“Confide in us, Olly,” says Cheeseman. “We’re your friends. Is she a real girlfriend, or have you … y’know … made her up?”
“ Ican vouch for her existence,” says Fitzsimmons, enigmatically.
“Oh?” I glower at Olly. “Since when did thiscuckolding crim take precedence over your stairs neighbor?”
“Chance encounter.” Fitzsimmons tips his roasted-nut crumbs into his mouth. “I espied Olly-plus-companion at the drama section in Heffer’s.”
“And speaking as a reformed postfeminist new man,” I ask Fitzsimmons, “where would you position Queen Ness on the Scale?”
“She’s hot. I presume an escort agency is involved, Olly?”
“Screw you.” Olly smiles like the cat who got the cream. “Ness!” He jumps up as a girl squeezes through the crush of student bodies. “Talk of the devil! Glad you got here.”
“ Sosorry I’m late, Olly,” she says, and they kiss on the lips. “The bus took about eight hundred years to arrive.”
I know her, or knew her, but only in the biblical sense. Her surname escapes me, but other parts I remember very well. An afterparty in my first year, though she was “Vanessa” back then; potty-mouthed Cheltenham Ladies College, if memory serves; a big shared house down the arse-end of Trumpington Road. We necked a bottle of Chвteau Latour ’76, which she’d nicked from the cellar in the pre-party house. We’ve sighted each other around town since and nodded to avoid the crassness of ignoring each other. She’s a craftier operator than Olly, but even as I wonder what’s in him for her, I recall a drunk-driving offense and a suspended license—and Olly’s warm, dry Astra. All’s fair in love and war, and although I’m many things, I’m not a hypocrite. Ness has seen me and a fifth of a second is enough to agree upon a policy of cordial amnesia.
“Have my seat,” Olly’s saying, removing her coat like a gentle-twat, “and I’ll … er, kneel. Fitz, you’ve met. And this is Richard.”
“Charmed.” Cheeseman offers her a four-fingered handshake. “I’m the malicious queer. Are you Nessie the Monster or Ness the Loch?”
“And I’m as charmed as you are.” I remember her voice, too: slumming-it posh. “My friends have no trouble with just ‘Ness’ but you can call me Vanessa.”
“I’m Jonny, Jonny Penhaligon.” Jonny jumps up to shake her hand. “A pleasure. Olly’s told us shedloads about you.”
“All of it good.” I hold up my palm to say hi. “Hugo.”
Ness misses no beat: “Hugo, Jonny, the malicious queer, and Fitz. Got it.” She turns to Olly. “And sorry—who are you again?”
Olly’s laugh is a notch too loud. His pupils have morphed into love-hearts and, for the nth time squared, I wonder what love feels like on the inside because externally it turns you into the King of Tit Mountain.
“Richard was about to buy a round,” says Fitzsimmons. “Right, Richard? Aerate your wallet?”
Cheeseman feigns confusion. “Isn’t it your turn, Penhaligon?”
“Nope. I bought the round before this one. Nice try.”
“But you own half of Cornwall!” says Cheeseman. “You should see Jonny’s manor, Ness—gardens, peacocks, deer, stables, portraits of three centuries’ worth of Captain Penhaligons up the main staircase.”
Penhaligon snorts. “Tredavoe House is whywe’ve got no bloody money. The upkeep’s crippling. And the peacocks are utter bastards.”
“Oh, don’t be a Scrooge, Jonny, the poll tax must be saving you a king’s ransom. I’m going to have to pimp myself later just to get a National Express ticket home to my Leeds pigeon-loft.”
Cheeseman is a fine misdirector—he still has ten thousand pounds from the money his grandfather left him—but I want no ruffled feathers tonight. “I’ll get the next round in,” I volunteer. “Olly, you’ll need to stay sober if you’re driving, so how about a tomato juice with Tabasco to warm the heart of your cockles? Cheeseman’s on the Guinness; Fitz, fizzy Australian wee; and Ness, your poison is … what?”
“The house red isn’t bad.” Olly wants a drunk girlfriend.
“Then a glass of red would hit the spot, Hugo,” she tells me.
I recall that quirky lilt. “Wouldn’t risk it, unless you carry a spare trachea in your handbag. It’s hardly a Chвteau Latour.”
“An Archers with ice, then,” says Ness. “Better safe than sorry.”
“Wise choice. Mr. Penhaligon, would you help me bring these six drinks back alive? The bar will not be pretty, I fear.”
THE BURIED BISHOP’S a gridlocked scrum, an all-you-can-eat of youth: “Stephen Hawking and the Dalai Lama, right; they posit a unified truth”; short denim skirts, Gap and Next shirts, Kurt Cobain cardigans, black Levi’s; “Did you see that oversexed pig by the loos, undressing me with his eyes?”; that song by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl booms in my diaphragm and knees; “Like, myonly charity shop bargains were headlice, scabies, and fleas”; a fug of hairspray, sweat and Lynx, Chanel No. 5, and smoke; well-tended teeth with zero fillings, revealed by the so-so joke—“Have you heard the news about Schrцdinger’s Cat? It died today; wait—it didn’t, did, didn’t, did …”; high-volume discourse on who’s the best Bond; on Gilmour and Waters and Syd; on hyperreality; dollar-pound parity; Sartre, Bart Simpson, Barthes’s myths; “Make mine a double”; George Michael’s stubble; “Like, music expired with the Smiths”; urbane and entitled, for the most part, my peers; their eyes, hopes, and futures all starry; fetal think-tankers, judges, and bankers in statu pupillari;they’re sprung from the loins of the global elite (or they damn well soon will be); power and money, like Pooh Bear and honey, stick fast—I don’t knock it, it’s me; and speaking of loins, “Has anyone told you you look like Demi Moore from Ghost?”; roses are red and violets are blue, I’ve a surplus of butter and Ness is warm toast.
“Hugo? You okay?” Penhaligon’s smile is uncertain.
We’re still logjammed two bodies back from the bar.
“Yeah,” I have to half shout. “Sorry, I was light-years away. While I have you to myself, Jonny, Toad asked me to invite you to his last all-nighter tomorrow, before we all jet off home. You, me, Eusebio, Bryce Clegg, Rinty, and one or two others. All cool.”
Penhaligon makes a not-sure face. “My mother’s half-expecting me back at Tredavoe tomorrow night …”
“No pressure. I’m just passing the invitation on. Toad says the ambience is classier when you’re there.”
Penhaligon sniffs the cheese. “Toad said that?”
“Yes, he said you’ve got gravitas. Rinty’s even christened you ‘the Pirate of Penzance’ because you always leave with the loot.”
Jonny Penhaligon grins. “You’ll be there too?”
“Me? God, yeah. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“You took quite a clobbering last week.”
“I never lose more than I can afford. ‘Scared money is lost money.’ You said that. Wise words for card players andeconomists.”
My partner in recreational gambling does not deny authorship of my freshly minted epigram. “I coulddrive home on Sunday …”
“Look, I won’t try to sway you one way or the other.”
He hums. “I could tell my parents I’ve a supervision …”
“Which would not be untrue—a supervision on probability theory, psychology, applied mathematics. All valid business skills, as your family will appreciate when you get the green light for the golf course at Tredavoe House. Toad’s proposing we raise the pot limit to a hundred pounds per game: a nice round figure, and quite a dollop of holiday nectar for you, sir, if your luck holds. Not that the Pirate of Penzance seems to need luck.”
Jonny Penhaligon admits: “I doseem to have a certain knack.”
I mirror his chuckle. Who’s a pretty turkey, then?
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER we’re bringing our drinks back to our nook to find that trouble has beaten us to it. Richard Cheeseman, The Piccadilly Review’s rising star, has been cornered by Come Up to the Lab, Cambridge’s premier Goth-metal trio, whose concert at the Cornmarket was acidly ridiculed in Varsitylast month—by Richard Cheeseman. The bassist guy’s a Frankenstein, lipless and lumbering; but She-Goth One has mad-dog eyes, a sharky chin, and knuckles of spiky rings; She-Goth Two has a Clockwork Orangebowler hat, exploding fuchsia-pink hair, a fake diamond hatpin, and the same eyes as She-Goth One. Amphetamines, I do believe. “Never done anything yourself, have yer?” Number Two is prodding Cheeseman’s chest with jet-black fingernails to italicize key words. “Never performed live to a real audience, have yer?”