The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [158]
"He's very exciting too, but . . ."
"I mean, I rather worry about you, if you're loving him so much as you say, and he's treating you like this. Actually, I wonder if you do really love him, you see."
He saw this was her usual hyperbole, and her usual solicitous undermining of his affairs. "No, no," he said, with a disparaging chuckle. It wasn't that she'd shown him the truth of the matter, but that telling her these few amusing details he'd told himself something he couldn't now retract. He had a witness too. "Anyway," he said, "I probably shouldn't have told you all this."
(vi)
The Tippers left the following day. Secret smiles of relief admitted also a dim sense of guilt, and a resultant hardening and defiance. Gerald was gloomily preoccupied, and seemed to carry the blame round with him, not knowing where to put it down. Wani was the only one who expressed real regret and surprise; he'd felt at home with the Tippers, they were the sort of people he'd been brought up to respect. It was Rachel who tried hardest to be diplomatic; her supple good manners struggled to contain the awkward turn of events, which she minded entirely for Gerald's sake.
The departure was handled very briskly. Sir Maurice was offended, active, in a surprising way fulfilled—this was what he looked for, a clarified antipathy, a somehow reassuring trustlessness. "We're not enjoying it much here," he said; and his wife took her usual strange pleasure in his hardness and roughness; they were her animating cause, his feelings were as unanswerable as his ulcers . . . Toby loaded up the luggage, with the straight-faced satisfaction of a porter.
After they'd gone, Wani, watchful and charming, suggested a game of boules to Gerald, and they went out and started playing in the bald space where the Tippers' car had stood. The day for once was overcast, and Nick sat in the drawing room with his book. The tingle of freedom made it a little hard to concentrate: he felt aware of the pleasure, the primacy of reading, but the content seemed to glint from a distance, as if through mist. Then Lady Partridge tottered in in her sundress, clearly pleased, repossessing the place, but also at a loose end without the irritant of Sally at her ear. The Tippers had been a subject for her, they'd annoyed her and they'd excited her with the raw fascination of money. She sat down in an armchair. She didn't say anything, but Nick knew that she was jealous of his book. From outside, through the open front door, came the cracks and clicks and yelps of the boules game.
"Mm, what are you reading?" said Lady Partridge.
"Oh . . ." said Nick, disowning the book with a shake of the head, "it's just something I'm reviewing." She turned her ear enquiringly. "It's a study of John Berryman."
"Ah . . . !" said Lady Partridge, sitting back with the mocking contentment of the non-reader. "The poet . . . Funny man."
"Oh—um . . . !" Nick gasped. "Yes, he was rather funny, I suppose . . . in a way."
"I always thought."
Nick smiled at her narrowly, and went on, to test the ground, "It's a sad life, of course. He suffered from these terrible depressions."
Lady Partridge smacked her lips illusionlessly, and rolled her eyes back—a more terrible effect than she realized. "Like . . . er, young madam," she said.
"Well, quite," said Nick, "though we hope it won't end the same way! He drank a tremendous lot, you know."
"I wouldn't be at all surprised if he drank a lot," said Lady Partridge, with a hint of solidarity.
"And then, of course," said Nick clinchingly, but with a sad loll of the head, "he jumped off a bridge into the Mississippi."
Lady Partridge reflected on this, as if she thought it unlikely. "I always