We sat in my best chairs, near the sound system and the electronic gear at the back of the pulpit, far enough downwind from the space heater to be able to talk without raising our voices, but still within its draught of warm, paraffin-scented air. Tumber took off his jacket and put his feet up on a loudspeaker. He'd accepted a small glass of Stolichnaya. He lit up a black and gold Sobranie and looked serious. I waited for him to say something. He nodded once, gave a sort of half-smile with one side of his mouth, pursed his lips.
I fiddled with my glass, wondering what was going on.
'Damn,' he said, taking his feet off the speaker and sitting forward on the edge of his seat, staring down at the tiled floor through the clear liquid in his glass. 'I don't know what to say, Dan.' He looked up at me, and took his Porsche glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose as though he was tired. He seemed oddly naked and vulnerable without the glasses. He put them back on again. 'I'm... sorry, I know how much you meant to each other, even if you hadn't... well, no; look...' He held up one hand as I opened my mouth to speak. '... I guess there isn't anything we can say, either of us, but, well, I want you to know ... well, I guess I felt the same way you did.' He looked away, shaking his head.
I had the oddest feeling of déjà vu. What year was this, for God's sake? This was what he'd said after Miami, after Davey died. What sort of weird time-warp was I — or he — in? Had something else happened? I didn't know what to say. I wanted to ask, What the hell are you talking about? but there was a silence between us now I didn't feel able to fill, a confusion in me I didn't want to admit to.
I was still trying to cope with last night, with the combined effects of a bad hangover, bruised ribs and the awful feeling that I'd lost a friend. I'd been to the Griffin when it opened, leaving a note on the door of St Jute's for Tumber, but McCann hadn't appeared for his usual Sunday drink. I' d waited an hour, drinking fruit juices, then left a message for McCann with the barman and come back to wait for Rick. So I had enough to think about, and I didn't even want to ask if some new catastrophe had befallen anybody I knew.
Nevertheless, I had to say something. I was still wondering what it should be when Rick knocked back his vodka and reached for the leather briefcase.
'Life goes on,' he said briskly, with the air of somebody deliberately putting a brave face on the hardly-bearable. 'I brought some incredibly pure coke with me. You still indulge?' I shrugged, feeling weakened, suggestible, vacuous in every sense.
'You know I used to be able to fuck twice within the space of one side of an album?' Tumber said. We were playing table tennis on the slightly dusty table right at the back of the choir under windows depicting hares chewing the cud, the two fathers of Joseph, God showing his rear parts to Moses... that sort of thing. Playing table tennis coked up had seemed like a good idea at the time but, as usual when it came to games, I was losing, and in this case I seemed to spend most of my time chasing the ball around under the table and across the floor. I had no idea how we suddenly started talking about sex.
'Really?' I said.
'Yeah,' Tumber served again. 'Twice in twenty minutes.' I missed a topspin slam completely and had to follow the bouncing ball across the tiles again.
'Wow,' I said.
'Yeah.' Rick got ready to serve, and I crouched, feeling tiger-tense and twice as fearsome, and staring at the point on the table where I expected the ball to bounce. Then Rick straightened again, rubbed his chin and looked up to the roof. I looked on, aghast. 'I mean, it was a while ago. The record was Let It Be...' He frowned, crossed his arms, seemed to say more to himself than to me, 'Now who's flat were we using? I always thought it was that one in Argyll Street, but...'
'Serve!' I shouted at him. He started as though he'd just noticed me, and crouched to serve again, the ball held in his left palm like some strange plastic offering.
'Sorry,' he said. 'Will I serve now?'
'Yes!' I screamed.
He served.
'Aah!' I yelped, returning.
'Well anyway; you should have seen this girl, Dan. What a body. I swear her tits didn't change shape when she lay down. That usually means silicon, but she was one hundred per cent natural, believe me. We'd done it once and then we just started doing it again, and, well, fucking zap-pow, man... anyway we were still lying there panting and quivering when the side finished and the turntable switched itself off, and I got up, dripping everywhere, and turned the album over, and then went back to bed, and...'
'And turned her over...' I laughed, which gained me a point when Tumber laughed, and missed the ball. My turn to serve.
'You asshole, Weird,' Tumber said.
We played a short rally which I lost, of course. Rick served again. 'So I'd come twice in twenty minutes, and I thought, "Hey, that's pretty good; you must be some sort of sexual athlete there, Ricky boy."'
'I wonder if they have heats for sexual athletics,' I pondered aloud.
, And I started,' Rick went on, 'timing myself like that, with sounds. Doing that deliberately, just to see, you know? I wanted to keep a check on my performance.'
'Uh-huh,' I said. I lost another point.
'Yeah,' Tumber said, serving again. 'I only stopped doing it with Judy... you remember Judy? When I was in love?'
'I remember. You seemed almost human for a while. It was disconcerting.'
'Thanks. Anyway I stopped doing it with Judy cos it felt wrong, and even after we split up I didn't do it because I'd sort of forgotten about it, and then a couple of months ago I was screwing these two gorgeous black chicks, and I'd just put Brothers In Arms on, and I humped one then the other, and it finished and I realised I'd done it again; twice within one side, and, like, I was completely exhausted, but I was so fucking pleased I'd done it, and then I realised ...'
'What?' I said, missing the ball again and going after it. It bumped up against a box full of Rumanian plum jam.
'It was a fucking compact disc, man,' Tumber said, disgustedly. 'I'd taken about fifty fucking minutes and I felt twice as knackered.' He shook his head. 'Jeez, was I pissed off.'
'My heart bleeds for you,' I told him. 'My bladder leaks for you; my pituitary secretes for you. What were you doing in bed with these two women, anyway?'
'What do you think I was doing?'
'Asking them, was it good for you two?'
'Wrong. In fact, they're a double act. I'm thinking of signing them.'
'I didn't know you'd formalised your relationships to quite that extent,' I said, and actually won a point. Tumber tossed the ball back to me.
'My relationships are changing a lot, Danny. I'm getting careful in my old age.' Rick stood up suddenly from the crouched position he'd assumed to receive my serve, put his hands on his hips and said, frowning with annoyance, 'Christ, isn't it a fucking bore wearing those goddamn willy wellies?'
I didn't move, but looked up from my serving stance and said, 'Yes.'
'Never mind,' Tumber said, crouching again and winning off the return. 'I'm laughing; I used the profit on my Telecom shares to buy into London International.'
'Asshole,' I told him.
'That's about the size of it.' he grinned.
We sat in the restaurant of the Albany hotel, Rick's usual base on the rare occasions when he visits me.
We finished our game of table-tennis. He'd won, of course, though I did score a couple of points, which I always regard as a moral victory. We'd had some more coke, talked for an hour or so about The Business, bad-mouthing everybody we could think of, then we drove the couple of hundred yards to the Albany in Rick's hired GTS (though only after he'd complained about the car-hire people at the airport not having a black Porsche to match his glasses; a red Ferrari was all very well, but it clashed).