The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [61]
All the time Nick was thinking about Leo, so that Leo seemed to be the element, the invisible context, in which these daunting disparate people were meeting and sparring and congratulating each other. They didn't know it, which made it all the funnier and more beautiful. He mixed himself a fresh gin-and-tonic, Gerald-style, quinine lost in juniper, and drifted round not minding if he wasn't spoken to. He looked at the pictures with a new keenness, as though explaining them to Leo, his grateful pupil. The other MP and his wife, John and Greta Timms, were standing in front of the Guardi with the look of people who had come to the wrong party, who wanted more of a challenge, he in a grey suit, she in the helpless boldness of a blue maternity dress with a white bow at the neck: it was as if the PM herself were pregnant. John Timms was a junior minister in the Home Office; he must have been several years younger than Gerald, but he had precocious gravitas and unflappable self-importance. If Barry Groom never said hello, John Timms seemed at first not to blink. His gaze was fixed and almost sensual, and his speech had a hypnotic steadiness of pace and tone, irrespective of meaning: he was inspired, he seemed constantly to admit, but he wasn't in any dubious way excitable. They were talking about the Falklands War and the need to commemorate it with a monument and to celebrate it with an annual public holiday. "A Trafalgar Day for our times," said Timms, and his wife, in whom his certainty produced a more vibrant kind of urgency, said, "Why not revive Trafalgar Day itself? Trafalgar Day itself must be revived! Our children are forgetting the War Against the French . . ."John Timms gazed out into the room as though flattered by his wife's zeal and loving her for it, but not himself being ready to go so far. He hadn't been introduced to Nick (indeed the Timmses were really speaking to each other), and his gaze played on him for a moment, seemed to feel him and test him and doubt him. "You'd like to see a permanent Falklands memorial, wouldn't you," he said.
"Mm, I wonder . . . " said Nick, not disrespectfully, and marvelled at just how unavailable his thoughts on the subject were. The doubtlessness of Timms was a wonder in itself. He imagined Leo being here beside him, and having one salient fact or objection to produce, of the kind Nick could never remember. Catherine came past, sampling each of the little power-centres in the room. "We were talking about the Falklands," said Nick.
"I understand the Prime Minister favours an annual parade," said John Timms, "as well as a prominent memorial. It was truly her triumph."
"And the men's," said Greta Timms, with her rich hormonal flush. "The men were staunch."
"They were certainly staunch, my darling," said John Timms. "They were dauntless."
"No," said Catherine, covering her ears and grinning, "it's no good, I just can't bear words with that au sound in. Do you know what I mean?"
"Oh . . . " said Greta Timms. "I think I've always found them rather splendid words!"
"Right, I'm off!" said Catherine, turning to the room with the big smile which perhaps all her life would seem unguarded and vulnerable. A rough chorus of "Bye"s, a chuckling "Oh, is she off?," and she was gazed at with relief, the suddenly conjured good humour that sends a child up to its early bed. "Bye, Gran!" she said, specially loudly, kissing Lady Partridge in the middle of the room. "See you in the morning, Dad." And picking up her bag she stalked out on her tall heels. Lady Partridge peeped at Morden Lipscomb to gauge his surprise; if he seemed amused by this vision of a sex-club door-girl she was ready to take some droll credit as her grandmother. But Lipscomb was looking disappointedly at Gerald.
Lady Partridge was taken in to dinner by Lipscomb. They didn't really "take people in" at the Feddens', but