“An eternal supply,” said Greg, “a magic fountain. And I’d tell him to find another girl with a rock-solid ass so I could snort the coke off that when I’d got tired of snorting it off the first girl’s tits.”
“You think I should invest in development in Africa, then, rather than here?” I asked Catherine.
“Why not?” she said. “It’s all connected. All part of the same general, you know, caboodle. Markets are all global; why shouldn’t our conscience be?”
“Interesting,” I said. I thought of rails and wires and boxes, all connected. “But what do they, you know, do in Africa?”
“What do they do?” she repeated.
“Yeah,” I said. “Like, when they’re just doing their daily thing. Walking around, at home: stuff like that.”
“Strange question,” she said. “They do a million different things, like here. Right now, building is very big in Zimbabwe. There’s loads of people pulling homes together.”
Just then the barmaid arrived with the champagne bottle and three glasses. She asked me if I wanted her to open it.
“I’ll do it,” I said. I wrapped my fingers round the top, trying to penetrate the foil cover with my nails. It was difficult: my nails weren’t sharp enough, and the foil was thicker than I’d thought.
“Here, use my keys,” said Greg.
I wrapped my fingers round his set of keys. Catherine and Greg watched me. I moved my hand back to the champagne bottle’s top, made an incision in the foil, then pinched the broken flap and started pulling it back, slowly peeling the foil off.
“Shall I help?” Catherine asked.
“No,” I said. “I can do it.”
“Sure,” she said. “I didn’t mean…you know, whatever.”
I peeled the foil right off and was about to start untwisting the wire around the cork when I realized we still had our beers.
“We should knock these off first,” I said.
Greg and I started gulping our pints down.
“Whole villages are getting housing kits,” said Catherine. “These big, semi-assembled homes, delivered on giant trucks. They just pull them up and hammer them together.”
“And they all slot in just like that?” I asked her. “Without hitch?”
“They’re well-designed,” she said.
Greg set down his beer and burped. “There’s a party this Saturday,” he said. “David Simpson. You know David Simpson, right?”
I nodded. I knew him vaguely.
“Well, he’s just bought a flat on Plato Road, off Acre Lane. Just round the corner from here. He’s having a house-warming party Saturday, and you’re invited. Both of you.”
“Okay,” I said.
I gulped the last of my beer and started on the wire around the cork. It was a pipe-cleaner wire frame, like the frame beneath those dresses eighteenth-century ladies wore. I had to pinch it between my fingers and twist it. I managed this and started working the cork with my thumbs, but it wouldn’t go.
“Let me try,” Greg said.
I handed it to him, but he couldn’t do it either.
“You have to…” Catherine began, but just then the cork flew out with a bang. It only missed my head by half an inch. It hit a metal light clamped to the ceiling and then fell back to the floor.
“Woah!” said Greg. “You could have had your accident all over again. If that light had fallen on you, I mean.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“Do the honours, then,” said Greg.
I poured the champagne and we drank. It wasn’t very cold, and it had a weird smell, like cordite. Catherine still had two glasses on the go, the champagne and the beer. She alternated, taking sips from each.
“You could do both,” said Greg.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“Live like a rock star and give to these housing projects in Kenya. It’s enough money to do both.”
“ Zimbabwe,” Catherine said. “Yeah but it’s not just housing. Housing is a vital aspect, but there’s education too. And health.”
“Hey,” Greg said, “did I tell you about the time I took coke with this rock band? I was with this…”
He stopped and looked up. Catherine and I looked up too. Greg had stopped because the weird guy who’d been on his own had shuffled over to beside our table and was glaring at us. We looked back at him. He shifted his gaze from one of us to the other, then on to the table and the champagne bottle, then to nowhere in particular. Eventually he spoke:
“Where does it all go?”
Catherine turned away from him. Greg asked him:
“Where does what all go?”
The weird guy gestured vaguely at the table and the bottle.
“That,” he said.
“We drink it,” Greg answered. “We have digestive systems.”
The weird guy pondered that, then tssked.
“No. I don’t mean just that,” he said. “I mean everything. You people don’t think about these things. Give me a glass of that stuff.”
“No,” said Greg.
The weird guy tssked again, turned round and walked away. Other people were trickling into the bar. Music started playing.
“Does this champagne smell of cordite to you?” I asked.
“What?” said Greg.
“Cordite,” I said, raising my voice above the music.
“Cordite?” Greg said, raising his voice too. “What does cordite smell like?”
“This,” I answered.
“I don’t think so,” Greg said. “But look: that time, I was with this friend-well, with this guy I knew-and he played in a band, and…”
“What time?” Catherine asked. She’d finished her first glass of champagne and had poured herself another.
“When I took coke with this band,” Greg told her. “We all went in a van, to an after-gig party. It was somewhere up in Kentish Town, Chalk Farm. There were-hang on…” He poured himself another glass as well. “There were…”
“Wait,” I said. “Say I were to give towards this reserve fund…”
“Resource,” Catherine corrected me.
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Well, could I…I mean, how would I fit in?”
“Fit in?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “How am I connected to it all? Do I need to go there? Even if I don’t, could I go anyway, and watch?”
“Maybe you could take the virgin with the firmest ass as collateral,” said Greg. “And then another with the firmest tits as interest on your investment. Then, each time you snort a line off her: bingo! instant connection.”
“Why do you need to see it?” Catherine said. “Isn’t just knowing it’s happening good enough?”
“No,” I said. “Well, maybe. But I’d need…” I felt a kind of vertigo. I knew what I meant but couldn’t say it right. I wanted to feel some connection with these Africans. I tried to picture them putting up houses from her housing kits, or sitting around in schools, or generally doing African things, like maybe riding bicycles or singing. I didn’t know: I’d never been to Africa, any more than I-or Greg-had ever taken cocaine. I tried to visualize a grid around the earth, a kind of ribbed wire cage like on the champagne bottle, with lines of latitude and longitude that ran all over, linking one place to another, weaving the whole terrain into one smooth, articulated network, but I lost this image among disjoined escalator parts, the ones I’d seen at Green Park earlier. I wanted to feel genuinely warm towards these Africans, but I couldn’t. Not that I felt cold or hostile. I just felt neutral.
“Well, anyhow,” said Catherine. “That’s what I’d do. But that’s just me. It all depends on what you feel will give you the greatest, you know…”
Her voice trailed off. Greg came back in with his cocaine story. Then they went on to talking about Africa, where Greg had been once, on some safari. This led them back after a while to arguing about what I should do with my new fortune; then they truced up and chatted about Africa again. We went on in this vein for quite some time. The whole damn evening, probably. It went round in cycles, over the same ground again and again. I zoned out after a while. I knew already that I had no desire either to build schools in some country I’d never been to or to live like a rock idol. The Dogstar filled up and the music got louder and louder, so that Catherine and Greg had to shout to make themselves heard. And shout they did. We had another bottle of champagne and three more beers. They ended up quite drunk. I felt stone-cold sober the whole night.