The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [47]
"Nor have I," said Nick, with giddy understatement, glancing over his shoulder.
"I thought, he's a shy one, a bit stuck-up, but there's something going on inside those corduroy trousers, I'll give him a go. And how right I was, Henry!"
Nick blushed with pleasure and wished there was a way to distinguish shy from stuck-up—the muddle had dogged him for years. He wanted pure compliments, just as he wanted unconditional love.
"Anyway, I was in the area, so I thought I'd try my luck." Leo looked him up and down meaningfully, but then said, "I've just got to drop in on old Pete, down the Portobello—I don't know if you want to come."
"Sure!" said Nick, thinking that a visit to Leo's ex was hardly his ideal scenario for their second date.
"Just for a minute. He's not been well, old Pete."
"Oh, I'm sorry . . . " said Nick, though this time without the rush of possessive sympathy. He watched a black cab crawling towards them, a figure peering impatiently in the back; it stopped just in front of them, and the driver clawed round through his open window to release the rear door. When the passenger (who Nick knew was Lady Partridge) didn't emerge, a very rare thing happened and the cabbie got out of the cab and yanked the door open himself, standing aside with a flourish which she acknowledged drily as she stepped out.
"Now who's this old battleaxe?" said Leo. And there was certainly something combative in her sharp glance at the two figures on the front steps, and in her sharp blue dress and jacket, as if she'd come for dinner rather than a family lunch. Nick smiled broadly at her and called out, "Hello, Lady Partridge!"
"Hullo," said Lady Partridge, with the minimal warmth, the hurrying good grace, of a famous person hailed by an unknown fan. Nick couldn't believe that she'd forgotten him, and went on with almost satirical courtesy,
"May I introduce my friend Leo Charles? Lady Partridge." Up close the old woman's jacket, heavily embroidered with glinting black and silver thread, had a scaly texture, on which finer fabrics might have snagged and laddered. She smiled and said,
"How do you do?" in an extraordinarily cordial tone, in which none the less something final was conveyed—the certainty that they would never speak again. Leo was saying hello and offering his hand but she had already drifted past him and in through the open front door. "Gerald, Rachel darling!" she called, edgy with the need for reassurance.
The Portobello Road was only two minutes' stroll from the Feddens' green front door, and there was no time for a love scene. Leo was walking his bike with one hand, and Nick ambled beside him, possibly looking quite normal but feeling giddily attentive, as if hovering above himself. It was that experience of walking on air, perhaps, that people spoke of, and which, like roller skating, you could master with practice, but which on this first try had him teetering and lurching. He had such an important question to ask that he found himself saying something else instead. "I see you know about Gerald, then," he said.
"Your splendid Mr Fedden," said Leo, in his deadpan way, almost as if he knew that splendid was one of Gerald's top words. "Well, I could tell there was something you didn't want me to know, and that always gets me—I'm like that. And then your friend Geoffrey in the garden was going on something about parliament—I thought, I'll look into all this at work. Electoral roll, Who's Who, we know all about you . . ."
"I see," said Nick, flattered but taken aback by this first glimpse of the professional Leo. Of course he'd done similar researches himself when he'd fallen for Toby. There had been a proxy thrill to it, Gerald's date of birth, pastimes,