Could he even tell, any more than Lord Kessler could, that he was gay? He felt there had been a flashing hint, in their moment of contact, of some more luxurious understanding, of a longer gaze, full of humour and curiosity, that they might have shared… He thought at the second contact, the refill, he would make it all right. The curlicue of the path brought him round to a view of the house again, but the waiter had moved off, and instead he saw Paul Tompkins ambling towards him.

"My dear!"

At Oxford Tompkins was widely known as Polly, but Nick said, "Hello, Paul," because the nickname seemed suddenly too intimate or too critical. "How are you?" He realized that in the romantic retrospect of his undergraduate life Paul was a figure he had painted out.

"I'm extremely well," Paul said meaningly. He was large and round in the middle and seemed to taper away, in his tight evening suit, towards narrow feet and a tall, jowly head. He had been a noise, a recurrent clatter of bitchery and ambition, a kind of monster of the Union and the MCR, throughout Nick's years in college. He had come out just below the top in the Civil Service exams, and had recently started in some promising capacity in Whitehall. He looked pop-eyed already from the tussle between pompous discretion and a natural love of scandal. He raised his glass. "My compliments to wicked old Lionel Kessler. The waiters here are sheer heaven."

"I know…"

"That one with the champagne is from Madeira, which is rather funny."

"Oh, really… "

"Well, better than the other way round. Now, however, he lives in Fulham: really awfully close to me."

"You mean that one there."

"Tristao." Paul gave Nick a look of concentrated mischief. "Ask me more after our date next week, my dear."

"Ah." Nick's face was tight with regret for a second, the pinch of his own incompetence. It was a mystery to him that fat old Polly, who was rutted with acne scars and completely lacking in ordinary kindness, had such a conspicuous success with men.