The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [70]
"Now, young sir," said Mrs Charles, with a clarity of enunciation that sounded both anxious and arch, "he tells me next to nothing, Leo, you know, at all. But I think you're the fellow who lives in the big white house, belongs to the MP?"
"Yes, I am," Nick said, with a self-deprecating laugh which seemed to puzzle her. Leo must have been talking up these facts to impress her, though on other occasions they were the object of vague derision.
"And how do you like it?" Mrs Charles asked.
"Well, I'm very lucky," Nick said. "I'm only there because I was at university with one of their children."
"So, you met her?"
Nick smiled back with a little pant of uncertainty. "What, Mrs Fedden, you mean . . ."
"No . . . ! Mrs Fedden . . . I assume you met Mrs Fedden, if I'm saying her name correctly." Nick blushed, and then smiled as he saw the way, simple but nimble, religious even, that she'd gone for the big question. "No—her. The lady herself. Mrs T!"
"Oh . . . No. No, I haven't. Not yet. . ." He felt obliged to go on, rather indiscreetly, "I know they'd love to have her round, he, um, Gerald Fedden, has tried to get her at least once. He's very ambitious."
"Ah, you want to make sure and meet Mrs T."
"Well, I'll certainly tell you if I do," said Nick, looking round gratefully as Leo came into the room. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and Nick had a vivid image of him ejaculating. Then he saw the heavy spit as it loitered and drooled down the taut ginger back of the sofa. He felt deliciously brainwashed by sex, when he closed his eyes phallus chased phallus like a wallpaper pattern across the dark, and at any moment the imagery of anal intercourse, his new triumph and skill, could gallop in surreal montage across the street or classroom or dining table.
"And can I be allowed to hope you are a regular church-attender?"
Nick crossed his legs to hide his excitement and said, "I'm not really, I'm afraid. At the moment, anyway."
Mrs Charles looked used to such disappointments, and almost cheerful, as if taking a very long view. "And what about your father and mother?"
"Oh, they're very religious. My father's a churchwarden, and my mother often does the church flowers . . . for instance." He hoped this compensated, rather than merely highlighting, his own delinquency.
"I'm very happy to hear it. And what is your father's occupation?" she demanded, pressing on in interview mode, which made Nick wonder if she did somehow know, however subconsciously, that he was trying to tie his life to her son's. He was a puzzle, Nick, in many contexts—he was often being interviewed obliquely, to see how he fitted in.
He said, "He's an antiques dealer—old furniture and clocks, mostly, and china."
Mrs Charles looked up at Leo. "Well, isn't that the exact same thing as old Pete!"
"Yeah," said Leo, whose whole manner was withdrawn and unhelpful. He dragged out one of the dining chairs and sat down at the table behind them. "There's a lot of antique dealers about."
"The exact same thing," said Mrs Charles. "You go on, look around. We got some good old antiques here. You don't know old Pete?"
"Yes, I do," Nick said, glancing round the room and wondering what Pete had said about it all before him, and how Pete had been explained to her.
"It's a small little world," she marvelled.
"Well, Leo introduced me to him . . ."
"Ah, he's a good man, old Pete. You know we always called him 'old' Pete, though he can't be not more than fifty."
"He's forty-four," said Leo.
"He was a great help to my son. He helped him with getting through college,