Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

It was Rachel who took and opened the box, with Nick standing by as if it was his present, as if he was giving it and perhaps also receiving it-he felt generous and possessive all at once. He kept himself from exclaiming when she lifted out a small oil painting. He determinedly said nothing. "My dear… " said Rachel, fascinated, hesitant, but controlled, as though to be surprised would be to have some vulgar advantage taken of her. She held it up, so that everyone could see it. "It's perfectly lovely," she said.

"Mm… " said Lionel, with the canny little smile of someone who has made a good decision.

Gerald said, "You're too kind, really… " and stared earnestly at the picture, hoping someone would say what it was. It was a landscape, about nine inches wide by twelve high, painted entirely in vertical dabs of a fine brush, so that the birch trees and meadow seemed to quiver in the breeze and warmth of a spring morning. A black-and-white cow lay under a bank at the front; a white-shawled woman talked to a brown-hatted man on the path in the near distance. It was in a plain dull-gilt frame.

"Hah, jolly nice," said Toby.

Catherine, looking comically from side to side as though detecting a trick, said, "It's a Gauguin, isn't it," and Nick, who after all couldn't bear not to say, said, "It's a Gauguin" at the same time.

"It's a nice one, isn't it," said Lionel, "he Matin aux Champs -it's a study, or a little version, of the picture in Brussels. I snatched it from the teeth of the head of Sony. Actually, I think it was a bit small for him. Not quite the ideally expensive picture"-and he chuckled with Nick as if they both knew just what to expect from the head of Sony.

"Really… Lionel… " Gerald was saying, shaking his head slowly and blinking to disguise his calculations as another kind of wonder. "That and the silver… um…"

Catherine shook her head too, and said, "God…!" in simultaneous glee and scorn of her rich family.

The picture was handed round, and they each smiled and sighed, and turned it to the light, and passed it on with a little shudder, as if they'd been oblivious for a moment, in the spell of sheer physical possession. "Where on earth shall we put it?" said Gerald, when it came back to him; Nick laughed to cover his graceless tone.

Just then the front door slammed and Rachel went to look over the banisters; it was a day of incessant arrivals. "Oh, come up, dear," she said. "It's Penny."

"Ah, she can give us her thoughts about the picture," said Gerald, as if from a view of her general usefulness. He got rid of the picture by propping it against Liszt's nose on the piano.

"Penny!" said Catherine. "Why? I mean, she wouldn't have a clue," and then laughed submissively, since it wasn't her day.

"Well," said Gerald, beaming and blustering, "well, her father's a painter." And he turned away to see to the champagne; he had a fresh glass in his hand when Penny came into the room.

"Hello, Penny," said Rachel, in her coolly maternal way.

"Congratulations to you both," said Penny, coming forward with her curious bossy diffidence, her air, that was almost maternal in itself, of putting her duty to forgetful, forgivable Gerald before any thought of her own pleasure. "I really came to do the diary."

"The diary can wait," said Gerald, with a note of reckless permissiveness, passing her the glass. "Have a look at what Lord Kessler's just given us." It struck Nick that he was avoiding any chance of a kiss. "It's by Gauguin," said Gerald, "he Rencontre aux Champs" -giving it already his own, more anecdotal title. They all peered at it politely again. "I can't help thinking of our lovely walks in France," Gerald said, looking round for agreement.

"Oh… I see," said Rachel.

"It's nothing like that," said Catherine.

"I don't know," said Gerald. "That could be your mother going down to Podier, and bumping into… ooh… Nick on the way."

Nick, pleased to have been put in the picture, said, "I seem to have borrowed Sally Tipper's hat."

Catherine smiled impatiently. "Yeah, but the point is, they're peasants, isn't it, Uncle Lionel. You know, this was when he went to Brittany, what was it called, to get as far away as possible from the city and the corruption of bourgeois life. It's about hardship and poverty."

"You're absolutely right, darling," said Lionel, who never stood for cant about money. "Though I expect he sent it to bourgeois old Paris to be sold."

"Exactly," said Gerald.

"It's funny, it looks like a Hereford cow," said Toby. "Though I don't suppose it can be."

"Probably a Charolais," said Gerald.

"Charolais are a completely different colour," said Toby.

"Anyway, it's very nice," said Penny, for whom being the daughter of Norman Kent had worked as a perfect inoculation against art.

"We were wondering where to hang it," said Rachel.

They spent five minutes trying the picture in different places, Toby holding it up while the others pursed their lips and said, "You see, /think it needs to go there… " Toby became a boy again, in a family game, pulling faces and then clearly thinking about something else. "Over 'ere, guv'nor?" he kept saying, in a "hopeless cockney accent which he found funny. He took down one or two things and replaced them with the Gauguin. The trouble was that the shapes of the other pictures showed on the wallpaper behind.

Rachel didn't seem to mind too much, but Gerald said, "We can't have the Lady seeing that."

"Oh…" said Rachel, with a little tut.

"No, I'm serious," said Gerald. "She's finally agreed to honour us with her company, and everything must be perfect."

"I'd be highly surprised if the Lady noticed," Lionel said candidly. But Gerald shot back, "Believe me, she notices everything," and gave a rather grim laugh.

"We'll decide later," said Rachel. "We just might be awfully selfish and have it in our bedroom."

"Though he'll probably get the Lady in there," said Catherine under her breath.

After lunch two men from Special Branch came, to check on matters of security for the PM's visit. They passed through the house like a pair of unusually discreet bailiffs, noting and evaluating. Nick heard them coming up the top stairs and sat smiling at his desk with his heart pounding and ten grams of coke in the top drawer while they peered out onto the leads. Their main concern was with the back gate and they told him a policeman would be on duty all night in the communal gardens. This made everything look a bit more risky, and when they'd gone down again he had a small line just to steady his nerves.

Later he went downstairs and when he looked out at the front of the house he saw Gerald and Geoffrey Titchfield talking on the pavement. They both had a look of contained exaltation, like marshals before some great ceremony, not admitting their own feelings, almost languid with unspoken nerves. Whenever someone walked past, Gerald gave them a nod and a smile, as if they knew who he was. He had made a very successful speech at Conference last month, since when he'd adopted a manner of approachable greatness.

Geoffrey was pointing at the front door, the eternally green front door, which Gerald had just had repainted a fierce Tory blue. It was the moment when Nick had first caught the pitch of Gerald's mania. Catherine, in a vein of wild but focused fantasy, had said that the PM would be shocked by a green door and that she'd read an article which said all Cabinet ministers had blue ones; even Geoffrey Titchfield, who was only the chairman of the local association, had a blue front door. Gerald scoffed at this, but a little later strolled out to the Mira Foodhall for some water biscuits and came back looking troubled. "What do you think about this, Nick?" he said. "The Titchfields have only got the garden flat, but their front door is unquestionably blue." Nick said he doubted it mattered, as drolly as possible, and feeling his own nostalgic fervour for the grand dull green. But the following day Gerald came back to it. "You know, I wonder if the Cat's right about that door," he said. "The Lady might very well think it's a bit off. She might think we're trying to save the fucking rainforest or something!" He laughed nervily. "She might think she's been taken to Greenham Common, by mistake," he went on, in a tone somewhere between lampoon and genuine derangement. At which point Nick knew, since the colour of the door had become a token of Gerald's success, that Mr Duke would be set to work with a can of conference-blue gloss.