The Line of Beauty

'Jack Fedden, of course, Gerald's father, a funny sort of man, in a way… He was in the law, very much a law man… very, very handsome… and Jack Partridge, Sir Jack, of course… No, not a law man… Not at all… He was a practical man, a builder, he built some of the new motorways, as you may know… Yes, some of the Ms… the M, um… He did marvellous work…'

At the head of the table Gerald was perceptibly distracted by his mother's talk. Nick knew that Jack Partridge had gone bust not long after getting his knighthood, in one of the funny reversals of these recent years; it was a subject which might seem to tarnish his stepson by association. Gerald made a firm intervention and said, 'So, Morden, I was absolutely gripped by your paper on SDL'

'Ah… ' said Lipscomb, with a smile that showed he wasn't so easily flattered. 'I wasn't sure that you'd agree with my conclusions.'

'Oh, absolutely,' said Gerald, with a surprising mocking smile which confirmed to Nick that he hadn't read beyond those first few pages. 'How could one not!'

'Well… you'd be surprised,' said Lipscomb.

'Is this the telephones?' said Lady Partridge.

'It's missile defence, Ma,' said Gerald loudly.

'You know, Gran, Star Wars,' said Toby.

'You're thinking of STD, Judy,' said Badger.

'Ah,' said Lady Partridge, and chuckled, not in embarrassment but at the attention she'd won for herself.

'The President announced the Strategic Defence Initiative six months ago,' said Morden Lipscomb, gravely but a little impatiently. 'It aims to protect the United States from any attack by guided missile systems. In effect a defensive shield will be created to repel and destroy nuclear weapons before they can reach us.'

'Delightful idea,' said Lady Partridge. This sounded satirical, and the plan had indeed been greeted with derision as well as dismay; but then Nick thought, no, the old lady would take pleasure in weaponry, and arms budgets generally.

'It is, I believe, an irresistible one,' said Lipscomb, laying his left hand commandingly on the table. He wore a signet ring on his little finger, but no wedding ring. Of course that didn't mean much; Nick's own father and his father's male friends didn't wear wedding rings, they were thought, for all their symbolism, to be vaguely effeminate. He thought of the card, 'From the Desk of Morden Lipscomb'-it made one wonder where else it might have come from: 'the Back-burner,' 'the Rest-room,' 'From the Closet of Morden Lipscomb'… well, it was an idea. He was clearly a man with his own defensive systems.

After pudding the ladies withdrew. Nick's thoughts went with them as they climbed the stairs; he stood with one knee on his chair, hoping he might somehow be allowed to join them. 'Slide along, Nick,' said Gerald. The men all closed up together at Gerald's end of the table, in a grimly convivial movement, occupying the absent women's places. Nick handed Lady Partridge's lipstick-daubed napkin to Elena, who had come through to sort them out. There were many all-male occasions that he liked, but now he missed the buffer of a female, even Jenny Groom, whose general impatience he'd decided was a sad flower of her hatred of her husband. Now Barry Groom was sitting down opposite him with a scowl, as if familiar to the point of weariness with the etiquette of such occasions. Nick looked across to Toby for help, but he was laying out a box of cigars and the cigar cutter; Gerald was setting the decanters off on their circuit. Nick pictured Leo, as he had left him today, walking his bike away, and the love-chord sounded, warily now-he didn't want the others to hear it. How could he describe it, even to himself, Leo's step, his bounce, his beautiful half-knowing, half-unconscious deployment of his own effects? 'I'll give you one piece of advice,' said Barry Groom, choosing imperiously between the unmarked port and claret decanters.

'Oh, yes,' said Nick, and felt his erection begin to subside. 'Never speculate with more than twelve per cent of your capital.'

'Oh…' Nick gasped humorously, but seeing Barry Groom was almost angrily in earnest he went on, 'Twelve per cent. Right… I'll try and remember that. No, that sounds like good advice.'

'Twelve per cent,' said Barry Groom: 'it's the best advice I can give you.' He slid the decanters over to him, since they formed the bridge, furthest from Gerald. Nick took some port and passed it on to Morden Lipscomb, with a little show of promptness and charm. Lipscomb was just clipping a cigar, and his thin mouth, turned down in concentration, seemed to brood on some disdain, not of the cigar, but of the company he found himself in. This was presumably the moment when he should be made way for, in the solemn but disinhibiting absence of the women, but he was cagey, or sulky. Nick felt sorry for Gerald, but didn't see how he could help. His own way of getting on terms with people was through the sudden intimacy of talk about art and music, a show of sensibility; but he felt Lipscomb would rebuff him, as though refusing intimacy of another kind. He wondered again what Leo would have said and done: he had such clear, sarcastic opinions about things.

'So, Derek,' said Barry Groom, in his cuttingly casual tone, 'how long are you staying here?'

Badger puffed coaxingly for a second or two, and then let out a roguish cloud of smoke. 'As long as the old Banger'll have me,' he said, jerking his head towards Gerald.

'Ah, that's what you call him, is it?' said Barry, with a rivalrous twitch.

Badger grunted, took a quick suck on his cigar, and said, 'Oxford days…' knowing how easy Barry was to tease. 'No, I'm having a place done up at the moment, that's why I'm here.'

'Oh, really? Where is it?' said Barry suspiciously.

Badger was deaf to this question, so Barry repeated it and he said at length, as if conceding a clue to a slow guesser, 'Well, it's quite near your place of work, actually.' The secrecy was presumably a further tease, though it fitted with something seedily hush-hush about Badger. 'It's just a little flat-a little pied-a-terre.'

'A fuck-flat in other words,' said Barry, sharply, to make sure the illusionless phrase, and his offensiveness in using it, struck home. Even Badger looked slightly abashed. Gerald gave a disparaging gasp and plunged as if confidentially into new talk with John Timms and his old mentor about the genius of the Prime Minister. Nick glanced across at Toby, who half closed his eyes at him in general if unfocused solidarity.

'I had wondered whether the Prime Minister might be with us this evening,' said Lipscomb. 'But I see of course it's not that kind of party.'

'Oh…' said Gerald, looking slightly guilty. 'I'm so sorry. I'm afraid she wasn't free. But if you'd like me to bring you together…'

Lipscomb gave a rare smile. 'We're lunching on Tuesday, so it's not at all necessary.'

'Oh, you are?' said Gerald, and smiled too, in a genial little mask of envy.

And so it went on for ten or fifteen minutes, Nick perching at the corner of two conversations, the 'odd man,' as Gerald had briskly predicted. He passed the decanters appreciatively, and sat smiling faintly at the reflections of the candelabra in the table top or at a disengaged space just above Barry Groom's head. He grunted noncommittally at some of Badger's jokes, Badger appearing in the candlelight and its mollifications as almost a friend among the other guests. He nodded thoughtfully, without following the thread, at one or two of Lipscomb's remarks that caused general pauses of respect. The cigar stench was the whole atmosphere, but the alcohol was a secret security. There was something so irksome about Barry Groom that he had a fascination: you longed for him to annoy you again. He was incredibly chippy, was that the thing?-all his longings came out as a kind of disdain for what he longed for. And yet he got on with Gerald, they were business partners, they saw a use for each other; and that perhaps was the imponderable truth behind this adult gathering.

Barry said, 'The way you Oxford fuckers go on about the Martyrs' Club,' and frowned sharply as he swallowed some claret. 'What were you martyrs to, that's what I'd like to know.'

'Ooh… hangovers,' said Badger.

'Yes, drink,' Toby put in, and nodded frankly.

'Overdrafts and class distinctions,' said Nick drolly.

Barry stared at him, 'What, were you a member?'

'No, no…' said Nick.

'I didn't think so!'

And then there was a rattle in the hall as the front door was opened and the bang of it slamming shut. Then immediately the bell rang, in three urgent bursts. There was a shout of vexation, the door was jerked open again, and Catherine, it must have been, was talking-from the dining room they heard only the hurried shape of her talk. Nick's eyes slid round the faces of the others at the table, who looked puzzled, displeased, or even lightly titillated.