The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [176]
"Hi," said Nick warmly. "Nick."
"I hope you don't mind," said Rosemary. "We went to your house. The woman there told us where you were."
"It's wonderful to see you!" said Nick, and saw the phrase register with them like some expected annoyance. They had something dreadful about them, with their undeclared purpose and their look of supporting each other for some much bigger challenge than Nick was ever going to offer them. "Come in, come in."
Gemma peered round the room. "Is there somewhere private where we could talk?" she said. She was Yorkshire, older, blue-eyed, hair dyed black, black T-shirt and black jeans and Doc Martens.
"Of course," said Nick. "Why don't you come upstairs."
He took them out and in again and up to the flat, with a responsible smile that threatened to warp into a smirk, as if he was proud of this kitsch apartment and its possible effect on the two women. He saw it all with fresh eyes himself. They sat down in the "Georgian-revival''-revival library.
"Look at all these books . . . " said Gemma.
On the low table all the papers were laid out, as in the reading room of a club. CHUCK HER OUT, begged the Mirror. THREE TIMES A LADY, bawled the Sun.
Rosemary said, "It's about Leo."
"Well, I thought . . ."
She looked down, she wasn't settled in the room, on the sofa's edge; then she stared at him for a second or two. She said, "Well, you know, my brother died, three weeks ago." Nick listened to the words, and heard how the West Indian colour and exactness in her tone claimed it as a private thing. It had been one of Leo's tones too: the cockney for defence, the Jamaican crackle and burn for pleasure, just sometimes, rare and beautiful like his black blush.
"Nearly four weeks now, pet," said Gemma, with her own note of bleak solidarity. "Yes, May the sixteenth." She looked at Nick as though the extra days made him more culpable, or useless.
"I'm so sorry," Nick said.
"We're trying to contact all his friends."
"Well, because, you know . . . " said Gemma.
"All his lovers," said Rosemary firmly. Nick remembered that she was, or had been, a doctor's receptionist; she was used to the facts. She unzipped her shoulder bag and delved into it. He found it screened them both, this angular attention to business—he was flinching at the frighteningly solemn thing she had just told him, and she twitched too at the power of her words, even if (as he thought he saw) they had a certain softness or drabness for her now from use, from their assertion of something that was shifting day by day from the new into the known. He said, with a sense of good manners that took him back to their long-ago meeting,
"How is your mother?"
"OK," said Rosemary. "OK . . ."
"She has her faith," said Gemma.
"She's got the church," said Nick; "and she's also got you."
"Well . . . " said Rosemary. "Yes, she has."
The first thing she passed him was a small cream-coloured envelope addressed to Leo in green capitals. He felt he knew it and he didn't know it, like a letter found in an old book. It had a postmark of August 2, 1983. She nodded, and he opened it, while they watched him; it was like learning a new game and having to be a good sport as he lost. He unfolded a little letter in his own best handwriting, and the photo slipped out into his lap. "That's how we knew where to find you," Rosemary said. He had sent it in the blank envelope to Gay Times, doubting how it could survive, how his own wish could take on form and direction, and someone there with a green biro had sent it on—he was seeing the history of his action, and seeing it as Leo himself had seen it, but distant and complete. He picked up the photo with the guarded curiosity he had for his earlier self. It was an Oxford picture, a passport-size square cut out from a larger group: the face of a boy at a party who somehow confides his secret to the camera. He only glanced at what he'd written, on the Feddens' embossed letterhead—the small size, meant