Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

Wani had brought the car to Gusto, and Nick drove him back in it to Lowndes Square. "Thanks very much," said Wani, in a whispery drawl.

"That's all right, old chap," said Nick. He parked opposite the house and they sat for a minute. Wani was taking deep breaths, as if to ready himself for a race or plunge. He didn't try to help Nick by explaining himself-well, he never had, he was his own law and his own licence. If Nick asked him how he felt he was drily impatient with him, both for not knowing and for wanting to know. It was the unfair prerogative of illness. Nick reached a hand over the steering wheel and swept the thin dust off the black leather hood of the dashboard. How cars themselves changed as they aged; at first they were possibilities made solid and fast, agents of dreams that kept a glint of dreams about them, a keen narcotic smell; then slowly they disclosed their unguessed quaintness and clumsiness, they seemed to fade into the dim disgrace between one fashion and another.

"I really must get a new car," said Wani.

"I know, it's frightfully dusty."

"It's a fucking antique."

Nick peered over his shoulder into the cramped back seat, and remembered Pdcky, the stupid genius of the old days (which was to say, last summer), sitting there with his legs wide apart. "I suppose you'll keep the number plate."

"God, yes. It's worth a thousand pounds."

"Dear old WHO 6."

"OK…" said Wani, cold at any touch of sentiment.

Nick glanced up and saw Lady Ouradi looking down from one of the drawing-room windows. She held the net curtain aside and gazed out into the browning leaves of the plane trees, the long dull chasm of the square. Nick waved, but she seemed not to have seen them; or perhaps she had already seen them but let her gaze wander, as it was clearly prone to, down the imagined vista of the past or future. He noted her austere wool dress, the single string of pearls. To Nick she was a creature of indoors, of unimaginable exiled mornings and measured afternoons; her gesture as she held the white curtain back was like the parting of a medium through which she wasn't quite supposed to see or be seen.

"You're OK for money?" Wani said.

"Darling, I'm fine." Nick turned and smiled at him, with the mischievous tenderness of a year ago. "Your little start-up present has grown and grown, you know." He put his hand discreetly into Wani's, where it lay on his thigh. A few seconds later Wani withdrew his hand, so as to get out his handkerchief. There was a question in the air, all this week, since he had come back from Paris, and it was only his pride which kept it from being asked: which it wouldn't be in words, but in some brave melting gesture. Instead he said, "You should really move out of the Feddens'. Get a place of your own."

"I know," said Nick, "it is rather dotty. But we muddle along somehow… I'm not at all sure they could manage without me."

"One never knows…" said Wani. He turned his head away and looked out at the pavement, the ugly concrete planters in the square gardens, a bicycle frame chained to the railings. "I was thinking I might leave you the Clerkenwell building."

"Oh… " Nick glanced at him and then away, almost scowling in shock and reproach.

"Of course I don't mean you should live there."

"Well, no, that's not the point…"

"I suppose it's a bit odd leaving you something unfinished."

After a couple of breaths, Nick said, "Let's not talk about you leaving things." And went on, with awful delicacy, "Anyway, it will be finished by then." It was impossible to say the right thing. Wani grinned at him coldly for a second. Until now he had only had the story of Wani being ill; he had taken the news about with him and brought off the sombre but thrilling effect, once or twice, of saying, "I'm afraid he's dying," or "He nearly died." It had been his own drama, in which he'd felt, as well as the horror and pity of it, the thump of a kind of self-importance. Now, sitting beside him and being offered buildings, he felt humbled and surprisingly angry.

"Well, we'll see," said Wani. "I mean, I'm assuming you'd like it."

"I don't find it easy to think about," said Nick.

"I need to get this sorted out, Nick. I'm seeing the lawyers on Friday."

"What would I do with the Clerkenwell building?" said Nick sulkily.

"You'd own it," said Wani. "It'll have thirty thousand square feet of office space. You can get someone to manage it for you and you can live on the rent for the rest of your life."

Nick didn't ask how he was supposed to go about finding a manager. Possibly Sam Zeman could help him with that. The phrase "the rest of your life" had come out pat, almost weightless, a futurity Wani wasn't going to bother imagining. For Nick it was very strange to find it attached to an office block near Smithfield Market. Wani knew he hated the design of the building; there was a sharp tease in the gift, even a kind of lesson. "What are you going to do about Martine?" said Nick.

"Oh, just the same. She'll carry on getting her allowance, at least until she marries. Then she gets a lump sum."

"Oh… " Nick nodded dimly at the wisdom of this, but then had to say, "I didn't know you gave her an allowance."

Wani slid him the smile that had once been slyly grand but now had something vicious in it. "Well, not me," he said. "I assumed you'd worked it out. Mamma's always paid her. Or kept her, rather."

"I see… " said Nick, after a moment, thinking how little Wani had taught him about Lebanese customs. He seemed to search for the discreet transaction in the tilted mantelpiece mirror. He glanced at the house again, but Wani's mother had dropped the curtain and absolute discretion reigned: the black front door, the veiled windows, the eggshell sheen of property.

"What a charming arrangement, to keep your son's girlfriend."

"For god's sake," murmured Wani, looking away. "She was never my girlfriend."

"No, of course not, I see…" said Nick, blushing and hurrying to cover his own foolishness, and also feeling absurdly relieved.

"Of course you must never tell Papa. It's his last illusion."

Nick didn't imagine seeing much of Bertrand in "the rest of his life." The little aesthete already felt the prohibition of that closed black door: which opened as he looked at it, to reveal Monique and the old servant woman, dressed in black, ready but not coming forward. "They're expecting you," Nick said quietly.

Wani looked across and then almost closed his eyes in droll disdain. All his old habits were there, and the beat of his lashes brought back occasions in the past when Nick had basked in his selfishness. He reached beside the seat for his stick. "How are you getting back?"

"I think I'll walk," said Nick, unthinkingly fit. "I could do with some exercise."

Wani pulled back the handle and the door cracked open onto the cold blue afternoon.

"You know I love you very much, don't you," said Nick, not meaning it in the second before he said it, but moved by saying it into feeling it might still be true. It seemed a way of covering his ungraciousness about Wani's will, of showing he was groping for a sense of scale. Wani snuffled, looked across the road at his mother, but didn't echo Nick's words. He had never told him he loved him. But it seemed possible to Nick that he might mean it without saying it. He said,

"By the way, I should warn you that Gerald seems to be in a bit of trouble."

"Oh, really?" said Nick.

"I don't know exactly what's happened, but it's something to do with the Fedray takeover last year. A spot of creative accounting."

"Really? What, you mean the Maurice Tipper thing."

"I think you can be pretty sure Maurice has covered his back. And Gerald will probably be all right. But there may be a bit of a fuss."

"Goodness… " Nick thought of Rachel first of all, and then of Catherine, who for the past few weeks had been in a wildly excitable state. "How do you know about this?"