“No, no,” said Adrian, with a bright nervous giggle. “But it would be well over forty thousand, obviously.”
“Well, they’d better not do well over forty thousand tonight,” Mike said, getting up and standing over Adrian while he gulped down the rest of his drink.
Alex was very quiet, and Danny wondered if he knew what was coming. He probably did, he was very sensitive; and he’d been through this kind of thing before. Danny looked casually at Justin, whom he found alien in many ways, and saw that they were about to share the shabby distinction of having thrown Alex over. He knew from his break-up with George what the pain might be like. And he noticed that having been through it himself he felt somehow authorised, and even empowered, to inflict it on someone else. It was the hard currency of human business. Slightly giddy from his own philosophy, he reached up to take his second cold drink.
Adrian said, “I do think we’re so lucky in having this marvellous castle in the village.” He had the surprised talkativeness of a buttoned-up person abruptly filled with alcohol.
“I hadn’t realised just how lucky we were,” murmured Margery.
“There’s not much to the castle, is there?” said Justin doubtfully.
“My darling Justin has never actually seen the castle,” said Robin, with a funny gloving of his gibe. “But he’s only lived here a year.”
“No, ten months, actually, sweetie, and three days,” Justin said. “Anyway, I never thought it wise to go down Ruins Lane.”
Adrian, who was disconcerted by jokes, said, “I found poor Miss Lawrence wandering up there yesterday. She had no idea where she was going.”
“There you are,” said Justin.
“She needs taking care of,” said Mike, with a certain softening of tone. “What are the so-called fucking social services doing?”
“She’s as mad as a house,” said Justin. “Did I tell you I saw her talking to a beetle?”
Danny smirked, and drew a finger through the wet on his glass. Mike said to him, “You’re very quiet tonight, young feller-me-lad.”
“He’s always quiet,” said Margery. “It’s nice.”
Justin said, “It’s the country air that tires him out. He’s not used to all this oxygen, are you darling. He normally goes round in a cloud of LSD, don’t you darling.”
“I don’t think you smoke LSD,” said Adrian.
“No, you don’t,” said Alex.
“I’m sure Danny doesn’t, anyway,” said Margery.
Adrian said, with the casualness of the shockable, “Do you see anything of all this drugs business up in London?”
Danny felt it would be absurd to lie. “Oh yeah,” he said warmly. He could be nice to them, he guessed, but he hated the silly compromises that were forced on you when you entered the remote moral atmosphere of closety old bores. As he didn’t say anything else, Adrian nodded and coloured and said,
“You do…yes…” (Yes, thought Danny, in a spasm of frustration and worry, and I can get in free to any club in London, and get off my face for days on end, and have anyone there I want.) “Yes. I saw a lot of it in South America, of course. There was cocaine everywhere, which I believe cost almost nothing. I must say, I was never tempted to try it.”
“Really…?” said Alex, who was leaning forward to catch Danny’s eye.
“I didn’t know you’d been in South America,” said Mike, irritated by this claim on his curiosity. “Whereabouts?”
“Oh, very much so. I was with the British Council in Caracas, and then in Lima for four years. This was in the late fifties, after Cambridge.”
“After your ringing years.”
“Yes…”
“They used to say they were all flower-arrangers in the British Council,” said Mike.
Adrian looked down for a moment, to give this remark time to clear, and went on, “I’ve got some very lovely folk-art that I brought back, some of which you’ll see when you come to “Ambages.” I have a beautiful Peruvian hanging in my bedroom.”
The words themselves hung in the air, lightly and evenly stressed, against the background clamour of the bells, and it was Margery who started to laugh first, an almost noiseless polite snuffle, and then a cackle came from Justin, Danny heard the chug-chug of Alex’s laugh, and then he got it himself, through the glaze of his preoccupation, and started to giggle breathlessly, with an edge of hysterical relief, before Mike gave out his rarely heard whimper. It was never quite clear whether Adrian had seen the joke. The amusement was too general for him to go against it, and he sat smiling bashfully, looking sideways at the floor.
After a while, Margery struggled to make a long face, and said, “Adrian, I’m so sorry,” with the insincere regret that follows a burst of instinct.
Embarrassed, and obliged to show willing, Adrian said, “Well, Danny, perhaps you should go to South America. People sniff cocaine in Lima like you and I drink sherry.”
Danny nodded with another after-tremor of laughter. “Yeah, that might be good.” He looked away. “Actually, I’m going back to the States next month. I think that’s more the sort of place for me.”
When he looked up again, Justin was making a “Get her!” face, and Robin said with a tender frown, “It’s the first I’ve heard of it.” Alex, of course, he couldn’t see – only the convulsion of his legs uncrossing and crossing the other way. “You’re going to your mother’s?” Robin mastered the situation.
“Yeah, I think so,” said Danny. “She says she can always get me a job out there again.”
“And where is that?” said Adrian.
“San Diego…”
“No, I don’t imagine I’ll ever fly again,” said Mike, loudly and slowly, as though that were the really interesting aspect of the matter. Danny saw Justin looking gently in Alex’s direction – to the others, of course, this sudden birthing of a plan was neither here nor there.
He said, surprised by his own note of involuntary bitterness, “Well, there’s not much to keep me in this country.” When you had an audience you could say things easily that were almost impossible to bring out one-to-one, even in bed. Though perhaps it was also easy to say too much.
Mike said, “I suppose we could hang each bell-ringer from his individual rope.”
“I’m quite getting used to it,” said Margery. “I think we’ll all rather miss it when it stops.” Then, seeing Alex had got up and was going towards the door, she said, “It’s across the hall and turn left.” He blinked and went out.
The conversation ambled on, given sly prods and perverse turns by Justin, who seemed to feel responsible for the success of the occasion, in a way that he never did at home. Mike was wincing at the wall, too caught up in the smoulder of his outrage to make his usual polemical sallies. Danny had the childish sensation of being ignored and unvalued after his clumsy moment in the spotlight. He couldn’t think about how cruel he had just been to Alex, and when he tried to run through his resignation speech again it had a horrible echoless deadness to it, like something said in a recording studio. He looked along the faces of the others, wondering what they were talking about. His father’s expression was specially husbandly and benign. Then Danny found Justin was staring privately at him, and he knew he was right when he twitched his head towards the door. “I must just go too,” Danny said under his breath as he slipped out.
The lavatory door was shut, and he waited for a minute outside, suddenly fidgety for a pee himself. Then he thought, well he’s still my boyfriend, and tapped and went in. But Alex wasn’t there; and in the white emptiness of the stuffy little room Danny knew the crisis had closed in on him. As he peed he looked sideways into the mirror, and saw how terribly beautiful he was: the image itself was reflected again off some hard vain surface deep in his eye, and he thought, with easy pity, how little Alex would want to lose him. On the narrow shelf above the basin was a thinning hairbrush, and a comb, and a square bottle of cologne: he pulled out the stopper to confirm it was the one they had been breathing all evening, and turned down his mouth in the mirror when he saw it was called “Bien-Etre.”