The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [54]
5
NICK CHOSE A moment before dinner to pay the rent. It was always awkward. "Oh . . . my dear . . . " said Rachel, as if the two ten-pound notes were a form of mild extravagance, like a box of chocolates, or like flowers brought by a dinner guest, which were also a bit of a nuisance. She looked for somewhere to put down her bowl of steeping apricots. "If you're sure . . . "
Nick shrugged and snuffled. "Heavens," he said. He had just spent five pounds on a taxi, he was doing all sorts of incautious things, and would have loved not to pay.
"Well, thank you!" Rachel took the money, and stood folding it appreciatively, not sure where to put it. Then Gerald and Badger Brogan came in from tennis—there was the flat chime of their feet on the iron stair from the garden, and then they were in the kitchen like two big hot boys. Just for a second Gerald noted the transaction that was taking place. The next second he said, "Thrashed him!" and threw down his racquet on the bench.
"God, Fedden, you're a liar," said Badger. "It was 6-4, Rache, in the third set."
Gerald shook his head in the savour of triumph. "I let him have it hot."
"I'm sure you were very well matched," said Rachel prudently.
This wasn't quite acceptable to either player. "I chose not to question some frankly fantastic line calls," said Badger. He roamed round by the table, picking up a spoon and putting it down, and then a garlic press, without noticing. Nick smiled as if amused by the drama of their game, though in fact he felt challenged by Badger's free and easy way here, by the mood of competition he stirred up in Gerald, and perhaps by its counterpart, his longer and deeper claim on Gerald's affection. "Hello, Nick!" said Badger, in his probing, sarcastic tone.
"Hello, Badger," said Nick, still self-conscious at teasing a virtual stranger about the yellow-grey stripe in his dark hair, at having to enrol in the family cult of Badger as a character, but finding it easier after all than the sober, the critical, the almost hostile-sounding "Derek."
Badger in turn was clearly puzzled by Nick's presence in his old friend's house and made facetious attempts at understanding him. It was a part of his general mischief—he lurched about all day, asked leading questions, rubbed up old scandals and scratched beadily for new ones. He said, "So what have you been up to today, Nick?"
"Oh, just the usual," said Nick. "You know, morning in the library, waiting for books to come up from the stacks; bibliography class in the afternoon, 'How to describe textual variants.' " He made himself as dull as he could for Badger, like a brown old binding, though to his own eye "textual variants" glinted with hints at what he'd actually done, which was to cut the class and have two hours of sex with Leo on Hampstead Heath. That would have been more scandal than Badger could manage. On the first night of his stay he had described an Oxford friend of theirs as the most ghastly shirtlifter.
"LBW, Badge?" said Gerald.
"Thanks, Banger," said Badger, using an interesting old nickname that Nick couldn't see himself making free with, and which Gerald was wise enough not to object to. The two men stood there, in their tennis whites, drinking their tall glasses of lemon barley water, gasping and grinning between swigs. Gerald's legs were still brown, and his confusingly firm buttocks were set off by his tight Fred Perry shorts. Badger was leaner and seedier, and his Aertex shirt was sweatier and pulled askew by being used to mop his face. He was wearing scruffy old plimsolls, whereas Gerald seemed to bounce or levitate slightly in the new thick-soled "trainers."
Elena hurried in from the pantry with the joint, or limb, of venison, plastered up in a blood-stained paste of flour and water. The whole business of the deer, culled at Hawkeswood each September and sent to hang for a fortnight in the Feddens' utility room, was an ordeal for Elena, and an easy triumph for Gerald, who always fixed a series of dinner parties to advertise it and eat