The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [87]
Ricky said, "She won't be back till really late, actually," more clearly than when he told the truth, and then added, "She's gone round to see her Uncle Nigel," with a tolerant cluck. This bit of business acted visibly on Wani, who cleared his throat and half-turned in his seat to say,
"That's good." The absurdity of the situation, something quite uncomfortable, tied a sudden knot in Nick, and at the top of the lane, instead of turning right down the hill towards town he turned the other way and climbed again towards Highgate village. He probably didn't need to explain, since as far as Wani was concerned they could have been in Lincolnshire, and Ricky would sit there with his half-smile of anticipation wherever they went, but he said,
"There's something I want to have a quick look at." At the top he made an abrupt left into the long shady row that he knew must be The Grove. He was fairly sure he'd never been here before, it was something he'd imagined doing, a piece of research, historical, emotional. . . but as he peered through the line of trees at the beautiful old brick houses behind high railings, the house where Coleridge had lived and died, and then, as they crept along, bigger Georgian houses with flights of steps and carriage yards, he had the ghostly impression that he had been here, had been brought here on some unlocatable evening for some irrecoverable event. "This is where Coleridge lived," he said, with a glow of piety intended to stir Wani too, and then protracted to defy his evident lack of interest.
"OK," said Wani.
"I just want to see where the Feddens used to live. Some old friends of mine," he explained to Ricky. "I know it was number thirty-eight . . ."
"This is sixteen," said Wani.
It was one of the Feddens' sentimental routines to refer to their "Highgate days," and Gerald would evoke the house where they had first lived in a tone of nostalgia and self-ridicule, as if remembering student digs. Rachel usually said it was "a darling house," it was where she had raised her children, and a snapshot of Toby and Catherine, aged ten and eight, sitting on the front steps, remained in a silver frame on her dressing table. To Nick the place had an obscure proxy romance, as the first home of his second family. When they got to it there was a skip outside piled high with splintered timber, and a blue Portaloo in the front garden.
"Hm," said Wani. "OK . . . " And he turned and gave Ricky an encouraging glance, in case he was getting bored. "Not much left."
The house was having a restoration so thorough it looked like demolition. The roof was like another house, made of scaffolding and sheeting. Most of the stucco had been hacked from the walls, and you could see the buried arcs of brick over each window. Through the front door you saw the garden at the back. On the surviving white-stucco pier by the side gate there was a painted black finger and the words TRADESMEN'S ENTPJVNCE; underneath which, in red spray-paint, a wit had written CUNTS EN-TPJVNCE, with an arrow pointing the other way.
"So much for that," said Wani. A workman in overalls and a blue helmet came out through the aperture of the front door and stared at them like a janitor, trying to decide if they mattered. They were one of a thousand carloads of easy wealth that roared and fluttered round London, knocking things down and flinging things up. They might be due for deference or contempt, or for the sour mixture of the two aroused by young money. Nick nodded affably at the man as he pulled away. Mixed in with his unease, and the rueful lesson of the skip and the scaffolding, was a feeling that the builder knew just what they would be getting up to half an hour from now.
Though half an hour later they were creeping down Park Lane. The decisive plunge from the heights had slowed and stalled in the inexhaustible confusion of traffic and roadworks and construction. The wolfish bites had turned into thwarted snaps, the squeals of half a dozen near-collisions.