I chatted to the other three young men, who all suffered from an interestingly diverse range of spots and related skin conditions. They seemed embarrassed by my presence, which I might have found flattering if I'd had the energy to spare. They kept on playing cards as they talked and ate, roundly abusing and cursing each other as though they were homicidally desperate outlaws gambling for the entire proceeds of a robbery rather than, I assumed, reasonably good friends and playing, apparently, for sweets called Smarties.
'Are those earrings, Topee?' I asked, as Topee - finding that some hairs were getting into his mouth as he munched on his lemon chicken and roll - flicked his hair back behind his ear and revealed a set of half a dozen or so small studs and rings set into the rearward edge of his left ear.
He flashed a smile at me. 'Yeah. Cool, eh?'
'Hmm.' I continued digging into my mostly-air roll.
Topee looked hurt. 'You don't like them?' he asked plaintively.
I forbore pointing out that body piercing was frowned upon by our Faith, just as I had questioning Topee's lack of a mud-mark on his forehead. 'I have always felt,' I said, instead, 'that the human body arrives with a more than sufficient number of orifices out of the box, as it were.'
They were all looking at me.
'Yeah,' sniggered the one called Mark. 'To name but one!'
The others snorted and laughed too, after a moment. I just sat and smiled, not entirely sure what the joke was.
Topee looked a little discomfited, but cleared his throat and asked politely what exactly it was I wanted help with.
While giving the details a wide berth, I explained to Topee that I wanted to investigate army records, events in 1948 as reported in newspapers, and possibly old currency. Even as I spoke the words I felt that just mentioning those three areas was already giving too much away, but Topee's eyelids remained unbatted, and I felt I had to involve him. I needed to do this quickly, I felt, and as a student Topee ought to know his way round a library, oughtn't he? Listening to the four lads chat and curse as they played cards, I wondered if this had been wise, but I had made my play now and would have to stick with it.
'Aw, shit, Is!' Topee exclaimed, when I made clear the need for haste. 'You wanna do this now? Aw, rats, man! This is Saturday, Is!' Topee said, laughing and waving his arms about. His pals nodded enthusiastically. 'We have to go out and get steamin' and listen to jazz and stuff and do a pub crawl or come back here and drink cans and bet on the football scores and go out and get paralytic and get black-pudding suppers and chips and go to the QMU and dance like maniacs and try and get off with nurses and end up back here having an impromptu soirée, like as not and throw up in the garden and throw things out of the window and call for a pizza and play bowls in the hall with empty cans!'
He laughed.
'You can't interfere with a… with a months-old tradition like that just because you need to do this research shit! Fuck, if we wanted to do that sort of stuff we'd be writing our essays! I mean, do we look like sad students? Come on; we're trying to resurrect a fine student tradition here. We have to party!'
'Party!' the others chorused.
I looked at Topee. 'You told me students were all very boring and exam-oriented these days.'
'They are, mostly!' Topee said, gesticulating. 'We party-'
'Party!' the other three chorused again.
'-animals are practically an endangered species!'
'I can't imagine why,' I sighed. 'Well, just-'
'Oh, come, Is; let your… I mean, get your party-'
'Party!'
'-hat on. We can do all that stuff on Monday.'
'Topee,' I said, smiling faintly. 'Just point me in the right direction. I'll do it myself.'
'You won't come out with us?' he asked, looking deflated.
'Thank you, but no. I'd like to get this done today. It's all right; I'll do it myself.'
'Not at all! If you won't come out with us, I'll come out with you; we'll do all this stuff. We'll all help! Except you have to come out for a drink with us tonight, right?' He looked round the others.
They looked at him and then at me.
'Na.'
'No, don't think so, Tope.'
'Nut; I wannae to go to the jazz.'
Topee looked crestfallen for a moment. 'Oh. Oh well,' he said, with an expansive shrug, waving with his arms. 'Just me, then.' He laughed. 'Fuck. Talked myself into that one, didn't I?'
The others murmured assent to this.
Topee slapped his forehead, staring at me. 'I suppose I have to wash your feet, too, don't I? I forgot!'
The others looked up, surprised.
I took a guess at the state of cleanliness of any basin, bowl or container suitable for feet-washing the flat might possess. 'That won't be necessary just now, thank you, Topee.'
'Currency,' Topee said, a little later in the kitchen as we tidied away the breakfast things.
'A bank-note,' I told him.
'Yeah. Cool. My Director of Studies collects stamps and stuff. I wonder if he knows anybody collects notes? I'll give him a call.' He grinned. 'Got his home number; I'm always calling in for extensions. Just chuck the stuff in there,' he said, pointing at one of three black polythene bags by the side of an overflowing bin. He strode out into the hall. I opened the black bag, averting my nose from the smell that emanated from it, and dumped the crushed, empty take-away containers into it. I tied up the sack and did the same with the other two, breathing through my mouth to combat the stench.
I started cleaning dishes. Anything to be busy. I'd been right about the washing-up basin. Topee was back a few minutes later. He stared at the washing-up suds as though he had never seen such a phenomenon before, a thesis the state of the kitchen did nothing to contradict. 'Oh, yeah! Like, well done, Is!'
'What did your Director of Studies say?' I asked him.
'We need a notaphilist,' he said, grinning.
'A what?'
'A notaphilist,' he repeated. 'Apparently there's one in Wellington Street.' He glanced at his watch. 'Open till noon on Saturdays. Reckon we can make it.'
I found it quite easy to drag myself away from the washing-up. We caught a bus into the city centre and found the address in Wellington Street, a little basement shop under a grand, tall Victorian office building of recently cleaned fawn sandstone.
H. Womersledge, Numismatist and Notaphilist, said the peeling painted sign. The place was pokey and dark and smelled of old books and something metallic. A bell jangled as we entered. I tried to convince myself that these were not really retail premises. There were glass cases, counters and tall display cabinets everywhere, all full of coins, medals and bank-notes, the latter held in little transparent plastic stands or folders like photographic albums.
A middle-aged man appeared from the back of the shop. I'd expected some little old bent-over octogenarian sporting a patina of dandruff and dust, but this fellow was my side of fifty, smoothly plump, and dressed in a white polo-neck top and cream slacks.
'Morning,' he said.
'Yo,' said Topee, bouncing from one foot to the other. The man looked unimpressed.
I tipped my hat. 'Good morning, sir.' I brought out the bank-note and placed it on the glass counter between us, over dully gleaming silver coins and colourfully ribboned medals. 'I wondered what you could tell me about this…' I said.