I can barely hear him: The Humber College Young Conservatives in the next room are howling along to Cliff Richard’s probably immortal Christmas hit “Mistletoe and Wine.” “Done, dusted, and slipped under Professor Dewey’s door.”
“Don’t know how you’ve stuck at politics for three years.” Richard Cheeseman wipes Guinness foam from his Young Hemingway beard. “I’d rather circumcize myself with a cheese grater.”
“Too bad you missed dinner,” Fitzsimmons tells me. “Pudding was the last of Jonny’s Narnian weed. We couldn’t very well let Mrs. Mop find it during her end-of-term clean-up, assume it was a turd nugget, and chuck it out with Jonny’s gluey copies of Scouting Ahoy!” Jonny Penhaligon, still draining his bitter, gives Fitzsimmons the finger; his knobbly Adam’s apple bobs up and down. Idly, I imagine slicing it with a razor. Fitzsimmons sniffs and asks Cheeseman, “Where’s your leather-trousered friend from the Mysterious Orient?”
Cheeseman glances at his watch. “Thirty thousand feet over Siberia, turning back into an upstanding Confucian eldest son. Why would I risk my reputation on being seen with a gang of notorious heterosexuals if Sek was still in town? I’m a fully converted rice queen. Crash us a cancer-stick, Fitz; I could bloody murder a fag, as I delight in telling Americans.”
“You don’t need to light up in here.” Olly Quinn is our pet nonsmoker. “Just breathe in.”
“Weren’t you giving up?” Fitzsimmons passes Cheeseman his box of Dunhills; Penhaligon and I take one too.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” says Cheeseman. “Your Hermann Gцring lighter, Jonny, if you’d be so kind? I adore its frisson of evil.”
Penhaligon produces his Third Reich lighter. It’s genuine, obtained by his uncle in Dresden, and these fat boys fetch three thousand pounds at auction. “Where’s RCP tonight?”
“The future Lord Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt,” answers Fitzsimmons, “is scoring drugs. Pity for him it’s not an academic discipline.”
“It’s a recession-proof sector of the economy,” I note.
“This time next year,” Olly Quinn picks at the label of his nonalcoholic lager, “we’ll all be out in the real world, earning a living.”
“Can’t bloody wait,” says Fitzsimmons, stroking his chin cleft. “I despise being poor.”
“My heart bleeds.” Richard Cheeseman holds his ciggie in the corner of his mouth а la Serge Gainsbourg. “People see your parents’ twenty-roomed mansion in the Cotswolds, your Porsche, your Versace gear and jump to allthe wrong conclusions.”
“It’s my parents’ loot,” says Fitzsimmons. “It’s only fair that I have my ownobscene bonus to squander.”
“Daddy’s still sorting you a job in the City?” asks Cheeseman, then frowns as Fitzsimmons brushes the shoulders of Cheeseman’s tweed jacket. “What are you doing?”
“Flicking the chips off your shoulders, our Richard.”
“They’re superglued on,” I tell Fitzsimmons. “And don’t knock nepotism, Cheeseman; my well-connected uncles all agree, nepotism made this country what it is today.”
Cheeseman blows smoke my way. “When you’re a burned-out ex-Citibank analyst having your Lamborghini repossessed and your third wife’s lawyer’s got your nuts under a judge’s gavel, you’ll be sorry.”
“Right,” I say, “and the Ghost of Christmas Future sees Richard Cheeseman working on a charity project for Bogotб street-children.”
Cheeseman ponders Bogotб street-children, purrs, and desists. “Charity breeds fecklessness. No, it’s the way of the hack for me. A column here, a novel there, bit of broadcasting now and then. Speaking of which …” He fishes in his jacket pocket and retrieves a book: Desiccated Embryosby Crispin Hershey. REVIEW COPY ONLY is emblazoned in red across the cover. “My first paid review for Felix Finch at The Piccadilly Review. Twenty-five pence a word, twelve hundred words, three hundred quid for two hours’ work. Result.”
“Fleet Street beware,” says Penhaligon. “Who’s Crispin Hershey?”
Cheeseman sighs. “The son of Anthony Hershey?”
Penhaligon blinks at him, none the wiser.
“Oh, c’ mon, Jonny! Anthony Hershey! Filmmaker! Oscar for Box Hillin 1964, made Ganymede 5in the seventies, thebest British SF film ever made.”
“That film robbed me of the will to live,” remarks Fitzsimmons.
“Well, I’mimpressed by your commission, our Richard,” I say. “Crispin Hershey’s last novel was superb. I picked it up in a hostel in Ladakh on my gap year. Is this one as good?”
“Almost.” Monsieur Le Critic places his fingertips together. “Hershey Junior isa gifted stylist, and Felix—Felix Finch, to you plebs—Felix puts him up there with McEwan, Rushdie, Ishiguro, et al. Felix’s praise is premature, but in a few books’ time, he’ll ripen nicely.”
Penhaligon asks, “How’s your own novel going, Richard?” Fitzsimmons and I do hanged-men faces at each other.
“Evolving.” Cheeseman gazes into his glorious literary future and likes what he sees. “My hero is a Cambridge student called Richard Cheeseman, working on a novel about a Cambridge student called Richard Cheeseman, working on a novel about a Cambridge student called Richard Cheeseman. No one’s ever tried anything like it.”
“Cool,” says Jonny Penhaligon. “That’s sounds like—”
“A frothy pint of piss,” I announce, and Cheeseman looks at me with death in his eyes until I add, “is what’s in my bladder right now. The book sounds incredible, Richard. Excuse me.”
THE GENTS SMELLS well fermented and the only free urinal is blocked and ready to brim over with the amber liquid so I have to queue, like a girl. Finally a grizzly bear of a man ambles away and I fill the vacancy. Just as I’m coaxing my urethra open, a voice at the next urinal says, “Hugo Lamb, as I live and breathe.”
It’s a stocky, swarthy man in a fisherman’s sweater with wiry dark hair, whose “Lamb” sounds like “Limb”—a New Zealander’s vowels. He’s older than me, around thirty, and I can’t place him. “We met back in your first year. The Cambridge Sharpshooters. Sorry, it’s appalling men’s-room etiquette to put a guy off his stride like this.” He’s pissing no-handedly into the gurgling urinal. “Elijah D’Arnoq, postgrad in biochemistry, Corpus Christi.”
A memory flickers: that unique surname. “The rifle club, yes. You’re from those islands, east of New Zealand?”
“The Chathams, that’s right. Now, I remember youbecause you’re a natural bloody marksman. Still room at the inn, you know.”
Now I know there’s no cottagey thing going on, I start pissing. “You’re overestimating my potential, I’m afraid.”
“Mate, you could be a contender. I’m serious.”
“I was spreading myself a bit thin, extracurricular-wise.”
He nods. “Life’s too short to do everything, right?”
“Something like that. So … you’ve enjoyed Cambridge?”
“Bloody love it. The lab’s good, got a great prof. You’re economics and politics, right? Must be your final year.”
“It is. It’s flown by. Do you still shoot?”
“Religiously. I’m an Anchorite now.”
I wonder if “Anchorite” means “anchorman,” or if it’s a Kiwi-ism or a rifle club–ism. Cambridge is full of insiders’ words to keep outsiders out. “Cool,” I tell him. “I enjoyed my few visits to the range.”
“Never too late. Shooting is prayer. And when civilization shuts up shop, a gun’ll be worth any number of university degrees. Happy Christmas.” He zips his fly. “See you around.”
PENHALIGON ASKS, “SO where’s this mystery woman of yours, Olly?”
Olly Quinn frowns. “She said she’d be here by half seven.”
“Only ninety minutes late,” offers Cheeseman. “Doesn’t proveshe’s dumped you for a gym rat with the face of Keanu Reeves, the anatomy of King Dong, and the charisma of moi. Not necessarily.”
“I’m driving her home to London tonight,” says Olly. “She lives in Greenwich—so she’s bound to be along by and by …”