The Line of Beauty (16 page)

Lady Partridge came in with that air of social vexation Nick had seen in her before: she wanted to appear totally at home
here and she also wanted her arrival to be an event; her deafness added a querulous uncertainty as to which effect she was
having. Badger got her a drink and flirted with her, and she allowed herself to be flirted with. She liked Badger, having
known him since he was a boy, and nursed him through mumps once, when he was staying in the holidays—an episode that was still
referred to as a touchstone of their friendship, and in a vaguely risque way, since apparently Badger's balls had been the
size of grapefruit. Nick had heard them joke about it earlier in the week, and it had sounded like jokes he had with his own
parents, that were ribald little reference points in a past before everything changed and became indescribable.

All the time Nick was thinking about Leo, so that Leo seemed to be the element, the invisible context, in which these daunting
disparate people were meeting and sparring and congratulating each other. They didn't know it, which made it all the funnier
and more beautiful. He mixed himself a fresh gin-and-tonic, Gerald-style, quinine lost in juniper, and drifted round not minding
if he wasn't spoken to. He looked at the pictures with a new keenness, as though explaining them to Leo, his grateful pupil.
The other MP and his wife, John and Greta Timms, were standing in front of the Guardi with the look of people who had come
to the wrong party, who wanted more of a challenge, he in a grey suit, she in the helpless boldness of a blue maternity dress
with a white bow at the neck: it was as if the PM herself were pregnant. John Timms was a junior minister in the Home Office;
he must have been several years younger than Gerald, but he had precocious gravitas and unflappable self-importance. If Barry
Groom never said hello, John Timms seemed at first not to blink. His gaze was fixed and almost sensual, and his speech had
a hypnotic steadiness of pace and tone, irrespective of meaning: he was inspired, he seemed constantly to admit, but he wasn't
in any dubious way excitable. They were talking about the Falklands War and the need to commemorate it with a monument and
to celebrate it with an annual public holiday. "A Trafalgar Day for our times," said Timms, and his wife, in whom his certainty
produced a more vibrant kind of urgency, said, "Why not revive Trafalgar Day itself? Trafalgar Day itself must be revived!
Our children are forgetting the War Against the French . . ."John Timms gazed out into the room as though flattered by his
wife's zeal and loving her for it, but not himself being ready to go so far. He hadn't been introduced to Nick (indeed the
Timmses were really speaking to each other), and his gaze played on him for a moment, seemed to feel him and test him and
doubt him. "You'd like to see a permanent Falklands memorial, wouldn't you," he said.

"Mm, I wonder . . . " said Nick, not disrespectfully, and marvelled at just how unavailable his thoughts on the subject were.
The doubtlessness of Timms was a wonder in itself. He imagined Leo being here beside him, and having one salient fact or objection
to produce, of the kind Nick could never remember. Catherine came past, sampling each of the little power-centres in the room.
"We were talking about the Falklands," said Nick.

"I understand the Prime Minister favours an annual parade," said John Timms, "as well as a prominent memorial. It was truly
her triumph."

"And the men's," said Greta Timms, with her rich hormonal flush. "The men were staunch."

"They were certainly staunch, my darling," said John Timms. "They were dauntless."

"No," said Catherine, covering her ears and grinning, "it's no good, I just can't bear words with that
au
sound in. Do you know what I mean?"

"Oh . . . " said Greta Timms. "I think I've always found them rather splendid words!"

"Right, I'm off!" said Catherine, turning to the room with the big smile which perhaps all her life would seem unguarded and
vulnerable. A rough chorus of "Bye"s, a chuckling "Oh, is she off?," and she was gazed at with relief, the suddenly conjured
good humour that sends a child up to its early bed. "Bye, Gran!" she said, specially loudly, kissing Lady Partridge in the
middle of the room. "See you in the morning, Dad." And picking up her bag she stalked out on her tall heels. Lady Partridge
peeped at Morden Lipscomb to gauge his surprise; if he seemed amused by this vision of a sex-club door-girl she was ready
to take some droll credit as her grandmother. But Lipscomb was looking disappointedly at Gerald.

Lady Partridge was taken in to dinner by Lipscomb. They didn't really "take people in" at the Feddens', but the procession
from the drawing room, down the stone stairs, and into the candlelight, awoke a memory sometimes, or an anxiety, in guests.
Lipscomb, with ponderous New World formality, presented his elbow to the senior lady, and Gerald's mother, who had a hurtling
look to her after two gin-and-tonics, pressed against him like an old flame. In the dining room Lipscomb peered around with
guarded curiosity as people found their places. "Yes, I always think what a splendid room," Lady Partridge said, trailing
away towards her chair.

"And are these your forebears, Lady Partridge?" Lipscomb asked.

"Yes . . . yes . . ." said Lady Partridge, in a daze of graciousness.

"No, they are
not
her forebears," said Rachel, quietly but firmly. "They're my grandfather and my great-aunt."

Nick was placed in the middle of the table, with Penny Kent on his right and Jenny Groom on his left—the dullest place of
all, but he didn't mind because he had company of his own. He tucked into his crab cake as if sharing a joke. "How do you
fit in?" Jenny Groom wanted to know, with the air of someone steeled to unpleasant surprises.

"Oddly but snugly," said Nick; and since she didn't like this, "No, I'm an old friend of Toby's."

"Oh, Gerald's son, you mean . . . And I hear
he's
working for the
Guardianl"
The scandal of Toby's having a traineeship at the
Guardian
seemed to Nick to eclipse his own dissidence, to be enough scandal for one household.

"Well, you can ask him. He's sitting just over there," said Nick, loud enough to intrude on Toby as he listened to Greta Timms
extolling the virtues of the Family: Toby gave a half-secret smile of acknowledgement but said, "Yes, I see," to Greta to
show she still had his attention.

"Oh, of course. He's got his father's looks," said Jenny with a frown. "So what do you do?"

"I'm doing a doctorate at UCL—on . . . on Henry James," said Nick, seeing the style question might lose her completely.

"Oh . . ." said Jenny warily, getting a hook on it. "Yes. I've never got round to Henry James."

"Well . . ." said Nick, not caring if she had or not.

"Or hang on, did I read one?
Dr Johnson
or something."

"No . . . I don't think so . . ."

"No, not
Dr Johnson,
obviously . . . !"

"I mean there's the Boswell."

"It was set in Africa . . . I know:
Mr Johnson."

"Oh,
Mister Johnson
is a novel by Joyce Cary."

"Exactly, I knew I'd read something by him."

When the venison came in Gerald yapped, "Don't touch the plates! Don't touch the plates!" so that it sounded as though something
had gone wrong. "They have to be white hot for the venison." The fact was that the fat congealed revoltingly if the plates
were less than scorching. "Yes, my brother-in-law has a deer park," he explained to Morden Lipscomb. "A rare enough amenity
these days." The guests looked humbly at their helpings. "No," Gerald went on, in his bristling way of answering questions
he wished someone had asked, "this is buck venison . . . comes into season before the doe, and very much superior." He went
round with the burgundy himself. "I think you'll like this," he said to Barry Groom, and Barry sniffed at it testily, as if
he knew he was thought to have more money than taste.

Nick shared a brief smile down the table with Rachel. It seemed subtly to mock not only Barry but Gerald himself. Nick took
his first sip of the burgundy with a frisson at their shared understanding, like the liberty allowed to a child by a confident
mother—the pretended conspiracy against the father. He wondered if Gerald and Rachel ever rowed. If anything happened, then
it was in the white secrecy of the bedroom, which, with its little vestibule, was removed from hearing behind two heavy doors;
it became somehow sexual.

When he thought of Leo after not thinking of him for a minute or two he heard a big orchestral sound in his head. He saw Leo
lying on his coat under a bush, his shirt and jersey pushed up under his armpits, his jeans and pants round his knees, small
dead leaves sticking to his thighs—and he heard the astonishing chord. It was high and low at once, an abysmal pizzicato,
a pounce of the darkest brass, and above it a hair-raising sheen of strings. It seemed to knock him down and fling him up
all in one unresisted gesture. He couldn't repeat it immediately, but after a while he would see Leo rising to kiss him, and
the love-chord would shiver his skin again. It startled him while Penny was describing the enormous interest of working for
Gerald, and he jumped, and smiled at his invisible friend, so that Penny worried that she'd been funny. He wondered if it
came from something he knew, or if he'd written it himself. It certainly wasn't the
Tristan
chord, with its germ of catastrophe. The horrible thought came to him that if it existed, it had probably been written by
Richard Strauss, to illustrate some axe-murder or beheading, some vulgar atrocity. Whereas to Nick, though it was frightening,
it was also indescribably happy.

"So how are you getting on at UCL?" said Penny kindly, as if it must be a sorry comedown after Oxford. Nick and Penny had
never met as students, the word Oxford meant different things to them, but Penny relied on it as a thing they had in common.

"Oh, fine . . . !" said Nick; and went on obligingly, "It's not at all like Oxford, you know. The place itself is fairly grim.
I've just found out that the English department used to be a mattress factory."

"Really!" said Penny.

"It is a bit depressing. I suppose it's no wonder half the staff are alcoholics." Penny laughed, oddly titillated, and Nick
felt rather treacherous. In fact he revered Professor Ettrick, who had taken to him with immediate subtle confidence, and
seen possibilities in his thesis topic that he himself hadn't dreamt of. But nothing much was being done, and through most
of Nick's library days his eyes wandered just beyond the page in a deep monotonous reverie about Leo: the great unfolding
sentences of Meredith or James would slow and fade into subliminal parentheses, half-hour subordinate clauses of remembered
sex. And he felt guilty, because he wanted to deserve the professor's trust and be as clever and committed as he was meant
to be. Penny said, "Was it Henry James you're working on?"

"Er . . . yes," said Nick.

She seemed to settle comfortably on that, but only said, "My father's got tons of Henry James. I think he calls him the Master."

"Some of us do," said Nick. He blinked with the exalted humility of a devotee and sawed off a square of brown meat.

"Art makes life: wasn't that his motto? My father often quotes that."

"It is art that
makes
life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute
whatever for the force and beauty of its process," said Nick.

"Something like that," said Penny. She smiled contentedly into the candlelight. "What would Henry James have made of us, I
wonder?" she went on.

" Well . . . " Nick chewed it over. He thought she was rather like a high-minded aunt, proposing questions with virginal firmness
and ignorance. He wondered condescendingly what her sexual prospects were. A certain kind of man might like to raise the colour
in that plump white neck. He said, "He'd have been very kind to us, he'd have said how wonderful we were and how beautiful
we were, he'd have given us incredibly subtle things to say, and we wouldn't have realized until just before the end that
he'd seen right through us."

"Because he did write about high society, didn't he?" said Penny, clearly thinking that was where she was, and also perhaps
that it was proof against being seen through.

"Quite a lot," said Nick; and remembering his chat with Lord Kessler in the summer and really giving a long-pondered answer
to him, "People say he didn't understand about money, but he certainly knew all about the effects of money, and the ways having
money made people think." He looked fondly across at Toby, who out of sheer niceness tried now and then not to think like
a rich person, but could never really get the hang of it. "He hated vulgarity," he added. "But he also said that to call something
vulgar was to fail to give a proper account of it."

Penny seemed to be puzzling this over, but in fact she was listening to what Badger was suggesting in her other ear: her sudden
blush and giggle showed Nick that this was one of Badger's little sexual challenges to him—it was almost a way of calling
him a fag.

Toby was listening to Greta Timms, but leaning past her to keep an eye on Sophie, who was being drily examined by Morden Lipscomb.
"No," said Sophie reluctantly, "I've only been in one sort of
major
film."

"And what of the stage?" said Lipscomb, with an odd mixture of persistence and indifference.

"Well, I am about to be in something. It's . . . I'm afraid it's going to be rather a
trendy
production . . . it's
Lady Windermere's Fan."

Jenny Groom started asking something about Catherine, was she as mad as they said, and Nick's hesitations as he answered only
half allowed him to hear the truth that Lipscomb dragged out of Sophie, that she wasn't playing Lady Windermere herself, but
"Oh, just a minor part. . . No! Not
too
much to learn . . . Oh no, not her, that's a wonderful part . . . Anyway it will probably all be
ruined
by the director . . . " and that in fact she'd been cast as Lady Agatha, a role which famously contained nothing but the
two words "Yes, mamma." Nick thought this was very funny, and then felt almost sorry for her.