“Hugo? You okay?” Penhaligon’s smile is uncertain.
We’re still logjammed two bodies back from the bar.
“Yeah,” I have to half shout. “Sorry, I was light-years away. While I have you to myself, Jonny, Toad asked me to invite you to his last all-nighter tomorrow, before we all jet off home. You, me, Eusebio, Bryce Clegg, Rinty, and one or two others. All cool.”
Penhaligon makes a not-sure face. “My mother’s half-expecting me back at Tredavoe tomorrow night …”
“No pressure. I’m just passing the invitation on. Toad says the ambience is classier when you’re there.”
Penhaligon sniffs the cheese. “Toad said that?”
“Yes, he said you’ve got gravitas. Rinty’s even christened you ‘the Pirate of Penzance’ because you always leave with the loot.”
Jonny Penhaligon grins. “You’ll be there too?”
“Me? God, yeah. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“You took quite a clobbering last week.”
“I never lose more than I can afford. ‘Scared money is lost money.’ You said that. Wise words for card players and economists.”
My partner in recreational gambling does not deny authorship of my freshly minted epigram. “I could drive home on Sunday …”
“Look, I won’t try to sway you one way or the other.”
He hums. “I could tell my parents I’ve a supervision …”
“Which would not be untrue — a supervision on probability theory, psychology, applied mathematics. All valid business skills, as your family will appreciate when you get the green light for the golf course at Tredavoe House. Toad’s proposing we raise the pot limit to a hundred pounds per game: a nice round figure, and quite a dollop of holiday nectar for you, sir, if your luck holds. Not that the Pirate of Penzance seems to need luck.”
Jonny Penhaligon admits: “I do seem to have a certain knack.”
I mirror his chuckle. Who’s a pretty turkey, then?
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER we’re bringing our drinks back to our nook to find that trouble has beaten us to it. Richard Cheeseman, The Piccadilly Review’s rising star, has been cornered by Come Up to the Lab, Cambridge’s premier Goth-metal trio, whose concert at the Cornmarket was acidly ridiculed in Varsity last month — by Richard Cheeseman. The bassist guy’s a Frankenstein, lipless and lumbering; but She-Goth One has mad-dog eyes, a sharky chin, and knuckles of spiky rings; She-Goth Two has a Clockwork Orange bowler hat, exploding fuchsia-pink hair, a fake diamond hatpin, and the same eyes as She-Goth One. Amphetamines, I do believe. “Never done anything yourself, have yer?” Number Two is prodding Cheeseman’s chest with jet-black fingernails to italicize key words. “Never performed live to a real audience, have yer?”
“Nor have I fucked a donkey, destabilized a Central American state, or played Dungeons & Dragons,” retorts Cheeseman, “but I reserve the right to hold opinions on those who do. Your show was a bobbing turd and I don’t take a word back.”
She-Goth One takes over: “Scribble scribble scribble with your faggoty pen in your faggoty notebook and snipe and bitch and slag off real artists, you hairy lump of dick cheese.”
“ ‘Dick Cheese,’ ” says Cheeseman, “from ‘Richard Cheeseman,’ yeah, that’s really clever. Original, too. Never once heard it.”
“What d’you expect,” She-Goth One snatches up Desiccated Embryos, “from a Crispin Hershey fan? He’s a prick, too.”
“Don’t pretend you read books.” Cheeseman gropes for his review copy in vain and I catch a distant glimpse of a tortured gay child having his satchel emptied off a sooty bridge over the Leeds — Bradford railway line. She-Goth Two rips the book down its spine and tosses the halves away. The male Goth goes gur-hur-hur.
Olly retrieves one half, Cheeseman the other. He’s riled now. “Crispin Hershey’s last crap has more artistic merit than your lifetime’s output. Your music’s derivative wank. It’s parasitic. It’s a hatpin through the eardrum, darling, and not in a good way.”
He was doing quite well until the last sentence, but if you bare your arse to a vengeful unicorn, the number of possible outcomes dwindles to one. By the time I’ve put the drinks on a handy shelf, She-Goth Two has indeed extracted her hatpin and flown at Monsieur Le Critic, who topples operatically; the table upends and glasses slide off; female spectators gasp and shriek and go, “Oh, my God!”; She-Goth Two pounces on the fallen one and stabs downwards; I grab the hatpin (glistening?) and Penhaligon pulls her off Cheeseman by her hair; the bassist’s fist misses Penhaligon’s nose by a whisker; Penhaligon staggers onto Olly and Ness; and She-Goth One’s screeching becomes audible to the human ear—“Get your hands off her!” Fitzsimmons is kneeling down, with Cheeseman’s head on his lap. Cheeseman looks like a guy in a comedy seeing stars and birdies, but the ear dribbling blood is more worrying; I examine it closely. Good: Only the lobe’s torn, but the attackers don’t need to know that. I arise and shout at Come Up to the Lab in a fisticuff-quelling roar: “A monsoon of piss and shit is headed straight at you for this.”
“The wanker was asking for it,” states She-Goth Two.
“He started it,” insists her friend. “He provoked us!”
“Multiple witnesses,” I indicate the scandal-hungry onlookers, “know exactly who was attacked by whom. If you think ‘verbal provocation’ is an admissible defense for grievous bodily harm, then you’re even stupider than you look. See that hatpin there?” She-Goth Two sees the blood on the tip and drops it; two seconds later it’s in my pocket. “Lethal weapon used with intent. Got your DNA all over it. Custodial term, four years. Yes, girls: four years. If you’ve punctured the ear canal, make it seven, and by the time I’ve finished in court, seven years will mean seven. So. Reckon I’m bluffing?”
“Who,” the bassist’s aggression is shaky, “the fuck are you?”
I perform my craziest L. Ron Hubbard laugh. “Postgrad in law, genius. What’s more interesting is who you are — an accomplice. Do you know what that means, in nice plain English? It means you get sentenced too.”
She-Goth Two’s braggadocio is wilting. “But I …”
The bassist’s pulling her by the arm. “C’mon, Andrea.”
“Run, Andrea!” I jeer. “Melt into the crowd — oh, but wait! You’ve glued posters of your mugshots all over Cambridge, haven’t you? Well, you are fucked. Well and truly.” Come Up to the Lab decide it’s time to vacate the building. I yell after them, “See you at the hearing! Bring phone cards for the detention wing — you’ll need them!”