed, what was funny and what was inept. He feared his innocence showed.

"You're bad, you are," said Leo appreciatively. "You're a very bad boy." He was wearing the same old jeans of their first date, which for Nick now had a touching anecdotal quality, he knew them and loved them; and a zipped-up tracksuit top which made him look ready for action, or for inaction, the rigours and hanging about of training. "I haven't forgotten our little tangle in the bushes."

"Nor have I," said Nick, with giddy understatement, glancing over his shoulder.

"I thought, he's a shy one, a bit stuck-up, but there's something going on inside those corduroy trousers, I'll give him a go. And how right I was, Henry!"

Nick blushed with pleasure and wished there was a way to distinguish shy from stuck-up-the muddle had dogged him for years. He wanted pure compliments, just as he wanted unconditional love.

"Anyway, I was in the area, so I thought I'd try my luck." Leo looked him up and down meaningfully, but then said, "I've just got to drop in on old Pete, down the Portobello-I don't know if you want to come."

"Sure!" said Nick, thinking that a visit to Leo's ex was hardly his ideal scenario for their second date.

"Just for a minute. He's not been well, old Pete."

"Oh, I'm sorry… " said Nick, though this time without the rush of possessive sympathy. He watched a black cab crawling towards them, a figure peering impatiently in the back; it stopped just in front of them, and the driver clawed round through his open window to release the rear door. When the passenger (who Nick knew was Lady Partridge) didn't emerge, a very rare thing happened and the cabbie got out of the cab and yanked the door open himself, standing aside with a flourish which she acknowledged drily as she stepped out.

"Now who's this old battleaxe?" said Leo. And there was certainly something combative in her sharp glance at the two figures on the front steps, and in her sharp blue dress and jacket, as if she'd come for dinner rather than a family lunch. Nick smiled broadly at her and called out, "Hello, Lady Partridge!"

"Hullo," said Lady Partridge, with the minimal warmth, the hurrying good grace, of a famous person hailed by an unknown fan. Nick couldn't believe that she'd forgotten him, and went on with almost satirical courtesy,

"May I introduce my friend Leo Charles? Lady Partridge." Up close the old woman's jacket, heavily embroidered with glinting black and silver thread, had a scaly texture, on which finer fabrics might have snagged and laddered. She smiled and said,

"How do you do?" in an extraordinarily cordial tone, in which none the less something final was conveyed-the certainty that they would never speak again. Leo was saying hello and offering his hand but she had already drifted past him and in through the open front door. "Gerald, Rachel darling!" she called, edgy with the need for reassurance.

The Portobello Road was only two minutes' stroll from the Feddens' green front door, and there was no time for a love scene. Leo was walking his bike with one hand, and Nick ambled beside him, possibly looking quite normal but feeling giddily attentive, as if hovering above himself. It was that experience of walking on air, perhaps, that people spoke of, and which, like roller skating, you could master with practice, but which on this first try had him teetering and lurching. He had such an important question to ask that he found himself saying something else instead. "I see you know about Gerald, then," he said.