The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [198]
"Not exactly," said Nick, following her upstairs and thinking that whatever was going on made another visit from the PM very unlikely. "We've been wondering where you were," he said. Rachel was on the phone in the drawing room, talking to Gerald in Westminster, and seemed to be getting the reassurances she needed; she was oddly placable. She smiled indulgently at Toby's portrait and said, "Of course, darling, just carry on as normal. We'll try . . . ! We'll see you . . . Yup, yup." Nick went to the front windows, which looked very large and shiny in the early dusk. It was unsettling to know there were men waiting outside, their patience barely tested. The curtains were never closed, and when freed from the brocaded bands that held them back they still curved stiffly apart. Nick leant in to close the shutters, seldom used, which unfolded with alarming cracks.
When Rachel explained what was going on, Catherine seemed distantly enthusiastic. "Extraordinary . . . " she said.
"It could be quite serious actually," said Nick.
"Not prison, you mean?" It was the pot perhaps that gave her this smile of benign speculation.
"No," said Rachel crossly. "Besides, he's done absolutely nothing wrong. It's clearly all to do with that hateful man Tipper."
"Then Tipper can go to prison," said Catherine. "Or both the Tippers, better still."
Rachel gave a twitch of a smile to show the subject of the joke touched her a little too nearly. "They're only making investigations. No one's been arrested, much less charged."
"Right."
"Uncle Lionel's been here, and he was very reassuring."
Nick murmured endorsingly and said, "Would anyone like a drink?"
"Anyway, darling, you know your father would never do a thing like that. He's far too experienced. Not to mention dead honest!" Rachel coloured slightly at this affirmation.
"So is it in the paper?"
"It's not in the Standard tonight. And Toby says they won't touch it at the Telegraph—he's spoken to Gordon. Daddy says it's just the sort of thing the Guardian would love to blow out of all proportion."
"I'll have um . . . " Catherine said, bearing down on the drinks table with a fascinated smile but in the end only managing to think of a gin-and-tonic. Nick mixed her one, juniper lost in quinine: when she was on the up curve it was best to be careful with alcohol, annoyance, laughter—any cause of excitement. They stood with their glasses at their chins and nodded "Cheers!" in a meaningful way.
"The thing is, darling," said Rachel, "we simply mustn't talk to anybody at the moment. Oath of silence, Daddy says."
"I don't know anything about stocks and shares, so you needn't worry."
"It's what they make you say, though . . . Darling, or they twist your words. They've got no principles."
"They're not your friend," said Nick, which had been Lionel's dry way of putting it.
"They've got the morals of rattlesnakes," said Rachel.
Catherine sat on a sofa, swayed her head over her glass, and looked from one to the other of them. She started to smile and they flinched, with the feeling they were being mocked; but the smile spread and they saw it was to do with something else, the flowering of a clear belief, just touched with playful calculation, that they would share her happiness. "I've had such a thrilling day," she said.
They sat down to dinner in the kitchen. Normally Nick enjoyed the nights when Gerald was kept late at Westminster—the mood of snug reduction and humorously tolerated crisis; if they had guests, or if Gerald and Rachel were due out, there was even a thrill to Gerald's absence: it was a wing-brush of power, the sign of demands and decisions greater than dinner. Tonight his absence was more critical. It was odd that