The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [165]
When he came down there was still a bit of time before the guests arrived. He went out into the dance tent and circled the creaky square of parquet, where suspended burners made pools of heat in the empty chill. The tent was a dreamlike extension to the house-plan. He came back in, across the improvised bridge, through the garlanded and lanterned back passage, and wandered from room to room, among the lights and candles and smell of lilies, with a sense almost of being in church, or at least of the memory of a ceremony. In the hall mirror he was lustre and shadow in his new evening suit and shiny shoes. He greeted Rachel and Catherine in the drawing room, and they chatted as if they were all guests, happily denatured, transformed by silk and velvet, jewels and makeup, into drawing-room creatures. The bangs of fireworks made them skittish. From downstairs came repeated stifled explosions of champagne corks, as the waiters got ready. "Shall I get us a drink?" said Nick.
"Yes, do. And you might find my husband," said Rachel.
He looked into the dining room, crowded like a restaurant with separate tables, where Toby was standing with a card in his hand. He was silently rehearsing his speech. "Keep it short, darling," Nick said.
"Nick . . . Fuck . . . !" said Toby, with a worried grin. "You know it's one thing making a speech to your aunts and uncles and, you know, your mates, but it's quite another making a speech to the fucking Prime Minister."
"Don't panic," said Nick. "We'll all shout, 'Hear, hear!'"
Toby laughed gloomily. "You don't suppose she might have to go to a summit or something at the last moment?"
"This is the summit, I'm afraid. It certainly is for your papa." Nick edged between the tables, each place with its mitred napkin and black-inked card. No titles, of course. He leant on the chair-to-be of Sharon Flintshire. "I love these pictures of the happy couple."
"I know," said Toby. "The Cat's done a bit of art."
Catherine had propped up on the sideboard a thing like a school project, where blown-up photographs of Gerald and Rachel before they were married flanked a formal wedding photo, with later family pics below. It looked rather like the placards of the cast outside a long-running West End farce.
"Your mother was so beautiful," Nick said.
"I know. And Dad."
"They're so young."
"Yeah, Dad's not that keen on it actually. He doesn't want the Lady seeing him in his hippy phase." To judge from the photos Gerald's hippy phase had reached its counter-cultural extreme in a pair of mutton-chop whiskers and a floral tie.
"I can't work out how old they were."
"Well, Dad'll be fifty next year, so he was . . . twenty-four; and Ma's a couple of years older, of course."
"They're our age," said Nick.
"They didn't waste any time," said Toby with a sad little smile.
"They certainly didn't waste any time having you, dear," Nick said, making the amusing calculation. "You must have been conceived on the honeymoon."
"I think I was," said Toby, both proud and embarrassed. "Somewhere in South Africa. Ma was a virgin when she was married, I know that, and three weeks later she was pregnant. No playing around there."
"No, indeed," said Nick, thinking of the years his parents had taken to have him, and with an inward smile at his own freedoms.
Toby looked at his speech again, and bit his lip. Nick watched him affectionately: unbuttoned jacket over crimson cummerbund,