The Line of Beauty

'Queenly?… Darling, she looks like a country and western singer.'

Catherine gave a brief screech, so that people turned round with varying degrees of humour and irritation. She had a look of running on quite fast inside. She held her trembling glass in front of her face. 'These champagne flutes are simply enormous!' she said.

'I know, they're sort of champagne tubas, aren't they,' said Nick.

Some very loud fireworks started going off in the communal gardens, mortars and thunderclaps. The windows rattled and the bangs echoed off the houses. People shouted cheerfully and flinched, but the Prime Minister didn't flinch, she fortified her voice with a firm diapason as if rising to the challenge of a rowdy Chamber. Around her her courtiers started like pheasants.

'Actually what amazes me,' Nick said, 'is the fantastic queenery of the men. The heterosexual queenery.'

'I sort of expect that,' said Catherine. 'You know, having Gerald…'

'Darling, Gerald's like a navvy in overalls, he's a miner on a picket line compared to some of these people. Look at old, um, the Minister for… what is he the Minister for?'

'I don't know, he's the Monster for something. With the pink face. I've seen him on telly.'

It was one of the men standing directly behind the PM, like a showman, both protecting and exhibiting her. From time to time he cast covetous glances at her hair. His own grey curls were oiled back in deep crinkly waves, over which he passed a hand that barely touched. He was one of the few men who were wearing a white tuxedo, and his posture was a superb denial of a possible gaffe. The jacket had swooping lapels, with cream silk facings; a line of flashing blue dress studs climbed to a lolling, surely purple, velvet bow tie. His wing collar kept his head framed at a haughty angle, and a tight silk cummerbund kept him erect and deepened the dyspeptic flush on his face.

Catherine said, 'I can see no self-respecting homosexual would dress like that.'

'Oh, I wouldn't go that far,' said Nick, uncertain which of them was being more ironic. 'It's just the licensed vanity…'

'He's the Monster of Vanity, darling!' said Catherine with another whoop.

He went to the first-floor lavatory and had a quick line there. It seemed a bit unnecessary to go all furtively upstairs. He snorted with a thumb against each nostril in turn, and smirked back at Gerald shaking hands with Ronald Reagan. You never felt the old boy knew who Gerald was-he had that look of medium-level benevolence. From outside the music was thumping, it had been Big Band jazz and now it was earlyish rock 'n' roll, such as Rachel and Gerald might conceivably have danced to twenty-five years ago. Fireworks popped and screeched. Beyond the locked door the collective boom of the party could be heard, with its undertone of secret opportunities: there were two men here that he wanted. The door handle rattled, he tidied, checked, flushed, tweaked his bow tie in the mirror, and sauntered out, hardly seeing the policeman waiting.

The Duchess had taken his place next to Catherine, so he looked about. The crowded drawing room was his playground. He found himself lounging intently towards the PM's sofa. Toby came away like an actor into the wings, still smiling; he couldn't say what she'd said. Lady Partridge had been hovering, and bent and clasped the Prime Minister's hand. She seemed nearly as speechless as Nick would have been on meeting a revered writer. 'I love your work' was really all one could say. But in this case, as Lady Partridge was an old woman, a crinkle of wisdom and maternal pride could be seen beside the childlike awe and submission. Nick couldn't quite hear what she was saying… something about the litter problem?… and he was pretty sure that she herself couldn't hear the PM-but it didn't matter, they hung on to each other's hands, in an act of homage or even of healing which for Judy was a thrilling novelty and for the PM a deeply familiar routine. They were both fairly sozzled, and might almost have been having an argument as they tugged their hands backwards and forwards and raised their voices. There was something in the PM that seemed to say she'd have preferred an argument, it was what she was best at, and as Judy withdrew, crouching blindly backwards, she picked up her empty whisky glass and banged it against the leg of the Monster of Vanity.

It was the simplest thing to do-Nick came forward and sat, half-kneeling, on the sofa's edge, like someone proposing in a play. He gazed delightedly at the Prime Minister's face, at her whole head, beaked and crowned, which he saw was a fine if improbable fusion of the Vorticist and the Baroque. She smiled back with a certain animal quickness, a bright blue challenge. There was the soft glare of the flash-twice-three times-a gleaming sense of occasion, the gleam floating in the eye as a blot of shadow, his heart running fast with no particular need of courage as he grinned and said, 'Prime Minister, would you like to dance?'

'You know, I'd like that very much,' said the PM, in her chest tones, the contralto of conviction. Around her the men sniggered and recoiled at an audacity that had been beyond them. Nick heard the whole episode already accruing its commentary, its history, as he went out with her among twitches of surprise, the sudden shifting of the centre of gravity, an effect that none of them could have caused and none could resist. He himself smiled down at an angle, ignoring them all, intimately held in what the PM was saying and the brilliant boldness of his replies. Others followed them down the stone stairs and through the lantern-lit passage, to watch, and to play their subsidiary parts. 'One's not often asked to dance,' said the PM, 'by a don.' And Nick saw that Gerald hadn't got it quite right: she moved in her own accelerated element, her own garlanded perspective, she didn't give a damn about squares on the wallpaper or blue front doors-she noticed nothing, and yet she remembered everything.

There was sparse but hectic activity on the parquet when they stepped on to it, to the thump of 'Get Off Of My Cloud.' Gerald was bopping with a tight-lipped Jenny Groom whilst Barry pushed Penny round the floor in a lurching embrace. Rachel, sedately jiving with Jonty Stafford, had a look of exhausted good manners. And then Gerald saw the PM, his idol, who had said before that she wouldn't dance, but who now, a couple of whiskies on, was getting down rather sexily with Nick. All Nick's training with Miss Avison came back, available as the twelve-times table, the nimble footwork, the light grasp of the upper arm; though with it there came a deeper liveliness, a sense he could caper all over the floor with the PM breathless in his grip. Anyway, Gerald put a stop to that.

They were up in Nick's bathroom, the three of them, Wani chewing and sniffing, almost shivering, like someone who is ill. He had a look of wide-eyed gloom, racing and lost. He said he was fine, never better. He concentrated on unfolding the square of Forum magazine, and then scraping the girl's dark pubic mound clear of powder. Nick sat on the edge of the bath, sat in the bath, crossways, with his legs hanging out, and watched Tristao taking a hugely protracted piss.

'Don't put that away,' said Wani, which was one of his little jokes.

Tristao clucked and said, 'He likes that.'

'I know,' said Nick.

'I know where I see you now,' Tristao said, putting it away none the less, and flushing the lavatory. He washed his hands and talked into the mirror. 'Is Mr Toby birthday party. In the big big house. Long time ago.'

'That's right,' said Nick, struggling up and taking off his jacket. Tristao took his tail-coat off too, as though it were agreed what they were going to do. The instinctive certainty made Nick smile.

'You come lookin for me, in the kitchen. I think you was very pissed.'

'Was I?' said Nick vaguely.

'Then I feel very bad because I say I meet you later, and I never come.'

'We know why,' said Wani.

'Don't worry,' said Nick. 'I'm sure I forgot too.'

Tristao put a hand on Nick's shoulder, and Nick understood and got out his wallet and gave him ?20. Tristao tilted his face and stuck his long fat tongue into Nick's mouth, kissed him systematically for ten seconds, then pulled out and turned away. Wani hadn't noticed, busy with the hill of coke. Tristao went and peered over his shoulder. 'I get in big trouble for this,' he said.

'No trouble,' said Wani. 'Couldn't be safer. House under police guard.'

'Yeah, I mean with my boss. Just a short break, yeah?'

'See how you like it,' said Wani, groping back at the waiter's crotch without looking round.

'I mean, do you need more money?' said Nick.

'I've just given him fifty fucking quid,' said Wani in a loud drawl.

Tristao mooched about and looked in the mirror again. He said, 'So you no bring your wife with you to the party?'

'She's not my fucking wife, you slut,' said Wani cheerfully.

Tristao grinned at Nick. 'I see you dancin with the big lady tonight,' he said. 'Jumpin around. I think she likes