The morning post brought several thick packets of papers for Gerald and he took them off to the end room, sighing petulantly. It was clear that without Penny he felt he couldn't tackle work, and clear too, presumably, that he couldn't invite Penny here. He had taken over the end room as an office; Nick wasn't sure what he did in it, but he always emerged with a watchful smile, even tiptoeing a little, like someone about to break a piece of news. The Penny question weighed on Nick, and then appeared so remote and unsubstantiated that he might have imagined it. Gerald was being thoroughly affectionate to Rachel, and when they lay side by side in the sun they seemed soaked in their own intimate history, as well as disconcertingly sexy and young. Even so there was something difficult and self-indulgent about Gerald, as if the holiday was both a licence and a penance.
Nick wandered off to explore the hidden corners of the little estate. He found the morning, and the freedom to use it, weighed rather heavily on him now Wani had gone. He went down the crumbling steps from terrace to terrace, like a descent into his own melancholy. The lower levels dropped more steeply, they were hidden from the house and had a neglected air: the parched stony soil showed through the thin grass. Clearly Dede and his son hardly bothered with these bits—perhaps it was only guests, in their appreciative aimlessness, who ever climbed down here. There was a look of disused agricultural terraces as much as garden; a distant whine of farm machinery, and the scurry of lizards running over dead leaves. On each level there were walnut trees thick with half-hidden green fruit. Nick went through a gap in a hedge and found some old stone sheds, a grassy woodpile, a rusty tractor. He was doing what he always did, poking and memorizing, possessing the place by knowing it better than his hosts. If Rachel had said, "If only we still had that pogo stick!" Nick could have cried, like a painfully eager child, "But we do, it's in the old shed with the broken butter churn and the prize rosettes for onions nailed to the beams." It struck him that a sign of real possession was a sort of negligence, was to have an old wood-yard you'd virtually forgotten about.
He fetched his book and went down to the pool. The heat was climbing and a high-up lid of thin cloud had soon expired into the blue. Jasper and Catherine were already in the water, and Jasper looked pleased to be discovered struggling with her, almost fucking her; he winked at Nick as he went into the pool-house to change. The wink seemed to follow him in. There was a bare suggestive atmosphere in the pool-house, which always felt cool and secret after the dazzle of the pool-side, and seemed to carry some coded memory or promise of a meeting. Nick would have had Wani there last night if Gerald hadn't been hanging, even snooping about. There was the first room, with a sink and a fridge and bright plastic pool toys, lilos and rings, an old rowing machine standing on end; and the changing room beyond, with a slatted bench and clothes hooks, and the shower opening straight off it, behind a blue curtain. Only the rather smelly lavatory had a door that could be locked.
Nick came out in his new little Speedos and walked along the pool's edge. The water was the clear bright answer to the morning, a mesmerizing play of light and depth. A few dead leaves were floating on it, and others had sunk and patched the blue concrete bottom. Dragonflies paid darting visits. He crouched and stirred the surface with his hand. On the far side Jasper had lifted Catherine up to sit on the tiled shelf, with the water lapping between her legs, and him hanging on to her, looking as if he'd like to do the same. She made some quick remark about Nick's being there, and then called, "Hello, darling!" Jasper turned and floated free and gave Nick his sure-fire smile, said nothing, but lazily trod water and kept looking at him. He had a tiny repertoire, a starter kit, of seducer's tricks, and got obvious satisfaction from deploying them, regardless of results. Nick found him embarrassing and resistible, which didn't preclude his figuring in some of his most punitive fantasies: in fact it made them all the more pointed. Jasper kicked across the pool towards him and it looked at first, in the welter of refractions, as if he was naked; then, when he sprang out streaming on to the poolside, he saw that he was wearing a little cut-away flesh-coloured item. "What do you think of Jaz's thong?" said Catherine, obviously assuming that Nick fancied him.
"Yeah, I don't like to wear it when her mum's about," said Jasper considerately. He posed for Nick, held in his brown stomach, and flashed him his number-two smile.
"What do you think?" said Catherine, grinning, a bit breathless, in her tone of sexual fixation.
"Hmm," said Nick, peering at the sleek pouch in which Jaz's crown jewels, as he called them, were boyishly slumped. "You'd have to say, darling, it leaves disappointingly little to the imagination." He made a sorry moue and strolled off to the lounger at the far end of the pool, where he had left his book.
He was reading Henry James's memoir of his childhood, A Small Boy and Others, and feeling crazily horny, after three days without as much as a peck from Wani. It was a hopeless combination. The book showed James at his most elderly and elusive, and demanded a pure commitment unlikely in a reader who was worrying excitedly about his boyfriend and semi-spying, through dark glasses, on another boy who was showing off in front of him and clearly trying to excite him. From-time to time the book tilted and wobbled in his lap, and the weight of the deckle-edged pages pressed on his erection through the sleek black nylon. He noted droll phrases for later use: "an oblong farinaceous compound" was James's euphemism for a waffle—compound was sublime in its clinching vagueness. He wondered just what Wani was up to in Perigueux. He suspected he was picking up some charlie, which seemed a shame and a danger—he wished Wani wasn't so fond of it; then he felt frustratedly, after three days off that as well, how lovely and just right it would be to have a line. It was amazing, it went really to the heart of Wani's mystique, that he knew how to find the stuff in any European city. In Munich Nick had waited in the taxi outside a bank, gazed tensely for ten minutes at the chamfered rustication of its walls and the massive swirling ironwork of its doors, while Wani was inside "seeing a friend." The photographer in Perigueux was probably another such friend. There were childish shrieks from the pool, as Jasper dive-bombed Catherine. Nick was delighted Wani had missed this airing, or drenching, of the thong; he would tease him about it later, over their first line. He longed to have a swim himself, but now the young couple were in a huddle, standing just within their depth, laughing and spluttering as they kissed: the pool was theirs, like a bedroom. They were mad with sex, in love with their own boldness; Nick felt Jasper might try to involve him too if he went in. His role was to be Uncle Nick, adult and sceptical, which seemed to make the baffled Jasper more and more provocative. He thought he could probably have him if he wanted, but he didn't want to give him that satisfaction. A minute later they got out, intently casual, Jasper's stocky hard-on sticking up at an angle, and went into the pool-house and closed the door. Edgar Allan Poe, James said, though a figure in his childhood, had not been "personally present"— indeed, "the extremity of personal absence had just overtaken him." Minute after minute went by, now the hiss of the pool-house shower could be heard, and Nick lay and flicked a fly from his leg, and felt the morning's discontent rise into envy and impatience. "The extremity of personal absence": at times the Master was so tactful he was almost brutal. He remembered what Rachel had said about Wani's wedding, and the image of him doing to Martine what Jasper was doing to Catherine filled him with a bitter jealousy—well, it was probably nonsense, probably waffle. The words slid and stuck meaninglessly in front of his eyes.
(iii)
Next day Toby was teaching Nick and Wani how to play boules: they were out on the dusty compacted square of the forecourt. Wani had been wet about the game until he turned out to be good at it, and now he was absorbed and unironical, tripping after the ball, yapping and grinning when he bombed the other boules away from the jack-ball, or cochonnet. "Bien tire!" said Toby, with a sweeter kind of happiness, at retouching an old friendship through a game, and with comic disconcertment, since he usually won games himself. Nick was applauded when he
made a fluky good throw, but it was really a tussle between Wani and Toby. Now he'd got the drugs Wani had become more natural and more popular. "Yup, seems to be settling in," said Gerald, taking the credit himself, like the manager of a hotel renowned for its beneficial regime. "I know . . . " said Rachel, who had borne the brunt of Wani's princely charm: "he seems to be getting in the holiday mood." A nod went round which admitted the reservations they'd had before, and a mood of solidarity was discovered, just in time, before the arrival of the Tippers and Lady Partridge. Nobody but Gerald wanted to see the Tippers, and Nick paced and stood about in the drive, bored by the game, but already sentimental about their little routines here, and his esoteric success, being deep in France, in a lovely old house, with his two beautiful boys.
Toby had just flung the cochonnet across the court when a big white Audi with Sir Maurice Tipper at the wheel swung in through the gate and ran over it. "Fucking great," said Toby, and waved and smiled resignedly. In the back were his grandmother and Lady Tipper, who had the passive air of women of all classes, nattering dutifully as they were driven they hardly knew where. Lady Partridge gestured in a general way at the house, as if to say she thought it was the right one. Nick ran over to open her door, and in the momentary release of chilled air the scent of leather and hairspray seemed to carry the story of the whole journey. "I know," said Lady Partridge, establishing her feet on the ground before pushing herself up, and looking for attention but not for help. "I have always caught the train."
"Good flight, Gran?" said Toby, kissing her cheek.
"It was perfectly all right," said Lady Partridge, with her usual indifference to a kiss. "It's quite a trek from the airport. Sally's been explaining to me all about operas"—and she gave the three boys a shrewd smile.
Sally Tipper said, "The first-class seats were just the same as tourist class, you got proper china, that was all. Maurice is going to write to John about it." She watched her husband, who came and shook hands with Toby, and said, "Tobias," in a coldly pitying tone.
"Welcome, welcome!" said Toby, in a weak flourish of good manners, avoiding the eye of the man who might have been his father-in-law, and going to the boot to take care of the bags. Nick got an inattentive hello from each of them, and the feeling, which he'd had in the past, of being an element they could neither accept nor ignore. Catherine came out of the house, as if to inspect some damage.
"Oh, how are you, Cathy?" said Sally Tipper.
"Still mad!" said Catherine.
Then Gerald and Rachel appeared. "Good, good . . ." said Gerald. "You found us . . ."
"We thought at first it was sure to be that splendid chateau up the road," said Lady Tipper.
"Ah no," said Gerald, "we're not at the chateau any more, we muddle along down here." There was a complicated double round of kisses, ending up with Sir Maurice facing Gerald and saying, "Oh no, not even in France . . . !" and laughing thinly.
The Tippers were not natural holidayers. They came beautifully equipped, with four heavy steel-cornered suitcases, and numerous other little bags which had to be handled carefully, but something else, unnoticed by them, was missing. They muttered questions to each other, and gave an impression of covert anxiety or irritation. When they came down on their first afternoon Sir Maurice said a lot of faxes would be coming through for him, and could they be sure there was enough paper in the machine. He was clearly looking forward to the arrival of the faxes above all. Wani sucked up to him and said he was expecting some faxes too, meaning that he would keep an eye on the machine, but Sir Maurice gave him a sharp look and said he hoped they wouldn't impede his own faxes. It was only four thirty but Gerald was marking his guests' arrival with a Pimm's, and Lady Partridge, with her son as her licence, accompanied him in a gin and Dubonnet. The Tippers asked for tea, and sat under the awning, glancing mistrustfully at the view. When Liliane, slow, stoical, and clearly unwell, came out with the tray, Sally Tipper gave her instructions about different pillows she needed. Sir Maurice talked to Gerald about a takeover they were both interested in, though Gerald didn't look quite serious with a fruit-choked tumbler in his fist. Lady Tipper complained to Rachel about the smell of hot dogs in the Royal Festival Hall. Rachel said surely that would all change now they'd got rid of Red Ken, but Lady Tipper shook her head as if deaf to any such comfort. Nick tried naively to interest Maurice Tipper in local beauty spots which he hadn't yet seen himself. "You're a fine one to talk!" said Sir Maurice—grinning quickly at Gerald and Toby to show he wasn't so easily taken in. He was used to total deference, and mere pleasantness aroused his suspicion. The democracy of house-party life wasn't going to come naturally to him. Nick looked at his smooth clerical face and gold rimmed glasses in the light of a new idea, that the ownership of immense wealth might not be associated with pleasure—at least as pleasure was sought and unconsciously defined by the rest of them here.
Sally Tipper had a lot of blonde hair in expensive confusion, and a lot of clicking, rattling, sliding jewellery. She shook and nodded her head a good deal. It was virtually a twitch—of annoyance, or of almost more exasperated agreement. She had a smile that came all at once and went all at once, with no humorous gradations. She said before dinner she'd like to have drinks indoors, which, since the whole point and fetish of the manoir for the Feddens was to do everything possible outside, didn't promise well. They sat in the drawing room with all the overhead lights on, like a waiting room. Nick had seen the names "Sir Maurice and Lady Tipper" in gold letters on the donors' board at Covent Garden, and had seen her there in person, sometimes with Sophie, but never with her husband. He thought they might have a theme for the week, and said quietly that the recent Tannhduser hadn't been very good.
"Very good . . . I know . . . I thought . . . " said Lady Tipper, and shook her head in wounded defiance of all the carpers and whiners. "Now, Judy, that you really should see," she went on loudly. "You'll know that one, the Pilgrims' Chorus."
Lady Partridge, fortified by being enfamille and half-tight, said, "It's no use asking me, dear. I've never set foot in an opera house, except once, and that was thirty years ago, when . . . my son took me," and she nodded abstrusely at Gerald.
"What did you see, Judy?" said Nick.
"I think it was Salome," Lady Partridge said after a minute.
"How marvellous!" said Lady Tipper.
"I know, ghastly," said Lady Partridge.
"Oh, Ma!" said Gerald, who was listening in with a distracted smile from a chat about shares with Sir Maurice.
"I applaud your taste, Judy," said Nick, with the necessary emphasis to get through, and heard what a twit he sounded.
"Mm, I think it was by Stravinsky."
"No, no," said Nick, "it's by the dreaded . . . : Richard Strauss. Oh, by the way, Gerald, I've found the most marvellous quote, by Stravinsky, in fact, about the dreaded."
"Sorry, Maurice . . . " murmured Gerald.
"Robert Craft asks him, 'Do you now admit any of the operas of Richard Strauss?' and Stravinsky says"—and Nick beat it out, conducted it, in the weird overexcitement of the Strauss feud—" T would like to admit all Strauss operas to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant banality. Their musical substance is cheap and poor; it cannot interest a musician today.'"
"What?" snorted Gerald.
"Well, I'd rather have Strauss than Stravinsky myself, any day! I'm afraid to say!" said Lady Tipper. Sir Maurice looked at Nick, in the flush of his arcane triumph, with baffled distaste.
At dinner Gerald was already pretty drunk. He seemed to have had an idea of taking Maurice Tipper with him, and making their first night a rush of high spirits, followed next morning by the rueful bond of a shared hangover. But Sir Maurice drank as suspiciously as he did business, covering his glass with a dwindling flicker of amusement each time Gerald leant over his shoulder with the bottle. Gerald's face leaning into the candlelight had a glow of obstinate merriment. He sat down and summarized for the second time the division of the Perigord into areas called gree
n, white, black and purple. "And we're in the white," said Maurice Tipper drily.
The talk came round, as it often did with the Feddens, to the Prime Minister. Nick saw Catherine clench in annoyance when her grandmother said, "She's put this country on its feet!"—clearly forgetting, in her fervour, which country she was now in. "She showed them in the Falklands, didn't she?"
"You mean she's a hideous old battleaxe," muttered Catherine.
"She's certainly a manxome foe," said Gerald. Sir Maurice looked blank. "One wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of her."
"Indeed," said Sir Maurice.
Wani somehow got people to look at him, and said, "People say that, but you know, I've always seen a very different side of her. An immensely kind woman . . ."; he let them see him searching a fund of heart-warming anecdote, but then said discreetly, "She takes such extraordinary pains to help those she . . . cares about."
Maurice Tipper expressed both respect and resentment in a dark throat-clearing, and Gerald said, "Of course you know her as a family friend," smiling resolutely as he conceded to Wani the thing, so clearly seen, that he hankered for himself.
"Well . . ." said Wani, "yes . . . !"
"I love her!" exclaimed Sally Tipper, hoping perhaps they would take love to include friendship, as well as surpassing it.
"I know," said Gerald. "It's those blue eyes. Don't you just want to swim in them—what?"
Sir Maurice didn't seem ready to go quite that far, and Rachel said, "Not everyone's as infatuated as my husband," lightly but meaningly.
Nick looked out over their heads at the vast night landscape, where the lights of farms and roads invisible by day shone in mysterious prominence. He said very little, holding on to the ignored romance of the place and the hour, the soft gusts in the trees, the stars that peeped in the grey above the silhouetted woods. It turned out to be Wani who saved the evening. He clearly admired Maurice Tipper, and tried to amuse him as well as impress him, neither an easy task. He had a significant lavatory break after the main course, and for the next half-hour supplied a sense of purpose and fun that the others had been groping for. Even Catherine was laughing at his farfetched imitation of Michael Foot, and Lady Partridge, who kept waking from brief sleeps with a cough and a furtive stare, laughed too.