The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [144]
At noon there were calls and voices up above as a party was assembled for lunch. Nick went to see them off. Toby had pulled up the spare seats in the back of the Range Rover and was checking they were safely bolted; he was taking the extra trouble that delays a departure and disguises the relief of the person left behind. "We don't want you flying through the windscreen," he said to Lady Tipper.
"I think you'll find this restaurant acceptable," Gerald burbled facetiously, gesturing Maurice Tipper to the front seat beside him.
"He just can't have anything too rich," said Sally. "His wretched ulcers . . ." She twitched while she pulled a long face. "I'm afraid last night's dinner rather did for him."
"Oh, they'll look after you, they'll do anything for you," said Rachel, with unflinching sweetness. Gerald, ruefully baffled by his new guests' failure to notice the beauties of the manoir, was taking them to Chez Claude in Perigueux, normally the last-night treat of the holidays, in the hope of cracking a word of praise out of them.
"See if you agree with us that it merits a third Michelin star," he said.
"We're not big lunchers," said Sally Tipper.
Catherine and Jasper came out last, and Wani squashed in with them excitedly in the third row. Toby closed the doors like a guard and off they went, with a soft superior roar, perched and crammed, for what Nick pictured as a little outing in hell—not the starry Chez Claude or the turret-crowned countryside, but the atmosphere they carried with them. Toby put his arm round Nick's shoulder and they went into the silent house—both of them lightly excited and self-conscious.
Toby made them sandwiches for lunch, in a deliberately enthusiastic way, heaping in cold chicken and lettuce and olives and tomato rings which the first bite would send squirting and dropping from the edges. It was a bit of a mess, a mishmash, lots of dressing was sploshed in—it was almost as though he was saying to Nick, who had once had a job in a sandwich shop, "I'm not a poof, I haven't got style, I can't help it." They took them down to the poolside and sat under an umbrella to eat them, with the dressing and tomatoes squirting out and the lettuce dropping into their laps.
"Mm, lovely and quiet, isn't it," said Toby after a bit.
"I know," said Nick, and grinned. They were both wearing dark glasses, and had to search for each other's gaze.
"Fancy a beer?" said Toby.
"Why not," said Nick. Toby went into the pool-house, and came back with a couple of Stellas from the fridge. It seemed to signal a desire to talk, but he didn't know how to start. Nick said, "So when are Maurice and Sally going?" though he knew the answer.
"Funny you should say that," said Toby. "I was just thinking the same thing."
"I can cope with her, somehow."
Toby looked at him almost reproachfully: "You're being a hero with her. Of course, she's a great opera queen, isn't she."
Nick tried to work out, through their two pairs of sunglasses, if this was a joke—but it seemed to have been said in equal innocence of queens and opera.
"He's a total philistine," he said.
"Oh, he's a bastard," said Toby, who, unlike his father, hardly ever swore.
Nick did it for him. "He's a cunt."
"No, he really is."
"I mean, why are they here actually?"
"Oh, business, of course . . . " Toby looked uneasy at hearing himself criticize his father: "You know, I think Dad thought we were going to be one big happy family; but then there was. . . the Sophie thing, but—anyway, he's carrying on as if nothing had gone wrong."
"Business as usual," said Nick, reluctant to get into the Sophie thing all over again. "I suppose Tipper's very powerful, isn't he?"
"Obviously he's one of the biggest."
"What is it, exactly?"
"Nick, really . . . ! You've heard of TipperCo, for Heaven's sake, it's a huge conglomerate."
"No, of course . .