Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"Yes, it was," said Nick.

She stared at the screen, where the famous swingometer was virtually at rest. "But nothing's changing," she said. "I mean there's two more Labour seats. That's not a landslide."

"Oh, I see," said Nick.

"I mean a landslide's a disaster, it changes everything."

"So you thought… " Nick thought he saw that Catherine, in her inattentive but literal way, had convinced herself it was a Labour landslide. "It's a dead metaphor, darling. It just means a crushing victory."

"Oh god," said Catherine, almost tearfully.

"I mean, the land did slide once, as we all know. And it looks very much as though it's going to stay slidden."

Barwick came up half an hour later. There was a buzz in the studio, as if they knew something was about to happen. Nick and Catherine sat forward on the sofa. "Welcome to Barwick," said the bearded young reporter: "where we're in the splendid Market Hall built by Sir Christopher Wren." ("No, you are not," said Nick.) "We're expecting the declaration in the next minute. Barwick of course held by Gerald Fedden since the last election-a minister in the Home Office-something of a maverick, but could be looking at a Cabinet post in the next government-he had a majority of over eight thousand in '83, but we're expecting to see a big increase in the Alliance vote here-Muriel Day, a very popular figure locally… " The camera found the two rivals, each in discussion with their people, Gerald chaffing as if nothing was going on, Muriel Day already rehearsing the smile of a good loser. The Labour man, perhaps under a delusion about the outcome, was running over a three-page speech.

Nick flopped back in the sofa with a laugh, to break the mood. Staring at the screen he felt awkwardly responsible, as if the place he'd come from, the very room that he'd measured and drawn as a schoolboy, was about to deliver its verdict on the room he was sitting in now. It was embarrassing, but there was nothing he could do. He watched the event quickly clarify, the intent activity was finished, the people redeployed themselves, officials were briefly in conference, and out of the toil of the day, metal boxes and rented tables, pure process without poetry, a kind of theatre emerged, so thick with precedent that it looked instinctual.

Old Arthur State was saying, extremely slowly, "I, Arthur Henry State, being the returning officer for the parliamentary constituency of Barwick in the county of Northamptonshire… " and surely expanding his text with various quaint heraldic clauses, while Catherine eyed her father on the podium behind him. Nick glanced at her in profile. She had a look of exhaustion, as at an object constantly but inexplicably in her way; but a twitch of excitement too: she was powerless, but tonight there were other powers stirring. Something might happen. The Labour man was called Brown and so came first-he'd got eight thousand, three hundred and twenty-one votes ("that's more than three thousand up on last time"), and was cheered defiantly. Next was Muriel Day, and her vote too was well up on that of her predecessor, two and a half thousand up, at eleven thousand, five hundred and seven. She took the applause with a grateful but distracted smile, almost hushing her supporters to let them hear the rest-since Arthur always waited for total silence, and went back to the start of any sentence that was interrupted. It was a serious figure, and Gerald had a look Nick knew well, the condescending simper that covered a process of mental arithmetic. The suspense was made worse by the unignorable but somehow forgotten figure of Ethelred Egg ("Monster Raving Loony Party"), who'd only polled thirty-one votes but seemed to have a hall-full of supporters. He plucked off and waved his green top hat and capered about in his clown's suit. You couldn't help seeing some slight kinship between him and Gerald, whose white collar and pink tie were half hidden by a vast blue rosette with long tabs or streamers below and the breast-pocket handkerchief struggling above. "Oh lose, lose…" muttered Catherine. "Fedden," said Arthur State, "Gerald John" ("Conservative…"), and because there was a klaxon squawk he repeated it, the strange momentary levelling and exposure of the cited second name, "eleven thousand, eight hundred and ninety-three"-so that Gerald grinned and coloured for a second, and perhaps thought he'd lost after all. The cheer that followed was a funny sound, because it had a loud "Woo-oo" mixed in with it, at the luck of a man who had just got away with something.

Nick topped up his drink and went out onto the balcony. He rallied to the surprising chill out there. Gerald's close shave at the ballot box was a drama and an embarrassment, and it was going to be hard to know what to say when he got home. Congratulations might sound sarcastic or unduly blithe, even to Gerald. Anyway, he was in, and everything could go on as planned. His gleaming grin floated against the dark trees for a while, and then faded, as perishable as all news. Slowly the trees themselves took on shape and detail in the light from the houses and from the softly reflecting night clouds. Nick loved the gardens; when he strolled between the house and the gardens through the private gate he seemed to glance up at his own good luck, in the towering planes on one side and the white-stuccoed cliff on the other. It would be good to be out there now; but it was too dripping and cold. There were wonderful expanses of summer ahead, no need to panic.

He remembered taking Leo there, in a jitter of nerves and shadows, the night they'd finally met; and quite a few other men too, the summer before last, on the sand path behind the workmen's hut-it had been his trick, done confidently, dwindling a little in charm and danger. Something basic and unsocial about it, no giving them a drink or a shower: it was good. And perhaps it had been a secret tribute to Leo, a memory honoured and scuffed over in each careless encounter. Leo never knew how much Nick had imagined him, before he'd met him; or how the first kiss, the first feel of his body, had staggered a boy who till then had lived all in his mind. Leo wasn't imaginative: that was part of the point and the beauty of him. But he had a kind of genius, as far as Nick was concerned. That big red tick on his letter had bounced him into life.

He swilled round the whisky in his glass and shivered. There was a mood of homage and forgiveness: how could you begrudge the dead? And there was something else, a need to be forgiven himself, though he frowned the thought away. When Rosemary had asked him about the last time he'd seen her brother, he had blinked at her through the bleak little image of a parting on Oxford Street. The dense blind crowd, which could hide all kinds of intimacy in its rush, had this time made things impossible. Leo pushed away on his bike, crept through the red light and round the corner, without looking back. In fact the crowd almost hid the thing that Nick was remembering-the latest of several unhappy goodbyes not marked in any way as the last of all. In the following weeks he'd had to rescue that routine sequence of actions, and clarify it in the light of what it had turned out to be. At the time it was just an impatient escape into the traffic.

But then, far more recently, three or four months ago, on a wet late February night, something else had happened, which he hadn't quite thought of this morning. Wani must already have been in Paris, and Nick had gone into the Shaftesbury on a sudden urge to pick up, the glow in his chest and the ache in his thighs. He went in through the little back bar, with its gas fire and non-combatant atmosphere, where you got served quicker. He noticed a couple of friends in his first half-sociable push through the crowd, and took in, while he waited to be served, the little black guy in a woolly hat, with his back to him, talking to a middle-aged white man. He saw how his beltless jeans stood away from his waist to give a glimpse of blue underwear, and had a moment's sharp unexpected recall of Leo, the double curve of his lower back and muscular bottom. There was sadness in the likeness, but the image lay quiet; it had more of the warmth of a blessing than the chill of a loss. Nick was pleased at that. The pub was all potential-he gazed busily over the counter into the main bar, which was jostling with sexy self-regard. This little guy was much too skinny, really, to excite him, and too odd: he had a beard that was so bushy you could see it from behind, the black touched with grey beside the ears. Still, Nick looked at the chap he was talking to, caught his eye for a second, with a tiny smile of collusion. Then instead of ordering the usual practical pint, he asked for a rum and Coke.