The Line of Beauty

'Brad…? You see who's over there?'

'So what do we call his old man?' said Brad, shaking his head as he turned in his chair.

'His father's the Duke of Flintshire. I should just call him sir.'

'Treat, my god, you're right… it's Betsy!'

'I want her to be in my film,' said Treat. 'She's such a great British actress.'

'I don't know if you will meet the Duke,' Nick went on, uncertain how much pomp he was borrowing from mere use of the word. He aimed to speak of the aristocracy in a factual tone, because of his shame at his father's tally of earls. 'I've only met him once. He never leaves the Castle. You know he's a cripple.'

'You British… ' said Treat, only half-relinquishing his childlike gaze at Betsy Tilden. She seemed to loom for him as a marvel and a dare, and Nick could see him going over to her. She was much too young for Mrs Gereth, and quite wrong for Fleda Vetch. 'You're so brutal!'

'Mm…?' said Nick.

'You know, 'he's a cripple'-really.'

'Oh… ' said Nick, and blushed as if it was his lurking snobbery that had been criticized and not whatever this was. 'I'm sorry, but that's actually what the Duke calls himself. He hasn't walked since he was a boy.' He was slightly winded to be called on a point of delicacy-and one that impinged, obliquely but perceptibly, on their lunch. He cleared his throat and said, 'You know, there's something I should tell you… Ah, here we are.' He raised a hand as Wani appeared at the desk by the door, and as he got up he heard both Americans murmuring, 'Oh my god…'

He went over to him, smiling and capable but in a fluster of emotions-pity, defiance, a desire to support him, and a dread of people seeing him. The girl held his stick for him as she helped him off with his coat. 'Hello,' said Wani; he didn't seem to want Nick to kiss him. He took his stick again, which was an elegant black one with a silver handle, and tapped across the marble floor with it. He still wasn't quite convincing with the stick; he was like a student actor playing an old man. The stick itself seemed both to focus and repel attention. People looked and looked away.

The Americans stood up, Treat clutching his napkin to his chest. 'Hey, Antoine, great to see you!'

'How are you!' said Brad, in a sporting wheeze. He laid his hand for a moment on Wani's back, and Nick on his other side was doing the same, so that they seemed to congratulate him; though what they felt was the knobs of his spine through the wool of his suit. Wani sat down, smiling with distant courtesy, as if this was a weekly meeting, with a known format and outcome. There was a brief pause of silent adjustment. Nick smiled at Wani, but the shock was refreshed by the presence of their guests and a bubble rose in his throat.

'So what were you talking about?' said Wani. His voice was if anything more languid than before, though with a hint that it couldn't be forced.

'I was just explaining to Brad and Treat about the Chirks,' said Nick.

'Ah yes,' said Wani, as if this was a very old and silly story. 'It's only a nineteenth-century dukedom, of course.'

'Right… ' said Brad, peeping at him and seeming to share, out of mere nerves and inattentiveness, the view that this was absurdly recent.

Treat laughed brightly and said, 'That's old enough for me. That'll do just fine.'

Nick said, 'It was really Sharon who saved the day-the Duchess…' and offered the story to Wani.

'Yes, a life-saving transfusion of vinegar,' said Wani; they all laughed loudly, as at the joke of a tyrant; and there did seem to be a trace of cruelty in the remark, against himself and thus obscurely against them. 'Shall we order straight away.' Wani turned and raised a hand to Fabio and as he did so Brad and Treat looked at each other with expressionless clarity for three or four seconds. Fabio was with them at once, and as always seemed to guess and applaud their decisions, to echo and confide to memory each item they mentioned; and perhaps it was only Nick who felt the new briskness in his tone and the quick decay of his laugh. Brad asked about the pansy salad and Fabio obliged with a noncommittal joke, and moved round the table holding the reclaimed menus flat against his chest. Nick said how well the restaurant was doing and smiled to insist on their part in its success, since Wani and he had been guests at its opening last year and had made it their local; and Fabio said, 'We can't complain… er, Nick, we can't complain,' just glancing at Wani on the second complain with something cold in his eyes, and then at the new arrivals at the door, who typically were the Stallards. Nick watched Fabio go to greet them and the coldness had gone-he heard the usual mutual primping of head waiter and fashionable customers. Well, Fabio must have been shaken to see Wani so changed; but there was something else in his reaction, fear and displeasure, as if Wani's presence was no longer good for business.

Sophie and Jamie came over, Jamie slapping Wani on the shoulder and Sophie wrinkling her nose across the table rather than kissing him. Jamie had just played the romantic lead in a low-budget Hollywood comedy, and had been praised for his uncanny re-creation of a dim but handsome Old Etonian with floppy hair. Sophie was pregnant, and thus resting, though thick packets that could well have been film scripts lay in the cradle-like basket she was carrying. Treat and Brad were thrilled to meet them, since Jamie was still a possible for Owen Gereth in Spoils; cards were exchanged, and social visits that were never going to happen were delightedly agreed on. Nothing was said about Wani's health, though Sophie, as they went off to their table, looked back with a finger-wave and a cringing smile of condolence.

'Wow, what a sweet guy,' said Brad.

Nick, taking praise for the introduction, said, 'Old Jamie…?Yeah…'

'You guys go way back?'

'Yes-well, again we were all at Oxford together. He's really much more a friend of Wani's.'

But Wani seemed to disown any further intimacy. He sat very still, with his slender hands on the tablecloth. His square-shouldered jacket was buttoned but stood forward like a loose coat. He commanded attention now by pity and respect as he once had by beauty and charm. The claim to attention was constant, but it had turned fiercer and quieter. Nick thought he still looked wonderful in a way, though to admit it was to make an unbearable comparison. He was twenty-five years old. He said, 'Stallard has always been an absurd figure, and he's found the perfect partner in the lovely Miss Tipper.'

'Oh…' said Brad. 'Is she… er…'

'It was a good match for him. She's the daughter of the ninth richest man in Britain, and he's the son of a bishop.'

'Bishops don't make that much, I guess,' said Treat, and took another pull on his cocktail straw.

'Bishops make absolutely nothing,' said Wani; and after a second he flashed a smile round the table at the imbecility of bishops. Everyone else smiled too, in nervous collusion. Wani's face, gaunt and blotched, had taken on new possibilities of expression-the repertoire of someone not only older but quite different, someone passed unknown in the street, was unexpectedly his. He must have looked at himself in the mirror, winced and raised his eyebrows, and seen this unbearable stranger mugging back at him. Clearly he couldn't be held responsible for the latest ironies and startlements of his face, though there were moments when he seemed to exploit them. The cheekbones were delicate, the frontal bone heavy, even brutal-it was his father's look, brought out sometimes in the past by candlelight and now exposed to the light of day.

Nick said, 'You know Wani's father's been made a lord,' not sure whom he was pandering to.

'Oh wow,' said Brad. 'Does that mean you'll be a lord one day too?' There were several seconds of silence till Wani said, 'It's not hereditary. What on earth are you drinking, by the way, Treat?'

'Don't ask…!' said Brad, eager with embarrassment.

'It's… what's he called?… Humphrey? Humphrey's latest invention. It's a Black Monday.'

Wani gave his grin again, bright and sarcastic in effect. 'That didn't take long,' he said. Humphrey was Gusto's venerable barman, keeper (up to a point) of long tabs and starlets' secrets. 'He trained on the Queen Mary. There's nothing he doesn't know about cocktails.'

'Well it's, what is it? It's dark rum, and cherry brandy, and sambuca. And loads of lemon juice. It tastes like a really old-fashioned laxative,' said Treat.

'I can't drink any more,' said Wani, 'but when I hear that, I don't mind.'

There was a brief pause. Treat ran his finger along his fringe, and Brad sighed and said, 'Yeah… I wanted to ask… ' They both of them, nicely enough, seemed relieved the subject had been brought up.

Wani tucked in his chin. 'Oh, a disaster,' he said, frowning from one to the other. 'Quite unbelievable. One of