The Line of Beauty

by Alan Hollinghurst

  Wani had brought the car to Gusto, and Nick drove him back in it to Lowndes Square. "Thanks very much," said Wani, in a whispery drawl.

  "That's all right, old chap," said Nick. He parked opposite the house and they sat for a minute. Wani was taking deep breaths, as if to ready himself for a race or plunge. He didn't try to help Nick by explaining himself—well, he never had, he was his own law and his own licence. If Nick asked him how he felt he was drily impatient with him, both for not knowing and for wanting to know. It was the unfair prerogative of illness. Nick reached a hand over the steering wheel and swept the thin dust off the black leather hood of the dashboard. How cars themselves changed as they aged; at first they were possibilities made solid and fast, agents of dreams that kept a glint of dreams about them, a keen narcotic smell; then slowly they disclosed their unguessed quaintness and clumsiness, they seemed to fade into the dim disgrace between one fashion and another.

  "I really must get a new car," said Wani.

  "I know, it's frightfully dusty."

  "It's a fucking antique."

  Nick peered over his shoulder into the cramped back seat, and remembered Pdcky, the stupid genius of the old days (which was to say, last summer), sitting there with his legs wide apart. "I suppose you'll keep the number plate."

  "God, yes. It's worth a thousand pounds."

  "Dear old WHO 6."

  "OK . . ." said Wani, cold at any touch of sentiment.

  Nick glanced up and saw Lady Ouradi looking down from one of the drawing-room windows. She held the net curtain aside and gazed out into the browning leaves of the plane trees, the long dull chasm of the square. Nick waved, but she seemed not to have seen them; or perhaps she had already seen them but let her gaze wander, as it was clearly prone to, down the imagined vista of the past or future. He noted her austere wool dress, the single string of pearls. To Nick she was a creature of indoors, of unimaginable exiled mornings and measured afternoons; her gesture as she held the white curtain back was like the parting of a medium through which she wasn't quite supposed to see or be seen.

  "You're OK for money?" Wani said.

  "Darling, I'm fine." Nick turned and smiled at him, with the mischievous tenderness of a year ago. "Your little start-up present has grown and grown, you know." He put his hand discreetly into Wani's, where it lay on his thigh. A few seconds later Wani withdrew his hand, so as to get out his handkerchief. There was a question in the air, all this week, since he had come back from Paris, and it was only his pride which kept it from being asked: which it wouldn't be in words, but in some brave melting gesture. Instead he said, "You should really move out of the Feddens'. Get a place of your own."

  "I know," said Nick, "it is rather dotty. But we muddle along somehow. . . . I'm not at all sure they could manage without me."

  "One never knows. . ." said Wani. He turned his head away and looked out at the pavement, the ugly concrete planters in the square gardens, a bicycle frame chained to the railings. "I was thinking I might leave you the Clerkenwell building."

  "Oh . . . " Nick glanced at him and then away, almost scowling in shock and reproach.

  "Of course I don't mean you should live there."

  "Well, no, that's not the point . . ."

  "I suppose it's a bit odd leaving you something unfinished."

  After a couple of breaths, Nick said, "Let's not talk about you leaving things." And went on, with awful delicacy, "Anyway, it will be finished by then." It was impossible to say the right thing. Wani grinned at him coldly for a second. Until now he had only had the story of Wani being ill; he had taken the news about with him and brought off the sombre but thrilling effect, once or twice, of saying, "I'm afraid he's dying," or "He nearly died." It had been his own drama, in which he'd felt, as well as the horror and pity of it, the thump of a kind of self-importance. Now, sitting beside him and being offered buildings, he felt humbled and surprisingly angry.

  "Well, we'll see," said Wani. "I mean, I'm assuming you'd like it."

  "I don't find it easy to think about," said Nick.

  "I need to get this sorted out, Nick. I'm seeing the lawyers on Friday."

  "What would I do with the Clerkenwell building?" said Nick sulkily.

  "You'd own it," said Wani. "It'll have thirty thousand square feet of office space. You can get someone to manage it for you and you can live on the rent for the rest of your life."

  Nick didn't ask how he was supposed to go about finding a manager. Possibly Sam Zeman could help him with that. The phrase "the rest of your life" had come out pat, almost weightless, a futurity Wani wasn't going to bother imagining. For Nick it was very strange to find it attached to an office block near Smithfield Market. Wani knew he hated the design of the building; there was a sharp tease in the gift, even a kind of lesson. "What are you going to do about Martine?" said Nick.

  "Oh, just the same. She'll carry on getting her allowance, at least until she marries. Then she gets a lump sum."

  "Oh . . . " Nick nodded dimly at the wisdom of this, but then had to say, "I didn't know you gave her an allowance."

  Wani slid him the smile that had once been slyly grand but now had something vicious in it. "Well, not me," he said. "I assumed you'd worked it out. Mamma's always paid her. Or kept her, rather."

  "I see . . . " said Nick, after a moment, thinking how little Wani had taught him about Lebanese customs. He seemed to search for the discreet transaction in the tilted mantelpiece mirror. He glanced at the house again, but Wani's mother had dropped the curtain and absolute discretion reigned: the black front door, the veiled windows, the eggshell sheen of property.

  "What a charming arrangement, to keep your son's girlfriend."

  "For god's sake," murmured Wani, looking away. "She was never my girlfriend."

  "No, of course not, I see . . ." said Nick, blushing and hurrying to cover his own foolishness, and also feeling absurdly relieved.

  "Of course you must never tell Papa. It's his last illusion."

  Nick didn't imagine seeing much of Bertrand in "the rest of his life." The little aesthete already felt the prohibition of that closed black door: which opened as he looked at it, to reveal Monique and the old servant woman, dressed in black, ready but not coming forward. "They're expecting you," Nick said quietly.

  Wani looked across and then almost closed his eyes in droll disdain. All his old habits were there, and the beat of his lashes brought back occasions in the past when Nick had basked in his selfishness. He reached beside the seat for his stick. "How are you getting back?"

  "I think I'll walk," said Nick, unthinkingly fit. "I could do with some exercise."

  Wani pulled back the handle and the door cracked open onto the cold blue afternoon.

  "You know I love you very much, don't you," said Nick, not meaning it in the second before he said it, but moved by saying it into feeling it might still be true. It seemed a way of covering his ungraciousness about Wani's will, of showing he was groping for a sense of scale. Wani snuffled, looked across the road at his mother, but didn't echo Nick's words. He had never told him he loved him. But it seemed possible to Nick that he might mean it without saying it. He said,

  "By the way, I should warn you that Gerald seems to be in a bit of trouble."

  "Oh, really?" said Nick.

  "I don't know exactly what's happened, but it's something to do with the Fedray takeover last year. A spot of creative accounting."

  "Really? What, you mean the Maurice Tipper thing."

  "I think you can be pretty sure Maurice has covered his back. And Gerald will probably be all right. But there may be a bit of a fuss."

  "Goodness . . . " Nick thought of Rachel first of all, and then of Catherine, who for the past few weeks had been in a wildly excitable state. "How do you know about this?"

  "I had a call from Sam Zeman earlier."

  "Right," said Nick, slightly jealous. "I must give him a ring."

  They got out of the car, and Nick dawdled across the road, findin
g it hard to go at Wani's pace. He kissed Monique and explained that Wani had brought up his lunch; she nodded, pursed her lips and swallowed in a funny mimetic reflex. She was dignified and withdrawn, but as she touched her son's upper arm the glow of a long-surrendered power over him came into her face, the animal solace of being allowed to love and protect him, even against such hopeless odds. Wani himself, with the women at each elbow, seemed to shrink into their keeping; the sustaining social malice of the past two hours abandoned him at the threshold. They forgot their manners, and the door was closed again without anyone saying goodbye.

  16

  NICK CROSSED KNIGHTSBRIDGE and went through Albert Gate into the Park. He swung his arms, and his calves and thighs ached with guilty vigour. There was so much to think about, and the Park itself seemed pensive, the chestnuts standing in pools of their shed leaves, the great planes, slower to change, still towering tan and gold; but all he wanted to do was march along. A group of young women on horseback came trotting down Rotten Row, and he crossed behind them, over the damp, crusted sand. He didn't mind the north-easterly breeze. It was the time of year when the atmosphere streamed with unexpected hints and memories, and a paradoxical sense of renewal. He thought of meeting Leo after work, always early, the chill of promise in the air. Once or twice they met at the bandstand, away over there, with the copper ogee roof: strange that that particular shape should have floated on its slender pillars above the quick kiss, quick touch, odd nervous avoidance of their meetings. He took the long diagonal that went past Watts's monument to, or of, Physical Energy: the huge-thighed horseman reining back and gazing, in a ferment of discovery, towards Kensington Palace. Nick gave it the smug glance which showed that as a critic he noticed it and as a Londoner he took it for granted.

  He thought about the Clerkenwell building. What Wani had bought was three narrow Victorian properties making a corner block, one extending deep behind the others into a high iron-and-glass-roofed workshop. They were solidly built, of blackened brick which showed up plum red when they were knocked down. There were doorbells of moribund trades, a glass beveller, a "Church and Legal" printer. There were boarded-up windows, industrial wiring, the light vandalism of use. Wani had taken Nick to see them, and Nick's whole impulse was to do them up and live in them. He went into the cellars and attics, heaved open trapdoors, climbed onto the leads, and looked down through the steep glass roof into the workshop where Wani was pacing around in his beautiful suit, flipping his car keys in his hand. Nick saw their friends coming to parties and dancing in that room.

  Something in Wani's impatient, unseeing manner told him this was never going to happen. He felt like a child whose desperate visionary plea has no chance of persuading a parent. And of course the buildings came down—for a month or two the backs of other buildings not seen for a century felt the common sunlight, and then Baalbek House, named by Wani as if he'd written a poem, started to go up. Nick cast about but really he'd never seen a more meretricious design than that of Baalbek House. His own ideas were discounted with the grunting chuckle of someone wedded to another vision of success and defiantly following cheaper advice. And now this monster Lego house, with its mirror windows and maroon marble cladding, was to be Nick's for life.

  When he turned into Kensington Park Gardens Nick remembered what Wani had said about Gerald, and started walking more slowly, as if to resist a strange acceleration of trouble. He was shy about meeting Gerald, who could be aggressive when in the wrong and sarcastic when he needed support. The Range Rover was parked outside the house, which might mean he'd come back early from Parliament. It looked significant. As so often, Nick didn't know what he was supposed to know—or indeed what he did know, since creative accounting was just a jocular phrase to him. Behind the Range Rover a man in a reddish leather jacket was leaning on the roof of a parked car and talking to another man sitting at the wheel. He looked up as Nick approached, and carried on talking while his eyes, in one fluent sequence, seemed to find him, hold him, scan him and dismiss him. Nick turned in at No. 48, and glanced back while he felt for his keys: the man was staring at him, and raised his chin as though about to call out, but then said nothing. He smiled unnervingly. His friend in the car passed him a camera through the window and he put it to his eye and took three pictures in two seconds—Nick was mesmerized by the lazy precision of the clicks; and too surprised to know what he felt. He felt victimized, and flattered, pretty important and utterly insignificant, since they clearly had no idea who he was. He thought in dignity he shouldn't answer questions, and was confused by their not asking him any. It took him an age to open the blue door.

  In the hall everything seemed calm. Elena was in the kitchen and Nick said hello and waited for a sign from her. She was preparing the "meal and a half," the separate portion, like a child's or an invalid's, that was made for Gerald when he was going to be late at the House. "Have you seen what's going on outside?" said Nick. Elena thumbed her pastry expressively, but only said,

  "I don't know."

  "Is Gerald here?"

  "Is gone to work."

  "Oh good . . ."

  "Miz Fed upstairs with his Lord." Elena radiated resentment, and Nick didn't risk exploring its cause, whether it was Gerald or what was being done to him: it felt large enough to include everyone. "You take the tray?" she said.

  The kettle was coming to the boil, and the tray was ready with two teacups and the little sweet lebkuchen that Rachel liked. Nick warmed the pot and put in two spoonfuls of lapsang. It was the set with a pink Petit Trianon in a wreath on each cup and saucer, dull and pale now from the fury of the dishwasher. He poured on the water, gave it a good stir, dropped the lid on, and picked up the tray. Elena looked at him more amiably but shook her head. "Is Street of Shame," she said. "Is Street of Shame, Nick." It was the Private Eye phrase for Fleet Street, which Gerald had once teased Toby with, but Nick wasn't sure if she meant that or if she meant that Kensington Park Gardens itself had been brought down.

  The drawing-room door was open, and Nick slowed again before going in. Lionel was saying, "If he has been a bloody fool then he'll have to face the consequences. If he hasn't, then we have infinite resources to demonstrate the fact." His manner was as quiet as ever, but without its usual cordiality: he sounded as if he expected the former option, and the stain it would bring on the family. Nick rattled the tray and went in. Rachel was standing by the mantelpiece, Lionel sitting in an armchair, and for a second Nick thought of the scene in The Portrait of a Lady when Isabel discovers her husband sitting while Mme Merle is standing, and sees at once that they are more intimate than she had realized. "Ah, my dear . . . " said Rachel, as Nick came forward with a slight mime of servility, which wasn't spotted as a joke. Lionel greeted him with his eyes, and went on, "When's he due back?" "He's got a late division," Rachel murmured. And Nick, setting down the tray, saw that though he hadn't chanced in on a secret he had caught the note of an older, more unguarded friendship than he'd heard before, the shared intelligence of brother and sister.

  "Thanks so much," said Rachel.

  "Did you have your picture taken?" said Lionel.

  "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 sa
id, "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.