Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

Brad didn't argue, but said job losses on Wall Street were terrible.

"Oh, fuck that," said Wani. "Anyway, it bounces back. It has already. It always recovers. It always recovers."

"It's a worrying time for all of us," said Nick responsibly.

Wani gave a mocking look and said, "We'll all be absolutely fine." And after that it was impossible to approach him on the subject of his fatal illness. Nick saw it was perplexing for the Americans, who had met him as a man about to get married. Now natural concern was mixed with furtive thinking back.

During lunch Brad, like Wani, drank only water, and Nick and Treat shared a bottle of Chablis. Treat touched Nick's arm a lot, and involved him in quiet side-chats about what they might do later. Nick tried to keep general conversation going. Wani's presiding coolness made them all hesitate. He seemed to play with their anxiety about him. Brad and Treat asked questions, and marvelled at their luck in having Wani to answer them.

If Nick answered a question Wani listened to him and then gave a flat little codicil or correction. His technique was to hold a subject up and show his command of it, and then to throw it away in smiling contempt for their interest in it. He ate very little, and a sense of his disgust at the expensive food, and at himself for being unable to eat it, seeped into the conversation. He looked at the slivers of chicken and translucent courgettes as pitiful tokens of the world of pleasure, and clutched the table as though to resist a slow tug at the cloth that would sweep the whole vision away.

The question of the film was slow to come up, and Nick was shy to mention it, just because it was his own project. He'd spent months writing a script, and it was almost as if he'd written the book it was based on: all he wanted was praise. He often imagined watching the film, in the steep circle of the Curzon cinema-absorbing the grateful unanimous sigh of the audience at the exact enactment of what he'd written; in fact he seemed to have directed the film as well. He lay awake in the bliss of Philip French's review. Somehow another James film, The Bostonians, had come up, and the crazy thing that the actor who played Superman starred in it.

"One can imagine," said Nick, "only too well, the Master's irony, not to speak of his covert excitement, at that idea…"; though the others perhaps imagined it less vividly than he did.

"Oh, we loved your letters, by the way," said Treat, with another squeeze of his arm: "so Britishl"

"Well, I guess we should talk about… our film," said Brad. Just then the desserts, mere bonnes bouches in foot-wide puddles of pink coulis, were set in front of them. Wani looked at his plate as if it and the film were equally unlikely confections. "Or we could talk about it next week…"

"I don't mind," said Nick, his heart thumping. He was suddenly incredulous that his beautiful plan, the best fruit of his passion for Henry James, depended on the cooperation of these two stupid people. He sensed already that it wasn't a question of changes, it was some larger defection from the plan.

"I mean we love what you've done, Nick."

"Yeah, it's great," said Treat.

Brad hesitated, peering at the grid of spun sugar that jutted from his loganberry parfait. "You know, we've talked about this in the letter a certain amount. It's just the problem of the story where the guy doesn't get the girl, and then the stuff they're all fighting over-the Spoils, right?-goes up in flames. It kinda sucks."

"Does it…?" said Nick; and, trying to be charming, "It's just like life, though, isn't it-maybe too like life for a… conventional movie. It's about someone who loves things more than people. And who ends up with nothing, of course. I know it's bleak, but then I think it's probably a very bleak book, even though it's essentially a comedy."

"Yeah, I haven't read the book," said Treat.

"Oh… " said Nick, and coloured with proxy embarrassment, with the shame Treat should have been feeling. His loose idea of getting some time alone with him vanished in a sigh and a shrug.

"You've read the book, Antoine?" said Treat.

Wani was rose-lipped, popping in quarter-spoonfuls of ice cream, sucking them from the spoon and letting them slip down in luxurious spasms like a child with tonsillitis; he said, "No, I haven't. I pay Nick to do that for me."

"I don't know what you think," said Brad, "about the idea of including just a short love scene for Owen and… I'm sorry…"

"Fleda," said Nick. "Fleda Vetch."

"Fleda Vetchl" said Treat, with a brief blare of a laugh. "What sort of a name is that? Doesn't she sound like the ugliest girl in the school?"

"I think it's rather a touching name," said Nick; and Brad looked reprovingly across the table.

"She sounds like a witch," muttered Treat, as if agreeing to shut up; but then went on, "I mean, can I imagine asking Meryl Streep, 'Oh, Miss Streep, we've got this really great role for you, will you please, please play the lovely Fleda Vetch?' She'd think I'd just thrown up all over the phone."

They all laughed except Wani, who said, very quiet and superior, as if she was someone else they would see at Nat Hanmer's wedding, "Fleda Vetch is what she is called."

"Yeah, I don't care overly what she's called," said Brad. "But… Owen and Fleda-we need to see them together more. We need some… passion!"

"We need him getting all hot," said Treat, flicking his glance towards Jamie's table. Then he winked at Nick. "Did he ever… you know…" lowering his voice and looking coyly away, "at Oxford… like, with other guys-I'm sure I heard someone say-"

"He's straight," said Wani.

"Oh, OK," said Treat, with a wobble of the head, as if to say, who's talking about straight here? But there was something bleaker than impatience in Wani's tone. He was pale and motionless, gazing at the far rim of his plate but clearly caught by some unpostponable inner reckoning. He jerked his chair back a little, and his stick, swinging off from the back of it, fell on the marble with a ringing clatter: he groped round for it, bending down, and Brad jumped up to help him, and reclaimed the stick and managed to absorb the blame and reassure the restaurant with his friendly bulk. Wani's mouth was held shut and he had an intensely private expression of imminent surrender. It made Nick think for a second of the bedroom. He stood and went off at a hobbling lurch among the tables.

A few seconds later Nick followed, frowning down at the floor, giving a brisk nod to Fabio's cool "Signore?" In the black marble lavatory there were two cubicles, and in one of them, with the door still ajar, Wani was stooping and vomiting. Nick came in behind him and stood there for a moment before laying a hand on his side. Wani flinched, whispered, "Oh fuck…" and crouched and shuddered as he threw up again. There seemed to be far more coming out than the invalidish meal that had gone in. Nick touched him lightly, wanting to help him and discourage him at the same time. He looked over his shoulder into the bowl, with a certain resolve, and saw the bits of chicken and greens in the pool of the promptly regurgitated ice cream. He plucked out sheets of paper from the dispenser and wondered if he should wipe Wani's face for him; then he stood and waited, which Wani didn't object to. He thought with bleak hilarity that this was their most intimate moment for many months. He looked at the streaky black walls and found himself thinking of nights here the year before, both cubicles sometimes carelessly busy with the crackle of paper and patter of credit card. There was a useful shiny ledge above the cistern, and they would go in in turn. The nights sped by in unrememberable brilliance. "Well," said Wani, grasping his stick and giving Nick a fearful smile, "no more parfait for Antoine."