The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [55]
"Fortunately I won't even have to look at you eating it," said Catherine; though she did quickly peer at it with a kind of relish of revulsion.
"Are you going out, then, old Puss?" said Gerald, his eagerness damped at once by a wounded frown.
"You'll have a drink with us, darling?" said Rachel.
"I might do if there's time," said Catherine. "Is it all MPs?"
"No," said Gerald. "Your grandmother's not an MP."
"Thank Christ, actually," said Catherine.
"And nor is Morden Lipscomb an MP."
"There are two MPs coming," said Rachel, and it wasn't clear if she thought this rather few or quite enough.
"Yup, Timms and Groom!" said Gerald, as if they were the joiliest company imaginable.
"The man who never says 'hello'!"
"You're too absurd," said Gerald. "I'm sure I have heard him say it . . ."
"If Morden Lipscomb's coming I'm going to keep my coat on, he makes my blood run cold."
"Morden's an important man," said Gerald. "He has the ear of the President."
"Will Nick be making up numbers, I suppose," said Catherine.
Nick fluttered his eyelashes and Gerald said, "Nick doesn't make up numbers, child, he's part of the . . . part of the household."
Catherine looked at Nick, slightly mockingly, across the space that separates good and bad children. She said, "He's the perfect little courtier, isn't he?"
"Oh, Elena," said Rachel, "Catherine's not dining, we'll be one fewer for dinner—yes, one less." Elena went into the dining room to adjust the placings, and came back a moment later with an objection.
"Miz Fed, you know is thirteen."
"Ah . . . " said Rachel, and then gave an apologetic shrug.
"Yes, well I don't think any of us are triskaidekaphobes here, are we?" said Gerald. They were all very up on the names of phobias, since at various times Catherine had suffered from aichmo, dromo, keno, and nyctophobia, among a number of more commonplace ones—it was a bit of a game with them, but it cut no ice with Elena, who stood there biting her lip.
"You see, you'll have to stay," said Badger, reaching out clumsily to hold Catherine. "How can you resist that beautiful venison?"
"Hmm," said Catherine. "It looks like something out of a field hospital." And she shot a tiny forbidding glance at Nick, who saw that it was probably the aichmophobia, the horror of sharp objects, that made the serving and carving of a haunch of venison impossible for her. The family knew about her trouble in the past, but had happily forgotten it when it seemed not to recur. It was only Nick who knew about the recent challenge of the carving knives. He said,
"I don't mind dropping out too if I'm going to spoil the seating." He enjoyed the well-oiled pomp of the dinners here, but he knew he was too much in love to do more than smile in the candlelight and dream of Leo. He would be quiet and inattentive. And already he felt a tingle in the air, the more-than-reality of the memory of being with his boyfriend.
"No, no," murmured Rachel, with an impatient twitch of the head.
"Elena, we'll risk it!" Gerald pronounced. "Si . . . va bene . . . Nick, you'll just have to be the odd man . . . um . . ." Elena went back into the dining room with that look of unhappy subjection that no one but Nick ever noticed or worried about. "We're not living in twelfth-century Calabria," said Gerald, as the phone started ringing and he plucked it from the wall and grunted, "Fedden," in his new no-nonsense style. "Yes . . . Hello . . . What?. . . Yes, yes he is. . . Yes, all right. . . Mm, and to you," then holding the receiver out towards Nick: "It's Leo." Nick coloured as though his thoughts of a few moments before had been audible to all of them; the kitchen had accidentally fallen silent and Gerald gave him a look which Nick felt was stern and disappointed, but perhaps was merely abstracted, the frown of a broken train of thought.
Catherine said, "If it's Leo, they'll be hours." And Rachel