The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [46]
"Isn't it a nightmare?" said Rachel gratefully. "One feels quite lost." They all started reading an article which began, " 'Get that motherfucker out of here!' says Daddy Mambo of Collision."
"OK," said Gerald, with a dismissive drawl, flicking through pages of advertisements for clubs and albums. He seemed vaguely distressed, not at the magazine itself, but that Rachel should have seen it. "This doesn't have the young genius's work in it . . . ?"
"Urn—yes, he did the cover on this one."
"Ah . . ." Gerald peered at it in an affectedly donnish way. "Oh yes, 'photo Russell Swinburne-Stevenson.'"
"I didn't know he had a surname," said Rachel.
"Much less two," said Gerald—as if perhaps he might not be such a bad sort.
They looked at Boy George's carmine smile and unusual hat. He wasn't at all sexy to Nick, but he carried a large sexual implication.
"Boy George is a man, isn't he?" said Rachel.
"Yes, he is," said Nick.
"Not like George Eliot."
"No, not at all."
"Very fair question," said Gerald.
The doorbell rang—it was a quick brassy rattle as much as a ping. "Is that Judy already?" said Rachel, fairly crossly. Gerald went into the hall and they heard him pluck open the front door and boom "Hello" in a peremptory and discouraging way he had. And then, in another timbre that made Nick's heart thump and the still air in the house shiver and gleam, Leo saying, "Good morning, Mr Fedden, sir. I was wondering if young Nicholas was at home."
"Urn, yes, yes he is . . . Nick!" he called back—but Nick was already coming through, with a strange stilted walk, it seemed to himself, of embarrassment and pride. It was abrupt and confusing but he couldn't stop smiling. It was the first time in his life he'd had a lover call for him, and the fact had a scandalous dazzle to it. Gerald didn't ask Leo in, but stood back a little to let Nick pass and to see if there was going to be any kind of trouble.
"Hello, Nick," said Leo.
"Leo!"
Nick shook his hand and kept holding it as he stepped out onto the shallow porch, between the gleaming Tuscan pillars.
"How's it going?" said Leo, giving his cynical little smile, but his eyes almost caressing, passing Nick a secret message, and then nodding him a sign that Gerald had withdrawn; though he must have been able to hear him saying, ". . . some pal of Nick's . . ." and a few moments later, "No, black chappie."
"I'm so pleased to see you," Nick said, with a certain caution because he didn't want to look mad with excitement. And then, "I've been thinking of you. And wondering what you were up to," sounding a bit like his mother when she was fondly suppressing a critical note. He looked at Leo's head as if he had never seen anything like it before, his nose, his stubble, the slow sheepish smile that admitted his own vulnerability.
"Yeah, got your message," Leo said. He gazed down the wide white street, and Nick remembered his authentic but mysterious phrase about how he'd been round the block a few times. "Sorry I didn't get back to you."
"Oh, that's all right," said Nick, and he found the weeks of waiting and failure were already half forgotten.
"Yeah, I've been a bit off colour," Leo said.
"Oh, no." Nick poured himself into believing this, and felt the lovely new scope it gave him for sympathy and interference. "I'm so sorry . . ."
"Chesty thing," said Leo: "couldn't seem to shake it off."
"But you're better now . . ."
"Ooh, yeah!" said Leo, with a wink and a squirm; which made Nick think he could say,
"Too much outdoor sex, I expect." Really he didn't know what was allowed, what was funny and what was inept. He feared his innocence showed.
"You're bad, you are,"