"Don't I see you at Bang last week?" the man beside him said, who had put a steadying hand on Nick's shoulder and left it there.
"I think not," said Nick, who in fact had never been there. But he carried some memory-print of this man, some unplaced excitement. It took him a moment to realize that he used to see him at the Y, last year perhaps, in the showers there; and a moment more to confirm that as Nick had grown slowly and unseriously heavier, the Spaniard, if that's what he was, black-haired and lean, with large rosy nipples, had grown perceptibly thinner, into an eerily beautiful, etched-out version of himself. He leant lighdy on Nick now, and seemed almost to shrug off this undeniable fact, or perhaps to challenge him to see it, but not himself to allude to it in any way, unless by a lingering, fearful glance. Nick twisted casually away from him, and what came back gleaming out of the blur of memory was his round bottom and the tiny black curls just showing when he bent over: an image which also reminded him of Wani. He scanned the water blandly, and thought that perhaps he had gone in—just then the fun began again, the Spaniard abruptly dive-bombed, everyone shouted, and the raft itself groaned and creaked. Nick hopped around, laughing and shouting something himself into the unavoidable drench after drench as people jumped in. And there, in the wallow, was Wani's face, almost tearful with concentration as he tried to avoid the reckless arms and legs of the other men and find a moment to clamber out.
"Hello, darling!" said Nick, and went down on one knee to help him heave himself up. Wani didn't answer and didn't smile.
A few minutes later it was almost calm again. They were sitting there beside a man of fifty with thick grey chest hair and a restlessly sociable manner. His much younger friend, a Malaysian perhaps, was swimming some way from the raft, cruising other men outrageously, and doing clever duck-dives which made his trunks come off. "Oh, he gives me some trouble, that one," the man said. "Look at him." Wani smiled politely and turned to Nick; he wasn't used to meeting people like this, in the near-naked free-for-all of a public place. "Don't get me wrong, though—it's all good fun." The man waved cheerfully as if the boy was paying him even the faintest attention, and said, "He's devoted to me, you know. I don't know why, but he is."
"What's his name, then?" said a rough-voiced man, who was squatting behind them.
"He's called Andy."
"Andy, yeah?" said the man. "Here, Andy," he shouted, getting to his feet, "show us your arse!"
"He will!" said his old protector. "He will!"
The raft shook and on the other side of them a sleekly muscly man twisted up out of the water and landed with a promising thump on the boards. Nick saw Wani glance across at him from under his long lashes, as if assessing a new kind of problem or possibility; Nick himself had seen him here last year. He was balding and dark eyed, round faced, with a nice long nose and the lazy but focused expression of a man who thinks of nothing but sex. Nick remembered his idling gaze, the huge dark pupils that seemed to fill his eyes, and the curving weight of him in his black trunks. His stomach was a smooth curve outwards as he sat, and it seemed his destiny to be fat, but for now the fat was held in easy balance with the muscle.
Wani was sitting with his knees drawn up, his hair swept back in shiny waves but bunching and tightening again as it dried. He had got back some of his social poise, and with it an oblique deprecating manner, as though afraid he might be recognized or fancied. The older man talked across him to Nick. "He's getting so particular," he said.
"Aha . . ." said Nick.
"KY not good enough any more, apparently. We have to have some other substance called Melisma. Then Melisma's not good enough, apparently, either. We're moving on to Crest. But you have to be careful, don't you, with these awful rubber johnnies. I never thought the day would come . . . What do you use?"
"Should keep him nice and clean, anyway," said the rough-voiced man, who was clearly taking quite an interest in Andy. "Crest's a kind of toothpaste, mate," and shortly afterwards he dived in and swam powerfully in his direction.
"I'm Leslie, by the way," said the older man.
Wani turned his head and nodded. "Hi. Antoine."
"Now where would you be from, I wonder?"
"I'm Lebanese," said Wani, with a quick dry smile, in his driest English accent. Nick watched his aquiline profile and smiled mischievously. He liked to see another man acknowledge Wani's glamour, it gave him a quick jealous shot of the passion he had felt for him since Oxford, which was lust enlarged and diffused by mystery. Now he was looking down again, his extraordinary eyelashes lowered. Nick remembered him sometimes, after a class, or after dinner on a rarer night when he was unclaimed by his other worlds, coming back to the room of some poor student, with its shelf of paperbacks and a Dylan poster, and talking a bit more about Culture and Anarchy or North and South, swapping notes over Nescafe, and making a sweetly respectful attempt to show that he shared the concerns of these other boys, and like visiting royalty was quite unconscious of their clumsiness and deference. Wani, who could really only bear fresh coffee, with a little jug of hot milk on the side. Some of the snobbier people in college, like Polly Tompkins, mocked his fanciness and said he was only the son of a grocer, an immigrant orange-and-lemon seller, "a Levantine cockney tart" was Polly's phrase—he was a cute little Lebanese boy who'd been sent to Harrow and turned into a drawling English gentleman. Some of them thought he must have been turned into a poof as well, on no stronger grounds than his tight trousers and his bewildering good looks.
"So what do you do?" said Leslie.
"I've got my own film-production company," Wani said.
"Oh . . ." said Leslie, crushed and intrigued at once. And then, in a rather roundabout response, "Did you see A Room with a View? I wonder what you thought of that, if you're in the film world."
"I didn't, I'm afraid," said Wani, with another tiny but chilling smile.
"Didn't I see you in the Volunteer last week?" Leslie said after a bit—at which Wani looked quite blank, but the question was aimed at the dark-eyed man, who all this time had been lying back on his elbow, with one knee raised and his tackle slumped unignorably towards them. It was difficult to tell if his vague smile was a reaction to their conversation, or even if he was looking at them. His eyes seemed to work on some scene of imminent gratification, unfolding on a screen that hung between himself and the afternoon. There was something confidently patient about him, no lecherous effort or rush. But when he was spoken to it was as if they'd already been talking, and there was an understanding between them. Nick gazed at him, feeling he allowed and absorbed gazes, and at the glinting water beyond, with a twinge of sadness that when they stopped talking they would have to leave the little sun-struck oblong of the raft and swim back to the solid world. Wani was looking at the man again too, but also at the waiting ladder of the jetty, with the flicker of someone calculating his escape.
When they were getting dried and dressed in the compound Wani nodded and said, "There's our friend Ricky again." Nick looked over his shoulder and saw the sexy man emerging round the fence of the nudist yard and pulling carelessly at the draw-string of his trunks.
"Oh, yes. I didn't know he was called Pdcky," Nick said.
"Well, he looks like a Ricky," said Wani, while getting out of his trunks sitting down and wrapped in a towel.
"Have you got an erection or something?" said Nick.
"Don't be puerile," Wani said. He gave Nick a look that was part challenge and part broody supplication. "Why don't you ask him if he'd like to come home with us?"
"What, 'Ricky'?"
"Isn't that what goes on at this sort of place? I didn't imagine we'd come here for the exercise."
Nick sniggered. "You don't have to go mad," he said, "the first time I take you out."
Wani coloured a little but he held his gaze. "It could be a lot of fun," he said. "I should have thought. He's very common."
Nick glanced round again at Ricky, who was loitering amiably by the path to the toilets, and loitered too of c
ourse in his memory, as unexplored potential. At the same time he felt a little clutch of warning. Wani didn't know what he might be getting them into, and nor did Nick. When he looked back Wani was standing up in his underpants and tugging on his jeans. "I'm sure it could be," Nick said drily. At which Wani, with a twitch of his eyebrows and a sour compression of his lips, seemed to shrug the thing off. He took his watch from his pocket and put it on.
"If you don't ask him soon," he said, "we won't have time. I'm sorry, I thought you liked him."
"Yes, he's hot," said Nick, and found he was describing himself, in his unexpected anxiety. He hated to see Wani's beautiful mouth curl like that, and to feel his disdain, so amusing and exciting when applied to others, fall on him. He wanted only love, and today perhaps a kind of obedience, from Wani, who knew that the local tactics of argument and persuasion confused and upset him. "All right, I'll go and get him," he said, pretending that for him as well to ask was naturally to get, and knowing that he could never allow Wani to ask him himself.
"I mean I know he's not one of your nig-nogs."
"Oh, fuck off," Nick said, and marched away, in his jeans, but still shirtless, towards the toilet. He felt the disadvantage of the clothed among the naked; and the floor of the lavatory, when he entered it, was unpleasantly wet under his bare feet.
The door of one of the two cubicles was shut, and at the raised tin trough of the urinal the man was standing, his big sleek back and arse to the room, but turning his head, in his odd expressionless way, to see who had come in. And that look, and the smell of the place, piss and disinfectant, the atmosphere of permission, the rules all changed by keen but furtive consent, gripped Nick and melted him. He went over and stood beside the man and a few seconds later the spray from the excited fizz of the flush was coldly tickling the tips of their two erections. Nick slid his foreskin slowly backwards and forwards and gazed at the other man's blunt-headed shaft. Then he looked into his eyes, and it was like when they had chatted on the raft, totally expected, the reason they were here, as commonplace as it was deep. He seemed to swim in that dark gaze, with little flickers of conjecture. The man tilted his head towards the open cubicle, so that Nick wondered if he could do that, quickly or partially, before "getting" him, or trying to get him, to come home with them, but there was the snap of the bolt, the other door opened halfway and little Andy, the Malaysian handful, slipped out, and crossed the room to wash his hands. In the mirror Nick saw the mischief in his eyes fade into blankness. Then as if by magic the flush sounded, the door opened wide, and a grey-haired man, who was not his friend Leslie and not his rough-voiced admirer either, emerged and made off with a preoccupied look.
Now they were alone, and Nick felt there was something almost romantic in their patience, and in the man's delayed grab at his penis, and his own half embrace of the man's waist, his hand between his buttocks. The man was breathing in his face and Nick muttered, "Wait. . . wait . . . what's your name?"
"Ricky," said the man, and tried to kiss him again.
Nick giggled as he pulled back his head. "I just wondered if you wanted to come home with me and my friend? You know, have a bit of fun . . ."
" Well . . . " Ricky clearly thought it was a lot of bother when he had him here already. "How far is it?"
"Only . . . Kensington!"
"Kensington? Fuck—I don't know, mate." And he pressed against Nick with another impatient nod at the waiting lockup. Nick hugged him clumsily, and grunted at how much he would like to have him right here; but it would be a scandal with Wani waiting round the corner. He said,
"We've got a fantastic car."
"Yeah?" said Ricky. "Which is he, anyway, your friend? Sort of dark curly hair?" He gently pinched and twisted Nick's nipple, and Nick gasped as he said,
"You saw him . . ."
Ricky pondered and nodded and let Nick free himself. They took a moment to make themselves decent. "He's a bit stuck-up, is he, that one? Butter wouldn't melt in his arse?"
"I wouldn't say that . . . He's a bit shy," said Nick.
"We'll see about that, then," said Pdcky.
As they went out Nick said, "Can you do us a favour?"
"I bloody well hope so."
Nick winced. "Can you pretend you're married—or at least you've got a girlfriend . . ."
Ricky shrugged and shook his head. "I have got a girlfriend."
"Have you?" Nick stopped for a second with his chin tucked in, while Ricky stared at him and then winked.
"Quick on the uptake, aren't I?"
Nick tutted and blushed. "I must say you're fucking quick," he said, almost in Ricky's voice.
Outside on the path Wani hurried ahead with the preoccupied look of a famous person, while Nick and Ricky followed behind. Ricky clearly never hurried, he was his own lazy happening. He kept his eyes on the pretty back view of Wani, which made Nick proud and also apprehensive. He wondered just what they were going to do, and couldn't distinguish the nerves that are a part of excitement from a kind of resentment. Wani's nerves showed in his cool dissociating manner. They went along beside the wide grass bank, and one of the sunbathing men called out something to Ricky, who gave him a nod and a dirty smile back—Nick smiled too, as if he knew what was going on.
In the lane above, Wani, who was playing with the car keys, flipping the leather fob about, said, "You can drive, Nick," and threw them over to him. It was typical of Wani to dress up a command as a treat. Nick had often been the passenger in WHO 6, but he had only driven it once before, by himself, a short hop from the river back to Kensington that became a whole glittering evening of darting about, the Brompton Road, Queen's Gate, along by the Park, round and round, and with the curious feeling (with the roof down and the coldish air blustering in) of passing for Wani, of being WHO, that glamorous enigma. All of which rather withered as he slid back into the driving seat. The car was parked in close to the rustic fence, under the lime trees, and their sticky exudations had already stippled the windscreen. He held down the button to retract the roof and watched in the mirror as it lifted and folded away behind him and sunlight through the leaves fell in glancingly on the dials and knobs and amber walnut. The other two stood waiting for him to pull out, but not talking. Then Wani gestured Ricky into the back, where he sat with his knees wide apart, since there was very little legroom. "You all right there?" said Nick, looking over at the squashed contour of his packet and feeling oddly apologetic about both the splendour and the inconvenience of the car.
"I'm all right," said Ricky, as if he was driven about like this every day.
They started on the steep hill towards Highgate and Nick was amazed all over again by the power leaping up under the ball of his foot. They seemed to wolf up the lane, in four thoughtless growls. He caught Ricky's eye in the mirror and said, "So what time's your girlfriend getting back?"
Ricky said, "She won't be back till really late, actually," more clearly than when he told the truth, and then added, "She's gone round to see her Uncle Nigel," with a tolerant cluck. This bit of business acted visibly on Wani, who cleared his throat and half-turned in his seat to say,
"That's good." The absurdity of the situation, something quite uncomfortable, tied a sudden knot in Nick, and at the top of the lane, instead of turning right down the hill towards town he turned the other way and climbed again towards Highgate village. He probably didn't need to explain, since as far as Wani was concerned they could have been in Lincolnshire, and Ricky would sit there with his half-smile of anticipation wherever they went, but he said,
"There's something I want to have a quick look at." At the top he made an abrupt left into the long shady row that he knew must be The Grove. He was fairly sure he'd never been here before, it was something he'd imagined doing, a piece of research, historical, emotional. . . but as he peered through the line of trees at the beautiful old brick houses behind high railings, the house where Coleridge had lived and died, and then, as they crept along, bigger Georgian houses with flights of steps
and carriage yards, he had the ghostly impression that he had been here, had been brought here on some unlocatable evening for some irrecoverable event. "This is where Coleridge lived," he said, with a glow of piety intended to stir Wani too, and then protracted to defy his evident lack of interest.
"OK," said Wani.
"I just want to see where the Feddens used to live. Some old friends of mine," he explained to Ricky. "I know it was number thirty-eight . . ."
"This is sixteen," said Wani.
It was one of the Feddens' sentimental routines to refer to their "Highgate days," and Gerald would evoke the house where they had first lived in a tone of nostalgia and self-ridicule, as if remembering student digs. Rachel usually said it was "a darling house," it was where she had raised her children, and a snapshot of Toby and Catherine, aged ten and eight, sitting on the front steps, remained in a silver frame on her dressing table. To Nick the place had an obscure proxy romance, as the first home of his second family. When they got to it there was a skip outside piled high with splintered timber, and a blue Portaloo in the front garden.
"Hm," said Wani. "OK . . . " And he turned and gave Ricky an encouraging glance, in case he was getting bored. "Not much left."
The house was having a restoration so thorough it looked like demolition. The roof was like another house, made of scaffolding and sheeting. Most of the stucco had been hacked from the walls, and you could see the buried arcs of brick over each window. Through the front door you saw the garden at the back. On the surviving white-stucco pier by the side gate there was a painted black finger and the words TRADESMEN'S ENTPJVNCE; underneath which, in red spray-paint, a wit had written CUNTS EN-TPJVNCE, with an arrow pointing the other way.
The Line of Beauty Page 19
