couldn't distinguish the nerves that are a part of excitement from a kind of resentment. Wani's nerves showed in his cool dissociating manner. They went along beside the wide grass bank, and one of the sunbathing men called out something to Ricky, who gave him a nod and a dirty smile back-Nick smiled too, as if he knew what was going on.
In the lane above, Wani, who was playing with the car keys, flipping the leather fob about, said, 'You can drive, Nick,' and threw them over to him. It was typical of Wani to dress up a command as a treat. Nick had often been the passenger in WHO 6, but he had only driven it once before, by himself, a short hop from the river back to Kensington that became a whole glittering evening of darting about, the Brompton Road, Queen's Gate, along by the Park, round and round, and with the curious feeling (with the roof down and the coldish air blustering in) of passing for Wani, of being WHO, that glamorous enigma. All of which rather withered as he slid back into the driving seat. The car was parked in close to the rustic fence, under the lime trees, and their sticky exudations had already stippled the windscreen. He held down the button to retract the roof and watched in the mirror as it lifted and folded away behind him and sunlight through the leaves fell in glancingly on the dials and knobs and amber walnut. The other two stood waiting for him to pull out, but not talking. Then Wani gestured Ricky into the back, where he sat with his knees wide apart, since there was very little legroom. 'You all right there?' said Nick, looking over at the squashed contour of his packet and feeling oddly apologetic about both the splendour and the inconvenience of the car.
'I'm all right,' said Ricky, as if he was driven about like this every day.
They started on the steep hill towards Highgate and Nick was amazed all over again by the power leaping up under the ball of his foot. They seemed to wolf up the lane, in four thoughtless growls. He caught Ricky's eye in the mirror and said, 'So what time's your girlfriend getting back?'
Ricky said, 'She won't be back till really late, actually,' more clearly than when he told the truth, and then added, 'She's gone round to see her Uncle Nigel,' with a tolerant cluck. This bit of business acted visibly on Wani, who cleared his throat and half-turned in his seat to say,
'That's good.' The absurdity of the situation, something quite uncomfortable, tied a sudden knot in Nick, and at the top of the lane, instead of turning right down the hill towards town he turned the other way and climbed again towards Highgate village. He probably didn't need to explain, since as far as Wani was concerned they could have been in Lincolnshire, and Ricky would sit there with his half-smile of anticipation wherever they went, but he said,
'There's something I want to have a quick look at.' At the top he made an abrupt left into the long shady row that he knew must be The Grove. He was fairly sure he'd never been here before, it was something he'd imagined doing, a piece of research, historical, emotional… but as he peered through the line of trees at the beautiful old brick houses behind high railings, the house where Coleridge had lived and died, and then, as they crept along, bigger Georgian houses with flights of steps and carriage yards, he had the ghostly impression that he had been here, had been brought here on some unlocatable evening for some irrecoverable event. 'This is where Coleridge lived,' he said, with a glow of piety intended to stir Wani too, and then protracted to defy his evident lack of interest.
'OK,' said Wani.
'I just want to see where the Feddens used to live. Some old friends of mine,' he explained to Ricky. 'I know it was number thirty-eight…'
'This is sixteen,' said Wani.
It was one of the Feddens' sentimental routines to refer to their 'Highgate days,' and Gerald would evoke the house where they had first lived in a tone of nostalgia and self-ridicule, as if remembering student digs. Rachel usually said it was 'a darling house,' it was where she had raised her children, and a snapshot of Toby and Catherine, aged ten and eight, sitting on the front steps, remained in a silver frame on her dressing table. To Nick the place had an obscure proxy romance, as the first home of his second family. When they got to it there was a skip outside piled high with splintered timber, and a blue Portaloo in the front garden.
'Hm,' said Wani. 'OK… ' And he turned and gave Ricky an encouraging glance, in case he was getting bored. 'Not much left.'
The house was having a restoration so thorough it looked like demolition. The roof was like another house, made of scaffolding and sheeting. Most of the stucco had been hacked from the walls, and you could see the buried arcs of brick over each window. Through the front door you saw the garden at the back. On the surviving white-stucco pier by the side gate there was a painted black finger and the words TRADESMEN'S ENTPJVNCE; underneath which, in red spray-paint, a wit had written CUNTS EN-TPJVNCE, with an arrow pointing the other way.
'So much for that,' said Wani. A workman in overalls and a blue helmet came out through the aperture of the front door and stared at them like a janitor, trying to decide if they mattered. They were one of a thousand carloads of easy wealth that roared and fluttered round London, knocking things down and flinging things up. They might be due for deference or contempt, or for the sour mixture of the two aroused by young money. Nick nodded affably at the man as he pulled away. Mixed in with his unease, and the rueful lesson of the skip and the scaffolding, was a feeling that the builder knew just what they would be getting up to half an hour from now.
Though half an hour later they were creeping down Park Lane. The decisive plunge from the heights had slowed and stalled in the inexhaustible confusion of traffic and roadworks and construction. The wolfish bites had turned into thwarted snaps, the squeals of half a dozen near-collisions. Shuddering lorries squeezed them and dared them and flushed their reeking fumes through the coverless car, as four lanes funnelled into one outside the Hilton Hotel. Wani had whisked Nick up one night to the top-floor bar of the Hilton, perhaps not fully aware of its glassy vulgarity-it was a place his father liked to take guests to, and there was something touchingly studied in the paying for the cocktails and the lordly gaze out over the parks and the palace and the fur and diamonds of the London night. And now here they were, trapped, motionless, half asphyxiated on the roadway outside. Since Nick was driving he felt guilty and clumsy, as if it were his fault, as well as angry and slightly nauseous. Wani's face tightened and his lips were pursed with blame. Even Ricky was letting out puffing sighs. Wani reached over and put a hand on Packy's thigh and Nick kept an eye on them in the mirror. He tried to make normal conversation, but Ricky had no views on any current topic, and was marvellously incurious about his new friends. He'd given up his job at a warehouse in favour of doing nothing, and now obviously he couldn't find a job even if he wanted to, with three and a quarter million out of work: he smiled at that. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, and he never read books. 'Perhaps we'll put you in a film,' said Wani archly, and Ricky said, 'All right.' He seemed to have forgotten he had a girlfriend, until Nick asked another question about her. At last they rushed out into Hyde Park Corner, and jostled their way round into Knightsbridge. Wani said, 'What's your girlfriend's name?'
'Felicity,' said Ricky-which was written on the awning of Felicity Prior's flower shop just beside them. 'Yeah…'
Wani turned and said, in a painfully roguish tone, 'Felicity's a very lucky girl.'
'Yeah, she is, isn't she,' said Ricky.
When they reached Wani's place there was no one in the office, the boys had left, and they went straight upstairs to the flat, Ricky following Wani, and Nick coming close behind, unpleasantly jealous of the other two. It was like the tension of a first date, but with an extra player who was also a competitor and critic. He was squeamish at the thought of Wani's little predilections being exposed, and angry because he was the one who had been trusted with the secret of them. He didn't know if he could go through with that drama in the presence of Ricky, whom obviously, elsewhere, he would have loved to fuck. Or perhaps it wouldn't be like that, they would just fool about a bit. He went across the room and put the car keys down on the side table, and when he looked back Ricky and Wani were snogging, nothing had been said, there were sighs of consent, a moment's glitter of saliva before a shockingly tender second kiss. Nick gave a breathy laugh, and looked away, in the grip of a misery unfelt since childhood, and too fierce and shaming to be allowed to last.
He took down the leather-bound
