Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

"Make them more valuable?"

"Exactly."

"Or less, of course," said Nick.

"Mm… " said Rachel.

"And how would they do that?"

"Well, I suppose they sort of… um…"

"Mm… " said Nick, after a bit.

They smiled doubtfully at their own unworldliness.

"It's not the same as asset-stripping, anyway," said Catherine.

"No… " said Rachel, with hesitant firmness.

"Because that's what Sir Maurice Tipper does. Toby told me. Maurice Tipper, Asset Stripper. That's when they get hold of something, it's like an old house, they strip out all the marble fireplaces before they demolish it."

"And leave everyone on the street," said Nick.

"Exactly!" said Catherine.

"That, of course, is what Badger's supposed to have done all over Africa," said Rachel, with a guilty grimace. "I don't know if it's true."

"Oh, Badger…" said Catherine, indulgent and dismissive at once. "What's become of poor old Badger, lately, I wonder."

"He's often away," said Rachel, as if to excuse her vagueness about him.

"I'm going to get in touch with him."

"Well, you could."

"I'm going to catch up with quite a number of people who've dropped out of my life. It's so pathetic to lose touch," Catherine said, with a lively but disgusted look at her last summer, when everything about her had been pathetic.

"I'm sure he's not expecting a call… " said Rachel.

"I saw Russell today, for instance."

"Oh really?" said Rachel thinly.

"Do you remember?"

"Oh, I do."

"Me too," said Nick.

"He was asking about everybody."

"I should still be a bit careful with Russell," said Nick, with a supportive glance at Rachel.

"But that was all before.. .!" said Catherine, in happy exasperation.

Later, she said, "If Gerald resigns, you'll be able to come to Barbados with me, that would be perfect, wouldn't it, until things blow over."

"That's very kind," said Rachel. "Though I can't help feeling there's more than one ' if in that sentence."

"Oh, Mum, this house has got an enormous swimming pool, as well as being right on the beach. You just take your pick!"

"No, I'm sure it's delightful."

"It could be just what he needs. A complete change of direction."

"You have the oddest idea of just what people need," said Rachel. "I've noticed it before."

"Well, let's face it, he certainly doesn't need the pathetic little empees salary."

' 'What you perhaps forget is that… your father wants to serve his country.''

"OK, when you get back, plunge into charity work! Probably much more useful than being Monster for Social Welfare and cutting everyone's grants. He could found something. The Gerald Fedden Trust. People often have a complete change of heart when something like this happens. You know, they go into the East End."

"Well, let's just wait and see, shall we," said Rachel, folding her napkin and pushing back her chair.

Nick and Catherine went up to the drawing room. "Will you put on some music, darling," said Catherine.

"I'm not sure your mother really…"

"Oh, just something nice. I don't mean God-dammery. All right, I'll choose." She went to the record cupboard, and knelt with her head cocked sideways, humming teasingly as she picked out an LP and prepared to put it on. Nick heard the needle drop, the kindling crackle.

"Turn it down a bit, darling…?"

She did so, and tutted, "Uncle Nick!" Out from the speakers came the sinister little jumps that start Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances. "There, you like that," she said.

"Up to a point," said Nick, knowing how much he didn't want to hear it.

"Oh, it's wonderful," she said, staring from the stage at an invisible dress circle and raising her arms. It was a piece he'd adored as a teenager, and played all the time in his first year at Oxford to confirm and deepen the regretful longing which seemed now to have been the medium he lived in-it unfolded for him like that endless tune on the alto sax. Now its melancholy felt painful, even vicious. He half watched Catherine sweeping through the room, alarmingly unselfconscious. He had danced to it himself, but by himself, in his room, drunk, at the end of days brightened or not by contact with Toby.

"It is a bit God-dammery," he said, as a Russian Orthodox chant made itself heard. Catherine waved her arms hectically. "It's a bit like having a bop in St Basil's Cathedral." He tried to throw off his embarrassment with these square little jokes. She smiled, stretched out a hand to him, and scowled for a second because he wouldn't join her. He thought of her four months ago, trailing her hopelessness from room to room like a sad child with an inseparable rag; and now, mere chemistry, she was Makarova. She didn't notice the melancholy, the insidious, shifting harmonies; it was movement and therefore life. He said, "The thing is, darling, there's a bit of a crisis going on. You know, it looks rather odd leaping round like this when your mum's so anxious-well, we all are." He spoke consciously as one of the family, to cover his private unease, at being both needed and excluded by the terms of the crisis. Catherine didn't pay attention, she hummed, serenely, stubbornly, and a while later stopped dancing as if on her own decision. She wandered to the big bay window at the back, and stood looking out through her reflection at the lights beyond the trees. They seemed perhaps like elements in a pattern, which, read with the right intuition for shape and meaning, might reveal an instruction. When she turned round she gave Nick a smile that hovered before various possible cajolements. She sat on the broad arm of his chair and slid in sideways against him.

"I know," she said, "let's go out for a bit. Have you got the car here?"

"Um, yes," said Nick. "Round the corner. But… well, Gerald will be back soon."

"Gerald could be ages. You know they don't vote till midnight sometimes, if they're filimandering."

"Or gerrybustering."

"Exactly! We needn't be long. I've just got an idea."

Of course the idea of not being here when Gerald got back was very attractive. Rachel came in, and Nick felt he'd been caught larking about, Catherine squashing him like some bolshie teenage attempt at seduction. "Gerald's just rung," Rachel said. "It seems they're going to be really awfully late. It's a bill he's got to, um, you know, keep a bit of an eye on."

"How is he?" said Catherine fondly.

"He sounds fine. He says really not to worry." She had a new confidence, an almost pleasurable glow, and Nick felt sure she'd just been told how much she was loved. She moved across the room, looking for some small task to perform; found fallen chrysanthemum petals on a table top, swept them into her open palm, and dropped them in the wastebasket. "Oh, I like this," she said. "Isn't it Rachmaninov?" The sad waltz of the second movement was just catching fire. She stood gazing over their heads at the caprice by Guardi, and perhaps at some memory of her own. Nick thought for a moment she was going to start dancing too-she seemed suddenly very like her daughter. But really it was only in charades or the adverb game that she took the licence to be silly.

Catherine said, "Mum, Nick and I are going out for half an hour."

"Oh, darling… really?"

"There's just something we've got to do. I'm not going to tell you, but… We'll be back!"

"Is it quite the best moment…?"

"Yes, I wonder," said Nick.

"I'm not going to talk to anyone, don't worry!"

Rachel thought, and said, "Well, if you are going out, then obviously Nick should go with you."

"We'll just go in the car," said Catherine. "Nick will be with me the whole time." And she hugged him to her in the chair with a delighted laugh.

Rachel looked rather narrowly at Nick, as the guarantor of this excursion. He thought he might be going to put up more resistance than he did. He gave a half smile, a slow nod, a wearily tolerant closing of the eyes. She said, "Please don't be long. And take the back way. Take a torch."