The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [42]
"I didn't know about all this," said Toby, who was going round in his bare feet with a bottle of brandy. He was grinning, slightly scandalized, even hurt perhaps that Nick hadn't told him he was having an affair.
"Oh, yes . . ." said Nick, "sorry . . . He's this really attractive black guy, called Leo."
"You should have brought him tonight," Toby said. "Why didn't you say?
"I know," said Nick; but he could only imagine Leo here in his falling-down jeans and his sister's shirt, and the jarring of his irony against the loaded assumptions of the Oxford lot.
"May one ask why?" said Lord Shepton, who had lately been snoring but had now been tickled awake and had a blearily vengeful look. Nobody knew what he was talking about. "We've already got bloody . . . Woggoo here," and he struggled upright, with a grimace of pretended guilt, to see if Charlie Mwegu, the Worcester loose-head prop and the only black person at the party, was in the room. "I mean, fucking hell," he said. Shepton was a licensed buffoon, an indulged self-parody, and Nick merely raised his eyebrows and sighed; for a moment the old dreariness and wariness surfaced again through the newer romance of the pot.
Claire was looking tenderly at Nick, and said, "I think black men can be so attractive . . . they have sweet little ears, don't they . . . sometimes . . . I don't know . . . It must be nice —"
"Calm down, Claire!" barked Roddy Shepton, as if his very worst fears had been confirmed. He struggled towards his glass on the floor.
"No, I'm quite jealous actually," said Claire, and gave Lord Shepton a playful poke in the stomach.
"Oh, you cow!" said Lord Shepton; his attention refocusing, slowly but greedily, on Wani Ouradi, who had just come into the room. "Ah, Ouradi, there you are. I hope you're going to give me some of that white powder, you bloody Arab."
"Oh, really!" said Claire, appealing hopelessly to the others.
But Wani ignored Shepton and stepped through the group towards the bed and Toby. He had changed into a green velvet smoking jacket. Nick had a moment of selfless but intensely curious immersion in his beauty. The forceful chin with its slight saving roundness, the deep-set eyes with their confounding softness, the cheekbones and the long nose, the little ears and springy curls, the cruel charming curve of his lips, made everything else in the house seem stale, over-artful, or beside the point. Nick longed to abandon handsome Nat and climb back on to the King's bed. He rolled his eyes in apology for Shepton, but Wani gave no answering sign of special recognition. And the group soon started talking about something else. Wani lay back on his elbow beside Toby for a minute, and took in the room through the filters of his lashes. Toby had picked up one of the girls' pink chiffon scarves, and was winding it into a turban with drunk perseverance. Wani said nothing about the turban, as if they were almost too familiar with each other to comment, as if they were figures of some other time and culture. Nick heard him say, "Si tu veux . . . " before getting up and going into the bathroom. Toby sat a while longer, laughing artificially at the conversation, and then went off with a yawn and a stumble after him. Nick sat sunk in himself, jealous of both of them, shocked almost to the point of panic by what they were doing. When they came back, he watched them like a child curious for evidence of its parents' vices. He could see their tiny effort to muffle their excitement, the little mock solemnity that made them seem oddly less happy and smashed than the rest of the