The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [173]
Wani tutted and went to stand behind him, leaned over to watch as he pinched and coaxed the waiter's nipples between forefinger and thumb. Tristao sighed, smiled, and bit his parched lip. He looked down intendy, as if it was always a marvel to him, as his cock stirred, and thickened, twitched its way languorously up across his thigh before floating free with a pink smile of its own as the skin slid back a little. "That's what it's all about," said Wani.
"Is that it?" said Nick.
"You like?" said Tristao, whose face seemed to Nick suddenly greedy and strange. Of course his penis was the latent idea of the night, of this strange little scene, an idea trailed and discounted and lifting at the end as a large stupid fact. Nick said,
"So you've seen this before?"
"Oh, he always want it," said Tristao.
Wani was down on his knees, trying clumsily to do justice to the thing he always wanted. His pants were undone, but his own little penis, depressed by the blitz or blizzard of coke, was puckered up, almost in hiding. He was lost, beyond humiliation—it was what you paid for. He sniffed as he licked and sucked, and gleaming mucus, flecked with blood and undissolved powder, trailed out of his famous nose into the waiter's lap. Obviously the waiter never got like this himself, he'd learnt the danger from Wani's example. Now he was chatty, like someone among friends. He nodded down at Wani and said, "That's when I see him first. Mr Toby party. He give me coke and I fuck him in the hass."
"In the house . . . ? Oh, in the arse, I see." Nick smiled with a funny mixture of coldness and hilarity, a certain respect for mischief, however painful. He watched him pushing his hands through his lover's black curls: which he did in a carefree, patient, familiar way, almost as if Wani wasn't sucking him off, as if he was some beautiful pampered child who'd run in among the adults, hungry for praise and confident of it. Tristao stroked his hair, and grinned and praised him. "He always pay the best."
"I'm sure!" said Nick, and took a condom out of his pocket.
"Here we go," said Tristao.
Downstairs the Prime Minister was leaving. Gerald had danced with her for almost ten minutes. He had the glow of intimacy and lightness of success about him as he saw her to her car, careless of the rain. Late fireworks were still going off, like bombs and rifles, and they glanced upwards. Rachel stood in the doorway, with Penny behind her, whilst Gerald, usurping the secret policeman, leant forward and slammed the car door in a happy involuntary bow. The rain gleamed and needled in the street lamps as the Daimler pulled away with a noise like a brusque sigh.
THE END OF THE STREET
(1987)
13
NICK WENT OUT to vote early, and took Catherine with him in the car. She had been up since six to catch Gerald on Good Morning Britain. In the long month of the election campaign she had refused to watch TV, but now that Gerald and Rachel had both gone up to Barwick she seemed able to do little else.
"How was he?" Nick said.
"He was only on for a minute. He said the Tories had brought down unemployment.''
"That is a bit rich."
"It's like Lady Tipper saying the 80s are a marvellous decade for staff."
"Well, it'll soon be over."
"What? Oh, the election, yes." Catherine stared out into the drizzle. "The 80s are going on for ever."
In the long tree-tunnel of Holland Park Avenue it was as if the dawn had been deferred, though it was high summer, and hours after sunrise. It was just the discouraging sort of weather that campaigners dreaded.
"Gerald's bound to get back in, isn't he?" said Nick. At Kensington Park Gardens no one had been able to put this simple question..
Catherine seemed to look up from the depths of her gloom at an impossible consolation. "It would be just so wonderful if he didn't."
At the polling station