The room’s least appealing feature was its rather unpalatable view onto the lifeless, foggy plastics of the bus terminal, and consequently and constantly it throbbed a sulphurous orange from artificial light no matter how lead-thick the curtains. The benefits, however, were occasionally many: on a warm summer’s afternoon with the sash fully open, and in the glorious, brief moments when the ad-stained buses held their belching and stood silent and cold, I could absorb the sprawls of half-naked sun worshippers dotted about the grass of Christ’s Pieces beyond, full of cheer and drink and tossing balls and frisbees and whatnot, and I could feel the breeze, hot upon my gently procrastinating face.
Sadly, my day was usually too damned occupied with work and panicked students and the blessed like to gaze too long at the unattainable outside.
I do confess the room was, on drunken occasion, pressed urgently into service for unofficial, personal purposes, witness the farrago with the Master over
Scott — git
. It was no accident I suspect that the sofa could easily transform into a bed of sorts whether my eyes consented to focus or not. But despite what Amanda might believe it was not my habit or my preference to bring gentlemen back to the room. I owned a very pleasant flat in a quiet area of town. Unhappily, it was a more distant area of town than I sometimes cared to stagger
post prandium
.
I returned to the room after Amanda’s press-ganging and sat harumphing at my desk in the orange-dark willing an obvious, easy idea to pop quickly into life so that my weekend wouldn’t be banjaxed utterly. The clock ticked stubbornly towards seven, at which point the gin switch in my brain would spark. All I could then hope for would be some lurking subconscious imp tackling the problem while the thinking portion disengaged. A few minutes of cogitation now might at least satiate what very little conscience I had on the matter.
Sadly, no life-saving plan was forthcoming as the hour chimed. No amount of riffing on the words
gin
,
git
,
tick
,
clock
,
cow
,
murder
,
escape
,
train
, and so on, triggered anything meritorious. I granted myself permission for a light starter drink, a
boozette
, since it was after all a Friday and pace was of the utmost importance, and then I called Claire.
“On a scale of one to ten,” I began as soon as she picked up.
“My dear, he hasn’t left yet.” The
he
to which she referred was her husband, Ken: a chubby businessman, ruddy-cheeked and rarely present, even when present. Ask him his wife’s birthday and he’d struggle, but he could rattle off Powerpoint keyboard shortcuts like Add Pointless Transition and Insert Shitty Clipart like a nerd on speed. He was forever jetting upon one urgent, sweaty business trip or another, and it seemed one such other was beckoning. I’d once called him a travelling salesman — why yes, alcohol
was
involved — and his cheeks had purpled for a nanosecond before the corporate smile reasserted. Aside from that momentary lapse he was always pleasant enough with me, and I suspect somewhere beneath the layers of blubber was secretly happy for his wife to have some unthreatening and convivial company while he counted ceiling tiles in airports and increased his circumference.
“Can you not decant Ken into a taxi and scuttle down here?” I said.
There was palpable tutting. “Spencer, you know I barely see him. Anyway, it’s only just gone seven. Why now?”
“On a scale of one to ten,” I repeated.
She paused and sighed. “How many?” I could hear the husband muttering darkly in the background, probably cursing me up and down as he packed his bag with hoovers or dusters or whatever it was he sold.
“A good 9.2, maybe 9.25.” I’d decided the scale was asymptotic, never hitting or breaching ten, otherwise I’d exaggerate wildly into the thousands. I’d secretly reserved the full ten-point-oh for planet-sundering events such as births, deaths, and obtaining a boyfriend.
She sighed again. “I bet it isn’t. I bet it’s low eights. There hasn’t been a nine since the play with Anita and that thing with the understudy.”
“Oh yes, the understudy with the underwear. He was… a challenge. No, I’m telling you, it’s unquestionably above nine.”
“What is it, then? I’m not coming unless you give me some kind of reason.”
“Gin. Gin is a reason.”
“Gin doesn’t score above nine, my dear. Gin doesn’t score anything, we agreed that.”
“It’s Professor Chatteris. Lady Macdeath. I was caught, well, rather knob-handed I’m afraid.”
“Again?” She laughed, and I made out her muffled voice passing the story on to her husband.
“Claire! This is serious!”
“It’s not even low eights, it’s somewhere in the fives at most. Hang on.” The phone muffled again as her husband spoke. She relayed it to me: “We should get you a chastity belt for Christmas, apparently.”
“Sadly negated by the lock-picking kit I already own. Listen. Being caught, fine. I tongued toes and made the right grunts. But she’s installed me as chair of some nauseous committee. I’m supposed to conjure up a grandiose plan to raise the college some cash.”
“Can’t you just—”
“Monday. By Monday. I am dangerously inflamed. You need to come and help me drink through it.”
The teens in their t-shirts and mini-skirts tailgating each other toward
The Regal
ignored the ghostly drizzle wetting St Andrew’s Street as I stood impatiently outside the college gate an hour and a half later. The ritual Friday night metamorphosis from shopper’s thoroughfare to drinker’s crawlway had begun and the porter on duty, Arthur with the amusing wig, had as usual rightly enacted the
Friend or Foe
protocol once reserved only for wartime and drag night. The century-old oak gates were closed and locked, with their inset door set to open only via college swipe card or special knock.
I hopped from foot to foot waiting for Claire. The gin deflected the cold but was losing its tussle against the bladder. I distracted myself counting the alternating pink and grey stripes painted into the stone around the gate. A small college shield was fixed above: its design showing two golden stags rampant by a central oak, within a border of pink and grey like the gate. Rather fussy and busy to my eyes. And the motto:
ex glande quercus
, from acorn to oak.
The street lights tinted everything toward the sulphurous. The rain sucked away the vibrancy. A camera watched.
“Finally!” I said as Claire surfed on a tide of teens around the corner from Emmanuel Street and then waded against the flow towards me.
Five years my senior and tapping upon the peeling and lightly scuffed door marked
forty
, Claire was a lady of means — her husband’s — and always appropriately turned out. Tonight she sported an allegedly slimming black jacket with some green and black patterned nonsense wrapped around her neck. Her hair, as usual, was hither and yon.
“Where have you been, scruffbag?” I said.
“Sorry, my darling. I had to, you know, see Ken off. Properly.” She smiled coyly.
“Oh, please! You two still—?”
“Spencer! Of course!”
We exchanged mwahs, both cheeks as ordained. “But, you know, he’s pretty much spherical these days and you’re, you’re looking forward to Christmas. I’m not sure I get the physics. How does it all—?” I made two fists and cracked them together.
“Oh dear, you did start early, didn’t you?” she said accurately, patting my hand. “I have lost weight, in fact, thank you for asking.”
“You look ravishing, Claire, I’m sure.”
“I do. And you seem to have mislaid your axe and a forest, as well as your razor.”
“One can hardly wear black tie on a permanent basis. The checked shirt is, I am told, very
a la mode
.” It was a mix of reds and blues and purples, under an admittedly tatty blue fleece. College dress code extended to
attractive and decorous
and placed no further burden upon you, and as ever some students delighted in testing its boundaries.
“Well,” said Claire, “I shall alert you if I spot a beaver. Now, where are we going? The usual, I suppose?”
I nodded sheepishly.
“Fine, if we must,” she sighed, and took my arm.
It was only a short walk at the slowest of paces, no more than a couple of minutes. I explained my present predicament as we strolled, hesitating on occasion to focus my attention upon any gentleman proportioned, scrubbed up and tailored within acceptable margins of error.
Our destination was Bar Humbug, hidden along a narrow passageway where it could attract a more select clientele. By night it was unofficially rechristened Bar Bumhug: Cambridge’s most cocktail-friendly homosexual establishment, the watering hole of choice for those who are, those who might be, those who aren’t but like to dabble, those who aren’t but like to be dabbled, and unsuspecting tourists. By day it lowered its rainbow colours and used its more pedestrian name to draw in any passing trade, so to speak. As the sun set the lights were dimmed and the music grew feistier, and the shirts lost a button or two. It was usually busy and often packed, and any straights caught in the glare either promptly reversed and screeched away or were subject to trial by tequila. Some were found very guilty indeed.
My man Eddie was tending bar, as usual, with two of his imported minions. I say my man, we once enjoyed a minor dalliance. Brief, and yet something more, I thought, than the typical soulless encounter. He had an arresting effervescence and he amused me: but we had nothing in common. He was a fair distance along both the chunky and camp axes, not my usual preference at all. It could never have worked. I’d have drunk the place dry. Eddie never warranted a
code ten
, but our thing, whatever it was, was sustained enough for me to feel moderately protective during the lubricated dust-up the early hours inevitably brought.
My own drunkenness was never unduly troublesome. As Claire said often, I was verbal enough while sober and my bile was reserved only for those unable to distinguish “your” from “you’re”. The effects of alcohol manifested themselves in me purely via excessive and uninvited touching. The touching occasionally had its advantages, though, leading to further touching.
Pleasingly, Eddie had plonked a G&G&T on the long, scratched chrome bar — one of the few straight things there — almost as we stepped over the threshold, and it was still early enough to navigate the few metres to it without slicing through too many cosy groups. The usual vultures had, however, already begun to circle and to mark their territories: the haggardly optimistic, the over-dressed, and the under-dressed. Their prey — the twinks and the twonks — herded together for safety, with an occasional shepherding lesbian.
Dotted about the place were the weirdos and their hangers-on, such as the odd man beside us with the wispy salt-and-pepper beard wearing an exotic waistcoat and hat with detailed and expensive-looking embroidery — some kind of Arabian or Afghan contrivance, I shouldn’t wonder. He always propped up the bar. There was often also an exotic creature possibly deposited straight from a shadowy Romanian castle, who stood large and lumbering with piercing blue eyes, and with whom I resolved never to make eye contact lest I fell into spinning hypnowheels and woke up in Bucharest minus my wallet and a kidney. Nevertheless I was proud to consider myself amongst their weird number: I imagined I was known as
the posh loudmouth groper with the fag hag
, or similar. Entirely appropriate and indeed rather desirable. I preferred life as an outlier, not an indistinguishable generigay gasping for air amidst complex interconnecting social strata I neither knew nor cared enough to truly comprehend. And, yes, I was easy too.
“You, sir, are a life-saver,” I said to Eddie as I claimed my drink.
“It’s a gift,” he replied, brushing his little finger against a dark eyebrow. “Pay me back in kind later if you like, darling.”
I knew he was joking. “I suspect you’ll have a rather better offer by then.”
“Ah, bless you, sweetheart. And what can I get for the other lady?” He looked at Claire. “Same again?”
“Please no,” said Claire. “White wine. I’m tiring of gin. I keep imagining myself an old crone in a Hogarth.”
“It’s the teeth, I imagine,” I said, and she slapped my arm.
An hour passed quickly, first at the bar and then hidden around the corner beside the hat man, in a cosy leatherette cubicle that after severe staring was finally vacated by a trio of hair product addicts aged twenty going on twelve, with their comedy multicoloured umbrella drinks. I had enlightened Claire on every sordid detail of the banished
Scott — git
, and on how St Paul’s appeared to be in rather a precarious position.
“Tell me the ideas you’ve had already, then, my dear,” said Claire. We were on our second bottle — I’d migrated from the gin. It was the house red, concocted from vintage rattlesnake venom mixed with sawdust, but at least it had the correct colour.
“Plan A,” I said, holding up one finger. “Drink myself into a stupor, kill everyone with knives and run away.”
“That would certainly raise the college profile, darling, but I doubt the money would start flowing in.”
“I could just kill Amanda. Nobody likes Amanda. Mind you, I think she might be some variety of robot not yet familiar with English. I might stab her and wires and springs and flames and dictionaries would gush out.”
“Let’s cross murder off the list, shall we? What other options do you have?”
“What I
don’t
understand,” I said forcefully, “is why Amanda hasn’t strong-armed the Archivist into coughing up some grade A gossip. His little red-eyed battalion can spot a lapsing hetero at a dozen paces. He must have all manner of
actionable materiel
at his disposal behind those blessed doors of his.”
Now as far as I was concerned, a gentleman, especially a gentleman seeking the very roundest of education, had every right to a free sample should he so desire. I’d even throw in a fourteen-day trial with no obligation. And of course, the occasional
walk along Brighton pier
wasn’t illegal and hadn’t been for several decades — and St Paul’s had had its entirely deserved reputation for two
centuries
without excessive intolerance from either town or gown.