"Stop it, Cletus!" I said.
"Stop, my arse," he said. "I am sick and tired of all these grab-grab girls."
"Leave me alone," she cried, sudden tears of anger and shame now running down her face. Somehow she succeeded in wrenching her hand free. Then she stepped back and threw the sugar full in his face, snatched her handbag and ran away, crying. He picked up the sugar, about half-a-dozen cubes.
"Sam!" shouted Cletus across to his houseboy. "Put some more water on the fire." And then turning to me he said again, his eyes glazed in crazy reminiscence: "Mike, you must tell them the battle I waged with sugar."
"He was called Sugar Baby at school," I said, dodging again.
"Oh, Mike, you’re no bloody good with stories. I wonder who ever recommended you for the Propaganda Directorate." The other two laughed. Beads of perspiration trembled on his forehead. He was desperate. He was on heat begging, pleading, touting for the sumptuous agony of flagellation.
"And he lost his girlfriend," I said turning brutal. "Yes, he lost a nice, decent girl because he wouldn’t part with half-a-dozen cubes of the sugar I bought him."
"You know that’s not fair," he said turning on me sharply. "Nice girl indeed! Mercy was just a shameless grabber like all the rest of them."
"Like all the rest, of us. What interests me, Cletus, is that you didn’t find out all those months you went with her and slept with her until I brought you a packet of sugar. Then your eyes were opened."
"We know you brought it, Mike. You’ve told us already. But that’s not the point…"
"What then is the point?" Then I realized how foolish it was and how easy, even now, to slip back into those sudden irrational acrimonies of our recent desperate days when an angry word dropping in unannounced would start a fierce war like the passage of Esun between two peace-loving friends. So I steered myself to a retrieving joke, retrieving albeit with a razor-edge.
"When Cletus is ready to marry," I said, "they will have to devise a special marriage vow for him. With all my worldly goods—except my Tate and Lyle—I thee honour. Father Doherty if they ever let him back in the country will no doubt understand."
Umera and his friend laughed again.