For Wani the first hit of coke was always an erotic rush, and for Nick too. They had kissed the first time they did coke together, their first kiss, Wani's mouth sour with wine, his tongue darting, his eyes timidly closed. Each time after that was a re-enactment of a thrilling beginning. Anything seemed possible-the world was not only doable, conquerable, but lovable: it showed its weaknesses and you knew it would submit to you. You saw your own charm reflected in its eyes. Nick stood and kissed Wani in the middle of the room-two or three heavenly minutes that had been waiting to happen, a glowing collision, a secret rift in the end of the day. They stood there, in their suits, Wani's lightweight Italian 'grey,' black really, like one of his father's suits but made to hint and flow, Nick, in the needle-fine pinstripe Wani had bought him, like one of the keen young professionals of the age, the banker, the dealer, the estate agent even…
Funny how sound travelled in an old house-through blocked-off chimney spaces, along joists. A rhythm almost inaudible to the cautious couple or unsuspecting soloist who made it was relayed as a workmanlike thump through the ceiling below or, as in this case, a busy squeak in the room next door. Stroking Wani's penis through his open fly, kissing his neck so that his skin stood up in shivers, Nick laughed but he was embarrassed too, almost shocked to hear them at it (which he never had before) and at it so promptly and so fast. No wasteful foreplay there-it made him wonder if Catherine was liking it, if Jasper wasn't being a brute with her, when surely she needed such careful handling. He felt Wani's grip tighten on his shoulder, pressing him down, and he went down on one knee, looking up at him sternly, and then on both knees and pulled his cock into his mouth. Wani wasn't big but he was very pretty, and his hard-ons, at least until the coke piled on too deep, were boyishly steep and rigid.
Nick worked on him easily and steadily, his own dick still buttoned away in a hard diagonal, something else waiting to happen, and the squeak of the telltale floorboard coming in rapid runs, like a manic mouse, and then with impressive intermittence; Nick almost went with it, but it was a distraction too, like the voices on the stair, a kind of brake or warning. They must have moved the bed, or they were fucking on the floor perhaps. He pictured them, Catherine vaguely and anxiously, Jasper much more vividly.
Wani's hands stroked and clutched at Nick's hair, tugged on it unpleasantly hard. 'They're really going at it,' he murmured. 'The little sluts… ' Nick glanced up and saw him smiling, in his erotic trance, not at him directly but at the two of them in the mirror; and also (Nick knew) staring through the mirror, and the wardrobe itself, into the room beyond, which he had never seen and which was just as readily the motel bedroom of some seedy flick. 'They're really going at it-the little sluts'-Nick heard how he loved saying it again, whispering it, and grunted as Wani's little thrusts against his face fell into the accelerating rhythm of the kids next door. He felt awkward, pulled in to service a fantasy he couldn't quite share-he tried again, he'd jerked off a few times about Jasper already, but Catherine was his sister, and on lithium, and, well… a girl. He heard her voice now, quick staccato wails… and Wani's breathing, slipping away from him just at the moment he had him. And then another idea came to him, a second resort, a silent, comical revenge on Wani while he brought him off-it was Ronnie he'd invited in, to solace him for his woman trouble, to give him ten minutes of real care, man to man. It took a little adjustment, of course, a little further twist on make-believe, since the Ronnie he'd imagined was twice the size of Wani-at least. But as Wani pulled out and Nick squeezed his eyes tight shut, it could almost have been Ronnie in front of him, instead of the man he loved.
Downstairs, a little later, in the drawing room, the coda of the party was unwinding, and Gerald opening new bottles of champagne as though he made no distinction between the boring drunks who 'sat,' and the knowing few of the inner circle, gathered round the empty marble fireplace. The Timmses were there, and Barry Groom, with their different fanatical ways of talking, their shades of zeal and exasperation-all alien to Nick more than ever in the lull after drugs and sex. He saw that Polly Tompkins was sitting with them, as if among equals, and already impatient for something superior. Gerald, it was clear, hadn't yet got round to the new paper on Third World debt. 'Have a look at it,' said Polly, and nodded at him like a genial don. The strange thing was that it was also Gerald's nod, just as his white collar was Gerald's collar. The mimicry was artful, slightly amorous, and since the love was hopeless, slightly mocking too. Really everything nice about Polly was a calculation.
Morgan, the woman Polly had brought, came to join Gerald's group, where they were going back over the scandal of Oxford refusing the PM an honorary degree. John Timms, with his intense belief in form, regarded the incident as an outrage, but Barry Groom, who hadn't bothered with Oxford, said, 'Fuck 'em's what I say,' in a sharp frank tone that made Morgan blush and then weigh in like a man herself. The only touching thing about her was her evident uncertainty as to when or why anything was funny. 'They seem to think the lady's not for learning,' Gerald said. She looked bewilderedfy at their laughing faces.
From the balcony, in the late July evening, the gardens receded in depth beyond depth of green, like some mysterious Hodgkin, to a point where a faintly luminous couple reclined on the grass. The astonishing greenness of London in summer. The great pale height of the after-dusk sky, birds cheeping and falling silent, an invincible solitude stretching out from the past like the slowly darkening east. The darkness climbed the sky, and the colours surrendered, the green became a dozen greys and blacks, the distant couple faded and disappeared.
'Hallo there…!'
'Oh hi, Jasper.'
'How are you, then, darling?'-almost tweaking him in the ribs.
'Very well. How are you?'
'Ooh, not bad. A bit tired…'
'Hmm. What have you been up to?'
Young Jasper, no younger probably than Nick, but with his chancy just-out-of-school look, quick and lazy at the same time, his flirtiness, his assumption he knew you, as if by bedding, or flooring, Catherine he gained equal rights, an instant history, with her intimate old friend… Jasper couldn't have known they'd been overheard upstairs, but his little smirk coming and going invited you to guess he'd been up to something. He had the pink of sex about him still. He leant by Nick on the balustrade, and he was clearly fairly drunk.
'Is Catherine OK?'
'Yeah… She's a bit knackered, she's turned in. This isn't really her sort of scene.'
Nick stared at the compound presumption of this remark and said, 'Things going OK between you two?'
'Ooh yes,' said Jasper, with a momentary pout, a wincing frown, to say how very hot it was. 'No, she's a lovely lady.'
Nick couldn't rise to this. After a moment he said, as nicely as he could, 'You are looking after her, aren't you, Jasper?'
'Hark at Uncle Nick,' said Jasper, piqued and somehow furtive.
'I mean, she seems quite steady at the moment, but it would just be disastrous if she came off this medication again.'
'I think she's got it all sorted out,' said Jasper, after a pause, adjusting his tone, his whole accent. He stood back and pushed his right hand through his glossy chestnut forelock, which immediately fell forward again; then the hand went into his jacket pocket, with just the thumb hooked out: subtly annoying gestures meant perhaps to convey commitment and dash to the doubtful house-buyer. 'She thinks the world of
Polly Tompkins had come out onto the balcony, perhaps jealous at seeing Nick with the boy he had squashed unavailingly earlier. Nick introduced them in a thinly amused tone which made no great claims for either of them. 'I thought you were avoiding me,' he said.
Jasper was waiting casually to see what the terms were, and if this big fat double-breasted man, who could have been anything between twenty-five and fifty, was part of the gay conspiracy or the straight one. Polly said, 'You're such a social butterfly, I haven't been able to reach you with my net,' and looked at Jasper as if to say he could find a use for him, if Nick couldn't.
Nick said, 'Well, I was a social caterpillar for years.'
Polly smiled and took out a packet of fags. 'You seem to be very close with our friend Mr Ouradi. What were you talking to him about, I wonder?'
'Oh, you know… cinema… Beethoven… Henry James.'
'Mmm… ' Polly looked at the Silk Cut-a quitter's ten-but didn't open them. 'Or Lord Ouradi, as I suppose we shall soon be saying.'
Nick struggled to look unsurprised as he ran through all the reasons that Polly might be pulling his leg. He said, 'I wouldn't be surprised-there's a sort of reverse social gravity these days, isn't there. People just plummet upstairs.'
