And it was true that as the crowd quickly doubled and trebled on the terrace it took on more and more the air of an efficiently reproductive species. The boys, most of them Nick's Oxford contemporaries, all in their black and white, glanced across at politicians and people on the telly, and caught a glimpse of themselves as high-achieving adults too-they had that canny glint of self-discovery that comes with putting on a disguise. They didn't mingle unnecessarily with the girls. It was almost as if the High Victorian codes of the house, with its smoking room and bachelors' wing, still guided and restrained them. But the girls, in a shimmer of velvet and silk, and brilliantly made-up, like smaller children who had raided their mothers' dressing tables, had new power and authority too. As the sunlight lowered it grew more searching and theatrical, and cast intriguing shadows.
Paul said, 'I should warn you, Wani Ouradi's got engaged.'
'Oh, no,' said Nick. It was such a snub, an engagement. 'He might have thought about it a bit longer.' He could picture a happy alternative future for himself and Wani-who was sweet-natured, very rich, and beautiful as a John the Baptist painted for a boy-loving pope. His father owned the Mira supermarket chain, and whenever Nick went into a Mira Mart for a bottle of milk or a bar of chocolate he had a vague erotic sense of slipping the money into Wani's pocket. He said, 'I think he's coming tonight.'
'He is, the old tart, I saw that vulgar motor car of his in the drive.' Tart was Paul's word for anyone who had agreed to have sex with him; though as far as Nick was aware, he had never got anywhere with Wani. Wani, like Toby, remained in the far pure reach of fantasy, which grew all the keener and more inventive to meet the challenge of his unavailability. He felt the loss of him as though he had really stood a chance with him, he'd gone so far with him in his mind, as he lay alone in bed. He saw the great heterosexual express pulling out from the platform precisely on time, and all his friends were on it, in the first-class carriage-in the wagons-lits! He clung to what he had, as it gathered speed: that quarter of an hour with Leo by the compost heap, which was his first sharp taste of coupledom. 'Are you and I the only homos here?' he said.
'I doubt it,' said Paul, who didn't look keen to become Nick's partner for the night on the strength of that chance connection. 'Oh my god, it's the fucking
'Fantastic,' said Nick.
'Oh, I knew it.' He knuckled his hair, with its oily fringe, like a vain schoolboy. 'Gotta go, girl!' he said, silly but focused, an outrageous new seduction in view. And off he went, eagerly striding and hopping over the little low hedges. Nick saw him reach the group where Gerald was introducing his son to the Home Secretary: it was almost as if there were two guests of honour, each good-humouredly perplexed by the presence of the other. Polly hovered and then pushed in shamelessly; Nick caught his look of unironic excitement as the group closed round him.
'So what's he like?' said Russell. 'Her old man. What's he into?' He glanced at Catherine, across the table, before his eyes drifted back down the room to Gerald, who was smiling at the blonde woman beside him but had the fine glaze of preoccupation of someone about to make a speech. They were in the great hall, at a dozen tables. It was the end of dinner, and there was a mood of noisy expectancy.
'Wine,' said Nick, who was drunk and fluent, but still wary of Russell's encouraging tone. He twirled his glass on the rucked tablecloth. 'Wine. His wife… um…'
'Power,' said Catherine sharply.
'Power…'-Nick nodded it into the list. 'Wensleydale cheese he's also very keen on. Oh, and the music of Richard Strauss-that particularly.'
'Right,' said Russell. 'Yeah, I like a bit of Richard Strauss myself.'
'Oh, I'd always prefer a bit of Wensleydale cheese,' said Nick.
Russell blinked at him in a way that suggested he didn't understand him or was about to punch him in the face. But then he smiled reluctantly. 'So he's not into anything kinky at all.'
'Power,' said Catherine again. 'And making speeches.' As the glass tinkled and the hubbub quickly died a lot of people heard her saying, 'He loves making speeches.'
Nick pushed his chair back to get a clear view of Gerald, and also of Toby, who had coloured up and was looking round with a tight grin of apprehension. There were ten minutes of oddly relished ordeal ahead of him, being teased and praised by his father and cheered by his drunk friends-his contemporaries. Nick grinned back at him, and wanted to help him, but was powerless, of course. He was blushing himself with the anxiety and forced eagerness of awaiting a speech by a friend.
Gerald had donned his rarely seen half-moon spectacles, and held a small card at arm's length. 'Your Grace, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen,' he said, offering the old formula with an ironic negligence which had the clever effect of making you think-yes, the Duchess, of course, and her son were here, as well as Lord Kessler and fat young Lord Shepton, a Martyrs' Club pal of Toby's. 'Distinguished guests, family and friends. I'm very happy to see you all here tonight, in this truly splendid setting, and very grateful indeed to Lionel Kessler for giving the Worcester College First XV the run of his world-famous porcelain collection. Well, as the sign in Selfridge's says, or used to say, 'all breakages must be paid for.' ' This drew a few titters, though Nick wasn't sure it struck the right tone. 'We're honoured by the presence of statesmen, and film stars, and I suspect Tobias is thoroughly flattered that so many members of Her Majesty's government were able to be here. My witty daughter, I understand, has said that it's 'not so much a party as a party conference.'' Uncertain laughter, through which, with good timing: 'I only hope I get to play an equally important role when we meet at Blackpool in October.' The MPs chuckled amiably at this, though the Home Secretary, who'd taken the epithet of statesman more gravely than the rest, smiled inscrutably at the coffee cup in front of him. Russell said 'Good girl!' quite loudly, and clapped a couple of times.
'Now, as you may have heard,' Gerald went on, with a delayed quick glance in their direction, 'Toby is twenty-one today. I had been going to give you Dr Johnson's well-known lines on 'long-expected one-and-twenty,' but when I looked them up again last night I found I didn't know them quite as well as I thought, or indeed as well as many of you, I'm sure, do.' Here Gerald looked down at the card in a marvellously supercilious way. ' 'Lavish of your grandsire's guineas,' says the Great Cham, 'Bid the slaves of thrift farewell… When the bonny blade carouses, Pockets full, and spirits high, What are acres? What are houses? Only dirt, or wet and dry.' So: far from suitable advice to the grandson and nephew of great bankers, or for any young person coming of age in our splendid property-owning democracy. And the question of wet versus dry, of course, is one on which indecision is no longer acceptable.'
Through the generous laughter Nick caught Toby's eye again, and held it for two or three long seconds, giving him perhaps a transfusion of reassurance. Toby himself would be too nervous to listen to his father's speech properly, and was laughing in imitation of the others, not at the jokes themselves. It was typical of Gerald not to have realized that Dr Johnson's poem was a ruthless little satire. Nick surveyed the room, and was reminded of a college hall, with Gerald and the more influential guests elected to the high table. Or perhaps of some other institution, such as houses like this had often turned into. Up in the arcade of the gallery one or two servants were listening impassively, waiting only for the next stage of the evening. There was a gigantic electrolier, ten feet high, with upward-curling gilt branches opening into cloudy glass lilies of light. Catherine had refused to sit under it, which was why their whole table had apparently been demoted to this corner of the room. If it did fall, Nick realized, it would crush Wani Ouradi. He began to feel a little anxious about it himself.
Gerald was now giving a facetious review of Toby's life, and again it made Nick think of a marriage, and the best man's speech, which everyone dreaded, and the huge heterosexual probability that a twenty-first would be followed soon enough by a wedding. He could only see the back of Sophie Tipper's head, but he attributed similar thoughts to it, transposed into a bright, successful key. 'As a teenager, then,' Gerald said, 'Tobias a) believed that Enoch Powell was a socialist, b) set fire to a volume of Hobbes, and c) had a large and mysterious overdraft. When it came to Oxford, a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics was the irresistible choice.' There was more laughter-and Gerald was leading them along very ably: they were drunkish and amenable, even gullible, since making a speech was a kind of trick. At the same time there was a bond among the young people, who were old enough to know that speeches were allowed, and perhaps even supposed, to be embarrassing, and who were rowdy and superior at once, in the Oxford way. Nick wondered if the women were responding more warmly, if they were picking up, as Polly did, on their host's 'splendour'; perhaps their laughter would seem to him a kind of submission. Nick himself was lazily exploring the margin between his affection for Gerald and a humorous suspicion, long resisted, that there might be something rather awful about him. He wished he could see Lord Kessler's reactions.
