Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

She came in at her gracious scuttle, with its hint of a long-suppressed embarrassment, of clumsiness transmuted into power. She looked ahead, into the unknown house, and everything she saw was a confirmation. The high hall mirror welcomed her, and in it the faces of the welcomers, some of whom, grand though they were, had a look beyond pride, a kind of rapture, that was bold and shy at once. She seemed pleased by the attention, and countered it cheerfully and practically, like modem royalty. She gave no sign of noticing the colour of the front door.

Upstairs, calm was re-established, but of a special kind, the engaged calm of progress once the overture has finished and the curtain has gone up. People recollected themselves. There was a sort of unplanned receiving line when the Lady came into the room (her husband, behind her, slipped modestly towards a drink and an old friend). Barry Groom, bouncing back from a low point with a call girl in the spring, dropped his head with horrible humility as the PM took his hand; it was later claimed that he had even said hello. Wani she greeted humorously, as someone she had seen recently elsewhere-he won the glow of recognition but surrendered the claim to need to speak to her so soon again; though he held on to her hand and it wasn't clear for a moment if he was going to kiss her. Gerald steered her jealously on, murmuring names. Nick watched with primitive interest as she approached; again she was beyond manners, however courtly and jewelled. Her hair was so perfect that he started to picture it wet and hanging over her face. She was wearing a long black skirt and a wide-shouldered white-and-gold jacket, amazingly embroidered, like a Ruritanian uniform, and cut low at the front to display a magnificent pearl necklace. Nick peered at the necklace, and the large square bosom, and the motherly fatness of the neck. "Isn't she beautiful," said Trudi Titchfield, in unselfconscious reverie. Nick was briskly presented, elided almost, in the rhythm of the long social sentence, but with a surprising detail, or fib, "Nick Guest… a great friend of our children… a young don," so that he saw himself enhanced and also compromised, since dons were not the PM's favourite people. He nodded and smiled and felt her blue eyes briefly but unconfidently focus on him before she seized the initiative and called out, "John, hullo…!" to John Timms, who was suddenly right next to him. "Prime Minister…" said John Timms, not shaking her hand but clasping her somehow with the fervour and humour of his tone. At the end of the row were the children themselves, a goggling unmatched pair, Toby still marvellously cheerful and Catherine, who could have sulked or asked an awkward question, shaking hands with a bright "Hello!" and gazing at the PM like a child at a conjuror. "Oh, and this is my boyfriend," she said, producing Jasper but forgetting to name him. "Hello," said the Prime Minister, in a tone just dry enough to suggest that by now she deserved a drink: which Tristao, with his doe eyes and nerveless smile, was at hand to provide.

Nick trotted downstairs from a quick refresher and caught Wani coming out of Gerald and Rachel's bedroom. "God, careful, darling," he said.

"I was just using the lav," said Wani.

"Mm," said Nick. He was too drunk and high himself to take the danger at all seriously. "Do use my lav if you need to."

"The stairs," said Wani.

Nick loved the way the coke took off the blur of champagne, claret, Sautemes, and more champagne. It totted up the points and carried them over as credit in a new account of pleasure. It brought clarity, like a cure-almost, at first, like sobriety. He put an arm round Wani's shoulders, and asked him if he was having a good time. "We see so little of each other," he said. They started to go downstairs and something caught Nick's eye at the third or fourth step, someone else moving in the great white bedroom that Wani had come out of. His instinct as guardian of the house, preventer of trouble, quickened. Jasper came out, businesslike, as if he had the keys and was showing the place to a buyer. He gave Nick a nod and a wink. "Just going up to Cat's room," he said.

"So," said Nick, as he and Wani went on down, with a pensive hesitation each step or two, as though they might stop completely in the charm of a shared thought, "you've been running the house tart up the hill… "

"It's got to be climbed, old chap, it's got to be climbed."

"Yeah," said Nick, with a sniff and a sour turning down of the mouth. He looked for guilt in Wani's oddly rosy face; he glimpsed, like shuffled cards, the two of them together in the bathroom, Wani's love of corruption, all the licence that went with the latest line. "So it's not our secret any more," he said. Wani gave him a look that was scornful but not aggressive. Nick might be in the clear, clever phase, but Wani was much further on, in the phase where high spirits reel and stall and blink at a barely recognized room or friend. Nick let him go, and the high heartbeat of the coke became a short sprint of panic. He smiled defensively, and the smile seemed to search and find a happier subject, in the opening bloom of the drug. It was hard to know what mattered. There was certainly no point in thinking about it now. Out in the marquee the music had started, and everything had the air of an escapade.

He found Catherine in a corner of the drawing room being chatted up by toothy old Jonty Stafford, the retired ambassador, who stooped over her like a convivial Jabberwock. "No, I think you'd like Dubrovnik," he was saying, with a suggestive hooding of the eyes. "The Hotel Diocletian, enormous charm."

"Oh," said Catherine.

"They always gave us the bridal suite, you know… which has the most enormous bed. You could have had an orgy in there."

"Not on your wedding night, presumably."

"Hello, Sir Jonty."

"Ah, now here's your handsome young beau, now I'm for it, now I'm done for!" said SirJonty, and lurched off after another passing female bottom, which happened to be that of the PM. He looked back for a moment with a shake of the head: "Marvellous, you know… the Prime Minister… "

"I think you've just been propositioned by a very drunk old man," said Nick.

"Well, it's nice to be noticed by someone," said Catherine, dropping onto a sofa. "Sit here. Do you know where Jaz is?"

"Haven't seen him," said Nick.

The photographer was at large, and his flash gleamed in the mirrors. He slipped and lingered among the guests, approached with a smile, like a vaguely remembered bore, in his bow tie and dinner jacket, and then poufl-he'd got them. Later he came back, he came around, because most shots catch a bleary blink or a turned shoulder, and got them again. Now they bunched and faced him, or they pretended they hadn't seen him and acted themselves with careless magnificence. Nick dropped onto the sofa beside Catherine, lounged with one leg curled under him and a grin on his face at his own elegance. He felt he could act himself all night. He felt fabulous, he loved these nights, and whilst it would have been good to top the thing off with sex it seemed hardly to matter if he didn't. It made the absolute best of not having sex.

"Mm, you smell nice," said Catherine.

"Oh, it's just the old 'Je Promets,' " said Nick, and shook his cufflinks at her. "Have you had your twelve seconds with the PM yet?"

"I was just about to, but Gerald put a stop to it."

"I heard a bit of her talk at dinner. She does that Great Person thing of being very homely and self-indulgent."

"Greedy," said Catherine.

"They all love it, they breathe sighs of relief, they'd talk about marge versus butter all night, and then suddenly she's on them with the Common Agricultural Policy."