The Line of Beauty

go away, aren't you?' It was one of her 'professional' worries, all parts of the great worry of London itself, along with fainting Guardsmen and the tedium of being in The Mousetrap, as to how MPs coped with their massive workloads; it was something Nick had been asked to find out when he moved in. His conclusion, that Gerald didn't do the work at all, but relied on briefings by hard-working secretaries and assistants, was considered cynical and therefore untrue by his mother.

Gerald said, 'Yes, we're off on Monday,' and gave a great shrug of relief. Nick could see him, bored and suggestible, start brooding at once on the superior pleasures of the manoir.

'I wonder how you fit it all in,' Dot said, 'all the reading you must have to do. It worries me-Nick says I'm silly… You probably never sleep, do you, I don't see how you could! That's what they say about… the Lady, isn't it?'

Nick had inculcated his parents with Gerald's form the Lady, but was embarrassed to hear them use it in front of him. He seemed to take it as a tribute, however, both to her and to himself. 'What, four hours a night?' he said, with an admiring chuckle. 'Yes, but the PM's a phenomenon- terrifying energy! I'm a mere mortal, I need my beauty sleep, I'm not ashamed to say.'

'She looks beautiful without any sleep, then,' said Dot piously, and Don nodded his agreement, too shy, as yet, to ask the question that burned in them both: what was she like?

Gerald, knowing they wanted to ask that, showed he hadn't lost sight of the original question. 'But you're right, of course.' He took them into his confidence. 'The paperwork can be quite overwhelming at times. I'm lucky in that I'm a fast reader. And I've got a memory like an ostrich. I can gut the Telegraph in ten minutes and the Mail in four-you just get a knack for it.'

'Ah,' said Dot, and nodded slowly. 'And how is your daughter?' She was being attentive and courteous, and Nick saw that she would run through things that troubled her, and hope to get a better answer out of Gerald than she could out of him. 'I know you've been worried about her, haven't you?'

'Oh, she's fine,' said Gerald breezily; and then seeing some use in the idea of being worried, 'She's had her ups and downs, hasn't she, Nick-the old Puss? It's not easy being her. But you know, this thing called librium that she's on has been an absolute godsend. Sort of wonder drug…'

'Mm… lithium,' said Nick.

'Oh yes…?' said Dot, looking uneasily from one to the other.

'She's just a much happier young pussycat. I think we've turned the corner.'

Nick said, 'She's doing some great work now, at St Martin's.'

'Yes, she's doing marvellous collages and things,' said Gerald.

'Ah, modern art, no doubt,' said Don, with a dreary ironic look at Nick.

'Don't pretend to be a philistine, Dad,' said Nick, and saw him unable to separate the praise from the reproach; the French pronunciation of philistine didn't help.

'It seems to work for her, anyway,' said Gerald, who liked the therapeutic excuse for Catherine's large abstract efforts. 'And she's got a super boyfriend, that we're all very happy about. Because we haven't always had good luck on that front.'

'Oh… ' said Dot, and looked down at her drink as if to say that neither, indeed, had they.

'Mm, we're jolly proud of her, in fact,' said Gerald grandly, so that he seemed slightly ashamed. 'And we're all going to be together in France this year, which Rachel and I are delighted about. First time for some years. And Nick too, as you know, will be joining us… at least for a bit… long overdue…' and Gerald guzzled the rest of his gin-and-tonic.

'Oh,' said Dot, 'you didn't say, dear.'

'Oh, yes,' said Nick. 'Well, I'm going with Wani Ouradi, you know, who I'm working with on this magazine- we're going to Italy and Germany to look at things for that, and then we hope to drop in at… the manoir, for a few days on the way back.'

'That'll be a wonderful experience for you, old boy,' Don said. And Nick thought, really the poor old things, they do as well as they can; but for a minute he almost blamed them for not knowing he was going to Europe with Wani, and for making him tell them a plan so heavy with hidden meaning. It wasn't their fault that they didn't know-Nick couldn't tell them things, and so everything he said and did took on the nature of a surprise, big or little but somehow never wholly benign, since they were aftershocks of the original surprise, that he was, as his mother said, a whatsit.

'Because you normally have Nick to look after the house for you, don't you,' she said. 'When you're away.' She clung to this fact, as a proof of his trustworthiness to important others, who apparently didn't care about his being a whatsit one way or the other.

'Poor old Nick, he has got rather landed with that in the past. This year we'll have our housekeeper and her daughter move in, and they can do a massive clean-up of the house without us getting under their feet. It makes a bit of a holiday for them.' Gerald gestured liberally with his empty glass.

'That sounds like the sort of holiday I'm used to!' said Dot, who longed for the spoiling of a hotel, but was subjected to her sister-in-law's cottage at Holkham each September.

Don brought Gerald a refill, and had a tiny one himself; they tended not to go at quite that pace. He said, 'He's a good chap, is he, this Ouradi?'

'You haven't met him… no… Oh, he's a charmer, absolutely. My son Tobias and he were great friends at Oxford-well, you all were, weren't you, Nick.'

'I didn't get to know him well until a bit later,' Nick said carefully, remembering the bathroom of the Flintshires' Mayfair house, the way the coke numbed their lips as they kissed. It gave him a tingle now, the thought of the other world that was waiting for him.

'Someone in his position can't help but do well,' said Don.

'I have the feeling… ' said Gerald, with a condescending twinkle. 'I know high hopes are riding on him. The father's quite a character, of course.'

'He's the supermarket chappie, isn't he.'

'Bertrand? Oh, a. great man!' said Gerald, who used the word very freely, as if hoping it might stick as easily to himself. 'I mean, an outstanding businessman, obviously… Awfully sad, I didn't know till the other day, but you know, they lost their first son.'

'Oh, really…'

'Yup, he was knocked down by a lorry in the street, in Beirut of course. The child and his nanny or whatever they call them were both killed. Bertrand Ouradi was telling me about it only the other day.'

Nick had to pretend he already knew7 this, and nodded sombrely to confirm it to his parents, who murmured in sympathy but seemed not to care much, as if a death in Beirut were only to be expected. 'Yes, it was an awful thing,' Nick said. It was a total surprise. His first thought was that his smug reckonings of intimacy with Wani looked very foolish. It was the family mystery, hardly glimpsed, far stronger and darker than their little sexual conspiracy. And Wani was carrying that burden… He seemed instantly more touching, more glamorous and more forgivable.

'His fiancee looks a sweet little thing,' said Dot. 'I've seen her at the hairdresser's.'

'Really…'

'In the Tatler, I mean!'

'Ah, yes…'

'Of course Nick was in the Tatler, after that marvellous party of yours. We dined out on that for months.' This was one of his mother's favourite boasts, and strictly a figure of speech, since they only dined out about three times a year. 'Who's the other one we see? That great big fat one, that Nick knows?-Lord Shepton: he's always in.'

'What about this little runaround of Nick's?' said Don, with anxious enthusiasm.

'Mm, she's a lively little thing,' said Gerald.

'Did you say he'd given the car to you, dear, I didn't quite understand…'

'I told you, Mum,' Nick said, 'it's like a company car. I can drive it while I'm working for him.'

'He must think very highly of you,' Dot said doubtfully. 'Well, it's all another world, isn't it?' No one quite assented to this, and after a moment she went on, 'And how's your son?'

'Oh, he's in great shape. Set up his own little company now, we'll see how he gets on.'

'We used to see his name in the paper a lot!' said Don, as if Toby's back-half paragraphs on share prospects