The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [146]
"Oh . . ."
"You know, she called it 'doings.'"
"That's not very promising, I agree."
"She was a bit. . . babyish. I don't think she liked it very much, actually." Nick couldn't help saying, "Surely . . . ?"
Toby sighed. "She used to say I hurt her, and . . . I don't know."
There were various possible explanations of this: that Sophie, child of the chilly Tippers, was frigid herself; or of course that Toby's knob was too big, or that he didn't know what to do with it, or that he was just too big and heavy altogether for a slender young woman. Nick said, "Well, if the sex was no good, that's another reason to think you had a lucky escape." It struck him that the man who'd been the focus of his longings for three years or more, and performed untiringly in his fantasies, was perhaps after all not much good at sex, or not yet, was clumsy from inexperience or the choice of the wrong partner. He'd been so lucky, himself, to be shown the way by someone so practised and insatiably keen. And for a second or two, in the meridional heat, the thrill of that first London autumn touched him and shivered him.
Toby mulled the thing over, emptied his bottle, and then went to the pool-house to get a couple more.
Later they had a swim, never quite saying if they were racing or not. It pleased Nick to beat Toby in a race, and then made him feel sorry. He felt warmed and saddened by his drug secrets and his sex secrets, like an adulterous parent playing with an unsuspecting child. It struck him as a strange eventuality, when for years the idea of romping almost naked in the water with Toby would have been one of choking romance. He pulled himself up and sat on the half-submerged shelf, with the water slapping round his balls, and looked at the view, and then the other way, at the pool-house, the steps up under the fig tree, and the high end-wall of the manor house, the windows shuttered against the sun. Afternoon randiness, the mood of desertion, opportunity silent and wide—he watched Toby getting out with a magnificent jump and shake of his big unsuspecting backside.
They had another beer together, lying flat in the sun. "I wonder how they're getting on," said Toby.
"I'm so glad I'm not there," said Nick. "I mean, I'm sure it's a lovely place . . ."
"It's been great just to spend some time with you, old chap," said Toby, as if they had really used the time. "How are you getting on with Wani, by the way?"
"OK, actually," said Nick. "He's been very generous to me."
"He told me he relies on you a lot."
"Oh, did he . . . ? Yes . . . He's quite a particular person."
"He always has been. But you'll get used to that in time. I know him inside out by now."
"Yes, you're very old friends, aren't you?"
"God, yes." said Toby.
Nick smeared on some sunscreen, and Toby did his back for him, rather anxiously, and describing all the time what he was doing. Then Toby lay face down on his lounger, and Nick for the first time ever squatted over him, and squirted the thin cream across his shoulder blades, and set to working it in, briskly but thoroughly. He had the premonitory tingle of a headache from the sun and the beer, he felt parched and heavy-lidded, and he had a highly inconvenient erection. His hands moved sleekly over Toby's upper body, in weird practical mimicry of a thousand fantasies. His heart started beating hard when he dealt with the curve of the lower back, he turned it into a bit of a massage, a bit of a method, as he moved towards the upward rise of his arse and the low loosish waistband of his trunks. And Toby just took it, leaving Nick with a haunting tumultuous sense of how he might have gone on. He finished, jumped away, and lay down quickly and uncomfortably on his front. For a few minutes the two boys said things, widely spaced, calling only for mumbled answers, like a couple in bed.
Nick woke to a strange tearing sound, like an engine that wouldn't start. Sharp vocalized