The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [71]
"Something like that," said Leo, with the sourness of a child subjected to the astounding iterations of a parent's treasured phrases—treasured often because they put a bright gloss on some anxious denial. The clumsy unconscious joke in this one must have made it specially wearing.
"A proper decent father Leo didn't have," said Mrs Charles candidly, and again with an almost cunning air of satisfaction that they had been so tested. "But the Lord looks after his own. And now, don't you reckon he's a good boy?"
"Yes, he's . . . splendid!" said Nick.
"What's for tea?" said Leo.
"I'm hoping your sister is bringing it off now," said Mrs Charles. "We're giving our guest our special spicy chops and rice. In this country," she observed to Nick, "you don't fry the chops so much, you're always grilling them, isn't that right?"
"Um . . . I don't know. I think we do both." He thought of his own mother, as an embodiment of any such supposed tradition; but went on charmingly, "But if you fry them rather than grilling them, then that's also what we do in this country!"
"Ha . . . " said Mrs Charles, "well that's certainly one way of looking at the matter."
At table the movement of Nick's left arm was limited by the leaning tower of "Welcoming Jesus In Today." He came down on his food in a hesitant but predatory fashion. The meal was a bold combination of bland and garishly spicy, and he wondered if Rosemary had mockingly overdone the chillies to make fun of his good manners. He was full of round-eyed appreciation, which was also a cover for the surprise of having his evening meal at five forty-five; some absurd social reflex, the useful shock of class difference, a childish worry perhaps at a changed routine, all combined in a mood of interesting alienation. At Kensington Park Gardens they ate three hours later, and dinner was sauntered towards through a sequence of other diversions, chats and decantings, gardening and tennis, gramophone records, whisky and gin. In the Charles household there was no room for diversions, no garden to speak of, and no alcohol. The meal came on straight after work, a wide-ranging grace was declaimed, and then it was eaten and done with, and the whole long evening lay ahead. There were things Nick guessed about them, from the habits of his own family, which lay somewhere between the two; but there were others he would have to wait for and learn. He had never been in a black household before. He saw that first love had come with a bundle of other firsts, which he took hold of like a wonderful but worrying bouquet.
After a longish silence Leo said, "So how's it going at college?" as if they hardly knew each other.
"Oh, it's all right," said Nick, disconcerted but then touched by Leo's stiffness. Whenever Leo was cold or rough to him he felt it like a child—then he turned it round and found some thwarted love in it. He was in awe of Leo, but he saw through him too, and each time he followed this little process of indulgence he felt more in love. "It hasn't been very exciting so far. I suppose it's just different from what I've been used to." He always came away from the sunless back court where the English department was with two or three newly shaped anecdotes, which gave his days there a retrospective sparkle; but he found it hard to interest Leo in them and they often went to waste. Or they were stored up, with a shadowy sense of resentment.
"He was at Oxford University before," said Leo.
"And now where is he?" Mrs Charles wondered.
"I'm at University College," Nick said. "I'm doing a doctorate now."
Leo chewed and frowned. "Yeah, what is it again?"
"Oh . . . " said Nick, with a disparaging wobble of the head, as if he couldn't quite get the words out. "I'm just doing something on style in the—oh, in the English novel!"
"Aaaah yes," said Mrs Charles, with a serene nod, as if to say that this was something infinitely superior but also of course