The Line of Beauty

by Alan Hollinghurst

  It was Rachel who took and opened the box, with Nick standing by as if it was his present, as if he was giving it and perhaps also receiving it—he felt generous and possessive all at once. He kept himself from exclaiming when she lifted out a small oil painting. He determinedly said nothing. "My dear . . . " said Rachel, fascinated, hesitant, but controlled, as though to be surprised would be to have some vulgar advantage taken of her. She held it up, so that everyone could see it. "It's perfectly lovely," she said.

  "Mm . . . " said Lionel, with the canny little smile of someone who has made a good decision.

  Gerald said, "You're too kind, really . . . " and stared earnestly at the picture, hoping someone would say what it was. It was a landscape, about nine inches wide by twelve high, painted entirely in vertical dabs of a fine brush, so that the birch trees and meadow seemed to quiver in the breeze and warmth of a spring morning. A black-and-white cow lay under a bank at the front; a white-shawled woman talked to a brown-hatted man on the path in the near distance. It was in a plain dull-gilt frame.

  "Hah, jolly nice," said Toby.

  Catherine, looking comically from side to side as though detecting a trick, said, "It's a Gauguin, isn't it," and Nick, who after all couldn't bear not to say, said, "It's a Gauguin" at the same time.

  "It's a nice one, isn't it," said Lionel, "he Matin aux Champs—it's a study, or a little version, of the picture in Brussels. I snatched it from the teeth of the head of Sony. Actually, I think it was a bit small for him. Not quite the ideally expensive picture"—and he chuckled with Nick as if they both knew just what to expect from the head of Sony.

  "Really . . . Lionel . . . " Gerald was saying, shaking his head slowly and blinking to disguise his calculations as another kind of wonder. "That and the silver . . . um . . ."

  Catherine shook her head too, and said, "God . . . !" in simultaneous glee and scorn of her rich family.

  The picture was handed round, and they each smiled and sighed, and turned it to the light, and passed it on with a little shudder, as if they'd been oblivious for a moment, in the spell of sheer physical possession. "Where on earth shall we put it?" said Gerald, when it came back to him; Nick laughed to cover his graceless tone.

  Just then the front door slammed and Rachel went to look over the banisters; it was a day of incessant arrivals. "Oh, come up, dear," she said. "It's Penny."

  "Ah, she can give us her thoughts about the picture," said Gerald, as if from a view of her general usefulness. He got rid of the picture by propping it against Liszt's nose on the piano.

  "Penny!" said Catherine. "Why? I mean, she wouldn't have a clue," and then laughed submissively, since it wasn't her day.

  "Well," said Gerald, beaming and blustering, "well, her father's a painter." And he turned away to see to the champagne; he had a fresh glass in his hand when Penny came into the room.

  "Hello, Penny," said Rachel, in her coolly maternal way.

  "Congratulations to you both," said Penny, coming forward with her curious bossy diffidence, her air, that was almost maternal in itself, of putting her duty to forgetful, forgivable Gerald before any thought of her own pleasure. "I really came to do the diary."

  "The diary can wait," said Gerald, with a note of reckless permissiveness, passing her the glass. "Have a look at what Lord Kessler's just given us." It struck Nick that he was avoiding any chance of a kiss. "It's by Gauguin," said Gerald, "he Rencontre aux Champs"—giving it already his own, more anecdotal title. They all peered at it politely again. "I can't help thinking of our lovely walks in France," Gerald said, looking round for agreement.

  "Oh . . . I see," said Rachel.

  "It's nothing like that," said Catherine.

  "I don't know," said Gerald. "That could be your mother going down to Podier, and bumping into . . . ooh . . . Nick on the way."

  Nick, pleased to have been put in the picture, said, "I seem to have borrowed Sally Tipper's hat."

  Catherine smiled impatiently. "Yeah, but the point is, they're peasants, isn't it, Uncle Lionel. You know, this was when he went to Brittany, what was it called, to get as far away as possible from the city and the corruption of bourgeois life. It's about hardship and poverty."

  "You're absolutely right, darling," said Lionel, who never stood for cant about money. "Though I expect he sent it to bourgeois old Paris to be sold."

  "Exactly," said Gerald.

  "It's funny, it looks like a Hereford cow," said Toby. "Though I don't suppose it can be."

  "Probably a Charolais," said Gerald.

  "Charolais are a completely different colour," said Toby.

  "Anyway, it's very nice," said Penny, for whom being the daughter of Norman Kent had worked as a perfect inoculation against art.

  "We were wondering where to hang it," said Rachel.

  They spent five minutes trying the picture in different places, Toby holding it up while the others pursed their lips and said, "You see, /think it needs to go there . . . " Toby became a boy again, in a family game, pulling faces and then clearly thinking about something else. "Over 'ere, guv'nor?" he kept saying, in a "hopeless cockney accent which he found funny. He took down one or two things and replaced them with the Gauguin. The trouble was that the shapes of the other pictures showed on the wallpaper behind.

  Rachel didn't seem to mind too much, but Gerald said, "We can't have the Lady seeing that."

  "Oh . . ." said Rachel, with a little tut.

  "No, I'm serious," said Gerald. "She's finally agreed to honour us with her company, and everything must be perfect."

  "I'd be highly surprised if the Lady noticed," Lionel said candidly. But Gerald shot back, "Believe me, she notices everything," and gave a rather grim laugh.

  "We'll decide later," said Rachel. "We just might be awfully selfish and have it in our bedroom."

  "Though he'll probably get the Lady in there," said Catherine under her breath.

  After lunch two men from Special Branch came, to check on matters of security for the PM's visit. They passed through the house like a pair of unusually discreet bailiffs, noting and evaluating. Nick heard them coming up the top stairs and sat smiling at his desk with his heart pounding and ten grams of coke in the top drawer while they peered out onto the leads. Their main concern was with the back gate and they told him a policeman would be on duty all night in the communal gardens. This made everything look a bit more risky, and when they'd gone down again he had a small line just to steady his nerves.

  Later he went downstairs and when he looked out at the front of the house he saw Gerald and Geoffrey Titchfield talking on the pavement. They both had a look of contained exaltation, like marshals before some great ceremony, not admitting their own feelings, almost languid with unspoken nerves. Whenever someone walked past, Gerald gave them a nod and a smile, as if they knew who he was. He had made a very successful speech at Conference last month, since when he'd adopted a manner of approachable greatness.

  Geoffrey was pointing at the front door, the eternally green front door, which Gerald had just had repainted a fierce Tory blue. It was the moment when Nick had first caught the pitch of Gerald's mania. Catherine, in a vein of wild but focused fantasy, had said that the PM would be shocked by a green door and that she'd read an article which said all Cabinet ministers had blue ones; even Geoffrey Titchfield, who was only the chairman of the local association, had a blue front door. Gerald scoffed at this, but a little later strolled out to the Mira Foodhall for some water biscuits and came back looking troubled. "What do you think about this, Nick?" he said. "The Titchfields have only got the garden flat, but their front door is unquestionably blue." Nick said he doubted it mattered, as drolly as possible, and feeling his own nostalgic fervour for the grand dull green. But the following day Gerald came back to it. "You know, I wonder if the Cat's right about that door," he said. "The Lady might very well think it's a bit off. She might think we're trying to save the fucking rainforest or something!" He laughed nervily. "She might think she's been taken
to Greenham Common, by mistake," he went on, in a tone somewhere between lampoon and genuine derangement. At which point Nick knew, since the colour of the door had become a token of Gerald's success, that Mr Duke would be set to work with a can of conference-blue gloss.

  Now Penny came out, with her briefcase of papers, and Nick watched from his window seat as she spoke to the two men. She had been typing up the diary which Gerald dictated each day onto tape, and which the family resented even more since her busy week with them in France, when she'd made it quite plain that none of them was in it: it was strictly the record of his political life, a kind of "archive," she said, "an important historical resource." Penny carried out the diary duty with a smug devotion which only added to their annoyance.

  Catherine drifted into the drawing room, and came to sit with Nick behind the roped-back curtains. "I hate it when we have everyone in," she said. There was something invalidish, semi-secret, about the window seats, the houses of children's games, spying on the room and the street.

  "I know, isn't it awful," said Nick absent-mindedly.

  "Look, there's Gerald showing off outside."

  "I think he's just having a chat with old Titch. You know it's his big day."

  "It's always his big day these days. He hardly has a small one. Anyway, it's also Ma's big day. And she's got to spend it with a whole lot of empees," said Catherine, for whom the two syllables were now a mantra of tedium and absurdity. "Plus she's got to play hostess to the Other Woman in her own house, to cap it all. You can tell he's longing to put up a big sign, 'Tonight! Special Appearance!'"

  " 'One Night Only' . . ."

  "God I hope so. That Titch man worships Gerald. Have you noticed, every time he walks past the house he sort of smirks at it fondly, just in case someone's looking out."

  "Does he . . . ?" said Nick, not quite forgetting that he had once done the same. He said, "I thought the party was originally going to be at Hawkeswood."

  "Oh, well that was Gerald's idea, you bet. But of course Uncle Lionel won't have the Other Woman there."

  "Right . . ."

  "It's rather funny," said Catherine coldly. "He's had this dream of getting her there. It's almost what's kept him going. And it's the one thing which simply can't happen."

  "I don't quite see why Lionel . . ."

  "Oh, it's all the vandalism she's done to everything. Anyway, that's why he's having this rewiring done, so that no one can get in the house."

  Nick laughed protestingly, because he knew Catherine's neat deep readings of the family narrative, but she said, "Oh, god, yes—why do you think he gave them that painting."

  "I don't know. You mean, to make up for it," said Nick, considering the idea, which did make sense of his earlier rough impression, that Gerald hadn't liked being given the Gauguin. Perhaps he saw it as the confirmation of a mysterious snub.

  "God, that Miss Moneypenny's a pain," said Catherine, for whom the lens of the drawing-room window seemed to focus a world of irritants.

  Penny was now taking some impromptu dictation from Gerald, while clutching her briefcase between her knees. "I suppose she must be madly in love with him, mustn't she?"

  "Oh, in the noblest, purest way," said Nick.

  "She'd have to be, darling, to type all that tripe."

  "Some people just live for their work. Norman's an obsessive worker, as we know all too well, and she's got it from him. They're happiest when they're hard at it."

  Catherine snorted. "God, the idea . . ."

  "Mm . . . ?"

  "Well—Gerald and Penny hard at it."

  "Oh . . . " Nick tutted and coloured.

  "Now I've shocked you," Catherine said.

  "Hardly," said Nick.

  "Actually, she's got herself a boyfriend, you know."

  "Really?" murmured Nick, with a dart of treacherous sympathy for Gerald, the doomed older man. "Have you met him?"

  "No, but she told me all about him."

  "Ah, I see . . ."

  Geoffrey Titchfield moved off, and as Gerald called some friendly command to him he looked back and gave a half-serious salute. Penny and Gerald were left alone. It was a moment when Nick saw they might do something incautious—kiss, or touch in a light but revealing way that would give Catherine's scurrilous joke the chill of reality. It was another of the secrets of the house that he kept, like a sleepy conscience. Gerald looked up as he talked, from floor to floor, and Nick waved to show him they were being watched.

  In the hours before the party the atmosphere thickened uncomfortably. The caterers had taken over the kitchen, and made faces behind Elena's back as she went stubbornly about her business; loud squawks and whines came out of the marquee in the garden, where the sound system was being tested; in the dining room the chairs were clustered knee to knee, waiting for orders. Gerald's manner became bright and fixed, and he mocked others for their nervousness. Catherine said she couldn't bear the sight of a cardboard box in a room, and went out to "look at properties" with Jasper. Even Rachel, who delegated with aristocratic confidence, was biting her cheek as Gerald described to her where the Lady would sit, whom she would talk to, and how much she would have to drink. He almost let it seem that the climax of the evening would be when he danced with the Prime Minister. Rachel said, "But you and I will lead off the dancing, won't we, Gerald," so that he said to her, from a rapidly covered distance, "But my love of course we will!" and gave her a blushing hug, and stumbled her through a few unexpected steps.

  About six Nick slipped out for a walk. The evening was gloomy and damp. Wet leaves smeared the pavement. He was infected with the house nerves about the PM, wondering what to say to her, and already imagining tomorrow morning, when the party was over, and the enjoyable phase of remembering it and analysing it could begin. The shrieks and bangs of fireworks sounded from the neighbourhood gardens. Sometimes a rocket streaked up over the housetops and shed its stars into the low-hanging cloud. Duffel-coated children were hurried through the murk. Nick's route was an improvised zigzag, an intention glimpsed and disowned; no one watching him could have guessed it, and when he turned the corner and trotted down the steps into the station Gents he wore a frown as if the whole thing was a surprise and a nuisance even to himself.

  Walking briskly back down Kensington Park Road he was frowning again, at having done something so vulgar and unsafe—it was suddenly late, the waiting and wondering and then the intent speechless action swallowed up time; his lateness accused him . . . Nothing "unsafe" in the new sense, of course; but reckless and illegal. It would have made a bad start to the evening to be caught. Simon at the office had said "Rudi" Nureyev used to cruise that particular lav, long ago no doubt, but the prospect of some starry pas de deux seemed to Nick to haunt and redeem the place, every time he went in. Now he was sour and practical, the warmth of a secret naughtiness faded in the November air. He went quickly upstairs, his haste was his apology, and the house had a brilliant quietness to it, a genuine brilliance, planned and paid for and brought to the point.

  When he came down there was still a bit of time before the guests arrived. He went out into the dance tent and circled the creaky square of parquet, where suspended burners made pools of heat in the empty chill. The tent was a dreamlike extension to the house-plan. He came back in, across the improvised bridge, through the garlanded and lanterned back passage, and wandered from room to room, among the lights and candles and smell of lilies, with a sense almost of being in church, or at least of the memory of a ceremony. In the hall mirror he was lustre and shadow in his new evening suit and shiny shoes. He greeted Rachel and Catherine in the drawing room, and they chatted as if they were all guests, happily denatured, transformed by silk and velvet, jewels and makeup, into drawing-room creatures. The bangs of fireworks made them skittish. From downstairs came repeated stifled explosions of champagne corks, as the waiters got ready. "Shall I get us a drink?" said Nick.

  "Yes, do. And you might find my husband," said Rachel.

  He looked
into the dining room, crowded like a restaurant with separate tables, where Toby was standing with a card in his hand. He was silently rehearsing his speech. "Keep it short, darling," Nick said.

  "Nick . . . Fuck . . . !" said Toby, with a worried grin. "You know it's one thing making a speech to your aunts and uncles and, you know, your mates, but it's quite another making a speech to the fucking Prime Minister."

  "Don't panic," said Nick. "We'll all shout, 'Hear, hear!'"

  Toby laughed gloomily. "You don't suppose she might have to go to a summit or something at the last moment?"

  "This is the summit, I'm afraid. It certainly is for your papa." Nick edged between the tables, each place with its mitred napkin and black-inked card. No titles, of course. He leant on the chair-to-be of Sharon Flintshire. "I love these pictures of the happy couple."

  "I know," said Toby. "The Cat's done a bit of art."

  Catherine had propped up on the sideboard a thing like a school project, where blown-up photographs of Gerald and Rachel before they were married flanked a formal wedding photo, with later family pics below. It looked rather like the placards of the cast outside a long-running West End farce.