Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"I did," said Nick; and for some reason went on, "Not my best side, I'm afraid."

"No, they're awful about that," said Lionel, clearly resolving to show by his humour and by sitting down squarely and comfortably that there was nothing to worry about. "I was tipped off, so I came through the gardens."

"Thank heavens for the gardens," said Rachel. "With four exits they really can't keep it covered."

Nick smiled and hesitated. There wasn't a cup for him, but he longed to be included. He said tactfully, "Is there anything I can do?"

"Oh… " Lionel and Rachel looked at each other, searching for an answer among their own proprieties and uncertainties. Perhaps it was too shaming, even with the press outside, for Rachel to talk about. "Some rather awful things are being said about Gerald," she said, in her tellingly passive fashion.

Nick bit his cheek and said, "Wani… Ouradi told me something about it."

"Oh, well it's out, then," said Rachel.

"It will come out, darling," said Lionel.

Rachel poured the tea, and seemed lost in this sombre idea, passing Lionel a cup and the plate of lebkuchen. "And what about Maurice Tipper?" she said.

Lionel sat scrunching his biscuit in a vigilant squirrel-like way, and licked the sugar from his lips before saying, "Maurice Tipper is a cold-blooded thug."

"That's certainly true," said Rachel.

"My guess is that he'll only help Gerald if doing so helps himself."

"Mm… I saw Sophie at lunchtime," Nick offered. "I thought she was rather evasive."

"Thank god Tobias didn't marry that false little girl!" said Rachel, clutching at this out-of-date consolation and laughing with new bitterness and relief.

"Quite!" said Nick.

"Two things you can do," said Lionel. "Obviously, don't talk to anyone. And could you bear to pop out and buy the Standard?"

"Of course," said Nick, suddenly more nervous of the photographers.

"And a third thing," said Rachel. "Could you try and find my daughter?"

"Ah, yes… " said Lionel.

"She's frightfully up at the moment," Rachel said. "You've no idea what she'll do."

"Well, I'll try," said Nick.

"Isn't she taking the pills?" said Lionel, firm and vague at once.

"They can't quite get it right," said Rachel. "Two months ago she could barely speak-now she can barely stop speaking. It is a strain."

They both looked at Nick and he said, "I'll see what I can do." He sensed a certain hardness towards himself, a request that he should prove his usefulness to the family. Then he thought briskness might be a mark of confidence. A structure of command, long laid away in velvet, had been rapidly reassembled.

Catherine came home about six. She was thinking of buying a house in Barbados, and had been having a long talk with Brentford about it. Nick could tell from the smell of her hair when she kissed him that she'd been smoking pot; she seemed both elated and spaced out. Flashes went off as she opened the front door, but she treated them almost as natural phenomena, the meteors of her own atmosphere. "What was all that about?" she said, hardly waiting for an answer. "Another visit from the Prime Minister?"

"Not exactly," said Nick, following her upstairs and thinking that whatever was going on made another visit from the PM very unlikely. "We've been wondering where you were," he said. Rachel was on the phone in the drawing room, talking to Gerald in Westminster, and seemed to be getting the reassurances she needed; she was oddly placable. She smiled indulgently at Toby's portrait and said, "Of course, darling, just carry on as normal. We'll try…! We'll see you… Yup, yup." Nick went to the front windows, which looked very large and shiny in the early dusk. It was unsettling to know there were men waiting outside, their patience barely tested. The curtains were never closed, and when freed from the brocaded bands that held them back they still curved stiffly apart. Nick leant in to close the shutters, seldom used, which unfolded with alarming cracks.

When Rachel explained what was going on, Catherine seemed distantly enthusiastic. "Extraordinary… " she said.

"It could be quite serious actually," said Nick.

"Not prison, you mean?" It was the pot perhaps that gave her this smile of benign speculation.

"No," said Rachel crossly. "Besides, he's done absolutely nothing wrong. It's clearly all to do with that hateful man Tipper."

"Then Tipper can go to prison," said Catherine. "Or both the Tippers, better still."

Rachel gave a twitch of a smile to show the subject of the joke touched her a little too nearly. "They're only making investigations. No one's been arrested, much less charged."

"Right."

"Uncle Lionel's been here, and he was very reassuring."

Nick murmured endorsingly and said, "Would anyone like a drink?"

"Anyway, darling, you know your father would never do a thing like that. He's far too experienced. Not to mention dead honest!" Rachel coloured slightly at this affirmation.

"So is it in the paper?"

"It's not in the Standard tonight. And Toby says they won't touch it at the Telegraph -he's spoken to Gordon. Daddy says it's just the sort of thing the Guardian would love to blow out of all proportion."

"I'll have um… " Catherine said, bearing down on the drinks table with a fascinated smile but in the end only managing to think of a gin-and-tonic. Nick mixed her one, juniper lost in quinine: when she was on the up curve it was best to be careful with alcohol, annoyance, laughter-any cause of excitement. They stood with their glasses at their chins and nodded "Cheers!" in a meaningful way.

"The thing is, darling," said Rachel, "we simply mustn't talk to anybody at the moment. Oath of silence, Daddy says."

"I don't know anything about stocks and shares, so you needn't worry."

"It's what they make you say, though… Darling, or they twist your words. They've got no principles."

"They're not your friend," said Nick, which had been Lionel's dry way of putting it.

"They've got the morals of rattlesnakes," said Rachel.

Catherine sat on a sofa, swayed her head over her glass, and looked from one to the other of them. She started to smile and they flinched, with the feeling they were being mocked; but the smile spread and they saw it was to do with something else, the flowering of a clear belief, just touched with playful calculation, that they would share her happiness. "I've had such a thrilling day," she said.

They sat down to dinner in the kitchen. Normally Nick enjoyed the nights when Gerald was kept late at Westminster-the mood of snug reduction and humorously tolerated crisis; if they had guests, or if Gerald and Rachel were due out, there was even a thrill to Gerald's absence: it was a wing-brush of power, the sign of demands and decisions greater than dinner. Tonight his absence was more critical. It was odd that he hadn't come home. Clearly he attached great importance to carrying on normally.

Catherine said, "What's Gerald voting about?"

"Oh, darling, I don't know… it's obviously something pretty major."

"Can't we ring him?"

"Well, he's not answering the phone in the office. And if he's in the Chamber, or somewhere else about the Palace," said Rachel impressively, "then we couldn't reach him anyway."

"He'll be back straight after the vote," said Nick. He knew that Gerald had Penny's new mobile phone; Rachel must be trying to spare him a wild, irrelevant pep talk from his daughter.

"What is a takeover?" said Catherine.

"Well, it's when one company buys up another."

"They acquire a majority of the shares," said Nick. "Then they have control."

"So are they saying Gerald didn't have these shares?"

Rachel said, as if judiciously filtering the facts for her child, "I think sometimes perhaps people fiddle with the price of the shares."