The Line of Beauty

  In the morning, before it was too hot, the Tippers went down to the pool, she with a clutch of sunscreens and a huge hat, he with the new Dick Francis in one hand as a decoy for the briefcase in the other. It was the time when Nick liked to do his fifty lengths—at least he invented this tradition to focus his resentment of the newcomers. When he went down a bit later, Lady Partridge, a keen but almost unmoving swimmer, was halfway across the shallow end, apparently unaware that Sally Tipper, beside her in the water, was asking her about her hip replacement: she glanced at her from time to time with mild apprehension. Maurice Tipper had got a table and chair fixed up under an umbrella and sat in tight biscuit-coloured shorts reading and annotating a sheaf of faxes. His lips quivered and pinched with the sarcastic alertness that was his own brand of happiness. Nick, dispossessed, went off to his favourite corner on a lower terrace and read A Small Boy and Others in the company of a lizard.

  At noon there were calls and voices up above as a party was assembled for lunch. Nick went to see them off. Toby had pulled up the spare seats in the back of the Range Rover and was checking they were safely bolted; he was taking the extra trouble that delays a departure and disguises the relief of the person left behind. "We don't want you flying through the windscreen," he said to Lady Tipper.

  "I think you'll find this restaurant acceptable," Gerald burbled facetiously, gesturing Maurice Tipper to the front seat beside him.

  "He just can't have anything too rich," said Sally. "His wretched ulcers . . ." She twitched while she pulled a long face. "I'm afraid last night's dinner rather did for him."

  "Oh, they'll look after you, they'll do anything for you," said Rachel, with unflinching sweetness. Gerald, ruefully baffled by his new guests' failure to notice the beauties of the manoir, was taking them to Chez Claude in Perigueux, normally the last-night treat of the holidays, in the hope of cracking a word of praise out of them.

  "See if you agree with us that it merits a third Michelin star," he said.

  "We're not big lunchers," said Sally Tipper.

  Catherine and Jasper came out last, and Wani squashed in with them excitedly in the third row. Toby closed the doors like a guard and off they went, with a soft superior roar, perched and crammed, for what Nick pictured as a little outing in hell—not the starry Chez Claude or the turret-crowned countryside, but the atmosphere they carried with them. Toby put his arm round Nick's shoulder and they went into the silent house—both of them lightly excited and self-conscious.

  Toby made them sandwiches for lunch, in a deliberately enthusiastic way, heaping in cold chicken and lettuce and olives and tomato rings which the first bite would send squirting and dropping from the edges. It was a bit of a mess, a mishmash, lots of dressing was sploshed in—it was almost as though he was saying to Nick, who had once had a job in a sandwich shop, "I'm not a poof, I haven't got style, I can't help it." They took them down to the poolside and sat under an umbrella to eat them, with the dressing and tomatoes squirting out and the lettuce dropping into their laps.

  "Mm, lovely and quiet, isn't it," said Toby after a bit.

  "I know," said Nick, and grinned. They were both wearing dark glasses, and had to search for each other's gaze.

  "Fancy a beer?" said Toby.

  "Why not," said Nick. Toby went into the pool-house, and came back with a couple of Stellas from the fridge. It seemed to signal a desire to talk, but he didn't know how to start. Nick said, "So when are Maurice and Sally going?" though he knew the answer.

  "Funny you should say that," said Toby. "I was just thinking the same thing."

  "I can cope with her, somehow."

  Toby looked at him almost reproachfully: "You're being a hero with her. Of course, she's a great opera queen, isn't she."

  Nick tried to work out, through their two pairs of sunglasses, if this was a joke—but it seemed to have been said in equal innocence of queens and opera.

  "He's a total philistine," he said.

  "Oh, he's a bastard," said Toby, who, unlike his father, hardly ever swore.

  Nick did it for him. "He's a cunt."

  "No, he really is."

  "I mean, why are they here actually?"

  "Oh, business, of course . . . " Toby looked uneasy at hearing himself criticize his father: "You know, I think Dad thought we were going to be one big happy family; but then there was. . . the Sophie thing, but—anyway, he's carrying on as if nothing had gone wrong."

  "Business as usual," said Nick, reluctant to get into the Sophie thing all over again. "I suppose Tipper's very powerful, isn't he?"

  "Obviously he's one of the biggest."

  "What is it, exactly?"

  "Nick, really . . . ! You've heard of TipperCo, for Heaven's sake, it's a huge conglomerate."

  "No, of course . . ."

  "It was a huge asset-stripping story in the 70s, he was very unpopular but he made millions."

  "Right . . ."

  "Yeah, you were probably doing Chaucer that week."

  Nick got as always a tiny amorous frisson from being teased by Toby; he coloured and giggled acceptingly. Of course, Toby knew about all this stuff, but you forgot that he did. It was as wonderful in its way that he'd written articles in newspapers as that his father should have something to do with immigration policy, or who went to prison. "I had a look at a few of his faxes, but they were in some foreign language."

  "Oh, I wonder what that was."

  "You know, numbers and things."

  "Ha! Yeah, I had a look too, actually. There's a lot of property stuff going on now, which I guess is what Dad's interested in."

  "Sam Zeman says Gerald's doing awfully well."

  "Yah, he's plotting something."

  "I suppose he's a plotter . . . ?"

  "Oh, yes. Well, you know how bored he gets."

  "That's true, actually . . ."

  "I mean, he's bored to death down here."

  "He always says how much he loves it."

  "He loves the idea of it. You know . . ." This was an interesting idea itself, and came somehow formulated, like the sage things Toby used to say at Oxford, as if he'd got it off a family friend.

  "He's probably missing London," said Nick, just wondering if Toby had an inkling of what he meant.

  "I think he misses work," said Toby.

  Nick gave a hesitant laugh, but said nothing else. He stood up, and pulled off his T-shirt.

  "Good idea," said Toby, and did the same, and stood stretching needlessly. There was a little rise, for Nick, in the sexual charge of the afternoon. Toby was still beautiful, even though he was letting himself go. His beauty was held in an eerie balance with its own neglect. He tucked his chin in, the corners of his mouth twitched down as he looked down his body. It was a shame, but it was also oddly comforting, even lightly arousing, how he grew plumper, while Wani, whose smooth sleekness had been part of his charm, seemed to Nick to grow leaner and ever more aquiline. Toby sat back down, looked at Nick, and took a couple of quick swigs from his bottle, shy about what he wanted to say. "Yeah, you're in pretty good shape these days, Nick," he said. "I was noticing."

  Nick pushed his chest out, flattened his stomach. "Yeah," he said, and had a quick proud suck on his own bottle.

  "You're not seeing anyone at the moment, are you?"

  He was touched by these little steps into intimacy, the sense that talking frankly to a friend was a kind of experiment for Toby, a puzzling luxury. It was an echo of the Oxford days, when Nick had invented occasions, engineered conversations, and led Toby into solemn and slightly bewildered talk about his feelings and his family. It was a pity now to have to say, as carelessly as he could, "No, not really." He sighed. "You're right, actually, why haven't I got someone! It's a scandal!" And then, incautiously, "How about you, by the way? Have you got your sights set on someone new?"

  "No," said Toby, "not yet." He smiled grimly at Nick, and said, "That bloody business with Sophie, you know . . ." He shook his head slowly, invoking the shock of it. "I mean
, what went wrong there, Nick? We were going to get married, and everything."

  "I know . . . " said Nick, "I know . . ."—scenting a chance to tell the truth, which was sometimes a questionable pleasure.

  "I mean, to go off with one of my own best mates."

  "I think eventually," said Nick, conscious of having said this to Toby four or five times already, "you'll come to see it as a fortunate escape."

  "Bloody Jamie," said Toby.

  "Of course she was a fool," said Nick, with brotherly rectitude and secret tenderness. "But just imagine, having all your summer holidays with Maurice and Sally."

  "Of course he blames me for not hanging on to her, Maurice does. He thought it was a good match."

  "It was a good match, darling, for her: far too fucking good."

  "Mm, thanks, Nick." Toby pulled on his beer and stared across the water. Nick's language seemed to set off a train of thought. He said, "I suppose it wasn't all that great, you know, the sexual side of things." He looked bitter and guilty too to be saying this.

  "Oh . . ."

  "You know, she called it 'doings.'"

  "That's not very promising, I agree."

  "She was a bit. . . babyish. I don't think she liked it very much, actually." Nick couldn't help saying, "Surely . . . ?"

  Toby sighed. "She used to say I hurt her, and . . . I don't know."

  There were various possible explanations of this: that Sophie, child of the chilly Tippers, was frigid herself; or of course that Toby's knob was too big, or that he didn't know what to do with it, or that he was just too big and heavy altogether for a slender young woman. Nick said, "Well, if the sex was no good, that's another reason to think you had a lucky escape." It struck him that the man who'd been the focus of his longings for three years or more, and performed untiringly in his fantasies, was perhaps after all not much good at sex, or not yet, was clumsy from inexperience or the choice of the wrong partner. He'd been so lucky, himself, to be shown the way by someone so practised and insatiably keen. And for a second or two, in the meridional heat, the thrill of that first London autumn touched him and shivered him.

  Toby mulled the thing over, emptied his bottle, and then went to the pool-house to get a couple more.

  Later they had a swim, never quite saying if they were racing or not. It pleased Nick to beat Toby in a race, and then made him feel sorry. He felt warmed and saddened by his drug secrets and his sex secrets, like an adulterous parent playing with an unsuspecting child. It struck him as a strange eventuality, when for years the idea of romping almost naked in the water with Toby would have been one of choking romance. He pulled himself up and sat on the half-submerged shelf, with the water slapping round his balls, and looked at the view, and then the other way, at the pool-house, the steps up under the fig tree, and the high end-wall of the manor house, the windows shuttered against the sun. Afternoon randiness, the mood of desertion, opportunity silent and wide—he watched Toby getting out with a magnificent jump and shake of his big unsuspecting backside.

  They had another beer together, lying flat in the sun. "I wonder how they're getting on," said Toby.

  "I'm so glad I'm not there," said Nick. "I mean, I'm sure it's a lovely place . . ."

  "It's been great just to spend some time with you, old chap," said Toby, as if they had really used the time. "How are you getting on with Wani, by the way?"

  "OK, actually," said Nick. "He's been very generous to me."

  "He told me he relies on you a lot."

  "Oh, did he . . . ? Yes . . . He's quite a particular person."

  "He always has been. But you'll get used to that in time. I know him inside out by now."

  "Yes, you're very old friends, aren't you?"

  "God, yes." said Toby.

  Nick smeared on some sunscreen, and Toby did his back for him, rather anxiously, and describing all the time what he was doing. Then Toby lay face down on his lounger, and Nick for the first time ever squatted over him, and squirted the thin cream across his shoulder blades, and set to working it in, briskly but thoroughly. He had the premonitory tingle of a headache from the sun and the beer, he felt parched and heavy-lidded, and he had a highly inconvenient erection. His hands moved sleekly over Toby's upper body, in weird practical mimicry of a thousand fantasies. His heart started beating hard when he dealt with the curve of the lower back, he turned it into a bit of a massage, a bit of a method, as he moved towards the upward rise of his arse and the low loosish waistband of his trunks. And Toby just took it, leaving Nick with a haunting tumultuous sense of how he might have gone on. He finished, jumped away, and lay down quickly and uncomfortably on his front. For a few minutes the two boys said things, widely spaced, calling only for mumbled answers, like a couple in bed.

  Nick woke to a strange tearing sound, like an engine that wouldn't start. Sharp vocalized breaths came in rhythm with it. He turned over, looked blearily round, and saw that Toby had brought out the rowing machine from the pool-house. It had a sliding seat and stirrups and a hand-bar that pulled out a coiled and fiercely retracting white cord. Nick lay on his side and watched, with a suspicion that Toby was showing off to him, shooting forwards and backwards with each tug and each letting go. He was very powerful. The sun beat down on his back and sweat trickled from his armpits. His stomach muscles clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed. His breaths were keen and humourless, lips funnelled into a rigid kiss. It was surreal to be rowing so hard on dry land, beside a sheet of still blue water. The machine made its noise, like distant sawing or planing, a rhythmic nag and lull. And Nick remembered an evening in Oxford, drifting out through the Meadows to the Isis, and along by the boathouses, the eights all in and stowed, but one or two rowers still about, as if held by the late light, the mood of freedom and discipline by the river. The wide gritty path was streaked and puddled where the dripping boats had been carried across it. He dawdled along, and then saw what he'd hoped to see, Toby out in a single scull, shirtless, glowing, moving with astonishing speed across the welling water.

  Nick was reading under the awning when he heard the slam of car doors and then tired, unsocial voices. For thirty seconds he was gripped by his old reflex of possession, resenting the real owners as intruders. The great glass jar was shattered, and the warm afternoon was spilt for ever. Catherine came clattering out, bent forward in a mime of exhaustion and nausea.

  "Good lunch?" said Nick.

  "Oh! Nick! God . . . " She subsided into a mumble and groped for him, for the table edge.

  "Sit down, darling, sit down."

  "The Tippers." She dragged a chair over the flags and fell onto it. "You wouldn't believe. They're as ignorant as shit. And as mean as . . . as . . ."

  "Shit . . . ?"

  "They're as mean as shit! He let Gerald pay for the whole of lunch. It was over ;£500, I worked it out, you know . . . And not a single word of thanks."

  "I don't think they really wanted to go."

  "Then when we went into Podier afterwards, we went into the church—"

  "Hello, Sally!" said Nick, getting up and smiling delightedly to annul what she might have heard. "Have you had fun?"

  It seemed to come as an unexpected and even slightly offensive question, and she twitched her hair back several times as she confronted it. Then she said severely, "I suppose we have. Yes. Yes, we have!"

  "Oh good. I believe it's a marvellous restaurant, isn't it. Well, you're back in time for drinks. Toby's just making a jug of Pimm's. We thought we might have it outside this evening."

  "Mm. OK. And what have you done all day?" She looked at him with a touch of criticism. He knew he was giving off the mischievous contentment of someone left behind for an afternoon, sleepy hints that he might have got up to something but in fact had done the more enviable and inexplicable nothing.

  "I'm afraid we were very lazy," he said, as Toby, red from dozing in the sun, came out with the jug. He saw that this was what he wanted her to understand, his deep and idle togetherness with the son o
f the house.

  Gerald and Rachel didn't appear for a while, and so the Tippers sat down with the youngsters for a drink. Toby gave Sir Maurice a glass so thick with fruit and vegetables that he left it untested on the table. Catherine blinked a lot and put her head on one side ponderingly. "You're really very rich, aren't you, Sir Maurice," she said after a while.

  "Yes, I am," he said, with a snuffle of frankness.

  "How much money have you got?"

  His expression was sharp, but not entirely displeased. "It's hard to say exactly."

  Sally said, "You can never say exactly, can you—it goes up so fast all the time . . . these days."

  "Well, roughly," said Catherine.

  "If I died tomorrow."

  Sally looked solemn, but interested. "My dear man . . . !" she murmured.

  "Say, a hundred and fifty million."

  "Yep . . . " said Sally, nodding illusionlessly.

  Catherine was blank with concealed astonishment. "A hundred and fifty million pounds."

  "Well, not lire, young lady, I can assure you. Or Bolivian bolivianos, either."

  There was a pause while Catherine allowed them to enjoy her confusion, and Toby said something smooth about the markets, which Sir Maurice merely shrugged at, to show he couldn't be expected to talk about such things at their level.

  Catherine poked at a segmental log of cucumber in her drink and said, "I noticed you gave some money to the appeal at Podier church."

  "Oh, we give to endless churches and appeals," said Sally.

  "How much did you give?"

  "I don't recall exactly."

  "Probably quite a lot, knowing Maurice!" Sir Maurice had the super-complacent look of someone being criticized.

  "You gave five francs," said Catherine. "Which is about fifty new pence. But you could have given"—she raised her glass and swept it across the vista of hills and the far glimpse of river—"a million francs, without noticing really, and single-handedly saved the Romanesque narthex!"