Chapter 8 - season 5 The łine øf beauty

The room wasmade of two transecting ogees crowned by a boss like a huge wooden

cabbage. It was as he lay beneath it, in uneasy post-coital vacancy,

that the idea of calling Wani's outfit Ogee had come to him: it had a

rightness to it, being both English and exotic, like so many things he

loved. The ogee curve was pure expression, decorative not structural; a

structure could be made from it, but it supported nothing more than a

boss or the cross that topped an onion dome. Wani was distant after

sex, as if assessing a slight to his dignity. He turned his head aside in

thoughtful grievance. Nick looked for reassurance in remembering

social triumphs he had had, clever things he had said. He expounded

the ogee to an appreciative friend, who was briefly the Duchess, and

then Catherine, and then a different lover from Wani. The double curve

was Hogarth's 'line of beauty', the snakelike flicker of an instinct, of

two compulsions held in one unfolding movement. He ran his hand

down Wani's back. He didn't think Hogarth had illustrated this best

example of it, the dip and swell - he had chosen harps and branches,

bones rather than flesh. Really it was time for a new Analysis of

Beauty. On the floor below was the 'library', a homage to Lutyens neo-

Georgian, with one black wall and pilastered bookcases. A glass bowl,

some framed photos, and a model car took up space between the

sparse clumps of books. There were big books on gardens and film

stars, and some popular biographies, and books valued for being by

people Wani knew, such as Ted Heath's Sailing and Nat Hanmer's

'really rather good' first novel Pig-Sty. The room had a proper Georgian

desk, and sofas, a huge staring television and a VCR with high-speed

rewind. It was here, a few days after the Ricky episode, with its large

tacit adjustment to Nick's understanding of things, that Wani had sat

down, plucked the top off his Mont Blanc and made out a cheque to

Nicholas Guest for Ј5,000.

Nick had looked at the cheque, drawn on Coutts amp; Co. in the

Strand, with a mixture of suspicion and glee. He handled it lighdy,

noncommittally, but he knew in a second or two that he was fiercely

attached to it, and dreaded its being taken away from him. He said,

'What on earth's this?'

'What…?' said Wani, as if he'd already forgotten it, but with a

tremor of drama that he couldn't fully suppress. 'I'm just fed up with

paying for you the whole fucking time.'

This was quite a witty remark, Nick could see, and he took the

roughness of it as a covert tenderness. Still, there was a sense that he

might have agreed to something, when he was drunk and high - diat

he'd forgotten his side of a bargain. 'It 1 Iocs n't seem right,' he said,

already seeing himself doing the paying, taking out Toby, or Nat

perhaps, to Betty's or La Stupenda; having a credit card, therefore…

'Yah, just don't tell anyone,' said Wani, pressing a video into die slot of

the player, and picking up the remote (ontrol, with which he pokedand chivvied the machine from a frowning distance. 'And don't just

blue it all in a week on charlie.'

'Of course not,' said Nick - though the idea, and the hidden

calculation he made, brought him up against the limits of

Ј5,000 fairly quickly. If he was going to have to pay for himself,

it wasn't nearly enough. Seen in that light, it was rather mean of Wani,

it was a bit of a tease. 'I'll invest it,' he said.

'Do that,' said Wani. 'You can pay me back when you've made

your first five grand profit.' At which Nick sniggered, out of sheer

ignorance. It was all a bit tougher than he thought, if he was going to

have to pay it back. But he didn't want to whinge.

'Well, thank you, my dear,' he said, folding the cheque

reflectively, and going towards him to give him a kiss. Wani reached up

his cheek, like a thanked but busy parent, and as Nick went out of the

room Wani's favourite scene from Oversize Load was already on the

screen, and the man in black was performing his painful experiment

on the excited little blond.

'Oh, baby…!' Wani chuckled, but Nick knew he wasn't being

called back. A couple of nights a week Wani spent uncomplainingly at

his parents' house in Lowndes Square. Nick had been ironical about

this at first, and piqued that he seemed to feel no regret at passing up

a night they could have spent together. The family instinct was weak in

him - or if it flared it involved some family other than his own. But he

soon learned that to Wani it was as natural as sex and as irrefutable in

its demands. On other nights of the week he might be in and out of the

lavatories of smart restaurants with his wrap of coke, and roar home

in WHO 6 for a punishing session of sexual make-believe; but on the

family nights he went off to Knightsbridge in a mood of unquestioning

compliance, almost of relief, to have dinner with his mother and father,

any number of travelling relations, and, as a rule, his fiancee. Then

Nick would go back jealously to Kensington Park Gardens and the

hospitable Feddens, who all seemed to believe his story that on other

nights he worked at his thesis on Wani's computer and used a 'put-

me-up' at his flat. He had never been invited to Lowndes Square, and

in his mind the house, the ruthless figure of Bertrand Ouradi, the

exotic family protocols, the enormous monosyllable of the very word

Lowndes, all combined in an impression of forbidding substance.

On one of his nights alone, Nick went to Tannhduser and met

Sam Zeman in the interval. They gossiped competitively about the

edition being used, an awkward hybrid of the Paris and Dresden

versions; Sam had the edge in relevant and precisely remembered fact.

Nick said there was something he wanted to ask him, and they agreed

to have lunch the following week. 'Come in early,' said Sam, 'and try

out the new gym.' Kesslers had just rebuilt their City premises, with asteel and glass atrium and high-tech dealing-floors fitted in behind the

old palazzo facade.

When the day came Nick turned up early at the bank and waited

under a palm tree in the atrium. People hurried in, nodding to the

commissionaire, who still wore a tailcoat and a top hat. On the

exposed escalators the employees were carried up and down, looking

both slavish and intensely important. Nick watched the motorbike

messengers in their sweaty waterproofs and leathers, and heavy boots.

He felt abashed and agitated by closeness to so many people at

work, in costume, in character, in the know. The building itself had

the glitter of confidence, and made and retained an unending and

authentic noise out of air vents, the hubbub of voices and the

impersonal trundling of the escalators. Nick craned upwards for a

glimpse of the regions where Lord Kessler himself might be conducting

business, at that level surely a matter of mere blinks and ironies, a

matter of telepathy. He knew that the old panelled boardroom had

been retained, and that Lionel had hung some remarkable pictures

there. In fact he had said that Nick should call in one day and see the

Kandinsky… Sam took him through and down into a chlorine-smelling

basement where the gym and lap-pool were. 'It's such a godsend, this

place,' he said. Nick thought it was very small, and hardly compared

with the Y; he saw that he came to a gym as a gay place, but that this

one wasn't gay. An old man in a white jacket handed out towels and

looked seasoned to the obscenities of the bankers. Nick did a

perfunctory circuit, really just to oblige Sam, who was pedalling on a

bike and filling in the Times crossword. He felt he didn't know Sam

very well, and had a vague sensation of being patronized. Sam's

friendly Oxford cleverness had hardened, he had a glint to him like the

building itself, a watchful half-smile of secret knowledge. All around

them other men were slamming weights up and down. Nick wasn't

sure if they were working up their aggression or working it off. In the

showers they shouted esoteric boasts from stall to stall.

Nick had seen their lunch taking place in a murmurous old City

dining room with oak partitions and tailcoated waiters. The restaurant

Sam took him to was so bright, noisy and enormous that he had to

shout out the details of his Ј5,000.

When Sam understood he flinched backwards for a second to

show he'd thought it was going to be something important. 'Well, what

fun,' he said.

It was nearly all men in the restaurant. Nick was glad he'd worn

his best suit and almost wished he'd worn a tie. There were sharp-eyed

older men, looking faindy harassed by the speed and noise, their

dignity threatened by the ferocious youngsters who already had their

hands on a new kind of success. Some of the young men were

beautiful and exciting; a sort of ruthless sex-drive was the way Nickimagined their sense ol their own power. Others were the uglies and

misfits from the school playground who'd made money their best

friend. It wasn't so much a public-school thing. As everyone had to

shout there seemed to be one great rough syllable in the air, a sort of

'wow' or yow'. Sam was somewhat aloof from them but he didn't

disown them. He said, 'I saw a marvellous Frau ohne Schatten in

Frankfurt.'

Ah yes… well, you know my feelings about Strauss,' said Nick.

Sam looked at him disappointedly. 'Oh, Strauss is good,' he said.

'He's very good on women.'

'That wouldn't in itself put me off!' said Nick.

Sam chuckled at the point, but went on, 'The orchestral music's

all about men and the operas are all about women. The only

interesting male parts he wrote are both trouser-roles, Octavian, of

course, and the Composer in Ariadne.'

'Yes, quite,' said Nick, slightly pressured. 'He's not universal. He's

not like Wagner, who understood everything.'

'He's not like Wagner at all,' said Sam. 'But he's still rather a

genius.'

They didn't get round to Nick's money till the end of lunch. 'It's

just a little inheritance,' said Nick. 'I thought it might be fun to see

what could be made of it.'

'Mm,' said Sam. 'Well, property's the thing now.'

'I wouldn't get much for five thousand,' said Nick.

Sam gave a single laugh. 'I'd buy shares in Eastaugh. They're

developing half the City. Share price like the north wall of the Eiger.'

'Going up fast, you mean.'

'Or there's Fedray, of course.'

'What, Gerald's company?' Amazing performance last quarter,

actually.'

Nick felt stirred but on balance uneasy at this idea. 'How does

one go about it?' he said, with a gasp at his own silliness, but a certain

recklessness too, after four glasses of Chablis. 'I wondered if you'd look

after it for me.'

Sam put his napkin on the table and gestured to the waiter. 'OK!'

he said brightly, to show it was a game, a bit of silliness of his own.

'We'll go for maximum profits. We'll see how far we can go.'

Nick fumbled earnesdy for his wallet but Sam put the lunch on

expenses.

'Important investor from out of town,' he said. He had Kesslers'

own platinum MasterCard. Nick watched the procedure with a bead of

anticipation in his eye.

Outside on the pavement, Sam said, 'All right, my dear, send me

a cheque. I'm going this way,' as if Nick had made it clear he was going

the other. Then diey shook hands, and as they did so Sam said, 'Shallwe say three per cent commission,' so tliat they seemed to have

solemnized the arrangement. Nick flushed and grinned because he'd

never thought of that: he minded terribly. It was only later that it came

to seem a good, optimistic thing, with die proper stamp of business to

it. Wani was still 'building up his team' at Ogee, and Nick was silendy

amazed by both his confidence and his lack of urgency. A woman

called Melanie, dressed for a Dallas cocktail party, came in to do the

typing, and artfully protracted her few bits of filing and phoning

through the afternoon. Whenever her mother rang her she said things

were 'hectic'. Wani had a wonderful Talkman, which was a portable

phone he could take with him in the car or even into a restaurant, and

Melanie was encouraged to call him on it if he was in a meeting and

give him some figures. Then there were the boys, Howard and Simon,

not actually a couple, but always referred to together, and acting

together in the comfortable way of schoolboy best chums. Howard was

very tall and square-jawed and Simon was short and owlish and

pretended not to mind being fat. If anyone took them for lovers Simon

shrieked with laughter and Howard explained tactfully that they were

merely good friends. Nick liked nattering with them when he dropped

into the office, and enjoyed their glancing hints that they both rather

fancied him. 'Well, I swim and I work out a couple of times a week,'

Nick would say, leaning back in his chair with the glow of shame that

for him was still the cost of bragging; and Simon would say, 'Oh, I

suppose I ought to try that.' They all carried on as if they'd never

noticed Wani's beauty, and as if they took him entirely seriously. If his

picture appeared in the social pages of Tatler or Harper's and Queen

Melanie passed the magazine round like a validation of their whole

enterprise.

Nick was confident that none of them knew he was sleeping with

the boss, and with ten or more years of practice he could head off

almost any train of talk that might end in a thought-provoking blush.

Part of him longed for the scandalous acclaim, but Wani exacted total

secrecy, and Nick enjoyed keeping secrets. He worked up his earlier

adventures as a cover, and told Howard and Simon a different version

of die Ricky incident, replacing Wani witJh a Frenchman he'd met at

the Pond the previous summer. 'So was he handsome, this Ricky?' said

Simon.

Handsomeness was neither here nor there with Ricky, it was his

look of stupid certainty, the steady heat of him, the way you started in

deep, as though the first kiss was an old kiss interrupted and picked

up again at full intensity - Nick said, 'Oh, magnificent. Dark eyes,

round face, nice big nose-'

'Mmm,' said Simon.

'Perhaps a trifle too punctually, though not yet quite lamentably,

bald.There was a moment's thought before Simon said, 'That's one of

your things, isn't it?'

'What…?' said Nick, with a vaguely wounded look. 'A trifle too…

how did it go?'

'I can't remember what I said… "a trifle too punctually, though

not yet quite lamentably, bald"?'

Howard sat back, with the nod of someone submitting to an easy

old trick, and said, 'So did he have a. beard?'

Tar from it,' said Nick. 'No, no - he spoke, as to cheek and chin,

of the joy of the matutinal steel.'

They all laughed contentedly. It was one of Nick's routines to slip

these plums of periphrasis from Henry James's late works into

unsuitable parts of his conversation, and the boys marvelled at them

and tried feebly to remember them -really they just wanted Nick to say

them, in his brisk but weighty way. 'So what's that from, then?'

'The baldness? It's from The Outcry, it's a novel by Henry James

that no one's ever heard of This was taken philosophically by the boys,

who hadn't really heard of any novels by Henry James. Nick felt he was

prostituting the Master, but then there was an element of self-mockery

in these turns of phrase - it was something he was looking at in his

thesis. He was at the height of a youthful affair with his writer, in love

with his rhythms, his ironies, and his idiosyncrasies, and loving his

most idiosyncratic moments best of all.

'It sounds like Henry James called everyone beautiful and

marvellous,' said Sam, a little sourly, 'from what you say.'

'Oh, beautiful, magnificent… wonderful. I suppose it's really more

what the characters call each other, especially when they're being

wicked. In the later books, you know, they do it more and more, when

actually they're more and more ugly -in a moral sense.'

'Right…' said Simon. 'The worse they are the more they see

beauty in each other.'

'Interesting,' said Howard drily. Nick cast a fond glance at his

little audience. 'There's a mar- vellous bit in his play The High Bid,

when a man says to the butler in a country house, "I mean, to whom

do you beautifully belong"'

Simon grunted, and looked round to see if Melanie could hear.

He said, 'So what was his knob like, then?… You know, Ricky?'

Well, it was certainly worth describing, and embellishing. Nick

wondered for a moment how Henry would have got round it. If he had

fingered so archly at beards and baldness, the fine paired saliences of

his own appearance, what flirtings and flutterings might he not have

performed to conjure up Ricky's solid eight inches? Nick said, 'Oh, it

was… of a dimension,' and watched Simon work what excitement he

could out of that.So he prattled on, mixing up sex and scholarship, and enjoying

his wanderings away from the strict truth. In fact that was really the

fun of it. And it seemed to fit in with the air of fantasy in the Ogee

office, the distant sense of an avoided issue. Nick couldn't quite have

defined his own role there, and he only learned what it was when he

was suddenly invited to Lowndes Square for Sunday lunch. He'd been

dancing at Heaven till three the night before, and was still struggling

with the rubber mask, the wobbly legs, the trill and glare of a beer and

brandy hangover when Bertrand Ouradi grasped his hand very hard

and said, 'Ah, so you're Antoine's aesthete.'

'That's me!' said Nick, returning the handshake as firmly as he

could, and grinning in the hope that even an aesthete might be a good

thing to be if it was sanctioned by his beloved son.

'Ha ha!' said Bertrand, and turned away along the chequered

marble floor of the hall. 'Well, we need our aesthetes.' He stretched out

his arms in a graceful shrug, and seemed to gesture at the shiny

paintings and Empire torcheres as necessary trappings of his position.

He had an aesthete of his own, he seemed to say, on a small retainer.

Nick followed on, wincing at the high polish on everything. He had the

feeling there was only one thing in the house he would ever want to

see. 'I'll join you in a moment,' Bertrand said, with a tiny gesture of

deterrence, as Nick found himself following him into the lavatory.

The dark little woman who'd opened the door led him dutifully

upstairs, and he followed her instead, smiling and doomed. So Wani

himself must have called him his aesthete, that was how he'd

explained him to his parents… He was shown into the pink and gold

confusion of a drawing room. Wani called out, 'Ah, Nick…' like an old

man remembering, and came across to shake his hand.

'Now here's Martine, who's been longing to see you…' (Nick

stopped by the sofa where she was sitting and shook her hand as well

with an exaggerated bow) - 'and you haven't met my mother.' Nick was

aware of himself advancing in the high mirror which hung over the

fireplace, and at a slight tilt, so that the room seemed to climb into a

luminous middle distance. He kept up a wide smile, in self-protection,

and only caught his own eye for an unwise second. It was a dazzled

smile, perhaps even the smile of someone about to make a sequence of

witty remarks. Monique Ouradi said she had been to Mass at

Westminster Cathedral, and smiled back, but seemed not quite ready

yet for mere social communication. 'And this is my Uncle Emile, and

my cousin, little Antoine,' said Wani, as two people came in

unexpectedly behind him. Everything impinged on Nick, but he

couldn't take it in. He shook hands with Uncle Emile, who said

'Enchante' in a coughing sort of voice, and Nick said 'Enchante' back.

Wani rested his hand on his little cousin's head, and the boy looked up

at him adoringly before also shaking hands with Nick. Nick felt a tearrise to his eye at the thought of the child's utter innocence of

hangovers. Nick had decided in the taxi that he would stick to water,

but when Bertrand came in saying, 'Now, drinks!' he at once saw the

point of a bloody Mary. Bertrand moved towards a drinks tray on a far

table and at just that moment an old man in a black jacket hurried in

with a salver and took control of the business. Nick gazed at them with

the patient surmise of the hung-over, a sense of mysterious

displacement and slow revelation. Bertrand could make a mere gesture

towards an action which would at once be performed by someone else -

there was a signalled readiness and then a prompt, never-doubted

relief! It explained everything.

Really it was best to prop oneself at a life-like angle in the corner

of the sofa and let the family talk trail back and forth… At the tall front

windows white net curtains rippled very gently into the room. Outside

on the balcony there were two pointed trees in tubs, and beyond them

the planes in the square, forest-height, filled the entire view. Nick's

thoughts drifted out and perched there.

Litde Antoine had a remote-controlled toy car, which Wani was

encouraging him to crash into the legs of the repro Louis Quinze tables

and chairs. It was a bright-red Ferrari with a whiplike antenna. Nick

crouched forward to watch it haring round, and made histrionic

groans when it banged into the skirting board or got stuck under the

bureau. He was pretending to enjoy the game, and trying to attach

himself to it, but the two boys seemed oblivious of him, Wani almost

snatching the controls now and then to cause a top-speed collision.

Bertrand was standing talking to Uncle Emile, and shuffled obligingly

out of the way a couple of times, with a certain hardening of

expression. In the tilting mirror Nick saw them all, as if from a

privileged angle, like actors on a set.

The parents were fascinating, Bertrand short and handsome as

an old-fashioned film star, and Monique too, very smart and austere,

with a black bob and a diamond brooch, evincing foreignness like a

time-shift, into the chic of twenty years before. There was a subdued

shine to Bertrand's dark suit, which was double-breasted, square-

shouldered, and worn with a crimson breast-pocket handkerchief; he

seemed to resolve into a pattern of squares and lozenges, with his

square jaw, tougher than Wani's, and the same long hawkish nose, all

parts of the pattern. Along his full upper lip he wore a thin black

moustache. The light, low-cut patent slippers he had on seemed to

Nick an eastern note. Wani had several pairs himself, with ridged

rubber soles, 'for walking on marble' as he explained. Bertrand's voice,

strongly accented, casual but coercive, dominated the room.

Martine was sitting at the other end of Nick's sofa, in what felt

like her place', adjacent to Wani's mother. They were speaking quiedy

in French, in a kind of lisdess female conspiracy, while the menboomed and frowned and crashed cars. Nick smiled at them

undemandingly. Martine in her long engagement must have become a

fixture, a passive poor relation, who was waiting and waiting to turn

into a millionairess. She seemed shy of speaking to Nick, for reasons

he could only guess at. Wani's claim that she was longing to see him

had been wishful social prompting - he had a habit of languidly

implanting his wishes.

But Martine, in her mild unexpectant way, had always seemed to

have her own mind. So it was a minute or two before she slid a dish of

olives towards him on the low glass table and said, 'And how are you

getting on?'

'Oh, fine!' said Nick, blinking and smirking. 'I'm feeling a bit

delicate, actually' - and he waggled his glass. 'This is helping. It's a

miracle how it does.' He thought what extraordinary things one said.

She was too delicate herself to take on the subject of his

hangover. 'Work is all fine?' she said.

'Oh - yes… thank you. Well - I'm trying to finish my thesis this

summer, and of course I'm very behind,' he said, as if she must be

familiar with his weaknesses, they seemed to grin out of him as he sat

there. 'I'm so terribly lazy and disorganized.'

'I hope not,' she said, as if he could only be joking. And what is it

concerning, this thesis?'

'Oh… it's concerning - Henry James…' He'd developed a

reluctance that was Jamesian in itself to say exacdy what its subject

was. There was a lot to do with hidden sexuality, which struck him as

better avoided.

'But Antoine says you are working with him too, at the Ogee?'

'Oh, I don't really do very much.'

'You are not writing a film? That is what he says.'

'Well, I'd like to. In a way, yes… We have a few ideas.' He smiled

politely beyond her to take Wani's mother as well into the

conversation. Since it was all he had, he said, Actually, I've always

rather wanted to make a film of The Spoils ofPoynton…' Monique

settled back with an appreciative nod at this, and Nick felt encouraged

to go on, 'I think it Could be rather marvellous, don't you. You know

Ezra Pound said it was just a novel about furniture, meaning to

dismiss it of course, but that was really what made me like the sound

of it!'

Monique sipped at her gin-and-tonic and looked at him with

vague concern, and then, as if searching for the point, glanced about

at the tables and chairs. Of course she had no idea what he was

talking about. Martine said, 'So you want to make a. film about

furniture?'Monique said, raising her voice as the Ferrari tore past her

ankles, 'We saw the latest film, which was so nice, of The Room with

the View.' Ah yes,' said Nick.

'Mainly it took place in Italy, which we love so much, it was

delightful.'

Martine slighdy surprised him by saying, 'I think it's so boring

now, everything takes place in the past.'

'Oh… I see. You mean, all these costume dramas 'Costume

dramas. All of this period stuff. Don't the English actors get fed up

with it - they are all the time in evening dress.'

'It's true,' said Nick. 'Though actually everyone is in evening

dress all the time these days, aren't they.' He was thinking really of

Wani, who owned three dinner jackets and had gone to the Duchess's

charity ball in white tie and tails. He saw he was under attack, since

die Poynton project would naturally involve a lot of dressing up.

Monique Ouradi said, 'I'm sure my son will make a beautiful film,

with your help' - so that Nick felt she was encouraging him in some

larger sense, in the inscrutable way that mothers sometimes do.

'Yes, perhaps you don't know him all that well,' Martine agreed.

'You will need to push and shove him.'

'I'll remember that,' said Nick with a laugh, and amazing

arousing images of Wani in bed glowed in front of him, so that Martine

was like a person in the beam of a slide projector, half exposed, half

coloured over, and a little ridiculous.

The Ferrari smacked into Bertrand's slipper once again, and little

Antoine made it rev and whine as it tried to climb over it, until

Bertrand bent down and picked the toy up and held it like a furious

insect in the air. Antoine came round from behind the sofa, dawdling

as he caught the moment of pure fury on his uncle's face and then

gasping with laughter as the glare curled into a pantomime snarl.

'Enough Ferrari for today,' Bertrand said, and gave it back to the child

with no fear of being disobeyed. Nick felt abruptly nervous at the

thought of crossing Bertrand, and those same naked images of his son

melted queasily away.

Wani said, 'You must be longing to see round the house.'

'Oh, yes,' said Nick, getting up with a flattered smile. He felt that

Wani had almost overdone the coolness and dissimulation, he'd barely

spoken to him, and even now, as he lifted Nick on a wave of secret

intentions, his expression gave nothing away, not even the warmth

that the family might have expected between two old college friends.

'Yes, take him round,' said Bertrand. 'Show him all the bloody

pictures and bloody things we've got.'

'I'd love that,' said Nick, seeing the hidden advantage of the

aesthete persona, even in a house where the good things had (he glare

of reproductions.'Will I go too?' said litde Antoine, who was clearly as fond ol his

cousin's touch and smile as Nick was; but Emile crossly made him

stay.

'We'll begin at the top,' Wani announced as they left the room

and started upstairs two at a time. On the second flight he said

quietly, 'You didn't say where you were last night.'

'Oh, I went to Heaven,' said Nick, with mild apprehension H

telling an innocent truth.

'I wondered,' said Wani, without looking round. 'Did you luck

anyone?'

'Of course I didn't fuck anyone. I was with Howard and Simon.'

'I suppose that follows,' said Wani, and then allowed Nick a liny

smile. 'What did you do, then?'

'Well, you have been to a nightclub, darling,' said Nick in a voice

where sarcasm almost wished itself away. 'You've been photographed

in several with your fiancee. We danced and danced and drank and

drank.'

'Mm. Did you take your shirt off?'

' I think I'll leave that to your jealous imagination,' Nick said.

They went along die landing and into Wani's bedroom. Wani

busded dirough, with a just perceptible air of granting a concession, of

counting on Nick not to look too closely at what the room contained,

and went into a white bathroom beyond.

Nick followed slowly. Everything in the bedroom interested him, it

was dead and alive at once, group photographs, from Harrow, from

Oxford, the Martyrs' Club in their pink coats, Toby and Roddy Shepton

and the rest; and the books, the Arnold and the Arden Shakespeare

and the cracked orange spines of the Penguin Middlemarch and Tom

Jones, the familiar colours and lettering, the series and ideas of all

that phase of their life, stranded and fading here as in a thousand

outgrown bedrooms, never to be looked at again; and the young man's

princely bed, almost a double; and the mirror, where Nick now timidly

checked his own progress - he looked perfectly all right. The

puzzlement of a hangover… the creeping hilarity of the new drink… He

strolled on into the bathroom.

Wani had got his wallet out, and was crushing and chopping a

generous spill of coke on the wide rim of the washbasin. 'A lot of funny

old stuff in there,' he said.

'I know,' said Nick. 'It's a little early for that, isn't it?' It was a

lovely slide they were on with the coke, but sometimes Wani was a bit

serious, a bit premature with it. 'You looked as if you needed it.'

'Well, just a small line,' said Nick. He looked around this room as

well, with tense insouciance. He didn't really want to go down to lunch

in reckless unaccountable high spirits and make a different kind of

fool of himself. But a line wasn't feasibly resisted. He loved theetiquette of the thing, the chopping with a credit card, the passing of

the tighdy rolled note, the procedure courteous and dry, 'all done with

money', as Wani said - it was part of the larger beguilement, and once

it had begun it squeezed him with its charm and promise. Being

careful not to nudge him as he worked, he hugged Wani lighdy from

behind and slid a hand into his left trouser pocket. 'Oh fuck,' said

Wani distantly. In about three seconds he was hard, and Nick too,

pressing against him. Everything they 11 ul was clandestine, and

therefore daring and therefore childlike, since it wasn't really daring at

all. Nick didn't know how lung it could go on - he didn't dream of it

stopping, but it was silly and degrading at twenty-three to be sneaking

sex like this, like a pickpocket as Wani said. But then again, on a

hungover morning, moronic with lust, he saw a beauty in the slyness

of II. I here were several pound coins in the flannel depths of the

pocket, and they tumbled round Nick's hand as he stroked W. iui's

dick.

Wani drew the powder into two long lines. 'You'd better i lose the

door,' he said.

Nick lingeringly disengaged himself. 'Yeah, we've only got a

minute.' He pushed the door to and came forward to take the lolled

Ј20 note.

'Turn the key,' said Wani. 'That little boy follows me everywhere.'

'Ah, who can blame him,' said Nick graciously.

Wani gave him a narrow look - he was often dissatisfied by

praise. They stooped in turn and zipped up the powder, and then stood

for a minute, sniffing and nodding, reading each other's faces for

comparison and confirmation of the effect. Wani's features seemed to

soften, there was a subde but involuntary smile that Nick loved to see

at the moment of achievement and surrender. He grinned back at him,

and reached out 10 stroke his neck, and with his other hand rubbed

playfully at Wani's oblique erection. They were on to such a good thing.

I le said, 'This is fucking good stuff.'

'God yes,' said Wani. 'Ronnie always comes through.'

'I hope you haven't given me too much,' Nick said; though over

the next thirty seconds, holding Wani to him and kissing him

lusciously, he knew that everything had become possible, and that the

long demanding lunch would be a waltz and that he would play with

Bertrand the tycoon and charm them all. He sighed and pulled Wani's

left arm up to look at his famous watch. 'We'd better go down,' he said.

'OK.' Wani stepped back, and quickly undid his trousers.

'Darling, they're waiting for us…' But Wani's look was so

fathomlessly interesting to him, command and surrender on another

deeper level, the raw needs of so aloof a man, the silly sense of

privilege in their romantic secret - Nick knelt anyway, and turned himround in his hands, and pulled his pants, die loose old-fashioned

drawers that Wani wore, down between his thighs.

On die way downstairs they met litde Antoine, who had been

dying to look for them and was going into every room in a mime of

happy exasperation. It had taken a couple of flushes to dispose of the

rubber, and they had got out with thirty seconds to spare. The boy

claimed them and then wanted to know what they were laughing

about. 'I was showing Uncle Nick my old photographs,' Wani said.

'They were rather funny,' said Nick, pierced by the generous twist

to his lie, and also, absurdly, by the missed opportunity of seeing the

photos. 'Oh,' said little Antoine, perhaps with a similar regret.

'You'd better have a quick look in here,' Wani said, and pushed

open the door of the room above the drawing room, which was his

parents' bedroom. He swept a hand over the switches and all the lights

came on, the curtains began to close automatically and 'Spring' from

The Four Seasons was heard as if coming from a great distance. Little

Antoine clearly loved this part, and asked to be allowed to do it all

again whilst Nick glanced humorously around. Everything was

luxurious and he feigned dismay at his own deep footprints in the

carpet. The richness of the room was its mixture of shiny pomp, glazed

swagged curtains, huge mirrors, onyx and glaring gilt, with older,

rougher and Inner things, things perhaps they'd brought from Beirut,

Persian rugs and fragments of Roman statuary. ()n top of a small chest

of drawers there was a white marble head of Wani, presumably, done

at about the same age as litde Antoine was now, the wider, plumper

face of a child. It was charming and Nick thought if he could have

anything in the house, any object, it would be that. Bertrand and

Monique had separate dressing rooms - each of them, in its order and

abundance, like a department of a shop. 'You'd better loo*c at this too,'

Wani said, showing him a large yellow painting of Buckingham Palace

that hung on the landing.

'It's a Zitt, I see,' said Nick, reading the signature dashed across

the right-hand corner of the sky. 'He's rather buying into Zitt,' said

Wani. 'Oh - well, it's absolutely ghasdy,' said Nick. 'Is it?' said Wani.

'Well, try and break it to him gently.'

They went down into the dining room, with little Antoine going in

before them, lolling his head from side to side and saying 'eb-solutely

gharsdy over and over to himself. Wani caught him from behind and

gave him an enjoyable strangle.

Nick was placed on Moniques right, beside little Antoine, with

Uncle Emile opposite. Uncle Emile had the air of a less successful

brother, baggy and gloomy rather than gleamingly triangular. But it

turned out that in fact he was Moniques brother-in-law, on a visit of

indefinite duration from Lyon, where he ran an ailing scrap-metal

business. Nick took in this story and smiled along the table as if theywere being told a sitnmeringly good joke; it was only Wani's tiny frown

that made him suspect he might be looking too exhilarated by his tour

of the house. It was the magic opposite, all this, of the jolted widess

hangover state of half an hour earlier. All their secrets seemed to fuse

and glow. Though for Wani himself, severely self-controlled, it seemed

hardly worth having taken the drug. The litde old couple were bringing

in elaborately fanned slices of melon and orange. It was clear that

citrus fruits were treated with special acclaim in the house; here as in

the drawing room there was a daringly stacked obelisk of oranges and

lemons on a side-table. The effect was both humble and proprietorial.

Another Zitt, of the Stock Exchange and the Mansion House, done in

mauve, hung between the windows.

'I see you're admiring my husband's new Zitt,' said Monique, with

a hint of mischief, as if she would value a second opinion. Ah yes…!'

'He's really an Impressionist painter, you know.'

'Mm, and almost, somehow, an Expressionist one, too,' said Nick.

'He's extremely contemporary,' said Monique. 'He's a bold colourist,'

said Nick. 'Very bold…'

'So, Nick,' said Bertrand, spreading his napkin, and steadying his

swivelling array of knives on the glassy polish of the table top: 'how is

our friend Gerald Fedden?' The 'our' might have referred to just the

two of them, or to a friendship with the family, or to a vaguer sense

that Gerald was on their side.

'Oh, he's absolutely fine,' said Nick. 'He's in great form. Wildly

busy - as always…!' Bertrand's look was humorous but persistent, as if

to show that they could be candid with each other; having ignored him

for the first half-hour he was turning the beam of his confidence on

him, with the instinct of a man who gets his way. 'You live in his

house, no?'

'Yes, I do. I went to stay for a few weeks and I've ended up

staying for nearly three years!'

Bertrand nodded and shrugged, as if this was quite a normal

arrangement. Uncle Emile himself, perhaps, might turn out to be just

such a visitor. 'I know where it is. We're invited to the concert,

whatever it is, next week, which we'll be charmed to come to.'

'Oh, good,' said Nick. 'I think it should be quite fun. The pianist

is a young star from Czechoslovakia.'

Bertrand frowned. 'I know they say he's a bloody good man.'

'No, actually… oh, Gerald, you mean - yes, absolutely!'

'He's going to go to the very top of the ladder. Or almost to the

top. What's your opinion of that?'

'Oh - oh, I don't know,' said Nick. 'I don't know anything about

politics.'

Bertrand twitched. 'I know you're the bloody aesthete Nick was

often pressed for insider views on Gerald's character and prospects,and as a rule he was wafflingly loyal. Now lie said, 'I do know he's

madly in love with the Prime Minister. But it's not quite clear if the

passion is returned. She may be playing hard to get.' Little Antoine did

the furtive double-take of a child who is not supposed to have heard

something, and Bertrand's frown deepened over his melon. It occurred

to Nick that he was in a household with a very serious view of sexual

propriety. But it was Monique who said, Ah, they're all in love with her.

She has blue eyes, and she hypnotizes them.'

Her own dark gaze went feelingly down the table to her husband,

and then to her son. 'It's only a sort of courtly love, isn't it,' said Nick.

'Yah…' said Wani with a nod and a short laugh. 'You've met the lady, I

imagine,' Bertrand said.

'I never have,' said Nick, humbly but cheerfully.

Bertrand made a pinched plump expression with his lips and

stared into an imaginary distance for a moment before saying, 'You

know, of course, she's a good friend of mine.'

'Oh, yes, Wani told me you knew her.'

'Of course, she is a great figure of the age. But she is a very kind

woman too.'

He had the mawkish look of a brute who praises the kindness of

another brute.

'She has always been very kind to me, hasn't she, my love? And

of course I intend to return the compliment.'

'Aha…'

'I mean in a practical way, in a financial way. I saw her the other

day, and…' he waved his left hand impatiendy to show he wouldn't be

going into what had been said; but then went on, with weird candour,

'I will make a significant donation to the party funds, and… who

knows what then.' He stabbed and swallowed a slice of orange. 'I

believe you have to pay back, my friend, if you have been given help' -

and he stabbed the air with his empty fork.

'Oh, quite,' said Nick. 'No, I'm sure you do.' He felt he had

inadvertently become the focus of some keen resentment of Bertrand's.

'You won't hear any complaints about the lady in this house.'

'Well, nor in mine, I assure you!'

Nick glanced around at the submissive faces of the others, and

thought that actually, at Kensington Park Gardens, the worship of 'the

lady, the state of mesmerized conjecture into which she threw Gerald,

was offset at least by Catherine's monologues about homeless people

and Rachel's wry allusions to 'the other woman' in her husband's life.

'So he's on the up-and-up, our friend Gerald,' Bertrand said more

equably.

'What's his role actually?'

'He's a minister in the Home Office,' Nick said.

'That's good. He did that bloody quickly.''Well, he's ambitious. And he has the… the lady's eye.'

'I'll have a chat with him when I come to the house. I've met him,

of course, but you can introduce us again.'

'I'd be happy to,' said Nick; 'by all means.' The black-jacketed

man removed the plates, and just then Nick felt the steady power of

the coke begin to fade, it was something else taken away, the elation

grew patchy and dubious. In four or live minutes it would yield to a

flatness bleaker than the one it had replaced.

However, the wine was served soon after, so (here was an

amusing sense of relief and dependency. Bertrand himself, Nick noted,

drank only Malvern water.

Nick tried for a while to talk to Emile about scrap metal, which

tested his Cornelian French to the limits; but Bertrand, who had been

looking on with an insincere smile and a palpable sense of neglect,

broke in, 'Nick, Nick, I don't know what you two young men are getting

up to, I don't like to ask loo many questions…'

'Oh…'

'But I hope it's soon going to start bringing in some money.'

'It will, Papa,' said Wani quickly, while Nick blushed in horror at

the chasm he'd just hopped over, and said, 'I'm the aesthete,

remember! I don't know about the money vide of things.' He tried to

smile out through his blush, but he saw that Bertrand's little

challenges were designed to show him up in a very passive light.

Bertrand said, 'You're the writing man-' which again was something

allowed for, an item in a budget, but under scrutiny and probably

dispensable.

Nick felt writing men were important, and though he had nothing

to show for it as yet he said again, 'That's me. ' He icali/. cd belatedly,

and rather sickeningly, that he would have nprovise, to answer to

Wani's advantage, to give body to what his father must have thought

were merely fantasies. 'You know I want to start this magazine, Papa,'

Wani said.

'Ah - well,' Bertrand said, with a puff. 'Yes, a magazine can he

good. But there is a whole world of difference, my son, i mining a

magazine than having your bloody face in a magazine!'

'It wouldn't be like that,' Wani said, somehow both crossly and

courteously. All right, but then probably it won't sell.'

'It's going to be an art magazine - very high quality photography -

very high quality printing and paper - all extraordinary exotic things,

buildings, weird Indian sculptures.' He searched mentally through the

list Nick had made for him.

'Miniatures. Everything.' Nick felt that even with his hangover he

could have made this speech better himself, but there was something

touching and revealing in how Wani made his pitch. 'And who do yousuppose is going to want to buy that?' Wani shrugged and spread his

hands. 'It will be beautiful.'

Nick put in the forgotten line. 'People will want to collect the

magazine, just as they would want to collect the things that are

pictured in it.'

Bertrand took a moment or two to see whether this was nonsense

or not. Then he said, All this bloody top-quality stuff sounds like a lot

of money. So you have to charge ten pounds, fifteen pounds for your

magazine.' He took an irritable swig from his glass of water.

Wani said, 'Top-quality advertising. You know, Gucci, Carder…

Mercedes? reaching for names far more lustrous than Watteau or

Borromini. 'Luxury goods are what people want these days. That's

where the money is.'

'So you've got a name for the bloody thing.'

'Yah, we're calling it Ogee, like the company,' Wani said, very

straightforwardly.

Bertrand pursed his plump lips. 'I don't get it, what is it…? "Oh

Gee!",' is that it?' he said, bad-tempered but pleased to have made a

joke. 'You'll have to tell me again because no one's ever heard of this

bloody "ogee".'

'I thought he was saying "Orgy",' said Martine. 'Orgy?!' said

Bertrand.

Wani looked across the table, and since this unheard-of name

had originally been his idea Nick said, 'You know, it's a double curve,

such as you see in a window or a dome.' He made the shape of half an

hourglass with his hands raised in the air, just as Monique, in one of

her occasional collusive gestures, did the same and smiled at him as if

salaaming. 'It goes first one way, and then the other,' she said.

'Exactly. It originates in… well, in the Middle East, in fact, and

then you see it in English architecture from about the fourteenth

century onwards. It's like Hogarth's line of beauty,' Nick said, with a

mounting sense of fatuity, 'except that there are two of them, of

course… I suppose the line of beauty's a sort of animating principle,

isn't it…' He looked around and swooped his hand suggestively in the

air. It wasn't perhaps the animating principle here.

Bertrand set down his knife and fork, and gave a puncturing

smile. He seemed to savour his irony in advance, as well as the

uncertainty, the polite smiles of anticipation, on the faces of the

others. He said, 'You know, um… Nick, I came to this country, twenty

years ago nearly, 1967, not a bloody good time in Lebanon

incidentally, just to see what the chances were in your famous

swinging London. So I look around, you know the big thing then is the

supermarkets are starting up, you know, self-service, help-yourself -

you're used to it, you probably go to one every bloody other day: but

then…!'Nick simpered obediently at the notion of how accustomed he

was. He wasn't sure if the Ogee talk was over, or being treated to some

large cautionary digression.

He said coolly, 'No, I can see what a… what a revolution there's

been.'

Like other egotists Bertrand cast only a momentary, doubting

glance at the possibility of irony aimed at himself, and stamped on it

anyway. 'Of course it is! It's a bloody revolution.' He turned to gesture

the old man to pour more wine for the others, and watched with an air

of practised forbearance as the burgundy purled into the cut-glass

goblets. 'You know, I had a fruit shop, up in Finchley, to start off with.'

He waved his other arm fondly at that distant place and time. 'Bought

it up, flew in the fresh citrus, which was our own product by the way,

we grew all that, we didn't have to buy it off bloody nobody. Lebanon, a

great place for growing fruit. You know, all that's come out of Lebanon

in the last twenty years? Fruit and brains, fruit and talent. No one with

any brains or any talent wants to stay in the bloody place.'

'Mm, the civil war, you mean.' He'd meant to mug up a bit on the

past twenty years of Lebanese history, but Wani grew pained and

evasive when he mentioned it, and now here it came. He didn't want to

concur in his host's harsh judgement on his own country, it was itself

a bit of a minefield.

Monique said, 'Our house was knocked down, you know, by a

bomb,' as though not expecting to be heard.

'Oh, how terrible,' said Nick gratefully, since it was another voice

in the room. 'Yes,' she said, 'it was very terrible.'

'As Antoine's mother says,' said Bertrand, 'our family house was

virtually destroyed.'

'Was it an old house?' Nick asked her.

'Yes, it was quite old. Not as old as this, of course' - and she gave

a little shiver, as if Lowndes Square dated from the Middle Ages. 'We

have photographs, many…'

'Oh, I'd love to see them,' said Nick, 'I'm so interested in that kind

of thing.'

Anyway,' said Bertrand, '1969 I open the first Mira Mart, up in

Finchley, up in Finchley, it's still there today, you can go and see it

any time. You know what the secret of it is?'

'Um…'

'That's what I saw, that's what you got in London, back then -

twenty years ago.

You got the supermarkets and you got the old local shops, the

corner shops going back hundreds of years. So what do I do, I put the

two bloody things together, supermarket and corner shop, and I make

the mini-mart - all the range of stuff you get in Tcsco or whatever thebloody place, but still with the local feeling, corner-shop feeling.' He

held up his glass and drank as if to his own ingenuity.

And you know the other thing, of course?'

'Oh!-urn…'

'The hours.'

'The hours, yes…'

'Open early and close up late, get people before work and get

people after work, not just the dear bloody housewifes going out for a

packet of ciggies and a chit-chat.'

Nick wasn't sure if this was Bertrand's special tone for talking to

an idiot or if its simplicity reflected his own vision of affairs. He said,

critically, 'Some of them aren't like that, though, are they? The one in

Notting Hill, for instance, that we always go to. It's quite grand' - and

he shrugged in dulled respect.

'Well, now you're talking about the Food Halls! It's two different

bloody things: the Mira Marts and the Mira Food Halls… The latter, the

Food Halls, being for the bloody rich, posh areas. We got that round

here. You know where that comes from.'

'Harrods,' said Wani.

Bertrand gave him a quick frown. 'Of course it does. The mother

of all bloody food halls in the whole world!'

'I love to go to Harrods Food Hall,' Monique said, 'and look at the

big… homards 'The lobsters,' muttered Wani, without looking at her,

as though it was his accepted function to interpret for his mother.

'Oh, I know!' said Martine, with a smile of faint-hearted rebellion.

Nick saw them often doing it, days probably were spent in Harrods,

just round the corner but another world of possibilities, something for

everyone who could afford it.

Bertrand gave them a patient five seconds, like a strict but fair-

minded schoolmaster, and then said, 'So now, you know, Nick, I got

thirty-eight Mira Food Halls all round the country, Harrogate I got one,

Altrincham I just opened one; and more than eight hundred bloody

Mira Marts.' He was suddenly very genial - he almost shrugged as well

at the easy immensity of it. 'It's a great story, no?'

'Amazing,' said Nick. 'It's kind of you to tell me a story you must

know so well' - making his face specially solemn. He saw the bright

orange fascia of the Notting Hill Food Hall, where Gerald himself

sometimes popped round late at night with a basket and a bashful

look as though everyone recognized him, shopping for pate and Swiss

chocolates. And he saw the corner Mira Mart in Barwick, with its

sadder produce in sloping racks, remote poor cousins of the

Knightsbridge obelisks, and its dense stale smell of a low-ceilinged

shop where everything is sold together. An orange, of course, topped

by two green leaves, was an emblem of the chain. Then he looked at

Wani, who was eating pickily (coke killed the appetite) and entirelywithout expression. His eyes were on his plate, or on the gleaming red

veneer just beyond it; he might have been listening thoughtfully to his

father, but Nick could tell he had slipped away into a world his father

had never imagined. His submissiveness to Bertrand's tyranny was the

price of his freedom. Uncle Emile, too, looked down, as if properly

crushed by his brother-in-law's initiative and success; Nick himself

quickly saw the charm of running off to Harrods with the ladies.

Then Bertrand actually said, 'All this one day will be yours, my

son.' Ah, my poor boy!' Monique protested.

'I know, I know,' said Bertrand, nettled, and then smirking rather

awfully.

'That day is doubtless a long way off. Let him have his magazines

and his films.

Let him learn his business.'

Wani said, 'Thank you, Papa,' but his smile was for his mother,

and his look, briefly and eloquently, as the smile faded, for Nick. He

was at home with his father's manner, his uncontradicted bragging,

but to let a friend in on the act showed a special confidence in the

friend. Wani rarely blushed, or showed embarrassment of any kind,

beyond the murmured self-chastisement with which he offered a seat

to a lady or confessed his ignorance of some trivial thing. Nick

absorbed his glance, and the secret warmth of what it acknowledged.

'No, no,' said Bertrand, with a quick tuck of the chin as if he'd

been unfairly criticized, 'Wani is in all things his own master. At the

moment fruit and veggies don't seem to interest him. Fine.' He spread

his hands. 'Just as getting married to his bloody lovely bride doesn't

seem to interest him. But we sit back, and we wait on the fullness of

time. Eh, Wani?' And he laughed by himself at his own frankness, as

though to soften its effect, but in fact acknowledging and heightening

it.

'We're going to make a lot of money first,' Wani said. 'You'll see.'

Bertrand looked conspiratorially at Nick. 'Now you know, Nick,

the big simple thing about money? The really big thing-'

Nick placed his napkin gently on the table, and murmured, 'I'm

terribly sorry… I must just…' - pushing back his chair and wondering

if this was even worse manners in Beirut than it was here.

'Eh…? Ah, weak bloody bladder,' said Bertrand, as if he'd

expected it. 'Just like my son.' Nick was ready to take on any

imputation that enabled him to leave the room; and Wani, with a

bored, almost impatient look, got up too and said, Til show you the

way'The piano tuner came in the morning, and then the pianist herself,

litde Nina Something-over as Gerald called her, came from two to five

to practise: it was a wearing day. The tuner was a cardiganed sadist

who tutted at the state of the piano and took a dim view in general of

its tone, the tiny delay and bell-like bloom that were its special charm.

('Oh,' said Rachel, 'I know Liszt enjoyed playing it…') From time to time

he would break off his pitiless ascent of the keyboard to dash out juicy

chords and arpeggios, with the air of a frustrated concert pianist,

which was even worse than the tuning. Litde Nina, too, drove them

mad with her fragments of Chopin and Schubert, which went on long

enough to catch and lull the heart before they dropped it again, over

and over. She had a lot of temperament and a terrifying left hand. She

played the beginning of Chopin's Scherzo No .2 like a courier starting a

motorbike. "When she'd finished Nick helped Elena bring up and

arrange the old gilt ballroom chairs from die trou degloire. The sofas

were trundled into new alignments, tall flower arrangements mounted

the stairs on Elena's legs, and the room took on an unnerving

appearance of readiness. Nick had one more task to do, which was to

phone Ronnie, and he eyed the clock, in the run-up to six, as jumpily

as if he was giving a recital himself.

He went out to a phone box on Ladbroke Grove, but it was back-

to-back with another and he thought perhaps the man who was in it

would hear what he said; he seemed almost to be expecting him, since

he wasn't evidently talking, just leaning there. And it was still very

close to home; it seemed to implicate Gerald. He went on down the hill,

into a street that looked far more amenable to drug-dealing, where a

man who could well have been an addict was just coming out of the

phone box on the corner. Nick went in after him, and stood in the

stuffy half-silence, fiddling in his wallet for the paper with the number

on it, and wishing he'd already had a line of coke, or at least a gin-and-

tonic, to put him in charge. He wished Wani could have done this, as

usual, in the car, with 1 lie Talkman. Having given Nick the money,

Wani liked to set him challenges, which were generally tasks he could

more easily have done himself. Wani claimed never to have used a

phone box, just as he had never been on a bus, which he said must be

a ghasdy experience. So he had never breathed this terrible air, black

plastic, dead piss, old smoke, the compound breath of the mouthpiece-

Yep.'

'Oh, hello… is that Ronnie?' Yeah.'

'()h, hi! It's Nick here,' said Nick, with an urgent smile at a spot

low down on the wall. It was like calling someone you'd landed at aparty, but much more frightening. 'Do you leinember - I'm a friend of,

um, Antony's…'

Ronnie thought for quite a while, while Nick panted riuouragingly

into the phone. 'I don't know any Antony. No. You don't mean Andy?'

Nick tittered. 'You know - sort of Lebanese guy, has a white

Mercedes… sometimes calls himself Wani…'

'All right, yeah - enough said! Yeah, Ronnie…' said I «" 1111 ic,

and chuckled affectionately, or with a hint of ridicule, MI 1 hat Nick

didn't know for a moment what he thought of Wani himself, any view

of him seemed plausible. 'The man with the portable telephone. He's

Lebanese, is he? I didn't know he was Lebanese.'

'Wani? Well actually he was born in Beirut, but he went to school

here, and in fact he's lived in London since he was ten,' said Nick,

getting snagged as usual in a sub-clause to a more important

sentence.

'… right…' said Ronnie after a bit. 'Well I expect you'll be wanting

to see me then. About something.'

The great thing about Ronnie, as Wani said, was that he always

came through. The stuff was tip-top, he dealt to some big names, and

if the price, at one-twenty a gram, was a little steep, the mark-down at

three-fifty for a quarter-ounce was a deal indeed. (A quarter-ounce,

seven grams, was the only metric equivalent Nick had yet been able to

memorize.) The downside of Ronnie was a strange delaying manner

that would have seemed sleepy if it hadn't been also a kind of

vigilance.

He never rushed, he was never on time, and he had a puzzled

porous memory. Nick had only met him once, when they'd driven

round the block in his red Toyota and he'd watched the simple way the

exchange was made. Ronnie was a cockneyfied Jamaican, with a tall

shaved head and doleful eyes. He talked a lot about girlfriend troubles,

perhaps just to make things clear. His voice was an intimate murmur,

and since he was giving them something they wanted he had seemed

to Nick both seductive and forgivable.

Today, it all felt much less happy. Ronnie asked him to ring back

ten minutes later, when the routine of the first call was repeated

almost verbatim, and again ten minutes after that, to check he was on

his way. After each t all Nick hung around the streets and felt glaringly

criminal as well as vulnerable, with Ј350 rolled up tight in

rubber bands in his pocket. The area seemed suddenly to be infested

with police cars. For several minutes a helicopter hammered overhead.

Nick wondered how he would explain the money x» the police, then

thought it was more likely they would wait until he got into the car

before they made their move. He wondered if Gerald would be able to

keep it out of the papers, if they'd be able to get Gerald into the papers,

it was more than vulgar and unsafe, he could lose his seat if it cameout that drugs were being taken in his house. How long would the

sentence be? Ten years? For a first offence… And tlien, god, how would

a pretty little poof with an Oxford accent survive in prison? They'd all

be after his arse. He saw himself sobbing in a doorless lavatory. But

perhaps a character reference from Professor Ettrick would help, or

even someone at the Home Office - Gerald might not abandon him

entirely! He was already at the place, the corner by the Chepstow

Casde - a minute or two early. He perched at one of the picnic tables

outside. The pub itself was shut, bleared light came out through

plastic sheeting as work went on after hours, a new brewery had

bought it, they were knocking the litde old bars into one big room to

make it more spacious and unwelcoming. Twelve minutes went past. It

was very suspicious the way that man at the bus stop kept glancing at

him and never got on a bus. Ronnie was getting careless, his phone

was obviously tapped, it would be what they called a knock, when

everyone in the street, the blind man, the pizza boy, the lady with the

dog, were revealed in a second as plain-clothes officers. The car pulled

up, Nick strolled over and got in and they cruised off round the block.

'How's it going. Rick?' Ronnie said, his mournful head not moving

but his glance going from side to side and back to the rear-view mirror.

Nick laughed and cleared his throat. 'Very well, thanks,' he said. They

sat low in the Celica, Ronnie long-legged, arms on his knees, like a boy

in a go-kart, long fingers turning the wheel by its crossbar rather than

the rim. 'Yeah?' said Ronnie.

'Well, that's good. How's that Ronnie, then?'

Nick laughed nervously again. 'Oh, he's fine, he's very busy.' It

was a wonderfully approximate world the real Ronnie lived in, and

perhaps he liked it that way, his customers all nicknames and

mishearings, it was tactful and safe.

He looked in the mirror again, and at the same time his left hand

went to his waistcoat pocket and then across to Nick, with the neat

little thing held invisible under it. Nick was ready for that but he had

to grope for the roll of notes in his pocket. Ronnie accelerated through

an amber light, and it struck Nick he was breaking the law by not

wearing a seat-belt. Ronnie wasn't wearing his either, that was the sort

of world he was moving in, and he thought it might hurt his feelings if

he belatedly buckled up. The journey must be nearly over, and the

chances were they wouldn't have a prang. Awful, though, to get pulled

over for a seatbelt violation, and then be questioned, and then

searched… He nudged Ronnie's arm and he took the money and lost it,

again without looking.

They pulled in behind the church at the crown of Ladbroke

Grove, in the shadowy crescent of plane trees. 'Thanks very much,'

said Nick. He really had to rush but he didn't want to seem unfriendly.Ronnie was looking out thoughtfully through the windscreen. 'This is

an old church, Rick,' he said. 'This must be old.'

'Yeah - well, it's Victorian, I suppose, isn't it,' said Nick, who in

fact knew all about it.

'Yeah?' said Ronnie, and nodded. 'God, there's some old stuff

round here.'

Nick couldn't tell quite what he was getting at. He said, 'It's not

that old - sort of 1840s?' He knew not everybody had a sense of

history, a useful image, as he had, of the centuries like rooms in

enfilade. For half a second he glimpsed what he knew about the

church, that the reredos was designed by Aston Webb, that it was built

on the site of the grandstand of a long-vanished racetrack. It was a

knobbly Gothic oddity in a street of stucco. 'I'm telling you, I'm moving

up here, too fucking right I am,' said Ronnie, in his protesting

murmur.

'Mm, you should,' said Nick, unsure if he was humouring him or

sharing a wry joke, but excited anyway at the thought of having him as

a neighbour. He was sexy, Ronnie, in his haggard spectral way… 'Get

away from that woman, I'm telling you' - he shook his head and

laughed illusionlessly .1 hope you're not having woman trouble, do

you, Rick?'

'Oh… no… I don't,' said Nick. 'Still bad, is it?'

'I'm telling you,' said Ronnie.

Nick could see that Ronnie might be a bit of a handful, and that

his line of work might make a certain kind of girl uneasy. He wanted to

lean over and get out his probably long and beautiful penis and give

him the consolation that a man so perfecdy understands - right here,

in the car, in the dappled shade across the windscreen. But Ronnie

had to get on - he offered his hand, coming down at an angle from a

high raised elbow.

Nick got out of the car and turned to walk the two hundred yards

to the house.

In the street the sense of danger squeezed about him again, and

the people who passed him as they came home from work frowned and

sneered as they saw that he held a tiny parcel, a crass mistake, a

heavy sentence, gripped tight in his hand in his pocket, ready, at the

dreaded moment, to be flung down a drain. But when he turned up the

steps and looked to left and right he had a gathering rapturous feeling

he had got away with it. Of course nobody knew, it was totally safe,

nobody had seen, it was nothing but an unknown car that slipped past

the end of the street in a second. And now a flood of pleasure was

waiting to be released.

He rushed through the hall, up the stone stairs, there were

voices already in the drawing room, the moan and yap of the first

guests' opening platitudes, up and up, up the familiar creaking atticstairs, and into his hot still room that was waiting for him with

birdsong through the window and the bed reflected in the wardrobe

mirror. He closed the door, locked the door, and over a smiling five

minutes changed his shirt, put in cufflinks, tied a tie and pulled on his

suit trousers, all intercut with tipping out, chopping and snorting a

trial line of the new stuff, hiding the rest in his desk, unrolling the

banknote and rolling it up backwards, wiping the desk with his finger

and his finger on his gums. Then he shrugged on the jacket, tied his

shoes, leapt downstairs and talked brilliantly to Sir Maurice Tipper

about the test match. Nick sat at the end of a row, like an usher. He

could see out onto the first-floor landing, where little Nina Glaserova,

with her long red hair in a braid down her back, was standing and

staring, not into the room but at a clear point in the dark oak of the

threshold. Her eyes seemed to work straight through it, into a space

where Chopin, Schubert and Beethoven waited for justice to be done to

them. She listened as Gerald told the story - father a notable dissident

- imprisoned - travelling scholarship withheld - without seeming to

recognize it as her own, or knowing of course that dissident wasn't

generally a term of approval in Gerald's book; artistic freedom was

unem-phatically invoked, and there was a joke, which she didn't get,

though it made her look up, into the room, at the rows of utterly

unknown laughing people, people of great consequence perhaps, whom

it was her mission to enthral. The clapping started, Nick gave her an

encouraging nod, she paused for a second, then scuttled in through

the audience, looking so much like a determined waif that a sigh of

starded tenderness seemed to sound like an undertone of the

applause. She gave a momentary bow, sal down and began

immediately - it was almost funny as well as thrilling when the

motorbike summons of tlu- (ihopin Sihcr/. o rang out. There were

about fifty people in the room, a loose coalition of family, colleagues

and friends. Nina Glaserova was an unknown quantity, and Gerald's

claims for her were political as much as artistic. He hoped for a

success but he wasn't making a great social effort.

Beside Nick a thin-lipped man from the Cabinet Office groped for

his programme sheet as if the music had come as a slighdy unpleasant

surprise - he made a litde scuffle with his chair and the paper. One or

two people snapped their glasses cases as they tried well-meaningly to

catch up with the leaping flood of sound. It was all so sudden and

serious, the piano was quivering, the sound throbbed through the

floorboards, and there were hints on some faces that it could be

thought rather bad form to make quite so much noise indoors.

Nick could see the far curve of the front row, with Lady Partridge

at the end, next to Bertrand Ouradi and his wife, and then Wani, in

steep profile against the raised piano lid. Catherine, just behind them,

was leaning on her boyfriend Jasper's shoulder, and Polly Thompsonwas casually squashing against Jasper from the other side. Then there

was Morgan, a steely young woman from Central Office whom Polly

had brought along as if no one would be surprised. To see Nina herself

Nick had to crane round the big white bonce of Norman Kent, who was

as sensitive to music as he was to conservatives, and kept shifting in

his seat.

His frayed denim jacket collar made its own effect among a dozen

grades of pinstripe. Penny was sitting beside him, and pressing against

him to calm him and to thank him for coming. Nick wondered what he

thought of Nina, he wondered what he thought of her himself, too

assailed by the sound, by the astounding phenomenon of it, to know if

she was really any good. Here came the opening again, the admonitory

rumble, the reckless, accurate leap. She had clearly been ferociously

schooled, she was like those implacable litde gymnasts who sprang out

from behind the Iron Curtain, curling and vaulting along the keyboard.

As the sadly questioning middle section gathered weight, she put on a

fearless turn of speed. She gestured very hard at her effects, and made

you doubt she knew their cause. For the programme sheet Nick had

rifled some old sleeve notes, to give a professional look to things, and

he had put in Schumann's description of the B-flat minor Scherzo as

'overflowing with tenderness, boldness, love and contempt'. He played

the words through to himself as he gazed across the rows at his lover's

head.

When the Chopin had finished, Nina bowed and rushed out, and

Nick saw her on the landing again, waiting in fact like someone about

to jump, too young and high-minded to care very much for applause,

or to know what to do with it.

Gerald was clapping in the loud, steady, hollow way he had. One

or two people stood up, the man from the Cabinet Office took in the

next item on the agenda, and the lady behind Nick said, 'No, sadly we

re at Badminton that weekend.'

It was a couple of Schubert Impromptus that followed, the C

minor and the stream-like E-flat major, which requires such

unfaltering evenness of touch.

Nick had heard her play through the very beginning of it a dozen

times, until he was screaming at her in his head to go on. Well, now

she did, watching her own hands busying up and down the keyboard

as if they were astonishing automata that she had wound up and set

in motion, in perfect synchrony, to produce this silvery flow of sound.

She made it seem a bit like an exercise, but you could tell, if you

listened, that the piece was life itself, in its momentum and its

evanescence. The modulations in it were like instants of dizziness.

Nick felt she played the B minor middle section too abruptly, so that

the visionary coherence of the thing was spoiled.He found himself staring at Gerald's mother and Wani's father,

who made a funny pair. Bertrand was sitting there in the lustrous

housing of his suit, very still, in respect for the tedious protocol of the

event, with only his thin black moustache to betray his impatience as

he pursed and flexed his lips in unconscious little kisses. Beside him

Lady Partridge, her head tilted up, her face a mask of blusher and

brown powder, like someone just back from a skiing holiday, was also

clearly elsewhere. From time to time she glanced sideways at her

neighbour, and at his drably dressed wife. Nick knew it Was upsetting

for her to sit next to what she always called an A-rab, but something

seemed to kindle in her too at the closeness of so much money.

They had decided before the concert that they would do without

an interval, so after the Schubert Gerald stood up and said in his

genial, penetrating tone, the tone of a commander among friends, that

they would go straight into the final item, Beethoven's 'Farewell'

Sonata, and then they could all have more to drink and some rather

good salmon - an idea that was greeted with applause all of its own.

Nina came back in looking slighted and doubly determined, Nick

clapped her very vigorously, and when she played the first three

descending notes, 'Le-be-wohl', a shiver ran up his back. The man

beside him looked at him suspiciously. But for Nick, to listen to music,

to great music, which was all necessity, and here in the house, where

the floor trembled to the sudden resolve of the Allegro, and the piano

shook on its locked brass wheels - well, it was a startling experience.

He felt shaken and reassured all at once - the music expressed life and

explained it and left you having to ask again. If he believed anything he

believed that. Not everyone here, of course, felt the same: Lady

Kimbolton, there, the tireless party fund-raiser, kept a careful frown as

she looked discreetly through her appointments diary, then shook the

bangles down her arm as she came to attention again - the grey

attention, mere good behaviour, of the governing class; she might have

been in church, at the memorial service of some unloved colleague, in

a world of unmeant expressions, the opposite of Beethoven. Gerald, at

the other end of Nick's row, loved music, and was nodding now and

then, just off the beat, like someone catching on to an idea, but

afterwards Nick knew he would say it had all been either 'glorious' or

'great fun' - even Parsifalhe had described as 'great fun', when

'glorious' had seemed the more likely option. Others were clearly

touched by what they heard: it was Beethoven, after all, and the piece

told a story, of departure, absence and return, which no one could fail

to follow or to feel.

It was the absence that was best, and little Nina, whom it was

hard to think of without her 'little', seemed almost visibly to grow up as

she played it. It was a proper andante espressivo, it moved and it

moved along, she didn't ham up the emotion, in fact you saw hercurbing some keen emotion of her own to the wisdom of Beethoven, so

that the numbness of absence, the wistful solitude, the stifled climaxes

of longing, came luminously through. Nick searched out Wani again,

the sliver of profile, the dark curls crowding behind his ear - and

wondered if he was touched, and if so in what way. He was watching

his ear but he couldn't tell what he heard. In Wani, it was hard to

distinguish complete attention from complete abstraction. Nick

focused on him, so that everything else swam and Wani alone, or the

bit of him he could see, throbbed minutely against the glossy double

curve of the piano lid. He felt he floated forwards into another place,

beautiful, speculative, even dangerous, a place created and held open

by the music, but separate from it. It had the mood of a troubling

dream, where nothing could be known for certain or offer a solid

foothold to memory after one had woken. What really was his

understanding with Wani? The pursuit of love seemed to need the

cultivation of indifference. The deep connection between them was so

secret that at times it was hard to believe it existed. He wondered if

anyone knew - had even a flicker of a guess, an intuition blinked away

by its own absurdity. How could anyone tell? He felt there must always

be hints of a secret affair, some involuntary tenderness or respect, a

particular way of not noticing each other… He wondered if it ever,

would be known, or if they would take the secret to the grave. l; or a

minute he felt unable to move, as if he were hypnotized by Wani's

image. It took a little shudder to break the charm.

There was a strange rough breath from Norman Kent, who was

crying steadily - making rather a thing of it perhaps, pulling off his

glasses and swiping his face with his hand. Nick admired the spirit of

it, the defiant sensitivity, and also felt put out, since he often cried at

music himself but on this occasion hadn't managed to do so. Penny

rested her hand on her father's shoulder, and braved this familiar

embarrassment. Nick saw she was blushing, which she easily did.

Then the music turned on a sixpence, and the light-headed rush of the

finale began. The marvellous marking, Vivacissimamente, was a red

rag to Nina, and the music flashed by in delirious chirrups and

stampings. Nick seemed to see Beethoven, or rather Nina herself,

striding up and down some sonorous wooden-floored room in frenzied

impatience for the joyful return. Norman made a grunt of rueful

amusement, and Penny twisted round, as if freed by the optimistic

turn of events, and looked gently, and still blushing, at Gerald, who

caught her eye, lowered his gaze and coloured slightly also. Well, there

was such an old tension between the two men, on stubborn matters of

principle; for years it had been only Rachel's stubbornness that could

make them forget their principles enough to meet, and nod at each

other, and exchange doggish banter.Of course it was painful for Penny, and now perhaps she was

making her own plea for reconciliation. Typing up Gerald's diary from

the tape each day she must have a useful sense of his feelings.

The sonata finished and firm applause broke out, given a new

edge of enthusiasm by the fact of its being the end - the whole

experience was suddenly seen in a brighter light, it was time for a

drink, they'd all done rather well. Norman Kent clapped with his hands

above his head when Nina came back in, Catherine called out a hectic

'Bravo,' and Jasper imitated her and grinned as if he'd made a joke in

class. For a second or two Nina stood there stiffly, then she sat down

without a word and played Rachmaninov's Prelude in C-sharp minor.

It was a piece the older members of the audience tended to know well,

and though they didn't specially want to hear it, they indulged it and

exchanged distracted smiles.

After that there was very decisive applause, the piece had gone

on for quite a while, one or two people looked round at the drinks table

and the exit and started talking, and Nina came back in and played

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, in the famous Busoni

transcription. At this Lady Kimbolton looked at her watch as if she was

virtually blind, holding her arm up to the light, and a number of people

started fanning themselves with their programme sheets. This caught

on as a form of mutiny, with the associated jiggling of bracelets. When

Nina came back the next time Gerald had stood up and was saying,

'Um… aah,' as if amiably bringing a meeting to order, but she sat down

anyway and played the Sabre Dance by Khachaturian. It all seemed

quite natural to Nick, she must have been told to have three encores

ready, but there was still a possibility that she had four, so at a sign

from Gerald he went out after her and congratulated her and asked

her to stop. She stood on the landing and gazed down the pompous

curve of the stairs as the applause pattered quickly to a close and the

greedy roar of the party began. 'Hello, Judy!'

'My dear.' Lady Partridge stood rigid while he kissed her rosy

cheek - Nick never knew if she regarded a kiss as a homage or a

liberty. He grinned at her, as if she was having as much fun as he was.

'You seem very cheerful,' she said.

Nick looked in the mirror where he did appear bright-eyed,

sharing a rich secret with himself. 'Well, a successful recital, I c

bought.'

'Did you,' said Lady Partridge; and then, merely to be agreeable, 'I

liked the last piece she played. I think I've heard ii before.'

'Oh, the Khachaturian.'

She gave him a very dry look. 'Got a swing to it.'

'Mm, it certainly has' - Nick laughed quietly and ilclightedly, and

after a second Lady Partridge smiled slyly too,. is if she'd been cleverer

than she knewA waitress came past and they both took new glasses of

champagne. 'Extraordinary people…' Lady Partridge was s. iying. As a

rule she was happy and busy in Gerald's political world, she treated

his colleagues very graciously, and felt a licrce thrill when, amongst

the drab shop talk that alas made up most of their social dealings,

they gave her an undiluted fix of policy, the really unanswerable need

to reduce manufacturing, curb immigration, rationalize 'mental health'

(what abuse. ind waste there were there!), and get public services back

into private hands. They were like rehearsals for the telly, and even

more inspiring. They liquidated every doubt. Nick said, 'That's Lord

Toft, isn't it… the mart who builds all the roads.'

'Nothing extraordinary about Bernie Toft,' Lady Partridge said.

Sir Jack himself of course had been in the construction business. 'I

don't know why Gerald has to ask that awful artist man.'

'Oh, Norman, you mean? He's not very good, is he?'

'He's a red-hot socialist,' said Lady Partridge.

They both looked over to where Norman Kent was standing by

the piano, holding on to it symbolically, and probably conscious of his

portrait of Toby hanging behind him, as if it was an element in his own

portrait. Most people dodged him with a preoccupied smile and

pretended to be searching for someone else, but Catherine and Jasper

were talking to him. His voice rose emotionally as he said, 'Of course

you must, my dear girl, paint and paint and paint,' and shook

Catherine by the shoulder. 'Do you happen to know who that young

man is with my granddaughter?' Lady Partridge said. 'Yes, it's Jasper,

he's her new boyfriend.'

'Ah…' Lady Partridge gave an illusionless nod or two; but said,

'He looks a cut above the last one, anyway.'

'Yes, he's all right 'He even appears to own shoes.'

'I know, amazing!' Nick's main feeling about Jasper, very clear to

him at the moment, was that he needed to be tied up face down on a

bed for an hour or two.

'He's an estate agent, actually.'

'Very good-looking,' said Lady Partridge, in her own odd lustful

way. 'I imagine he sells masses of houses.' Trudi Titchfield came past

with a grimace, as if not expecting to be remembered. 'Lovely party,'

she said. 'It's such a lovely room for a party. We sadly only have the

garden flat. Well, one has the garden, but the rooms are rather low.'

'Yes,' said Lady Partridge.

Trudi lowered her voice. 'Not long of course before a very special

party. The Silver Wedding…? I hear the PM's coming.'

'I don't think the Queen's coming,' said Lady Partridge. 'No, not

the Queen - the PM - in a radiant whisper. 'The Queen! No, no…'

Lady Partridge blinked magnificendy. 'All rather hush-hush,' she

said.Sam Zeman came past and said, 'You're making me a rich man,

my dear!' which was charming and funny, but he didn't stop to

expand. Perhaps it was just the code of business, but Nick felt they'd

used up their store of friendship in the gym and the restaurant, and

that they would never be close to each other again.

In the crowd around the buffet (all chaffing courtesy and furtive

ruthlessness) little Nina was mixing with her audience, who in general

were nice enough to say 'Well done!' and ask her where on earth she

had learnt to play like that. She had simple expressionless English,

and the English people talked to her in the same way, but louder. 'So

your father, is in prison! You poor thing? Just in front of Nick, Lady

Kimbolton was greeting the Tippers. Lady Kimbolton's first name was

Dolly, and even her close friends found ways of avoiding the natural

salutation.

'Good evening, Dolly,' said Sir Maurice, with a satirical little bow.

'Hello!' said Sally Tipper. 'Well, that was very enjoyable.'

'I know, heartbreaking,' said Lady Kimbolton. 'I imagine you saw

the Telegraph this morning?'

'I did indeed,' said Sir Maurice. 'Congratulations!'

'I do like to hear music in the home,' Lady Tipper said, 'as in the

times of Beethoven and Schubert themselves.'

'I know…' said Lady Kimbolton, her square practical face tilting

this way and that to see what was on the table. 'Nigel must be chuffed,'

Sir Maurice said.

'Maurice and I have been to a number of concerts at friends'

houses lately, it's an excellent move,' said Lady Tipper, who was

known to be artistic.

'I know, there seems to be an absolute mania for concerts,' Lady

Kimbolton said.

'This is the second one I've been to this year.'

'I hear Lionel Kessler, you know…? had the Medici Quartet at

Hawkeswood for a marvellous evening with Giscard d'Estaing.'

'I think that's really what gave Gerald the idea,' said Nick, joshing

in between them as they got to the table. 'Oh, hello…'

'Hello, Dolly,' said Nick. He knew he could do quite a funny

sketch about Gerald's growing preoccupation with the concert idea,

which had come to a peak of competitive angst when Denis Beckwith,

a handsome old saurian of the right enjoying fresh acclaim these days,

had hired Kiri te Kanawa to sing Mozart and Strauss at his eighty-fifth

birthday party. But something made him tread carefully. 'You know

how competitive he is,' he said.

'We're all for competition!' said Dolly Kimbolton, claiming her

plate of salmon from the waiter.

'Jolly good, jolly good…' said Gerald, weaving through behind

them. 'Clever you to introduce us to a new artiste,' said Sally Tipper. 'Iliked that last thing she played,' said Sir Maurice. Gerald looked round

to see where Nina was. 'We thought rather than going for a big name

The 'Badminton' lady was darting in for a bread roll. 'You're so right,'

she said. 'I hear Michael's hiring the Royal Philharmonic for their

summer party.'

'Michael…?' said Gerald.

'Oh?… Heseltine? Yup… yup…' She hunched in fake apology as

she backed away.

'Yup, the whole blinking RPO. What it must be costing. But

they've had a good year,' she added, in a tenderly defiant tone. 'I

thought we'd had a pretty good year,' Gerald muttered. Nick had been

avoiding Bertrand Ouradi, but as he turned from the table with his

plate there Bertrand was. 'Aha, my friend the aesthete!' he said, and

Nick was reminded of an annoying foreign waiter, perhaps, or taxi

driver, for whom he was identified by a single joke. But he was able to

say excitedly, 'How are you?'

Bertrand didn't answer - he seemed to suggest the question was

bodi trivial and impertinent. He looked around the room, where people

were grouping on the sofas and at litde tables brought in by the staff

and swiftly covered with white clodis. I Ic didn't know where to settle,

among tliese braying English Miobs; his expression was proud and

wary. 'Bloody hot, isn't it,' he said to Nick.

'Come and talk to me'; and he led him, again like a waiter, with

half-impatient glances over his shoulder, among the dotted supper

tables - not to the cool of the great icar balcony but to a window seat at

the front, looking onto i lie street. Perching there, knee to knee, pardy

screened by die ioped-back curtains, they had a worrying degree of

privacy. ' Moody hot,' said Bertrand again. 'Thank god diat beast has

jnt bloody air conditioning': he nodded at die maroon Rolls-Royce

Silver Shadow parked at die kerb below.