The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [43]
A joint came round again, and Nick took a serious pull on it. Then he got up and went to the open window, to look out at the damp still night. The great beeches beyond the lawn showed in grey silhouette against the first vague paling of the sky. It was a beautiful effect, so much bigger than the party: the world turning, the bright practical phrases of the first birds. Though there were hours still, surely, before sunrise . . . He stiffened, grabbed at his wrist, and held his watch steady in front of him. It was 4.07. He turned and looked at the others in the room, in their stupor and animation, and his main heavy thought was just how little any of them cared—they could never begin to imagine a date with a waiter, or the disaster of missing one. He made the first steps towards the door, and slowed and stopped as the pot took his sense of direction away. Where, after all, was he going? Everything seemed to have petered into a silence, as if by agreement. Nick felt conspicuous standing there, smiling cautiously, like someone not on to a joke; but when he looked at the others they seemed equally stilled and bemused. It must be some amazingly strong stuff Nick thought his way towards moving his left leg forward, he could coax his thought down through the knee to the foot, but it died there with no chance of becoming an action. It was slightly trying if he had to stand here for a long time. He looked more boldly round at the others, not easy to name at the moment, some of them. Slow blinks, little twitches of smiles. "Yah . . . " said Nat Hanmer, very measuredly, nodding his head, agreeing with some statement that only he had heard. "I suppose . . . " said Nick, but stopped and looked around, because that was part of a conversation about Gerald and the BBC. No one had noticed, though. "But you're thinking, wasn't that Bismarck's whole point?" Gareth said.
Nick wasn't sure how it started. Sam Zeman was laughing so much he lay back on the floor, but then choked and had to sit up. One of the girls pointed at him mockingly, but it wasn't mockery, she was laughing uncontrollably herself. Nat was red in the face, pinching the tears out of his eyes and pulling down the corners of his mouth to try to stop it. Nick could only stop giggling by glaring at the floor, and as soon as he looked up he was giggling again convulsively, it was like hiccups, it was hiccups, all mixed up together with the whooping, inexplicable funniness of the brandy bottle, the Renoir lady, the gilded plaster crown above the bed, all of them with their ideas and bow ties and plans and objections.
4
"‘THAT'S NOT A Hero's Life,' said a critic of the first performance, 'but rather a Dog's Life.' Or rather a dog's breakfast, you may well feel, after hearing that rendition of the battle music by Rudolf Kothner and the Tallahassee Symphony." It was Saturday morning, in the kitchen at Kensington Park Gardens, and a sharp young man was comparing recordings of Ein Heldenleben on "Building a Library."
"Ha, ha," said Gerald sourly, who had been slouching up and down, conducting first with a biro, now with a tennis racquet. He loved these domestic mornings, deferring to Rachel, making lists, carrying out small invented duties in the kitchen and the cellar. Today was even better, with his favourite composer on the radio; he lingered and got in the way, swinging his head from side to side, and not at all minding having a passage repeated again and again in ever louder rival interpretations. He took great interest in the breakdown of the Hero's adversaries into carpers (flutes), vituperators (oboe), and whiners (cor anglais), and drove them all into the pantry with a vigorous forehand when the Hero won.
"But let's move on to 'The Hero's Works of Peace,' " said the reviewer, "where Strauss self-glorifyingly recalls material from his own earlier symphonic poems and songs."
"I don't like this chap's tone," said Gerald. "Ah, now . . . ! Nick . . ." as the music revelled and swelled enormously. "You must admit!"