The Line of Beauty

was generally held to be.

'A lot of rot certainly is talked on that subject,' Nick said, with generous ambiguity. The old lady looked at him ponderingly.

They turned and watched Gerald come forward to rescue the Home Secretary, with a solicitous smile on his lips and a flicker of jealousy in his eyes. He led him away, stooping confidentially over him, almost embracing him, but looking quickly round like someone who has organized a surprise: and there was a flash and a whirr and another flash.

'Ah! The Tatler,' exclaimed Lady Partridge, 'at long last.' She patted her hair and assumed an expression of… coquetry… command… welcome… ancient wisdom… It was hard to say for sure what effect she was after.

Catherine was hurrying Nick and Pat Grayson along the bachelors' corridor towards the thump of the dance music.

'Are you all right, darling?' Nick said.

'Sorry, darling. It was that ghastly speech-one just couldn't take any more!' She was lively, but her reactions were slow and playful, and he decided she must be stoned.

'I suppose it was a bit self-centred.'

She smiled, with a condescension worthy of her grandmother. 'It would have been a marvellous speech for his own birthday, wouldn't it. Poor Fedden!'

Pat, who must have been the person described in the speech as a film star, said, 'Ooh, I didn't think it was all that bad, considering'; though considering what, he didn't specify. Nick had seen him as the smooth eponymous rogue in Sedley on TV, and was struck by how much smaller, older and camper he was in real life. Sedley was his mother's favourite series, though it wasn't clear if she knew that Pat was a whatnot. 'Ooh, I don't know about this, love…' he said as they came into the room. But Catherine pulled him into the crowd and he started rather nimbly circling round her, flicking his fingers and frowning sexily at her. She seemed to love everything that was uncool about this, but to Nick, Pat was an unwelcome future, a famous man who was a fool, a silly old queen. He slipped away across the room, and found he was being shouted and smiled at by people and roughly hugged as if he was very popular. The brandy was having its way. But for a minute he was ashamed of snubbing Pat Grayson, and pretending to be part of this hetero mob. He felt pretty good, and grinned at Tim Carswell, who came across the floor and seized him and whirled him round till they were both stumbling and Tim's damp breath was burning his cheek, and Tim shouted 'Whoa!' and slowly pulled away, still slamming from side to side and then backing into the crowd with a Jaggerish raised arm. 'How's the bonny blade?' said Nick, and Sophie Tipper looked at him over her shoulder with faint recognition as she danced annoyingly with Toby-Nick kissed them both on the cheek before they could stop him, and shouted 'How are you?' again, beaming and heartbroken, and Toby put out a fist with a raised thumb, and shortly after that they moved away. Nick danced on, his collar was tight and he was sweating, he undid his jacket and then did it up again-ah, a window was open at the far end of the room and he jigged around in front of it for a while, turning his face to that rainy garden smell. Martine was sitting on the raised banquette that ran along the wall, and in the beam of green light that flashed on every few seconds her patient profile looked haggard and lost. 'Hi-i!' Nick called, stopping and half-kneeling beside her. 'Isn't Wani with you?' She looked round with a shrug: 'Oh, he's somewhere…' And Nick really wanted to see him, suddenly certain of a welcome like the ones he gave him in his fantasies, and there was a twist of calculation too-he could press himself, heavy and semi-incapable, into Wani's arms. Three girls were doing disco routines in a line, turning round and touching their elbows. Nick couldn't do that. The girls danced better than the boys, as if it was really their element, where their rowdy partners were making twits of themselves. Nick didn't like it near the door, where some of the older couples had wandered in and were trotting to and fro as if quite at home with Spandau Ballet. The ultraviolet light made Nat Hanmer's dress shirt glow and the whites of his eyes were thrillingly strange. They held hands for a few moments and Nat goggled at him for the freaky effect, then he shouted, 'You old poof!' and slapped his back and gave him a barging kiss on the ear before he moved off 'Your eyes!' Mary Sutton gasped at Nick, and he goggled too. It was easy to trip over the raised edge of the hearthstone if you were bopping near the fireplace, and Nick fell against Graham Strong and said, 'It's so great to see you!' because he'd sometimes hungered for Graham too, he hardly knew him, and he said, 'We must have a dance together later,' but Graham had already turned his back, and Nick fetched up with Catherine and Russell and Pat Grayson, where he was very welcome since they were an awkward threesome.

He opened a door from the hall into a small drawing room where a man in shirtsleeves got up and said, 'I'm sorry, sir,' and came towards him unsmilingly.

'I'm so sorry,' Nick said, 'I'm on the wrong side,' and he went out again and pulled the door closed with a boom.

He could hear the music in the distance, and the burble and laughter from the library, and a high ringing in his own ears. Up above, the hundred lilies of the electrolier glowed and twitched-there was a hesitant animation to things, all beating to his own pulse. He went sidling and parading through a suite of lit rooms, abandoned, amusing, a bolster or pulled-back curtain like a glimpse of a person in hiding. Stopped and stooped now and then to appreciate a throbbing little bronze or table that revolved as you looked away from it. Leant caressingly, a little heavily, on the escritoire of the dear old Marquise de Pompadour, which creaked-he was a lover of that sort of thing, if anyone was watching… He went into the dining room where they'd had lunch, found the light switches and looked very closely at the landscape by Cezanne, which pulsed as well, with secret geometries. Why did he talk to himself about it? The imaginary friend was at his shoulder, the only child's devoted companion, needing his guidance. The composition, he said… the different greens… He had a keen idea, which he was cloaking and avoiding, and then licensing step by step as he opened a side door into a brown passageway, that turned a corner, and had other doors off it, and then came in a quickening cool draught to an open back door with the service yard beyond, glittering in drizzle. The glare was bright and unsentimental here. No enriching glow of candles or picture lights. Men in jeans were stacking and crashing things, and carried on shouting to each other as they passed Nick, so that he felt like a ghost whose 'Thanks!' and 'Sorry!' were inaudible. Tristao was washing glasses in a pantry and he walked in behind him with his heart suddenly thumping, smiling as if they were more than friends, and aware none the less that Tristao was working, it was one in the morning, and he himself was just a bow-tied drunk, a walking wrong note of hope and need.

'Hi there!'

Tristao looked round and sighed, then turned back to his work. 'You come to help?' The glasses came in on metal trays, half full, lipstick-smeared, fag ends in claret, jagged edges on stems.

'Urn… I'm sure I'd break everything,' Nick said, and gazed at him from behind with wonder and a sense of luck and again the suspicion of a rebuff.

'Oof…! I'm tired,' Tristao said, and came across the room so that Nick felt in the way. 'I been up on my feet nine hours now.'

'You must be,' said Nick, leaning towards him with a friendly stroke or pat, which fell short and was ignored. He wondered if he might be going to fall over. 'So… When do you finish?'

'Oh, we go on till you go off, baby.' He dried his hands on a tea towel, and lit himself a cigarette, half offering one to Nick as an afterthought. Nick hated tobacco, but he accepted at once. The first sharp drag made his head fizz. 'You enjoying the party, anyway?' Tristao said.

'Yeah…' said Nick, and gave a shrug and a large ironical.laugh. He wanted to impress Tristao as a Hawkeswood guest, and to mock at the guests as well. He wanted to suggest that he was having a perfectly good time, that the staff, certainly, could not have done more, but that he could take it or leave it; and besides (here he half closed his eyes, suavely and daringly) he had a better idea about how to have fun. Tristao perhaps didn't get all that at once. He looked at Nick moodily, as at a kind of problem. And Nick looked back at him, with a simmering drunk smile, as if he knew what he was doing.

Tristao had lost his bow tie, and the top two buttons of his shirt were open over a white singlet. His sleeves were rolled up, there were streaked black hairs on his forearms, but from his heart to his knees he wore a white apron tied round tight, which made a secret of what had been such a heavy hint before. The pantry was lit by a single fluorescent tube, so that his tired sallow face was shown without flattery. He looked quite different from what Nick had remembered, and it took a little effort of lustful will to find him attractive-there seemed almost to be an excuse for giving up on him and going back to the party. 'A lot of people here, yeah?' said Tristao. He glanced sourly at the trays of glasses and debris, and blew out smoke in that same critical sibilant way that Polly had, like a