The Line of Beauty

frightening. He wondered how he himself would ever square up to that. Gerald moved slowly, with heavy patience, sturdy in the interest of his case and confident of knowing the right form, however humiliating the content, towards the Range Rover; which at last he got into, and drove off, almost running down photographers, to the House of Commons, to hand in his resignation.

Nick let the curtain drop, and made his way carefully around the twin guest beds and on to the brighter landing. Rachel was just coming out of her bedroom. 'Sorry about this absurd gloom!' she said. 'I find I have the greatest reluctance to have my photograph taken.' There was a briskness in her tone that warned off any touch of sympathy.

'I understand.'

She was wearing a red-and-black wool suit, a necklace, four or five rings, and would certainly have looked good in a photograph. Nick glanced past her into the shadowy white room. There was the first door, into a small anteroom with the bathroom opening off it, and then the second door, which had always sealed the couple away in a grandeur of privacy. Nick saw the end of the bed, a round table with silver-framed pictures of the children. He had hardly ever been in there, since his first summer, when he had walked around noiselessly, with his hands behind his back, an intruder in the temple of marital love; his own love fantasies had taken envious possession of it, like squatters, in the married couple's absence.

'Mm, strange times,' said Rachel, again as if talking to someone barely known, and instinctively disapproved of, whom a crisis had thrust her together with: Nick felt for the tender irony which always lined their little phrases, but he wasn't sure he found it. Perhaps she knew that he had known all along about Gerald and Penny, and her dryness was a form of bitter embarrassment.

He said, 'I know…' He was painfully sorry for her, but didn't see how to say so; it was a strange inhibition. In a way it was the moment for a new intimacy, and he hoped to bring her round to it. He glimpsed something beautiful for both of them emerging from the wreckage of the marriage: their old alliance, running rings of secret mockery round Gerald's pompous head, would flourish and be a strength to her. He hesitated, but he was ready.

She looked at him, her lips firming and relenting; then she turned away.

She went unnoticing past Norman Kent's portrait of Catherine, though to Nick it played its part in the unfolding moment. 'I wish you would go and get Catherine,' she said, as she started downstairs.

'Oh… ' said Nick, following behind, with a nervous laugh that he regretted.

'She ought to be here with her family,' Rachel said, not turning round. 'She needs care. I can't tell you how worried I am about her with that man.'

'Of course you are,' said Nick promptly, 'of course you are,' feeling he needed a new tone to console a woman twice his age. He felt he learned as he spoke, and saw how all her worries found an outlet in this one worry. He said, 'I'm sure she's safe with him, but if you want me to, I'll go over there, gladly,' pressing and then faltering behind her in anxious support and respect. The truth was he was frightened of the reporters and photographers: he didn't know how to deal with them, or with anyone who didn't show support and respect. And he was very wary of Russell, who seemed to have brought about his longed-for exposure of Gerald almost by chance, and now was 'looking after Cath' in his Brixton flat, and declining to let anyone see her.

Rachel reached the first-floor landing. 'I mean, I can't go over there; I'd have the whole press pack at my heels.' It was as if she was in danger even coming down to this level. The world outside her door had revealed itself as not only alien but hostile. And her world within doors had abruptly been robbed of comfort. She turned and her face was stiff apart from her moving lips; Nick thought she might be going to cry, and in a way he hoped she would, because it would be a natural thing to do, as well as a sign of trust-he could hold her, which he'd never done before. He saw the quick sensual crush of his chin against the shoulder of her wool suit, her grey-streaked hair across his mouth; she would clutch him, with a shudder of acceptance and release, and after a while he would lead her into the drawing room, where they would sit down and decide what to do about Gerald.

'No, you mustn't…' he said. 'Obviously.'

He watched her blink rapidly and choose a different sort of release: 'I mean, since you're so good at winkling people out!'

Nick didn't counter this gibe, the first he'd ever had from her. He said, 'Oh… ' almost modestly, looking away at the carpet, the legs of the Sheraton table, the polished threshold of the drawing room. He felt very low, and Rachel went on,

'You know, we do rather count on you to keep an eye on Catherine.'

He tried to think when he'd heard the tone before. It was one of her adorable, unexpectedly funny little moments of exasperated candour about some party official, some simpleton at Conference. 'Well,' he said, 'I have tried… as I hope you know.' Rachel didn't endorse this. 'But, you know, she is an adult, she leads her own life…!' He gave the soft laugh of sensible conviction, which was all it had ever taken to win Rachel's agreement.

'Well, you say that!' she said, with a quite different kind of laugh, a single hard gasp.

Nick leant back on the mahogany banister, and felt his way into the new conditions. He said, very measuredly, 'I think I always have been as good a friend to her as she would allow me to be. As you know, friends come and go with her-and they all disappoint her. So I suppose I must have been doing something right if she still trusts me.'

'No, I'm sure she's devoted to you,' said Rachel, 'we all are,' in a sharp but conditional tone, as though it didn't much matter. 'It's really the question of your doing what's best for her, I mean, not simply… conspiring with her in whatever she wants you to do. She has a very serious illness.'

'Yes, of course,' Nick murmured, while his face grew fixed at the rebuke. Rachel was waiting, as if taking the pulse of her feelings; he peeped at her, saw her blink again and draw breath but then only give out a sharp resentful sigh. Nick said, 'I left her with Gerald… the other night. That should have been safe enough.'

'Ah, safe,' she said, 'yes. She should never have been there in the first place.'

'I promise you, I didn't know where she was taking me…'

'She wasn't taking you anywhere. You were taking her, if you remember, in your horrible little car.'

'Oh…!'

'I'm sorry,' she said, and Nick wasn't sure if she was instantly retracting or grimly confirming her remark. His impulse was to forgive her, he frowned tenderly, the reflex of a boy who couldn't bear to be in the wrong. 'You know the state she was in. Who knows what's happening to her now, if she hasn't got her librium with her.'

'Mm… her lithium…'

'There's just rather a question of responsibility, you know? I mean, we'd always supposed you understood your responsibilities to her-and to us, of course.'

'Oh, well, yes…!' He flashed a smile at the sting of this.

'We'd imagined you'd tell us if, for instance, anything went seriously wrong.' Her steady tone, her emphasizing twitches, were new to Nick; they seemed to signal a change in their relations that wouldn't easily be reversed. He was used to her easy assents, her oddly contented demurrals… 'We didn't know until last night, for instance, about this very serious episode four years ago.'

'What do you mean?' said Nick, shaking his head. The 'we' was fairly unnerving, the apparent solidarity with Gerald.

'I think you know very well what I mean.' She peered at him, with an effect of complex distaste; which extended in a reluctance to put it in words. 'We had no idea she'd tried to… harm herself while we were away.'

'I don't know what you've been told. She didn't harm herself, anyway. She asked me to stay with her-which I did-and she was fine, you know, she'd just had one of her bad moments.'

'You didn't tell us about it,' said Rachel, pale with anger.

'Please, Rachel! She didn't want to upset you, she didn't want to spoil your holiday.' The half-forgotten alibis came back, and the squeezing sensation of being out of his depth. 'I stayed with her, I talked her through it.' It was a bleat of a boast.

'Yes, she said you were wonderful,' said Rachel. 'Apparently, she quite raved about you to Gerald the other night.' Nick looked at the floor, and at the rhythm of the black-and-gilt S-shaped balusters. Then beyond them, and below, he heard the scratch of the front door being unlocked, a voice from the street saying, 'Over here, love!' and the jump of the knocker as the door slammed shut again.