The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [218]
The boxes filled immediately, in proof of the ungraspable formula relating shelf-length to box-capacity. He carried one of them down, and as he dumped it in the hall he heard the sound of the back door being unlocked, feet scuffed on the mat, an umbrella shaken. Elena? Or Eileen again? Whoever it was was very unwelcome. He was annoyed by their furtiveness as well as their confidence. He went into the kitchen with a bored look.
"Oh my god!" said Penny in a breathy rush. She held the pink bundle of her umbrella in front of her chest. Then, furious to have been frightened, she said, "Mm, hello, Nick," and went to the sink with a bored look of her own. "I thought you'd gone," she said.
"I think I thought you'd gone," said Nick, quite gently. They'd both been in the wars, and he felt they might finally have found some ground to share. There was an outside chance she might give him some sympathy, which so far he hadn't had a taste of; and to him commiseration was always easy.
She settled the wet brolly, like a blown flower, and came back across the room. "In five minutes I will have. I'm getting my things." He seemed almost to be blocking her way. "You're not at the wedding," she said.
"I thought I'd give it a miss."
"Yes. Well, I don't know them, of course."
"Oh, Nat's awfully nice."
"Uh-huh."
"I don't think anyone really knows Beatriz yet. Hardly even Nat actually!"
"She's Argentinian, isn't she?"
"Yes, she's a rich widow. Her first husband broke his neck playing polo." He hesitated and said, "Apparently she's four months pregnant."
Penny made a grim snuffle. "At least I avoided that," she said, and with this tiny sarcastic self-exposure she edged past him and out of the room.
He hadn't seen her since the night at Badger's flat, and he had to admit she had an interest, a bleak unanticipated glamour. A week ago her name was known only to her family, her school and college friends, and her work contacts; now millions worldwide had heard about her sex life. He watched her march off along the passage; his mocking sense of her as a busily ambitious little person with no sense of humour rather faltered. He stood with a thin smile of remorse, and a minute later went after her into Gerald's study. She was standing reading a yard-long fax, which she clumsily folded and put down. She said, "So where are you going to go?" crisply, almost as though she were despatching him herself.
"Oh, I'm staying at Wani's. Yup." He gave a rueful smile over the ramparts of his own scandal, but no answering wave came from within hers.
"Then I'm going to start looking for a place of my own."
"You're not worried about money."
Nick shrugged. "I've done all right, actually, in the past year or so. With a little help from my friends . . . How about you?"
"I don't have much."
"No, I mean, where are you staying?"
"Oh, I've gone back home for a bit."
"Right . . . How's Norman taken all this?"
"Well, how do you imagine? Very badly indeed." She moved some papers on the desk and put them down as if inadvertently on the looped fax. "He detests Gerald, of course, and always has."
Nick shook his head slowly, as if this was beyond his grasp. "I never really believed that. Just because he's a Tory."
"Fiddlesticks. He took Rachel off him—that's what he's never forgiven him for."
"It was an incredibly long time ago," said Nick, turning towards the window to cover his surprise.
"Well, Dad's like that. When he was young he thought he was going to be very happy and very rich. And then Gerald came along."
It was clearly an arrival she could vouch for the force of. Nick laughed for a second and was vaguely touched. He said, "We all know how competitive Gerald is."
Penny searched in a drawer for a while before saying, "Mmm . .