Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"Mm, I wonder… " said Nick, not disrespectfully, and marvelled at just how unavailable his thoughts on the subject were. The doubtlessness of Timms was a wonder in itself. He imagined Leo being here beside him, and having one salient fact or objection to produce, of the kind Nick could never remember. Catherine came past, sampling each of the little power-centres in the room. "We were talking about the Falklands," said Nick.

"I understand the Prime Minister favours an annual parade," said John Timms, "as well as a prominent memorial. It was truly her triumph."

"And the men's," said Greta Timms, with her rich hormonal flush. "The men were staunch."

"They were certainly staunch, my darling," said John Timms. "They were dauntless."

"No," said Catherine, covering her ears and grinning, "it's no good, I just can't bear words with that au sound in. Do you know what I mean?"

"Oh… " said Greta Timms. "I think I've always found them rather splendid words!"

"Right, I'm off!" said Catherine, turning to the room with the big smile which perhaps all her life would seem unguarded and vulnerable. A rough chorus of "Bye"s, a chuckling "Oh, is she off?," and she was gazed at with relief, the suddenly conjured good humour that sends a child up to its early bed. "Bye, Gran!" she said, specially loudly, kissing Lady Partridge in the middle of the room. "See you in the morning, Dad." And picking up her bag she stalked out on her tall heels. Lady Partridge peeped at Morden Lipscomb to gauge his surprise; if he seemed amused by this vision of a sex-club door-girl she was ready to take some droll credit as her grandmother. But Lipscomb was looking disappointedly at Gerald.

Lady Partridge was taken in to dinner by Lipscomb. They didn't really "take people in" at the Feddens', but the procession from the drawing room, down the stone stairs, and into the candlelight, awoke a memory sometimes, or an anxiety, in guests. Lipscomb, with ponderous New World formality, presented his elbow to the senior lady, and Gerald's mother, who had a hurtling look to her after two gin-and-tonics, pressed against him like an old flame. In the dining room Lipscomb peered around with guarded curiosity as people found their places. "Yes, I always think what a splendid room," Lady Partridge said, trailing away towards her chair.

"And are these your forebears, Lady Partridge?" Lipscomb asked.

"Yes… yes…" said Lady Partridge, in a daze of graciousness.

"No, they are not her forebears," said Rachel, quietly but firmly. "They're my grandfather and my great-aunt."

Nick was placed in the middle of the table, with Penny Kent on his right and Jenny Groom on his left-the dullest place of all, but he didn't mind because he had company of his own. He tucked into his crab cake as if sharing a joke. "How do you fit in?" Jenny Groom wanted to know, with the air of someone steeled to unpleasant surprises.

"Oddly but snugly," said Nick; and since she didn't like this, "No, I'm an old friend of Toby's."

"Oh, Gerald's son, you mean… And I hear he's working for the Guardianl" The scandal of Toby's having a traineeship at the Guardian seemed to Nick to eclipse his own dissidence, to be enough scandal for one household.

"Well, you can ask him. He's sitting just over there," said Nick, loud enough to intrude on Toby as he listened to Greta Timms extolling the virtues of the Family: Toby gave a half-secret smile of acknowledgement but said, "Yes, I see," to Greta to show she still had his attention.

"Oh, of course. He's got his father's looks," said Jenny with a frown. "So what do you do?"

"I'm doing a doctorate at UCL-on… on Henry James," said Nick, seeing the style question might lose her completely.

"Oh…" said Jenny warily, getting a hook on it. "Yes. I've never got round to Henry James."

"Well…" said Nick, not caring if she had or not.

"Or hang on, did I read one? Dr Johnson or something."

"No… I don't think so…"

"No, not Dr Johnson, obviously…!"

"I mean there's the Boswell."

"It was set in Africa… I know: Mr Johnson."

"Oh, Mister Johnson is a novel by Joyce Cary."

"Exactly, I knew I'd read something by him."

When the venison came in Gerald yapped, "Don't touch the plates! Don't touch the plates!" so that it sounded as though something had gone wrong. "They have to be white hot for the venison." The fact was that the fat congealed revoltingly if the plates were less than scorching. "Yes, my brother-in-law has a deer park," he explained to Morden Lipscomb. "A rare enough amenity these days." The guests looked humbly at their helpings. "No," Gerald went on, in his bristling way of answering questions he wished someone had asked, "this is buck venison… comes into season before the doe, and very much superior." He went round with the burgundy himself. "I think you'll like this," he said to Barry Groom, and Barry sniffed at it testily, as if he knew he was thought to have more money than taste.

Nick shared a brief smile down the table with Rachel. It seemed subtly to mock not only Barry but Gerald himself. Nick took his first sip of the burgundy with a frisson at their shared understanding, like the liberty allowed to a child by a confident mother-the pretended conspiracy against the father. He wondered if Gerald and Rachel ever rowed. If anything happened, then it was in the white secrecy of the bedroom, which, with its little vestibule, was removed from hearing behind two heavy doors; it became somehow sexual.

When he thought of Leo after not thinking of him for a minute or two he heard a big orchestral sound in his head. He saw Leo lying on his coat under a bush, his shirt and jersey pushed up under his armpits, his jeans and pants round his knees, small dead leaves sticking to his thighs-and he heard the astonishing chord. It was high and low at once, an abysmal pizzicato, a pounce of the darkest brass, and above it a hair-raising sheen of strings. It seemed to knock him down and fling him up all in one unresisted gesture. He couldn't repeat it immediately, but after a while he would see Leo rising to kiss him, and the love-chord would shiver his skin again. It startled him while Penny was describing the enormous interest of working for Gerald, and he jumped, and smiled at his invisible friend, so that Penny worried that she'd been funny. He wondered if it came from something he knew, or if he'd written it himself. It certainly wasn't the Tristan chord, with its germ of catastrophe. The horrible thought came to him that if it existed, it had probably been written by Richard Strauss, to illustrate some axe-murder or beheading, some vulgar atrocity. Whereas to Nick, though it was frightening, it was also indescribably happy.

"So how are you getting on at UCL?" said Penny kindly, as if it must be a sorry comedown after Oxford. Nick and Penny had never met as students, the word Oxford meant different things to them, but Penny relied on it as a thing they had in common.

"Oh, fine…!" said Nick; and went on obligingly, "It's not at all like Oxford, you know. The place itself is fairly grim. I've just found out that the English department used to be a mattress factory."

"Really!" said Penny.

"It is a bit depressing. I suppose it's no wonder half the staff are alcoholics." Penny laughed, oddly titillated, and Nick felt rather treacherous. In fact he revered Professor Ettrick, who had taken to him with immediate subtle confidence, and seen possibilities in his thesis topic that he himself hadn't dreamt of. But nothing much was being done, and through most of Nick's library days his eyes wandered just beyond the page in a deep monotonous reverie about Leo: the great unfolding sentences of Meredith or James would slow and fade into subliminal parentheses, half-hour subordinate clauses of remembered sex. And he felt guilty, because he wanted to deserve the professor's trust and be as clever and committed as he was meant to be. Penny said, "Was it Henry James you're working on?"