The Line of Beauty Read Online Free PDF Page A

which he had made a point of buying
     from the cartoonists. When Gerald was in the kitchen, guests always found themselves contrasting him with his grinning, hawk-nosed
     cartoon image; the comparison was obviously to his advantage, though it couldn't help stirring the suspicion that under his
     handsome everyday mask this predatory goon might indeed be lurking.
    Now, in linen shorts and espadrilles, busying back and forth from the car, he was full of anecdotes about life at the manoir,
     and mentioned particular local characters to stir up amusement and regret in his children. "It's such a shame we couldn't
     all be there together. And you know, you really should come down one year, Nick."
    "Well, I'd love to," said Nick, who had been hovering with an encouraging but modest expression. Of course it would have been
     grand to summer with the Feddens at the manoir, but less marvellous, he couldn't help feeling, than staying in London without
     them. How different the room looked now, with all of them noisily and unnoticingly back in it. Their return marked the end
     of his custodianship, and his real pleasure in seeing them again was stained with a kind of sadness he associated with adolescence,
     sadness of time flying and missed opportunities. He was keen for a word of gratitude to ease the mysterious ache. Of course
     his main achievement, in the crisis with Catherine, went unmentioned. It seemed an omission which could still be redeemed,
     by a quick firm gesture of good conscience, and Catherine herself looked nervously aware of the unstated subject; but Nick
     saw, in the unsuspecting presence of her parents, that he had somehow sided with her, and that it was never going to be declared.
     "
    However," said Gerald, "it was simply great for us that you could be here to look after the Cat that Walks by Herself. I hope
     she wasn't any trouble?"
    "Well . . . " Nick grinned and looked down.
    As an outsider, he had no pet name, and was exempt from the heavy drollery of the family lingo. His own gift was a small knobbly
     bottle of cologne called "Je Promets." He took an appreciative sniff, and read into it various nice discriminations on the
     part of the donors; certainly his own parents would never have given him anything so fragrant or ambiguous. "I trust it's
     all right," said Gerald, as if to say he'd made a generous stab at something outside his competence.
    "It's wonderful—thank you so much," said Nick. As an outsider he found himself floating again in a pleasant medium of social
     charm and good humour. Toby and Catherine could frown and sulk, and exercise their prerogative not to be impressed or amused
     by their parents. Nick, though, conversed with his hosts in an idiom of tremendous agreement. "Did you have glorious weather?"
     "I must say we had glorious weather." "I hope the traffic wasn't too frightful. . ." "Frightful!" "I'd love to see the little church at Podier." "I think you'd love the little church at Podier." So they knitted their talk together. Even disagreements, for instance over Gerald's taste for
     Richard Strauss, had a glow of social harmony to them, of relished licence, and counted almost as agreements transposed into
     a more exciting key.
    There was a lot of wine in the back of the Range Rover and Nick offered to help Gerald carry it in. He couldn't help noticing
     the almost annoying firmness of the MP's backside, pumped up no doubt by daily tennis and swimming in France. The suntanned
     legs were a further hint of sexual potential that Nick would normally have thought impossible in a man of forty-five—he thought
     perhaps he was so excited by the prospect of Leo that he was reacting to other men with indiscriminate alertness. When the
     last case was in, Gerald said, "We were stung for a hell of a lot of duty on this stuff."
    Toby said, "Of course if trade barriers were lifted in the EC you wouldn't have to worry about that sort of thing."
    Gerald smiled thinly to show he wasn't rising to