The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [149]
Rachel sighed and hesitated, and held Catherine's gaze, which was alert and apprehensive. "Awfully sad, darling," she said. "It's godfather Pat. I'm afraid he died this morning."
Catherine, with her knife and fork held unthinkingly in the air, forgot to chew as she stared at her mother and tears slipped down her cheeks.
"Oh, I'mso sorry," said Nick, movedby her instant distress more than by the news itself, and feeling the AIDS question rear up, sudden and undeflectable, and somehow his responsibility, as the only recognized gay man present. Still, there was a communal effort by the rest of the family to veil the matter.
"Awfully sad," said Gerald, and explained, "Pat Grayson, you know, the TV actor . . . ? Old, old friend of Rachel's . . . " Nick saw something distancing already in this and remembered how Gerald had called Pat a "film star" at Hawkeswood three years earlier, when he was successful and well. "Who was it, darling, on the phone?"
"Oh, it was Terry," said Rachel, so tactfully and privately she was almost inaudible.
"We see so little TV," said Sally Tipper. "We don't have the time! What with Maurice's work, and all our travelling . . . And really I don't think I miss it. What was he in, your friend?"
Toby, clearly moved, said, "He starred in Sedley. He was bloody funny, actually."
"Oh, sitcoms," said Sally Tipper, with a twitch.
"Would you say, Nick?" said Gerald. "Not a sitcom exactly . . ."
"It was sort of a comedy thriller," said Nick, who wanted them to like Pat before they found out the truth. "Sedley was the charming rogue who always got away with it."
"Mm, quite a lady-killer," said Gerald.
Wani said, "I thought he was so charming when I met him . . . at Lionel's house, it must have been . . . frightfully funny!"
"I know . . . " said Rachel distractedly, stroking Catherine's hand across the table, enabling and containing the little episode of grief. She had probably been crying herself in her room, and now drew a certain resolve from having her daughter to look after.
Gerald, with his frowning moping manner of comprehending the feelings of others while being quite untouched and even lightly repelled by them, made little sighs and rumbles from the head of the table. "Poor old Puss," he said. "Uncle Pat was her godfather. Not her real uncle, obviously . . . !"
"Madly left-wing," said Lady Partridge, but with a chuckle of posthumous indulgence, as though that had been something else rather roguish about him. "She had two—a true-blue one and a red-hot socialist. Godfathers."
"Well, he might have been a red-hot socialist when Mum first met him," said Toby. "But you should have heard him on the Lady."
"What . . . ?" said Gerald.
"Loved the Lady!"
"Of course he did," said Gerald warmly, not wanting to risk the old jokes about Rachel's left-wing pals in front of the Tippers. "Her godmother, of course, is Sharon, um, Flintshire . . . you know, yup, the Duchess."
"You and Pat were old friends," said Wani, with his instinct for social connections. "You were at Oxford together."
"He was Benedick to my Beatrice," said Rachel, with a beautiful smile which seemed conscious of the spotlight of sympathy, "and indeed Hector Hushabye to my Hesione!"
"Mm, jolly good!" said Gerald, outshone and subtly embarrassed.
This was enough to rouse Maurice Tipper, who said, in the airy unsurprisable way of a suspicious person, "So how did he die?"
Gerald made a sort of panting noise, and Rachel said quietly, "It was pneumonia, I'm afraid. But he hadn't been well, poor old Pat."
"Oh," said Maurice