Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"Do you see that, darling?"

Maurice brought his gleaming lenses to bear on it. "What? Oh yes," he said. He went towards Wani, who was quickly refolding the FT.

"You're very welcome to read it," Nick said, with a frank little laugh, "but it's actually mine-it was sent on to me this morning. I'm reviewing it for the THES."

"Oh I see, no, no," said Sally, with a coldly tactful smile. "No, Maurice owns Pegasus-I just noticed they publish it."

"I didn't know that."

"I've bought it," said Sir Maurice. "I've bought the whole group. It's in the paper." And he sat down and glared at the vase of thistles and dried honesty in the grate.

"I'm just going up to see if my sis is OK," said Toby, as though all this had decided him.

Nick didn't feel he could go out after him. He sat down again, opposite Sally, but not quite in relation with her, like guests in a hotel lounge. He said, "I'm afraid this news has rather spoilt the evening."

"Yes," said Sally, "it's most unfortunate."

"Awful losing an old friend," said Nick.

"Mm," said Sally, with a twitch, as if to say her meaning had been twisted. "So you knew him too, did you, the man?"

"Pat-yes, a bit," said Nick. "He was a great charmer." He smiled and the word seemed to linger and insist, like a piece of code.

Sally said, "As I say, we never saw him." She took up a copy of Country Life, and sat staring at the estate agents' advertisements. Her expression was tough, as if she was arguing the prices down; but also self-conscious, so that it seemed just possible she wanted to talk about what had happened. She looked up, and said with a great twitch, "I mean, they must have seen it coming."

"Oh…" said Nick, "I see. I don't know. Perhaps. One always hopes that it won't be the case. And even if you know it's going to happen, it doesn't make it any less awful when it does." It had become unclear to him whether she knew that he was gay; he'd always assumed it was the cause for her coldness, her way of not paying attention to him, but now he'd started to suspect she was blind to it. He felt the large subject massing, with its logic and momentum. There would be the social strain of coming out to such people in such a place, and the wider matter of AIDS concerning them all, more or less. He said, "I think I heard you say your mother had a long final illness."

"That was utterly different," Sir Maurice put in curtly.

"It was a blessed relief," said Sally, "when she finally went."

"She hadn't brought it on herself," said Sir Maurice.

"No, that's true," Sally sighed. "I mean, they're going to have to learn, aren't they, the… homosexuals."

"It's a hard way to have to learn," said Nick, "but yes, we are learning to be safe."

Sally Tipper stared at him. "Right… " she said.

Sir Maurice seemed not to notice this, but in her there was a little spectacle of ingestion. Nick tried to put it in her language, but couldn't think what the term would be. "You know, there are very simple things that need to be done. For instance, people have got to use protection… you know, when they're… when they're humping."

"I see," said Sally, with another shake of the head. He wasn't sure she followed. Were such cheerful genteelisms any use? She had an air of being ready to take things on, and simultaneously an air of puzzled and frightened offence. "That's what he'd been doing, had he, I suppose, your friend the actor? Humping?"

"Almost undoubtedly," said Nick. Sir Maurice made a rough, dyspeptic sound, as if chewing a mint. "But as we all know," Nick went on flatteringly, and with a sort of weary zeal now the moment had come, "there are other things one can do. I mean there's oral sex, which may be dangerous, but is certainly less so."

Sally received this stoically. "Kissing, you mean."

Sir Maurice looked at him sharply and said, "I'm afraid what you're saying fills me with a physical revulsion," and seemed to be laughing in his distaste. "I just don't see why anyone's remotely surprised. The whole thing had got completely out of hand. They had it coming to them."

Sally, enlightened for a minute by her unusual talk with Nick, said wildly, "Oh, Maurice is medieval on this one, he's like Queen Victoria!" It was a little shot at freedom, her silliness of tone almost invited correction.

"I'm not ashamed of what I think," said Sir Maurice.

"Of course you're not, darling," said Sally.

"No, well nor am I, as a matter of fact," said Nick.

"What do you think, Wani," said Sally, "as a younger person, you know, on the other side of the picture?"

Wani had been watching Nick with mischievous patience. "I suppose Nick must be right, you know… everyone's going to have to be more careful. There's really no excuse for getting the thing now." He smiled wisely. "I think it's so sad with little children having it-babies born with it, even."

"That is awfully sad," said Sally.

"I'm probably just old-fashioned on these things, but actually I was brought up to believe in no sex before marriage."

"My own view entirely," said Sir Maurice, as fiercely as if he was contradicting him.

Nick, tingling with ironies and astonishment, said merely, "But if we're never going to get married…"

"Sort of sex-mad, isn't it, the world we live in," said Sally, as if that was their general conclusion.

"I know… " said Wani.

Next morning there was a briefbit of shouting between Gerald and Catherine, down by the pool. Nick couldn't quite hear what it was about. He was surprised by it, so soon after Pat's death, when Gerald might have bothered to tread carefully; but it seemed also to make a kind of sense, as an awkward aftershock of that event. Nothing more was said about it in the day.

When Nick went upstairs in the afternoon Catherine came too, a little behind him, so that it wasn't clear if she was following him; he glanced back in the long passageway and saw her plotting expression. He left his door open, and a few moments later she came wandering in. "Hello, darling," said Nick.

"Mm, hello again, darling," said Catherine, looking quickly at him, and then peering mysteriously around the room.

"Are you OK?"

"Oh, yes… fine. I'm fine."

Nick smiled tenderly, but she seemed almost irritated by the question, and he thought perhaps she'd got over Pat, with her odd emotional economy, of feelings fiercely inhabited and then discarded. She was wearing tight white shorts and a grey tank top of Jasper's, in which her small breasts moved alertly. No one had come to his room before, and it felt intimate, and pleasantly tense, like a first date. She sat on the bed and tested the springs.

"Poor old Nick, you always get the worst room."

"I love my room," said Nick, gazing to left and right.

"This used to be my room. It's where they put the children. God, I remember those creepy pictures."

"They are a bit spooky, aren't they." They were the little German paintings on glass: Autumn, where a woman with an aigrette filled a girl's apron with easily reached fruit, and Winter, where men in red coats shot and skated and a bird sang on a bare branch. It was hard to put your finger on it, but they had a sort of sinister geniality.

"Still, you're nice and near your friend."

"I can hear old Ouradi snoring, yes," said Nick, rather heartily, and sat down at the table.

"Actually I don't mind old Ouradi," said Catherine.

"He's all right, isn't he."

"I always thought he was just a spoilt little ponce, but there's a wee bit more to him than that. He can even be quite funny."

"I know…" said Nick, who thought of himself as much funnier than Wani.

"I mean he's bloody moody. Sometimes he's just not there, he's like a shop dummy going charming… duchess … et cetera; and sometimes he's the life and soul."