Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"Er… yes," said Nick.

She seemed to settle comfortably on that, but only said, "My father's got tons of Henry James. I think he calls him the Master."

"Some of us do," said Nick. He blinked with the exalted humility of a devotee and sawed off a square of brown meat.

"Art makes life: wasn't that his motto? My father often quotes that."

"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process," said Nick.

"Something like that," said Penny. She smiled contentedly into the candlelight. "What would Henry James have made of us, I wonder?" she went on.

" Well… " Nick chewed it over. He thought she was rather like a high-minded aunt, proposing questions with virginal firmness and ignorance. He wondered condescendingly what her sexual prospects were. A certain kind of man might like to raise the colour in that plump white neck. He said, "He'd have been very kind to us, he'd have said how wonderful we were and how beautiful we were, he'd have given us incredibly subtle things to say, and we wouldn't have realized until just before the end that he'd seen right through us."

"Because he did write about high society, didn't he?" said Penny, clearly thinking that was where she was, and also perhaps that it was proof against being seen through.

"Quite a lot," said Nick; and remembering his chat with Lord Kessler in the summer and really giving a long-pondered answer to him, "People say he didn't understand about money, but he certainly knew all about the effects of money, and the ways having money made people think." He looked fondly across at Toby, who out of sheer niceness tried now and then not to think like a rich person, but could never really get the hang of it. "He hated vulgarity," he added. "But he also said that to call something vulgar was to fail to give a proper account of it."

Penny seemed to be puzzling this over, but in fact she was listening to what Badger was suggesting in her other ear: her sudden blush and giggle showed Nick that this was one of Badger's little sexual challenges to him-it was almost a way of calling him a fag.

Toby was listening to Greta Timms, but leaning past her to keep an eye on Sophie, who was being drily examined by Morden Lipscomb. "No," said Sophie reluctantly, "I've only been in one sort of major film."

"And what of the stage?" said Lipscomb, with an odd mixture of persistence and indifference.

"Well, I am about to be in something. It's… I'm afraid it's going to be rather a trendy production… it's Lady Windermere's Fan."

Jenny Groom started asking something about Catherine, was she as mad as they said, and Nick's hesitations as he answered only half allowed him to hear the truth that Lipscomb dragged out of Sophie, that she wasn't playing Lady Windermere herself, but "Oh, just a minor part… No! Not too much to learn… Oh no, not her, that's a wonderful part… Anyway it will probably all be ruined by the director… " and that in fact she'd been cast as Lady Agatha, a role which famously contained nothing but the two words "Yes, mamma." Nick thought this was very funny, and then felt almost sorry for her.

Rachel said, "My dear, what fun, we shall all come to your first night," apparently sincerely, so that a further alliance, of efficient, almost impersonal solidarity, was seen to be in place between the mother and her possible daughter-in-law.

Lady Partridge, jealous of Lipscomb's attention, went off on the unobvious tangent of her hip replacement. "Oh, I had it at the Dorset… Well, yes, I always go there, I find them marvellous… charming girls… The nurses, yes… One or two of the doctors are coloured, but there's absolutely no need to have anything to do with them… Not that I'm much of a one for hospital!" she reassured him. "My late husband was there a good deal."

"Ah… " said Lipscomb, measuring the distance to a condolence.

She lifted her glass, with a worldly sigh. "Well, I've outlived two husbands, and that's probably enough," she said, as if still leaving a tiny loophole for further proposals. She looked at Lipscomb, perhaps wondering if he had said something, and went on, "Actually they were both called Jack! They couldn't have been more different, as it happens… chalk and cheese… I don't think they'd have got on for a moment -had they ever met!" Nick thought she might almost have been on the phone, hearing answers and questions from far away. "Jack Fedden, of course, Gerald's father, a funny sort of man, in a way… He was in the law, very much a law man… very, very handsome… and Jack Partridge, Sir Jack, of course… No, not a law man… Not at all… He was a practical man, a builder, he built some of the new motorways, as you may know… Yes, some of the Ms… the M, um… He did marvellous work…"

At the head of the table Gerald was perceptibly distracted by his mother's talk. Nick knew that Jack Partridge had gone bust not long after getting his knighthood, in one of the funny reversals of these recent years; it was a subject which might seem to tarnish his stepson by association. Gerald made a firm intervention and said, "So, Morden, I was absolutely gripped by your paper on SDL"

"Ah… " said Lipscomb, with a smile that showed he wasn't so easily flattered. "I wasn't sure that you'd agree with my conclusions."

"Oh, absolutely," said Gerald, with a surprising mocking smile which confirmed to Nick that he hadn't read beyond those first few pages. "How could one not!"

"Well… you'd be surprised," said Lipscomb.

"Is this the telephones?" said Lady Partridge.

"It's missile defence, Ma," said Gerald loudly.

"You know, Gran, Star Wars," said Toby.

"You're thinking of STD, Judy," said Badger.

"Ah," said Lady Partridge, and chuckled, not in embarrassment but at the attention she'd won for herself.

"The President announced the Strategic Defence Initiative six months ago," said Morden Lipscomb, gravely but a little impatiently. "It aims to protect the United States from any attack by guided missile systems. In effect a defensive shield will be created to repel and destroy nuclear weapons before they can reach us."

"Delightful idea," said Lady Partridge. This sounded satirical, and the plan had indeed been greeted with derision as well as dismay; but then Nick thought, no, the old lady would take pleasure in weaponry, and arms budgets generally.

"It is, I believe, an irresistible one," said Lipscomb, laying his left hand commandingly on the table. He wore a signet ring on his little finger, but no wedding ring. Of course that didn't mean much; Nick's own father and his father's male friends didn't wear wedding rings, they were thought, for all their symbolism, to be vaguely effeminate. He thought of the card, "From the Desk of Morden Lipscomb"-it made one wonder where else it might have come from: "the Back-burner," "the Rest-room," "From the Closet of Morden Lipscomb"… well, it was an idea. He was clearly a man with his own defensive systems.

After pudding the ladies withdrew. Nick's thoughts went with them as they climbed the stairs; he stood with one knee on his chair, hoping he might somehow be allowed to join them. "Slide along, Nick," said Gerald. The men all closed up together at Gerald's end of the table, in a grimly convivial movement, occupying the absent women's places. Nick handed Lady Partridge's lipstick-daubed napkin to Elena, who had come through to sort them out. There were many all-male occasions that he liked, but now he missed the buffer of a female, even Jenny Groom, whose general impatience he'd decided was a sad flower of her hatred of her husband. Now Barry Groom was sitting down opposite him with a scowl, as if familiar to the point of weariness with the etiquette of such occasions. Nick looked across to Toby for help, but he was laying out a box of cigars and the cigar cutter; Gerald was setting the decanters off on their circuit. Nick pictured Leo, as he had left him today, walking his bike away, and the love-chord sounded, warily now-he didn't want the others to hear it. How could he describe it, even to himself, Leo's step, his bounce, his beautiful half-knowing, half-unconscious deployment of his own effects? "I'll give you one piece of advice," said Barry Groom, choosing imperiously between the unmarked port and claret decanters.