The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [203]
17
(i)
It didn't take the photographers long to work out about the communal gardens, though they were stretched to cover all four gates. They put up their stepladders and looked over the railings and peripheral shrubbery through binoculars or through their telephoto lenses, dreaming of shots. The falling leaves were in their favour. It was news, but it was also a matter of patience. They talked confidently on mobile phones. They were rivals who'd met so often they were friends, sharing their indifference to their victims in companionable Thermos caps of tea. They toasted them sardonically in milk and sugar. Then the house gate would open and Toby, perhaps, would come out, who for a while had worked with these guys and now was dodging them, making towards one exit and then switching and jogging to another—the photographen went swearing and clattering round the long way; one or two jumped in cars. Soon Geoffrey Titchfield was making hourly patrols of the gardens, after several of the buzzards, as he called them, had simply used their ladders to climb in. "You are not keyholders," he said. "I must ask you to leave immediately." Sir Geoffrey was deeply vexed by the whole episode. The exposure of his idol, terribly shocking to him, was brought home, like the threat of a larger disorder, by these incursions on the gardens.
At the front of the house the shutters or curtains stayed closed, so that indoors the day had the colour of an appalling hangover or other failure to get up. Electric light combined with diffused sunlight in a sickly glare. All the papers came as usual, in their long, arhythmical collapse onto the doormat, where they lay like a menace and were approached at last with long-armed reluctance. And there they were, the Millionaire MP, his Elegant Wife, his Blonde, or his Blushing Blonde Secretary. "Troubled daughter speaks of minister's affair." It seemed she'd spoken to Russell, and Russell had spoken to an old friend at the Mirror; after that there was no holding it. Oddly enough, in all the pictures "heartbroken Cathy" was smiling with sublime conviction. That was the first day.
On the second day, Gerald, resenting the demeaning scurry through the gardens, where he looked such a fool to the other keyholders, walking their dogs and knocking up on the tennis courts, put on his widest-brimmed fedora and a dark, double-breasted overcoat, and came out of the front door into the film set of the street. Parked vans, spotlights, shoulder-hefted TV cameras, fluffy boom mikes, the ruck of reporters—everything took on life and purpose with his emergence. The freshly whitened house-front reflected the flashbulbs. Gerald seemed as usual to draw strength from their attention. He was the star of this movie, whatever he did. Nick, looking out from behind an upstairs curtain, saw him step on to the pavement and heard him say loudly, "Thank you, gentlemen, I have nothing to say," in a cordial, plummy tone. The Press were in front of him in a half ellipse, of which his hat formed the centre. They called him Sir and Gerald and Mr Fedden and Minister. "Are you leaving your wife?" "This way, Gerald!" "Mr Fedden, are you guilty of insider dealing?" "Where's your daughter?" "Will you be resigning, Minister?" Nick saw how they enjoyed their deadpan mockery, their brief but decisive wielding of power. He found it frightening. He wondered how he himself would ever square up to that. Gerald moved slowly, with heavy patience, sturdy in the interest of his case and confident of knowing the right form, however humiliating the content, towards the Range Rover; which at last he got into, and drove off, almost running down photographers, to the House of Commons, to hand in his resignation.
Nick let the curtain drop, and made his way carefully around the twin guest beds and on to the brighter landing. Rachel was just coming out of her bedroom. "Sorry about this absurd gloom!" she said. "I find I have the greatest reluctance to have my photograph taken." There was a briskness in her tone that warned off any touch of sympathy.
"I understand."