The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [60]
Gerald came down in a dark suit with characteristic pink shirt, white collar, and blue tie. He seemed to recognize, with a forgiving smile, that he had set a sartorial standard the others were unlikely to match. He kept on smiling as he crossed the room, as a sign of his decision that he would not react to Catherine's appearance. The mac worn over the micro-frock made her look almost naked. When Badger came in he was less circumspect. "My god, girl!" he said.
"No, your god-daughter actually, Uncle Badger," said Catherine, with the forced pertness of a much younger child.
Badger frowned and hummed. "Well, exactly," he said. "Didn't I promise to safeguard your morals, or something?" He rubbed his hands together and had a good look at her.
"I'm not sure anyone thinks you'd be the best person for that," Catherine said, sipping her gin and sitting down sideways on a low armchair.
"You're going easy on that stuff, aren't you, Puss?" said Gerald.
"It's my first one, Daddy," Catherine said; but Nick could see why Gerald was anxious, she was high on her own defiance tonight. He watched Badger watching her, his grey-striped peak slicked back after his shower, something disreputable and unattached about him; in parts of Africa, according to Toby, he was known not as Badger but by one of a number of words for hyena. Certainly he circled, and was hungry for something. His lecherous teasing of his god-daughter was allowed because it was of course impossible, a clownish joke.
Catherine stayed long enough to meet everyone and to test her claim that Barry Groom never said hello. Gerald played along and said, "Hello, Barry," and not only seized his hand but covered it confirmingly with his other hand, as if he was canvassing: at which Barry, looking round the room with a suspicious smile, said, "Gerald, I'm surprised at you"—holding him there long enough to make him uneasy—"a green front door, that's hardly sending the right signal." He got a laugh, which was warmer and more complex than he expected—there was a second or two while he grew into it, squared his shoulders. He followed Gerald across the room, nodding in a vain, critical way as he was introduced, but not saying hello. When Catherine shook his hand, he said, "Aha! Beautiful creature!" with a vaguely menacing presumption of charm. Catherine asked him where his wife was and he said she was still parking the car.
It was good that Catherine should want to be present, to be presented, to help entertain the guests, but to the family it was also a little sinister. She put everyone on edge by having her coat on indoors, and seemed to be playing with her father's hopes that at any moment she might leave. He glanced at her distractedly from time to time, as if he would have liked to say something but had made the calculation that the oddity of the coat was preferable to the naked flesh beneath it. He introduced her to Morden Lipscomb with visible reluctance. The grey old American, with his tiny granite-like sparkle of charm, shook her hand and smiled mockingly, as if being confronted with an ancient indiscretion he meant entirely to deny. Toby and Nick were both watching her and Toby said, "God, my sis looks like, you know, one of those girls who try and lure you into striptease parlours."
"She looks like a strippergram," Sophie said.
Lady Partridge came in with that air of social vexation Nick had seen in her before: she wanted to appear totally at home here and she also wanted her arrival to be an event; her deafness added a querulous uncertainty as to which effect she was having. Badger got her a drink and flirted with her, and she allowed herself to be flirted with. She liked Badger, having known him since he was a boy, and nursed him through mumps once, when he was staying in the holidays—an episode that was still referred to as a touchstone of their friendship, and in a vaguely risque way, since apparently Badger's balls had been the size of grapefruit. Nick had