The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [116]
Downstairs, a little later, in the drawing room, the coda of the party was unwinding, and Gerald opening new bottles of champagne as though he made no distinction between the boring drunks who "sat," and the knowing few of the inner circle, gathered round the empty marble fireplace. The Timmses were there, and Barry Groom, with their different fanatical ways of talking, their shades of zeal and exasperation—all alien to Nick more than ever in the lull after drugs and sex. He saw that Polly Tompkins was sitting with them, as if among equals, and already impatient for something superior. Gerald, it was clear, hadn't yet got round to the new paper on Third World debt. "Have a look at it," said Polly, and nodded at him like a genial don. The strange thing was that it was also Gerald's nod, just as his white collar was Gerald's collar. The mimicry was artful, slightly amorous, and since the love was hopeless, slightly mocking too. Really everything nice about Polly was a calculation.
Morgan, the woman Polly had brought, came to join Gerald's group, where they were going back over the scandal of Oxford refusing the PM an honorary degree. John Timms, with his intense belief in form, regarded the incident as an outrage, but Barry Groom, who hadn't bothered with Oxford, said, "Fuck 'em's what I say," in a sharp frank tone that made Morgan blush and then weigh in like a man herself. The only touching thing about her was her evident uncertainty as to when or why anything was funny. "They seem to think the lady's not for learning," Gerald said. She looked bewilderedfy at their laughing faces.
From the balcony, in the late July evening, the gardens receded in depth beyond depth of green, like some mysterious Hodgkin, to a point where a faintly luminous couple reclined on the grass. The astonishing greenness of London in summer. The great pale height of the after-dusk sky, birds cheeping and falling silent, an invincible solitude stretching out from the past like the slowly darkening east. The darkness climbed the sky, and the colours surrendered, the green became a dozen greys and blacks, the distant couple faded and disappeared.
"Hallo there . . . !"
"Oh hi, Jasper."
"How are you, then, darling?"—almost tweaking him in the ribs.
"Very well. How are you?"
"Ooh, not bad. A bit tired . . ."
"Hmm. What have you been up to?"
Young Jasper, no younger probably than Nick, but with his chancy just-out-of-school look, quick and lazy at the same time, his flirtiness, his assumption he knew you, as if by bedding, or flooring, Catherine he gained equal rights, an instant history, with her intimate old friend . . . Jasper couldn't have known they'd been overheard upstairs, but his little smirk coming and going invited you to guess he'd been up to something. He had the pink of sex about him still. He leant by Nick on the balustrade, and he was clearly fairly drunk.
"Is Catherine OK?"
"Yeah . . . She's a bit knackered, she's turned in. This isn't really her sort of scene."
Nick stared at the compound presumption of this remark and said, "Things going OK between you two?"
"Ooh yes," said Jasper, with a momentary pout, a wincing frown, to say how very hot it was. "No, she's a lovely lady."
Nick couldn't rise to this. After a moment he said, as nicely as he could, "You are looking after her, aren't you, Jasper?"
"Hark at Uncle Nick," said Jasper, piqued and somehow furtive.
"I mean, she seems quite steady at the moment, but it would just be disastrous if she came off this medication again."
"I think she's got it all sorted out," said Jasper, after