The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [215]
"Right . . ." he said, when he was alone, and even then he smiled selfconsciously. He sat down at Melanie's empty desk, the magazine squarely in the centre, and turned back the cover with an expression of vacant surmise. And of course what he saw was the wonderland of luxury, for the first three glossy spreads, Bulgari, Dior, BMW, astounding godparents to Nick and Wani's whimsical coke-child. He went quickly to his name under the masthead —"Executive Editor: Antoine Ouradi. Consulting Editor: Nicholas Guest"—and blushed, out of pride and a vague sense of imposture. He thought how relieved his parents would be to see that, to see his name in print as a distinction, not a shameful worry. It fortified him. He went on through, stopping for a moment on each page—he'd read every word of it ten times in proof and passed the pages for the printer but he felt they had undergone a further unaccountable mutation to become a magazine . . . he blurred his eyes against the impossible late mistake.
His own article, deferentially far back, behind Anthony Burgess on brothels and Marco Cassani on the Gothic revival in Italy, was about the Line of Beauty, illustrated with sumptuous photos of brooches, mirrors, lakes, the legs of rococo saints and sofas. He read it with a beating heart, going back once or twice to ride the slide of an elegant sentence again. Beside him as he read were other admirers. . . Professor Ettrick, his trust in a little-seen student restored . . . Anthony Burgess, in Monaco, brought to a marvelling halt as he skimmed his contributor's copy . . . Lionel Kessler, relaxing perhaps on a Louis Quinze day bed, garlanded all round with lines of beauty, seeing welcome proof that his clever maligned young friend was a mensch. Nick went on, with a confident smile, through the latter pages, the glowing short features on mah-jong sets and toy soldiers of the Raj. The inside back cover, to his satisfaction, was an ad for "Je Promets." And after that the answering angel with its lifted wing. Nick took the highest view of it all, his initial timidity was flooded out by its opposite, a conviction that they'd produced a masterpiece.
Strange teetering mood of culmination. Five minutes later he wished he had it to read through fresh again; but that could never happen. He took a copy upstairs to the flat, and opened it at random several times—to find that its splendour had a glint to it, a glassy malignity. No, it was very good. It was lustrous. The lustre was perfected and intense—it was the shine of marble and varnish. It was the gleam of something that was over.
How he wished Wani could have been here to see it—he'd missed it by five minutes. He could have taken it with him to Yorkshire, given copies to the guests, to Toby, to Sophie, to the Duchess, to Brad and Treat. Nick pictured Roddy Shepton, huge in tails and top hat, casting a wary eye over it as he waited for a drink. He pictured Wani himself, shuffling through the rooms in chilly defiance to show them the one beautiful thing he had managed to make out of his millions—it would confirm or confound their slight expectations that he was or wasn't going to do something. The reflex acclaim for anything published by a child of the fellow-rich would be loud, but tempered by disgust at his illness and remembered unease about his origins. Copies would be left behind in bedrooms and lavatories. Nick sighed over their fate and then thought how silly he was, since Wani hadn't taken the magazine with him; and really there were worse things to imagine. He was afraid, for instance, that he hadn't been careful enough in checking Wani's bags—he could easily have had other wraps of coke in his pockets or in his rolled socks. The crisis in May had forcibly broken his habit, but the reprieve, the return to London and its suddenly finite pleasures, must have pulsed with temptation. Nat himself was clean now, but his friends included half a dozen steady users, who could easily and carelessly offer Wani a line. And his heart was very weak. It would be a kind of suicide. Nick stood