The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [183]
Elena had prepared some cannelloni, which Nick and Catherine ate in the kitchen, under the family gallery of photographs and cartoons; this had now spread over the pantry door and down the other side, where Marc's caricature of Gerald had pride of place. Gerald had still not received the accolade of a Spitting Image puppet in his likeness, but it was one of his main hopes for the new Parliament. Catherine stared at her food as she worked through it, like someone performing a meaningless task as a punishment, and Nick found himself contrasting her to her eager six-year-old self, with only half her big teeth, and a grin of excitement so intense it was almost painful; and to a feature from Harper's ten years later, where rich people's children modelled evening clothes, and white gloves covered the first scars on her arms. Really, though, it was Gerald's wall, and his wife and children appeared as decorative adjuncts to the hero's life, unfolding in a sequence of handshakes with the famous. The Gorbachev was the latest trophy, not a handshake, but a moment of conversation, the Soviet leader's smile just hinting at the tedium of hearing English puns explained by an interpreter. Nick said, "Can you remember when that picture of you was taken?" and Catherine said, "No, I can't. I can only remember the picture." She glanced up over her shoulder with an apologetic cringe. It was as if all the pictures might come bashing down about her ears.
He said, "Mum says there's a cartoon of Gerald in the Northants Standard; she's sending it down for possible inclusion."
"Oh . . ." said Catherine. She looked at him steadily. "I don't know about cartoons."
"You love satire, darling, especially if it's of Gerald."
"I know. Just imagine if people did look like that, though. Hydrocephalous is the word. Monstrous teeth of Gerald . . . " and her hand shook. She seemed startled to recall these words.
Afterwards they went up to the drawing room, and Nick, suddenly shaky too, poured himself a large Scotch. They sat side by side on the sofa, in the heavy but unselfconscious silence she generated. He remembered the one time Leo had come to this room, and surprised him, moved him, and slightly rattled him by playing Mozart on the piano. They'd both had a glass of whisky then, the only time he'd known Leo to drink. He caught the beautiful rawness of those days again, the life of instinct opening in front of him, the pleasure of the streets and London itself unfolding in the autumn chill; everything tingling with newness and risk, glitter of frost and glow of body heat, the shock of finding and holding what he wanted among millions of strangers. His sense of the scandalous originality of making love to a man had faded week by week into the commonplace triumph of a love affair. He saw Leo crossing this room, the scene brilliant and dwindling, as if watched in a convex mirror. It was the night he had stepped warily, with many ironic looks, into Nick's deeper fantasy of possession: his lover in his house, Nick owning them both by right of taste and longing.
Now the rain had stopped, and the sky brightened a little just as the dusk was falling. Pale neutral light stretched in through the front windows, seemed to search and fail and then probe again. Nick formulated the thing, "I had some terribly sad news today, I heard that Leo's died, you remember . . ."; but it stayed shut in his head, like a difficult confession.
He listened to the birdsong from the gardens, with a more analytical ear than usual for the notes of warning and protest and ruffled submission. The long neutral light grew more tender and burning as it touched the gilt handles of the fire irons and the white-marble vines beneath the mantelpiece. Then it reached the turned legs of an old wooden chair and made them glow with new and unsuspected presence, like little people, skittle-people, with bellies and collars and Punchinello hats, shining fiercely and stoically with their one truth, that