The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [127]
Nick got up to pass round a dish of stuffed olives and made small waiterly noises to distract his father from saying what he knew was coming next. "Thanks so much," said Gerald.
"No, it's a pleasure doing things at these great houses," Don said. "Even if they're not very quick at settling their accounts." He looked round fondly. "We've got so many of them round here. Nick's tired of hearing this, but I've got two earls, one viscount, one baron and two baronets on my books!"
"Quite a tally," said Gerald. "We'll have to see if we can find you a duke."
"Of course, the fabulous thing," said Nick, in a rush of shame, "is the quality of the furniture in all these houses. Things that have been there for centuries."
"Quite so . . ." Gerald nodded, as if he took that point very seriously himself. He raised and lowered his eyebrows, in perplexity at his empty glass.
Don said, "Nick tells me you have some lovely pieces at your London house."
"Oh . . ."
"A fair bit of French work, I believe?"
"Quite a bit of French work, yes," said Gerald, who didn't have a clue where most of it came from.
"And some lovely paintings too."
Gerald gave them a look of thoughtful beneficence, just coloured with impatience, even a kind of disdain—or so it seemed to Nick, who felt for both parties, as though he were witnessing an argument with himself. "You know you really should come and see us, shouldn't they, Nick?—or come even when we're away. Come when we're in France and make yourselves at home. Have the run of the place. You could have a look at all our stuff, while you're about it, and tell us what's what."
"Well, that's immensely kind," said Don, smiling at the seduction of the idea.
"Oh, I don't think we could," said Dot, whose fear of liberties in general included even those that might be allowed to herself. "I mean, it's awfully nice of you, of course . . ." She looked crushed by the offer, and bit her cheek as she peered at Don. Nick thought his mother sometimes obtuse and narrow-minded, he deplored her sillinesses, and at the same time he was so attuned to her moods, to the currents of implication between a mother and an only child, that he could trace the lines of her anxiety without effort. To come to Kensington Park Gardens, to stay in the house and rootle hesitantly around in it, would satisfy a curiosity; but it would also give unforgettable shape and detail to the world in which Nick lived, with its tolerance and its expenditure, its wine cellars and its housekeepers who hardly spoke English, and the Home Secretary ringing up just like that, which Nick said sometimes happened. It would be a flood of knowledge, and in general, as she said, she would rather not know anything more.
"Give it some thought, anyway," said Gerald; and Nick knew, as his parents murmured and glowed, that it would never be mentioned again.
He drove into the Market Square and slowed down as they approached CLOCKS D. N. GUEST ANTIQUES: "There's our shop!"—he raised an arm, as if showing him the Doge's Palace or some other great thing he was about to visit.
"Absolutely!" said Gerald. Nick could only glance at it, but it had a presence for him, like a surprise he had prepared for someone else who could never feel it as keenly as he did himself. That side of the square was in shadow now, though the sun still glared on the other side, on the white stucco front of the Crown Hotel. A cloudless sky above the roofs, the shops all shut, emptiness of a country town on a high summer evening; not quite empty, as weekenders strolled before dinner, peering into the locked shops, with a look of hoping to get the best from the place, and some lads, or "louts," roamed about under the arches of the market hall. The market hall was the jewel of the town, a cage of glass and stone on a high arcade, still locally claimed, against all the evidence, as a work of Sir Christopher Wren. It had been the pride of Nick's childhood, he had done a project about it at