going. And it's the one thing which simply can't happen.'
'I don't quite see why Lionel…'
'Oh, it's all the vandalism she's done to everything. Anyway, that's why he's having this rewiring done, so that no one can get in the house.'
Nick laughed protestingly, because he knew Catherine's neat deep readings of the family narrative, but she said, 'Oh, god, yes-why do you think he gave them that painting.'
'I don't know. You mean, to make up for it,' said Nick, considering the idea, which did make sense of his earlier rough impression, that Gerald hadn't liked being given the Gauguin. Perhaps he saw it as the confirmation of a mysterious snub.
'God, that Miss Moneypenny's a pain,' said Catherine, for whom the lens of the drawing-room window seemed to focus a world of irritants.
Penny was now taking some impromptu dictation from Gerald, while clutching her briefcase between her knees. 'I suppose she must be madly in love with him, mustn't she?'
'Oh, in the noblest, purest way,' said Nick.
'She'd have to be, darling, to type all that tripe.'
'Some people just live for their work. Norman's an obsessive worker, as we know all too well, and she's got it from him. They're happiest when they're hard at it.'
Catherine snorted. 'God, the idea…'
'Mm…?'
'Well-Gerald and Penny hard at it.'
'Oh… ' Nick tutted and coloured.
'Now I've shocked you,' Catherine said.
'Hardly,' said Nick.
'Actually, she's got herself a boyfriend, you know.'
'Really?' murmured Nick, with a dart of treacherous sympathy for Gerald, the doomed older man. 'Have you met him?'
'No, but she told me all about him.'
'Ah, I see…'
Geoffrey Titchfield moved off, and as Gerald called some friendly command to him he looked back and gave a half-serious salute. Penny and Gerald were left alone. It was a moment when Nick saw they might do something incautious-kiss, or touch in a light but revealing way that would give Catherine's scurrilous joke the chill of reality. It was another of the secrets of the house that he kept, like a sleepy conscience. Gerald looked up as he talked, from floor to floor, and Nick waved to show him they were being watched.
In the hours before the party the atmosphere thickened uncomfortably. The caterers had taken over the kitchen, and made faces behind Elena's back as she went stubbornly about her business; loud squawks and whines came out of the marquee in the garden, where the sound system was being tested; in the dining room the chairs were clustered knee to knee, waiting for orders. Gerald's manner became bright and fixed, and he mocked others for their nervousness. Catherine said she couldn't bear the sight of a cardboard box in a room, and went out to 'look at properties' with Jasper. Even Rachel, who delegated with aristocratic confidence, was biting her cheek as Gerald described to her where the Lady would sit, whom she would talk to, and how much she would have to drink. He almost let it seem that the climax of the evening would be when he danced with the Prime Minister. Rachel said, 'But you and I will lead off the dancing, won't we, Gerald,' so that he said to her, from a rapidly covered distance, 'But my love of course we will!' and gave her a blushing hug, and stumbled her through a few unexpected steps.
About six Nick slipped out for a walk. The evening was gloomy and damp. Wet leaves smeared the pavement. He was infected with the house nerves about the PM, wondering what to say to her, and already imagining tomorrow morning, when the party was over, and the enjoyable phase of remembering it and analysing it could begin. The shrieks and bangs of fireworks sounded from the neighbourhood gardens. Sometimes a rocket streaked up over the housetops and shed its stars into the low-hanging cloud. Duffel-coated children were hurried through the murk. Nick's route was an improvised zigzag, an intention glimpsed and disowned; no one watching him could have guessed it, and when he turned the corner and trotted down the steps into the station Gents he wore a frown as if the whole thing was a surprise and a nuisance even to himself.
Walking briskly back down Kensington Park Road he was frowning again, at having done something so vulgar and unsafe-it was suddenly late, the waiting and wondering and then the intent speechless action swallowed up time; his lateness accused him… Nothing 'unsafe' in the new sense, of course; but reckless and illegal. It would have made a bad start to the evening to be caught. Simon at the office had said 'Rudi' Nureyev used to cruise that particular lav, long ago no doubt, but the prospect of some starry pas de deux seemed to Nick to haunt and redeem the place, every time he went in. Now he was sour and practical, the warmth of a secret naughtiness faded in the November air. He went quickly upstairs, his haste was his apology, and the house had a brilliant quietness to it, a genuine brilliance, planned and paid for and brought to the point.
When he came down there was still a bit of time before the guests arrived. He went out into the dance tent and circled the creaky square of parquet, where suspended burners made pools of heat in the empty chill. The tent was a dreamlike extension to the house-plan. He came back in, across the improvised bridge, through the garlanded and lanterned back passage, and wandered from room to room, among the lights and candles and smell of lilies, with a sense almost of being in church, or at least of the memory of a ceremony. In the hall mirror he was lustre and shadow in his new evening suit and shiny shoes. He greeted Rachel and Catherine in the drawing room, and they chatted as if they were all guests, happily denatured, transformed by silk and velvet, jewels and makeup, into drawing-room creatures. The bangs of fireworks made them skittish. From downstairs came repeated stifled explosions of champagne corks, as the waiters got ready. 'Shall I get us a drink?' said Nick.
'Yes, do. And you might find my husband,' said Rachel.
He looked into the dining room, crowded like a restaurant with separate tables, where Toby was standing with a card in his hand. He was silently rehearsing his speech. 'Keep it short, darling,' Nick said.
'Nick… Fuck…!' said Toby, with a worried grin. 'You know it's one thing making a speech to your aunts and uncles and, you know, your mates, but it's quite another making a speech to the fucking Prime Minister.'
'Don't panic,' said Nick. 'We'll all shout, 'Hear, hear!''
Toby laughed gloomily. 'You don't suppose she might have to go to a summit or something at the last moment?'
'This is the summit, I'm afraid. It certainly is for your papa.' Nick edged between the tables, each place with its mitred napkin and black-inked card. No titles, of course. He leant on the chair-to-be of Sharon Flintshire. 'I love these pictures of the happy couple.'
'I know,' said Toby. 'The Cat's done a bit of art.'
Catherine had propped up on the sideboard a thing like a school project, where blown-up photographs of Gerald and Rachel before they were married flanked a formal wedding photo, with later family pics below. It looked rather like the placards of the cast outside a long-running West End farce.
'Your mother was so beautiful,' Nick said.
'I know. And Dad.'
'They're so young.'
'Yeah, Dad's not that keen on it actually. He doesn't want the Lady seeing him in his hippy phase.' To judge from the photos Gerald's hippy phase had reached its counter-cultural extreme in a pair of mutton-chop whiskers and a floral tie.
'I can't work out how old they were.'
'Well, Dad'll be fifty next year, so he was… twenty-four; and Ma's a couple of years older, of course.'
'They're our age,' said Nick.
'They didn't waste any time,' said Toby with a sad little smile.
'They certainly didn't waste any time having you, dear,' Nick said, making the amusing calculation. 'You must have been conceived on the honeymoon.'
'I think I was,' said Toby, both proud and embarrassed. 'Somewhere in South Africa. Ma was a virgin when she was married, I know that, and three weeks later she was pregnant. No playing around there.'
