Suckers

The Foxhole was a murky cellar with walls moist enough to support several species of fungi. It was already getting crowded, and we had to do some nifty manoeuvring to grab the last vacant table. As I'd expected, it took only one glass to knock Duncan back against the ropes. Perhaps I should have put a stop to it, but I was still so annoyed at the 'intellectual' gibe that I encouraged him to have another. And another. Besides, it was good to have him to myself for once, without Lulu or Alicia around to be disapproving.

After three glasses he started singing selections from South Pacific. In all the time I'd known him, Rodgers and Hammerstein had never struck me as his kind of entertainment, but you live and learn. The people on the next table joined in on Bali-Hai. Duncan got chatty with them, and we learned that the man with the bow-tie and red-framed spectacles was Dexter, who was in advertising, and that his girlfriend with the Rita Hayworth hair — she wished — was Josette, a publishing PR, and that their companion with the stammer and the name I didn't catch was an accountant.

They were impressed when they found out Duncan was a famous photographer. No one took much notice of me, which was the way I liked it. I was content to sit back and wait for Duncan to lose interest in them. It was only a matter of time and it happened even sooner than I was expecting. He started singing again, only to break off midway through Some Enchanted Evening and lurch to his feet, announcing he had to go and make a phone call. He began to weave his way through the tables, banging into one or two of them and slopping people's drinks. Then he turned round and wove back again, fumbling through his pockets, and asked if I had any change.

I found some ten pences in my bag, instructed Dexter and Josette and their friend to save our table, and trotted after Duncan to the payphone. It wasn't a very exciting telephone call. I should have realized he'd been going to check on Lulu. I could hear him arguing with her in a basic yes/no mode. After a few minutes of this, I was itching to get back to my drink, even if it meant having to make polite conversation with Dexter and Josette.

'You just can't,' Duncan kept saying. 'Because I don't want you to.' By the time he'd inserted the last of my ten pences, his shoulders were sagging and his voice was trailing off into a hoarse whisper. He'd argued himself to a standstill. Then he heard something which made him hand the receiver out to me. 'Lu wants a word,' he said.

'Hello?'

Lulu sounded anxious. 'Dora? Is that you? Where are you? What's the matter with him?'

'He's all right,' I said, trying not to slur my words. 'He just heard some bad news about an old schoolfriend.'

Lulu wanted to know who it was, but I deliberately kept it vague. 'But drinking's bad for his liver,' she wailed. 'For God's sake don't let him drive.'

'Of course I won't.'

Then, unexpectedly, she said, 'Thank Christ you're there. Thank Christ it's you and not Jack or Charlie. Those guys just egg each other on.' I was surprised, even a little touched in my tipsyish state.

'He's pissed off because I'm working tomorrow,' she said. 'I don't know what's got into him, he never tried to stop me working before.'

In a conversational tone, I asked, 'You mean you're going to take that Multiglom job?'

'I'd be mad to turn it down.'

'That's the spirit. Don't let him push you around.'

'He can be incredibly bossy sometimes,' she said, slipping into a confidential tone. 'I don't think he realizes.'

'We girls have got to stick together,' I said.

'I wonder if…' she began, but changed her mind. 'Give him my love, won't you? Tell him I love him.'

'Oh yes,' I assured her. She said something else, but I didn't catch it because I was already returning the receiver to its cradle.

Duncan was slumped against the wall, staring at his shoes. I said to him, 'You need another drink.'

He looked up sharply, as though only just remembering where he was. 'What did she say?'

'She said you needed another drink.' It was time to move on. I frogmarched him up the stairs and over the Strand to another bar, mildly amused by the notion of Dexter and Josette being left to defend our empty table against all comers. This new place was even more crowded than the Foxhole, but by now we were beyond caring. We squeezed aggressively on to a red-plush banquette and commandeered half of someone else's table.

After a couple of beers Duncan started babbling, and I encouraged him. He told me how much he valued our friendship. He observed the colour of my eyes, and informed me what I already knew — that there was a speck of hazel in one of the irises. He became sentimental and said what an extraordinary person I was, what a wonderful singer, and asked how on earth I had managed to learn so many languages. He waxed lyrical about my tiny, tiny feet, and, at this point, I experienced an uncomfortable sensation of deja-vu and realized he had long since stopped talking about me. I started to feel very depressed and switched from white wine to Scotch and soda.

Duncan, meanwhile, had switched from second to third person. 'She's been away for a long time. A long long time. And now she's back and it's all going to happen again.'

I shushed him. It wasn't prudent to bring up such things in public. 'It's finished. Over.'

'No, no, no,' he said, shaking his head. 'No, no, no. Not over. Because you know what? She's not like us. She's different. Very, very different.' He shook his head some more, in case I hadn't seen him shaking it the first time.

I said, 'We're each of us different in our own little ways.' The conversation had taken a dispiriting twist. The alcohol had loosened his inhibitions, but not in the way I'd anticipated. It was the same old story: all that effort, and all of it swept aside so easily.

'It's beginning again,' he was saying. 'And you know what? You know what? I want it to begin again. Oh yes I do.'

'Oh no you don't,' I said. 'That's the last thing you want. It wouldn't be a good idea, not at all.' He persisted, so I tried talking sense. 'Let us suppose that — contrary to all laws of medical science and Middle European mythology — let us suppose you are right and it really is beginning again. Do you really think she'd want to shake you by the hand? Remember what you did? Remember how you left her without a hand to shake? She'd be fairly pissed off at you, don't you think?'

'Don't care.'

'Oh for Heaven's sake, use your head.' I could have wept. I was in that sort of state, but Duncan's drunkenness was way ahead of mine; it had passed through the maudlin stage and had now entered the rowdy.

'Want to know the quickest way to a woman's heart?' he asked loudly. 'Through the thorax with a Kitchen Devil!' Heads swivelled in our direction. He started to laugh uproariously. I shushed him again, and he lowered his voice so only about half the people in the pub could hear. 'It was the next best thing to fucking my mother, you know?'

'No, I don't know. Nobody wants to hear about your Oedipus Complex.'

'Not Oedipus,' he complained. 'You've got it upside-down.'

'I don't care who was on top. Just keep your voice down.'

'I've done nothing to be ashamed of. That's what you kept telling me, wasn't it? That I've done nothing to be ashamed of.'

'Not much,' I muttered.

'Don't you think I did the right thing?'

'Yes,' I said, in what I hoped was an authoritative voice. 'Imagine if you'd let her get away with it. Imagine what would have happened then. Think of it as being like a contagious disease. If you hadn't put a stop to it, it would have spread like wildfire. Of course you did the right thing.'