The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [205]
"You know, we do rather count on you to keep an eye on Catherine."
He tried to think when he'd heard the tone before. It was one of her adorable, unexpectedly funny little moments of exasperated candour about some party official, some simpleton at Conference. "Well," he said, "I have tried . . . as I hope you know." Rachel didn't endorse this. "But, you know, she is an adult, she leads her own life . . . !" He gave the soft laugh of sensible conviction, which was all it had ever taken to win Rachel's agreement.
"Well, you say that!" she said, with a quite different kind of laugh, a single hard gasp.
Nick leant back on the mahogany banister, and felt his way into the new conditions. He said, very measuredly, "I think I always have been as good a friend to her as she would allow me to be. As you know, friends come and go with her—and they all disappoint her. So I suppose I must have been doing something right if she still trusts me."
"No, I'm sure she's devoted to you," said Rachel, "we all are," in a sharp but conditional tone, as though it didn't much matter. "It's really the question of your doing what's best for her, I mean, not simply . . . conspiring with her in whatever she wants you to do. She has a very serious illness."
"Yes, of course," Nick murmured, while his face grew fixed at the rebuke. Rachel was waiting, as if taking the pulse of her feelings; he peeped at her, saw her blink again and draw breath but then only give out a sharp resentful sigh. Nick said, "I left her with Gerald . . . the other night. That should have been safe enough."
"Ah, safe," she said, "yes. She should never have been there in the first place."
"I promise you, I didn't know where she was taking me . . ."
"She wasn't taking you anywhere. You were taking her, if you remember, in your horrible little car."
"Oh . . . !"
"I'm sorry," she said, and Nick wasn't sure if she was instantly retracting or grimly confirming her remark. His impulse was to forgive her, he frowned tenderly, the reflex of a boy who couldn't bear to be in the wrong. "You know the state she was in. Who knows what's happening to her now, if she hasn't got her librium with her."
"Mm . . . her lithium . . ."
"There's just rather a question of responsibility, you know? I mean, we'd always supposed you understood your responsibilities to her—and to us, of course."
"Oh, well, yes . . . !" He flashed a smile at the sting of this.
"We'd imagined you'd tell us if, for instance, anything went seriously wrong." Her steady tone, her emphasizing twitches, were new to Nick; they seemed to signal a change in their relations that wouldn't easily be reversed. He was used to her easy assents, her oddly contented demurrals . . . "We didn't know until last night, for instance, about this very serious episode four years ago."
"What do you mean?" said Nick, shaking his head. The "we" was fairly unnerving, the apparent solidarity with Gerald.
"I think you know very well what I mean." She peered at him, with an effect of complex distaste; which extended in a reluctance to put it in words. "We had no idea she'd tried to . . . harm herself while we were away."
"I don't know what you've been told. She didn't harm herself, anyway. She asked me to stay with her—which I did—and she was fine, you know, she'd just had one of her bad moments."
"You didn't tell us about it," said Rachel, pale with anger.
"Please, Rachel! She didn't want to upset you, she didn't want to spoil your holiday." The half-forgotten alibis came back, and the squeezing sensation of being out of his depth. "I stayed with her, I talked her through it." It was a bleat of a boast.
"Yes, she said you were wonderful," said Rachel. "Apparently, she quite raved about you to Gerald the other night." Nick looked at the floor, and at the rhythm of the black-and-gilt S-shaped balusters. Then beyond them, and below, he heard the scratch of the front door being unlocked, a voice from the street saying, "Over here, love!" and the jump of the knocker as the door slammed shut again.
Rachel stood where she was,