Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"He's into me."

"Well, yes," said Catherine, as if she could see round this.

"OK, he likes to get fucked," said Nick briskly, and got up as if that was really all she was going to get out of him.

"I always thought he must be into some pretty weird sort of gay stuff."

"You didn't even know he was gay till ten minutes ago."

"I knew deep down."

Nick smiled reproachfully. Telling the story for the first time he saw its news value, already wearing off on Catherine, the quick fade of a shock, and felt the old requirement not to disappoint her. It was their original game of talking about men, boasting and mocking, and he knew its compulsion, the quickened pulse of rivalry and the risk of trust. There were phrases about Wani that he'd carried and polished for some occasion like this and he imagined saying them now, and the effect on himself as much as on her, mere reluctant admission melting into the relief of confession. There was nothing, exactly, to confess. The secrecy of the past six months was not to be mistaken for the squeeze of guilt. He thought, I won't tell her about the hotel pom. He sat down again, to mark a wary transition to frankness.

"Well, he's quite into threesomes," he said.

"Mm, not my cup of tea," said Catherine.

"OK, we won't ask you."

She gave a tart smile. "So who do you have threesomes with?"

"Oh, just with strangers. He gets me to pick people up for him. Or we get a rent boy in, you know. A Strieker. "

"A what?"

"That's what they call them in Munich."

"I see," said Catherine. "Isn't that a bit risky, if he's so into secrecy?"

"Oh, I think the risk's quite the thing," said Nick. "He likes the danger. And he likes to submit. I don't quite understand it myself, but he likes having a witness. He likes everything that's the opposite of what he seems."

"It all sounds rather pathetic, somehow," said Catherine.

Nick went on, not knowing if it was evidence for the defence or the prosecution, "He's quite a screamer, actually."

"A screaming queen, you mean?"

"I mean he makes a lot of noise." It would probably be better not to tell her about that morning in Munich. "It was hilarious one morning in Munich," he said. "He made so much noise in the room, I don't think he noticed, but the chambermaids were all laughing about us in the corridor outside."

Catherine snuffled. "Russell always liked me to shout a lot," she said.

Again Nick allowed the allusion; he smiled thinly through it, and thought and said with a wince, "He's got this rather awful thing for porn, actually." "Oh?"

"I mean, nothing wrong with porn, but you sometimes feel it's the real deep template for his life."

Catherine raised her eyebrows and gave a deep sigh. "Oh dear…" she said.

Nick looked away, at the open window, and the closed door. "It just got a bit out of hand, actually, in Germany. You know, there's endless porn on the hotel TV."

"Oh…" said Catherine, to whom porn was a blankly masculine mystery.

"He lay there all evening watching it-straight stuff, of course, which he likes just as much, if not more. One night, I'm afraid, I had to go off to dinner by myself. He just wouldn't turn it off."

Catherine laughed, and so did Nick, though the image was a sad one, was pathetic, as she said: of Wani with his pants round his ankles, too crammed with coke to get an erection, in slavish subjection to the orgy on screen, whilst Nick, in the sitting room of their stuffy little suite, made a bed for himself on the sofa. He could hear Wani, through the door, talking to the people in the film. Catherine said, "He sounds a nightmare, actually, darling."

"He's very exciting too, but…"

"I mean, I rather worry about you, if you're loving him so much as you say, and he's treating you like this. Actually, I wonder if you do really love him, you see."

He saw this was her usual hyperbole, and her usual solicitous undermining of his affairs. "No, no," he said, with a disparaging chuckle. It wasn't that she'd shown him the truth of the matter, but that telling her these few amusing details he'd told himself something he couldn't now retract. He had a witness too. "Anyway," he said, "I probably shouldn't have told you all this."

The Tippers left the following day. Secret smiles of relief admitted also a dim sense of guilt, and a resultant hardening and defiance. Gerald was gloomily preoccupied, and seemed to carry the blame round with him, not knowing where to put it down. Wani was the only one who expressed real regret and surprise; he'd felt at home with the Tippers, they were the sort of people he'd been brought up to respect. It was Rachel who tried hardest to be diplomatic; her supple good manners struggled to contain the awkward turn of events, which she minded entirely for Gerald's sake.

The departure was handled very briskly. Sir Maurice was offended, active, in a surprising way fulfilled-this was what he looked for, a clarified antipathy, a somehow reassuring trustlessness. "We're not enjoying it much here," he said; and his wife took her usual strange pleasure in his hardness and roughness; they were her animating cause, his feelings were as unanswerable as his ulcers… Toby loaded up the luggage, with the straight-faced satisfaction of a porter.

After they'd gone, Wani, watchful and charming, suggested a game of boules to Gerald, and they went out and started playing in the bald space where the Tippers' car had stood. The day for once was overcast, and Nick sat in the drawing room with his book. The tingle of freedom made it a little hard to concentrate: he felt aware of the pleasure, the primacy of reading, but the content seemed to glint from a distance, as if through mist. Then Lady Partridge tottered in in her sundress, clearly pleased, repossessing the place, but also at a loose end without the irritant of Sally at her ear. The Tippers had been a subject for her, they'd annoyed her and they'd excited her with the raw fascination of money. She sat down in an armchair. She didn't say anything, but Nick knew that she was jealous of his book. From outside, through the open front door, came the cracks and clicks and yelps of the boules game.

"Mm, what are you reading?" said Lady Partridge.

"Oh…" said Nick, disowning the book with a shake of the head, "it's just something I'm reviewing." She turned her ear enquiringly. "It's a study of John Berryman."

"Ah…!" said Lady Partridge, sitting back with the mocking contentment of the non-reader. "The poet… Funny man."

"Oh-um…!" Nick gasped. "Yes, he was rather funny, I suppose… in a way."

"I always thought."

Nick smiled at her narrowly, and went on, to test the ground, "It's a sad life, of course. He suffered from these terrible depressions."

Lady Partridge smacked her lips illusionlessly, and rolled her eyes back-a more terrible effect than she realized. "Like… er, young madam," she said.

"Well, quite," said Nick, "though we hope it won't end the same way! He drank a tremendous lot, you know."

"I wouldn't be at all surprised if he drank a lot," said Lady Partridge, with a hint of solidarity.

"And then, of course," said Nick clinchingly, but with a sad loll of the head, "he jumped off a bridge into the Mississippi."

Lady Partridge reflected on this, as if she thought it unlikely. "I always rather liked him on the telly. Came over awfully well. Perhaps you never saw those… He went to the seaside. Or, you know, poking round old churches and what-not. Even those weren't too bad. He had what I'd call an infectious laugh. I think I'm right in saying he became the Poet Laureate."

"Ah… No," said Nick. "No, actually-"

"Fuck!" came a howl from the forecourt, hardly recognizable as Gerald's voice. Lady Partridge's gaze slid uncertainly away. Nick got up with a soft laugh and went out into the hall to see what had happened. Gerald was coming in from outside, his face in a spasm of emotion that might have been rage or glee, and veered away from Nick into the kitchen, where Toby was sitting having coffee with Rachel. Nick glanced out of the front door, and saw Wani collecting up the boules with a dutiful but unrepentant expression.