Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

Nick pushed his chest out, flattened his stomach. "Yeah," he said, and had a quick proud suck on his own bottle.

"You're not seeing anyone at the moment, are you?"

He was touched by these little steps into intimacy, the sense that talking frankly to a friend was a kind of experiment for Toby, a puzzling luxury. It was an echo of the Oxford days, when Nick had invented occasions, engineered conversations, and led Toby into solemn and slightly bewildered talk about his feelings and his family. It was a pity now to have to say, as carelessly as he could, "No, not really." He sighed. "You're right, actually, why haven't I got someone! It's a scandal!" And then, incautiously, "How about you, by the way? Have you got your sights set on someone new?"

"No," said Toby, "not yet." He smiled grimly at Nick, and said, "That bloody business with Sophie, you know…" He shook his head slowly, invoking the shock of it. "I mean, what went wrong there, Nick? We were going to get married, and everything."

"I know… " said Nick, "I know…"-scenting a chance to tell the truth, which was sometimes a questionable pleasure.

"I mean, to go off with one of my own best mates."

"I think eventually," said Nick, conscious of having said this to Toby four or five times already, "you'll come to see it as a fortunate escape."

"Bloody Jamie," said Toby.

"Of course she was a fool," said Nick, with brotherly rectitude and secret tenderness. "But just imagine, having all your summer holidays with Maurice and Sally."

"Of course he blames me for not hanging on to her, Maurice does. He thought it was a good match."

"It was a good match, darling, for her: far too fucking good."

"Mm, thanks, Nick." Toby pulled on his beer and stared across the water. Nick's language seemed to set off a train of thought. He said, "I suppose it wasn't all that great, you know, the sexual side of things." He looked bitter and guilty too to be saying this.

"Oh…"

"You know, she called it 'doings.'"

"That's not very promising, I agree."

"She was a bit… babyish. I don't think she liked it very much, actually." Nick couldn't help saying, "Surely …?"

Toby sighed. "She used to say I hurt her, and… I don't know."

There were various possible explanations of this: that Sophie, child of the chilly Tippers, was frigid herself; or of course that Toby's knob was too big, or that he didn't know what to do with it, or that he was just too big and heavy altogether for a slender young woman. Nick said, "Well, if the sex was no good, that's another reason to think you had a lucky escape." It struck him that the man who'd been the focus of his longings for three years or more, and performed untiringly in his fantasies, was perhaps after all not much good at sex, or not yet, was clumsy from inexperience or the choice of the wrong partner. He'd been so lucky, himself, to be shown the way by someone so practised and insatiably keen. And for a second or two, in the meridional heat, the thrill of that first London autumn touched him and shivered him.

Toby mulled the thing over, emptied his bottle, and then went to the pool-house to get a couple more.

Later they had a swim, never quite saying if they were racing or not. It pleased Nick to beat Toby in a race, and then made him feel sorry. He felt warmed and saddened by his drug secrets and his sex secrets, like an adulterous parent playing with an unsuspecting child. It struck him as a strange eventuality, when for years the idea of romping almost naked in the water with Toby would have been one of choking romance. He pulled himself up and sat on the half-submerged shelf, with the water slapping round his balls, and looked at the view, and then the other way, at the pool-house, the steps up under the fig tree, and the high end-wall of the manor house, the windows shuttered against the sun. Afternoon randiness, the mood of desertion, opportunity silent and wide-he watched Toby getting out with a magnificent jump and shake of his big unsuspecting backside.

They had another beer together, lying flat in the sun. "I wonder how they're getting on," said Toby.

"I'm so glad I'm not there," said Nick. "I mean, I'm sure it's a lovely place…"

"It's been great just to spend some time with you, old chap," said Toby, as if they had really used the time. "How are you getting on with Wani, by the way?"

"OK, actually," said Nick. "He's been very generous to me."

"He told me he relies on you a lot."

"Oh, did he…? Yes… He's quite a particular person."

"He always has been. But you'll get used to that in time. I know him inside out by now."

"Yes, you're very old friends, aren't you?"

"God, yes." said Toby.

Nick smeared on some sunscreen, and Toby did his back for him, rather anxiously, and describing all the time what he was doing. Then Toby lay face down on his lounger, and Nick for the first time ever squatted over him, and squirted the thin cream across his shoulder blades, and set to working it in, briskly but thoroughly. He had the premonitory tingle of a headache from the sun and the beer, he felt parched and heavy-lidded, and he had a highly inconvenient erection. His hands moved sleekly over Toby's upper body, in weird practical mimicry of a thousand fantasies. His heart started beating hard when he dealt with the curve of the lower back, he turned it into a bit of a massage, a bit of a method, as he moved towards the upward rise of his arse and the low loosish waistband of his trunks. And Toby just took it, leaving Nick with a haunting tumultuous sense of how he might have gone on. He finished, jumped away, and lay down quickly and uncomfortably on his front. For a few minutes the two boys said things, widely spaced, calling only for mumbled answers, like a couple in bed.

Nick woke to a strange tearing sound, like an engine that wouldn't start. Sharp vocalized breaths came in rhythm with it. He turned over, looked blearily round, and saw that Toby had brought out the rowing machine from the pool-house. It had a sliding seat and stirrups and a hand-bar that pulled out a coiled and fiercely retracting white cord. Nick lay on his side and watched, with a suspicion that Toby was showing off to him, shooting forwards and backwards with each tug and each letting go. He was very powerful. The sun beat down on his back and sweat trickled from his armpits. His stomach muscles clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed. His breaths were keen and humourless, lips funnelled into a rigid kiss. It was surreal to be rowing so hard on dry land, beside a sheet of still blue water. The machine made its noise, like distant sawing or planing, a rhythmic nag and lull. And Nick remembered an evening in Oxford, drifting out through the Meadows to the Isis, and along by the boathouses, the eights all in and stowed, but one or two rowers still about, as if held by the late light, the mood of freedom and discipline by the river. The wide gritty path was streaked and puddled where the dripping boats had been carried across it. He dawdled along, and then saw what he'd hoped to see, Toby out in a single scull, shirtless, glowing, moving with astonishing speed across the welling water.

Nick was reading under the awning when he heard the slam of car doors and then tired, unsocial voices. For thirty seconds he was gripped by his old reflex of possession, resenting the real owners as intruders. The great glass jar was shattered, and the warm afternoon was spilt for ever. Catherine came clattering out, bent forward in a mime of exhaustion and nausea.

"Good lunch?" said Nick.

"Oh! Nick! God… " She subsided into a mumble and groped for him, for the table edge.

"Sit down, darling, sit down."

"The Tippers." She dragged a chair over the flags and fell onto it. "You wouldn't believe. They're as ignorant as shit. And as mean as… as…"