The Line of Beauty

you.'

Wani's head reared in a single laugh. 'I'm going to ask her just what she thinks of Nick the next time I see her.'

'You a good friend of hers then, are you?' said Tristao, and grinned at Nick again.

'A fucking good friend,' said Wani, tapping and peering at his work. 'An exceedingly good friend… There…' He turned and stared. 'No, don't you love her? Isn't she just beautiful?'

Tristao made a little moue. 'Yeah, she OK. OK for me, anyway. Lots of parties, lots of money. Lots of tips. Hundred pound. Two hundred pound…'

'God, you slut,' said Wani.

Nick went to the basin and drank two glasses of water. 'I need a li-ine,' he crooned. They were all wired up now and desperate to go on, with the great, almost numbing reassurance of having packets more stuff. It was beyond pleasure, it was its own motor, pure compulsion, though it gave them the delusion of choice, and of wit in making it.

Tristao bent to snort his line, and Wani felt his cock and Nick felt his arse. 'Is good stuff? So where you get this stuff?' he said, stepping back, escaping for a moment, sniffing sharply.

'I get it from Ronnie,' said Wani. 'That's his name. Ah, that's better'- pinching his nostrils. 'I love Ronnie. He's my best friend. He's really my only friend.'

'Apart from the Prime Minister,' said Nick.

Tristao had the big first smirk on his face. A dozen decisions were already being made for him. He said, 'I thought he's your best friend. Him, Nick. No?'

'Nick? He's just a slut,' said Wani. 'He takes my money.'

Nick looked round from the first half of his line. 'What he means is he's my employer,' he said, with necessary pedantry.

'Not that he does any fucking work,' said Wani.

'Actually that's one kind of work I do do,' said Nick pertly.

'What-fuckin work?' said Tristao, and laughed like an idiot.

'Anyway,' said Nick, 'he's a millionaire, so…'

'I'm a mw/tf-millionaire,' said Wani, with a sort of airy scowl. 'I want you to do your trick now.'

'What is his trick?' said Nick.

'You'll see,' said Wani.

'I hope this drugs don't make my dicky go soft,' said T Tristao.

'If your dicky go soft I'm having my fucking money back,' said Wani.

Tristao dropped his trousers and pants round his knees and sat on the edge of the little cane-seated chair. His dark heavy dick hung down. He put his hands up inside his shirt, pushed his shirt up over his ribs, and twisted his nipples. 'You want to help me?' he said.

Wani tutted and went to stand behind him, leaned over to watch as he pinched and coaxed the waiter's nipples between forefinger and thumb. Tristao sighed, smiled, and bit his parched lip. He looked down intendy, as if it was always a marvel to him, as his cock stirred, and thickened, twitched its way languorously up across his thigh before floating free with a pink smile of its own as the skin slid back a little. 'That's what it's all about,' said Wani.

'Is that it?' said Nick.

'You like?' said Tristao, whose face seemed to Nick suddenly greedy and strange. Of course his penis was the latent idea of the night, of this strange little scene, an idea trailed and discounted and lifting at the end as a large stupid fact. Nick said,

'So you've seen this before?'

'Oh, he always want it,' said Tristao.

Wani was down on his knees, trying clumsily to do justice to the thing he always wanted. His pants were undone, but his own little penis, depressed by the blitz or blizzard of coke, was puckered up, almost in hiding. He was lost, beyond humiliation-it was what you paid for. He sniffed as he licked and sucked, and gleaming mucus, flecked with blood and undissolved powder, trailed out of his famous nose into the waiter's lap. Obviously the waiter never got like this himself, he'd learnt the danger from Wani's example. Now he was chatty, like someone among friends. He nodded down at Wani and said, 'That's when I see him first. Mr Toby party. He give me coke and I fuck him in the hass.'

'In the house…? Oh, in the arse, I see.' Nick smiled with a funny mixture of coldness and hilarity, a certain respect for mischief, however painful. He watched him pushing his hands through his lover's black curls: which he did in a carefree, patient, familiar way, almost as if Wani wasn't sucking him off, as if he was some beautiful pampered child who'd run in among the adults, hungry for praise and confident of it. Tristao stroked his hair, and grinned and praised him. 'He always pay the best.'

'I'm sure!' said Nick, and took a condom out of his pocket.

'Here we go,' said Tristao.

Downstairs the Prime Minister was leaving. Gerald had danced with her for almost ten minutes. He had the glow of intimacy and lightness of success about him as he saw her to her car, careless of the rain. Late fireworks were still going off, like bombs and rifles, and they glanced upwards. Rachel stood in the doorway, with Penny behind her, whilst Gerald, usurping the secret policeman, leant forward and slammed the car door in a happy involuntary bow. The rain gleamed and needled in the street lamps as the Daimler pulled away with a noise like a brusque sigh.

THE END OF THE STREET(1987)

13

NICK WENT OUT to vote early, and took Catherine with him in the car. She had been up since six to catch Gerald on Good Morning Britain. In the long month of the election campaign she had refused to watch TV, but now that Gerald and Rachel had both gone up to Barwick she seemed able to do little else.

'How was he?' Nick said.

'He was only on for a minute. He said the Tories had brought down unemployment.''

'That is a bit rich.'

'It's like Lady Tipper saying the 80s are a marvellous decade for staff.'

'Well, it'll soon be over.'

'What? Oh, the election, yes.' Catherine stared out into the drizzle. 'The 80s are going on for ever.'

In the long tree-tunnel of Holland Park Avenue it was as if the dawn had been deferred, though it was high summer, and hours after sunrise. It was just the discouraging sort of weather that campaigners dreaded.

'Gerald's bound to get back in, isn't he?' said Nick. At Kensington Park Gardens no one had been able to put this simple question…

Catherine seemed to look up from the depths of her gloom at an impossible consolation. 'It would be just so wonderful if he didn't.'

At the polling station they gave in their cards and the woman smiled and blushed when she saw the name Fedden and the address. Nick felt she was being unduly confident. In '83 Catherine had fouled her paper, and this time she promised to vote for the Anti-Yuppie Visionary Vegetarian candidate. Nick stood in the plywood booth and turned the thick hexagonal stub of pencil in his fingers. Voting always gave him a heightened sense of irresponsibility. They were in the big classroom of a primary school, with children's drawings and a large and unusual alphabet (N was for Nanny, K for Kiwi-fruit) running round the walls. Today was an unearned holiday. Nick