The Line of Beauty

criticized.

'You gave five francs,' said Catherine. 'Which is about fifty new pence. But you could have given'-she raised her glass and swept it across the vista of hills and the far glimpse of river-'a million francs, without noticing really, and single-handedly saved the Romanesque narthex!'

These were two terms Maurice Tipper had never had to deal with singly, much less together. 'I don't know about not noticing,' he said, rather leniently.

'You simply can't give to everything,' said Sally. 'You know, we've got Covent Garden…'

'No, OK,' said Catherine, tactically, as if she'd been quite silly.

'What's all this…?' said Gerald, coming out in shorts and espadrilles, with a towel over his shoulder.

'The young lady was giving me some criticism. Apparently I'm rather mean.'

'Not in so many words,' said Catherine.

'I'm afraid the fact is that some people just are very rich,' said Sally.

Gerald, clearly sick of his guests, and glancing tensely towards the steps to the pool, said, 'My daughter tends to think we should give everything we've worked for away.'

'Not everything, obviously. But it might be nice to help when you can.' She gave them a toothy smile.

'Well, did you put something in the box?' said Sir Maurice.

'I didn't have any money with me,' said Catherine.

Gerald went on, 'My daughter lives her life under the strange delusion that she's a pauper, rather than-well, what she is. I'm afraid she's impossible to argue with because she keeps saying the same thing.'

'It's not that,' said Catherine vaguely and irritably. 'I just don't see why, when you've got, say, forty million you absolutely have to turn it into eighty million.'

'Oh…!' said Sir Maurice, as if at an absurdly juvenile mistake.

'It sort of turns itself, actually,' said Toby.

'I mean who needs so much money? It's just like power, isn't it. Why do people want it? I mean, what's the point of having power?'

'The point of having power,' said Gerald, 'is that you can make the world a better place.'

'Quite so,' said Sir Maurice.

'So do you start off wanting to do particular things, or just to have the sensation of power, to know you can do things if you want to?'

'It's the chicken and the egg, isn't it,' said Sally with conviction.

'It's rather a good question,' said Toby, seeing that Maurice was getting fed up.

'If I had power,' said Catherine, 'which god forbid-'

'Amen to that,' murmured Gerald.

'I think I should stop people having a hundred and fifty million pounds.'

'There you are, then,' said Sir Maurice, 'you've answered your own question.' He laughed briefly. 'I must say, I hadn't expected to hear this kind of talk in a place like this.'

Gerald moved off, saying, 'It's art school, I'm afraid, Maurice,' but not looking sure that this routine disparagement would please his guest any more than the lunch at Chez Claude.

(iv)

During dinner that evening the phone rang. Everyone out on the terrace looked ready for a call, and a self- denying smirk spread along the table as they listened to Liliane answering it. Nick was expecting nothing himself, but he saw the Tippers being called home by some opportune disaster. Liliane came out into the edge of the candlelight and said it was for Madame. The conversation at table continued thinly and with a vague humorous concern for the odd phrases of Rachel's that could be made out; then she must have closed the phone-room door. A few minutes later Nick saw her bedroom light go on; her half-eaten grilled trout and untouched side plate of salad took on an air of crisis. When she came back out and said, 'Yes, please,' with a gracious smile at Gerald's offer of more wine, she seemed both to encourage and prohibit questions. 'Not bad news, I hope,' said Sally Tipper. 'We always get bad news when we're on holiday.'

Rachel sighed and hesitated, and held Catherine's gaze, which was alert and apprehensive. 'Awfully sad, darling,' she said. 'It's godfather Pat. I'm afraid he died this morning.'

Catherine, with her knife and fork held unthinkingly in the air, forgot to chew as she stared at her mother and tears slipped down her cheeks.

'Oh, I'mso sorry,' said Nick, movedby her instant distress more than by the news itself, and feeling the AIDS question rear up, sudden and undeflectable, and somehow his responsibility, as the only recognized gay man present. Still, there was a communal effort by the rest of the family to veil the matter.

'Awfully sad,' said Gerald, and explained, 'Pat Grayson, you know, the TV actor…? Old, old friend of Rachel's… ' Nick saw something distancing already in this and remembered how Gerald had called Pat a 'film star' at Hawkeswood three years earlier, when he was successful and well. 'Who was it, darling, on the phone?'

'Oh, it was Terry,' said Rachel, so tactfully and privately she was almost inaudible.

'We see so little TV,' said Sally Tipper. 'We don't have the time! What with Maurice's work, and all our travelling… And really I don't think I miss it. What was he in, your friend?'

Toby, clearly moved, said, 'He starred in Sedley. He was bloody funny, actually.'

'Oh, sitcoms,' said Sally Tipper, with a twitch.

'Would you say, Nick?' said Gerald. 'Not a sitcom exactly…'

'It was sort of a comedy thriller,' said Nick, who wanted them to like Pat before they found out the truth. 'Sedley was the charming rogue who always got away with it.'

'Mm, quite a lady-killer,' said Gerald.

Wani said, 'I thought he was so charming when I met him… at Lionel's house, it must have been… frightfully funny!'

'I know… ' said Rachel distractedly, stroking Catherine's hand across the table, enabling and containing the little episode of grief. She had probably been crying herself in her room, and now drew a certain resolve from having her daughter to look after.

Gerald, with his frowning moping manner of comprehending the feelings of others while being quite untouched and even lightly repelled by them, made little sighs and rumbles from the head of the table. 'Poor old Puss,' he said. 'Uncle Pat was her godfather. Not her real uncle, obviously…!'

'Madly left-wing,' said Lady Partridge, but with a chuckle of posthumous indulgence, as though that had been something else rather roguish about him. 'She had two-a true-blue one and a red-hot socialist. Godfathers.'

'Well, he might have been a red-hot socialist when Mum first met him,' said Toby. 'But you should have heard him on the Lady.'

'What…?' said Gerald.

'Loved the Lady!'

'Of course he did,' said Gerald warmly, not wanting to risk the old jokes about Rachel's left-wing pals in front of the Tippers. 'Her godmother, of course, is Sharon, um, Flintshire… you know, yup, the Duchess.'

'You and Pat were old friends,' said Wani, with his instinct for social connections. 'You were at Oxford together.'

'He was Benedick to my Beatrice,' said Rachel, with a beautiful smile which seemed conscious of the spotlight of sympathy, 'and indeed Hector Hushabye to my Hesione!'

'Mm, jolly good!' said Gerald, outshone and subtly embarrassed.

This was enough to rouse Maurice Tipper, who said, in the airy unsurprisable way of a suspicious person, 'So how did he die?'

Gerald made a sort of panting noise, and Rachel said quietly, 'It was pneumonia, I'm afraid. But he hadn't been well, poor old Pat.'

'Oh,' said Maurice Tipper.

Rachel peered into the distance beneath the glazed earthenware salad bowl. 'He picked up some extraordinary bug in the Far East last year. No one knew what it was. It's thought to be some incredibly rare thing.