The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [21]
In a side street a team of young black men with high yellow wings and tails like birds of paradise were preparing for the parade. "It's marvellous what they do," said Rachel.
"Not very nice music," said Elena, with a cheerful shiver. Nick didn't reply—and found himself in fact at one of those unforeseen moments of inner transition, when an old prejudice dissolves into a new desire. The music shocked him with its clear repetitive statement of what he wanted. Then one vast sound system warred happily with the next, so that there were different things he wanted, beautiful jarring futures for him—all this in forty or fifty seconds as the car slipped out and away into the ordinary activity of the weekend streets.
Still, if he couldn't be with Leo it was best to be somewhere quite different. Gerald drove them out along the A40, at a somehow preferentially high speed, as if led by an invisible police escort. Soon, however, they came into massive roadworks, and a long unimpressionable tailback, as you did everywhere these days. Here they were taking out the last old roundabouts and traffic lights and forcing an unimpeded freeway across the scruffy flat semi-country. Nick gazed out politely at the desert of digging and concrete, and beyond it a field where local boys were roaring round and round on dirt-bikes in breakneck contempt for the idea of actually going anywhere. They didn't care about the carnival, they'd never heard of Hawkeswood, and they'd chosen to spend the day in this field rather than anything else. Beside them perhaps a mile of solid traffic stood stationary on the motorway of the future.
As always, Nick felt a need to make things all right. He said, "I wonder where we are. Is this Middlesex, I suppose?"
"I suppose it's Middlesex," Gerald said. He hated to be thwarted and was already impatient.
"Not very nice," said Elena.
"No . . . " said Nick, hesitantly, humorously, as if considering a defence of it, to pass the time. He knew Elena was anxious about the party, and about her role for the evening. She had asked a couple of questions already about Fales, who was Lionel Kessler's new butler, with whom she was about to find herself pressed into some unspecified relation.
"If Lionel's giving us lunch," said Gerald, "we'd better stop somewhere and ring ahead. We'll be late."
"Oh, Lionel won't mind," said Rachel, "we're just taking pot luck."
"Hmm," said Gerald. "One doesn't as a rule find the words Lionel and pot luck used in the same sentence." The tone was mocking, but suggested a certain anxiety of his own about his brother-in-law, and a sense of obligation. Rachel settled back contentedly.
"Everything will be fine," she said. And in fact the traffic did then make a move, and an optimistic attitude, which was the only sort Gerald could bear, was cautiously indulged. Nick thought about the old-fashioned name Lionel. Of course it was related to Leo; but Lionel was a little heraldic lion, whereas Leo was a big live beast.
Five minutes later they were at a standstill.
"This fucking traffic," said Gerald; at which Elena looked a bit flustered.
"As well as everything else," Nick said, with determined brightness, "I can't wait to see the house."
"Well, you're going to have to," said Gerald.
"Ah, the house," said Rachel,