Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

He fetched his book and went down to the pool. The heat was climbing and a high-up lid of thin cloud had soon expired into the blue. Jasper and Catherine were already in the water, and Jasper looked pleased to be discovered struggling with her, almost fucking her; he winked at Nick as he went into the pool-house to change. The wink seemed to follow him in. There was a bare suggestive atmosphere in the pool-house, which always felt cool and secret after the dazzle of the pool-side, and seemed to carry some coded memory or promise of a meeting. Nick would have had Wani there last night if Gerald hadn't been hanging, even snooping about. There was the first room, with a sink and a fridge and bright plastic pool toys, lilos and rings, an old rowing machine standing on end; and the changing room beyond, with a slatted bench and clothes hooks, and the shower opening straight off it, behind a blue curtain. Only the rather smelly lavatory had a door that could be locked.

Nick came out in his new little Speedos and walked along the pool's edge. The water was the clear bright answer to the morning, a mesmerizing play of light and depth. A few dead leaves were floating on it, and others had sunk and patched the blue concrete bottom. Dragonflies paid darting visits. He crouched and stirred the surface with his hand. On the far side Jasper had lifted Catherine up to sit on the tiled shelf, with the water lapping between her legs, and him hanging on to her, looking as if he'd like to do the same. She made some quick remark about Nick's being there, and then called, "Hello, darling!" Jasper turned and floated free and gave Nick his sure-fire smile, said nothing, but lazily trod water and kept looking at him. He had a tiny repertoire, a starter kit, of seducer's tricks, and got obvious satisfaction from deploying them, regardless of results. Nick found him embarrassing and resistible, which didn't preclude his figuring in some of his most punitive fantasies: in fact it made them all the more pointed. Jasper kicked across the pool towards him and it looked at first, in the welter of refractions, as if he was naked; then, when he sprang out streaming on to the poolside, he saw that he was wearing a little cut-away flesh-coloured item. "What do you think of Jaz's thong?" said Catherine, obviously assuming that Nick fancied him.

"Yeah, I don't like to wear it when her mum's about," said Jasper considerately. He posed for Nick, held in his brown stomach, and flashed him his number-two smile.

"What do you think?" said Catherine, grinning, a bit breathless, in her tone of sexual fixation.

"Hmm," said Nick, peering at the sleek pouch in which Jaz's crown jewels, as he called them, were boyishly slumped. "You'd have to say, darling, it leaves disappointingly little to the imagination." He made a sorry moue and strolled off to the lounger at the far end of the pool, where he had left his book.

He was reading Henry James's memoir of his childhood, A Small Boy and Others, and feeling crazily horny, after three days without as much as a peck from Wani. It was a hopeless combination. The book showed James at his most elderly and elusive, and demanded a pure commitment unlikely in a reader who was worrying excitedly about his boyfriend and semi-spying, through dark glasses, on another boy who was showing off in front of him and clearly trying to excite him. From-time to time the book tilted and wobbled in his lap, and the weight of the deckle-edged pages pressed on his erection through the sleek black nylon. He noted droll phrases for later use: "an oblong farinaceous compound" was James's euphemism for a waffle- compound was sublime in its clinching vagueness. He wondered just what Wani was up to in Perigueux. He suspected he was picking up some charlie, which seemed a shame and a danger-he wished Wani wasn't so fond of it; then he felt frustratedly, after three days off that as well, how lovely and just right it would be to have a line. It was amazing, it went really to the heart of Wani's mystique, that he knew how to find the stuff in any European city. In Munich Nick had waited in the taxi outside a bank, gazed tensely for ten minutes at the chamfered rustication of its walls and the massive swirling ironwork of its doors, while Wani was inside "seeing a friend." The photographer in Perigueux was probably another such friend. There were childish shrieks from the pool, as Jasper dive-bombed Catherine. Nick was delighted Wani had missed this airing, or drenching, of the thong; he would tease him about it later, over their first line. He longed to have a swim himself, but now the young couple were in a huddle, standing just within their depth, laughing and spluttering as they kissed: the pool was theirs, like a bedroom. They were mad with sex, in love with their own boldness; Nick felt Jasper might try to involve him too if he went in. His role was to be Uncle Nick, adult and sceptical, which seemed to make the baffled Jasper more and more provocative. He thought he could probably have him if he wanted, but he didn't want to give him that satisfaction. A minute later they got out, intently casual, Jasper's stocky hard-on sticking up at an angle, and went into the pool-house and closed the door. Edgar Allan Poe, James said, though a figure in his childhood, had not been "personally present"- indeed, "the extremity of personal absence had just overtaken him." Minute after minute went by, now the hiss of the pool-house shower could be heard, and Nick lay and flicked a fly from his leg, and felt the morning's discontent rise into envy and impatience. "The extremity of personal absence": at times the Master was so tactful he was almost brutal. He remembered what Rachel had said about Wani's wedding, and the image of him doing to Martine what Jasper was doing to Catherine filled him with a bitter jealousy-well, it was probably nonsense, probably waffle. The words slid and stuck meaninglessly in front of his eyes.

Next day Toby was teaching Nick and Wani how to play boules: they were out on the dusty compacted square of the forecourt. Wani had been wet about the game until he turned out to be good at it, and now he was absorbed and unironical, tripping after the ball, yapping and grinning when he bombed the other boules away from the jack-ball, or cochonnet. "Bien tire!" said Toby, with a sweeter kind of happiness, at retouching an old friendship through a game, and with comic disconcertment, since he usually won games himself. Nick was applauded when he made a fluky good throw, but it was really a tussle between Wani and Toby. Now he'd got the drugs Wani had become more natural and more popular. "Yup, seems to be settling in," said Gerald, taking the credit himself, like the manager of a hotel renowned for its beneficial regime. "I know… " said Rachel, who had borne the brunt of Wani's princely charm: "he seems to be getting in the holiday mood." A nod went round which admitted the reservations they'd had before, and a mood of solidarity was discovered, just in time, before the arrival of the Tippers and Lady Partridge. Nobody but Gerald wanted to see the Tippers, and Nick paced and stood about in the drive, bored by the game, but already sentimental about their little routines here, and his esoteric success, being deep in France, in a lovely old house, with his two beautiful boys.

Toby had just flung the cochonnet across the court when a big white Audi with Sir Maurice Tipper at the wheel swung in through the gate and ran over it. "Fucking great," said Toby, and waved and smiled resignedly. In the back were his grandmother and Lady Tipper, who had the passive air of women of all classes, nattering dutifully as they were driven they hardly knew where. Lady Partridge gestured in a general way at the house, as if to say she thought it was the right one. Nick ran over to open her door, and in the momentary release of chilled air the scent of leather and hairspray seemed to carry the story of the whole journey. "I know," said Lady Partridge, establishing her feet on the ground before pushing herself up, and looking for attention but not for help. "I have always caught the train."