Penhaligon rights the table and Olly gathers the glasses. Fitzsimmons hauls Cheeseman onto the bench, and I ask him how many fingers I’m holding up. He winces a bit, and wipes his mouth. “It was my ear she went for, not my sodding eye.”
A very pissed-off landlord appears. “What’s going on?”
I turn on him. “Our friend was just assaulted by three drunken sixth-formers and needs medical attention. As regulars, we’d hate to see your license revoked, so at A and E Richard and Olly here will imply the assault happened off your premises. Unless I’ve read the situation wrongly, and you’d prefer to involve the authorities?”
The landlord susses the state of play. “Nah. ’Preciated.”
“You’re welcome. Olly: Is the Magic Astra parked nearby?”
“In the car park at the college, yes, but Ness here—”
“Um, my car’s available too,” says helpful Penhaligon.
“Jonny, you’re over the limit and your father’s a magistrate.”
“The breathalyzers’ll be out tonight,” warns the landlord.
“You’re the only sober party, Olly. And if we phone for an ambulance from Addenbrookes, the cops will come along too, and—”
“Questions, statements, and all sorts of how’s-yer-father,” says the landlord, “and then your college’d get involved, too.”
Olly looks at Ness, like a boy who’s lost his finger of fudge.
“Go on,” Ness tells him. “I’d join you, but the sight of blood …” She makes a yuck face. “Help your friend.”
“I’m supposed to be driving you to Greenwich tonight.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get home by train — I’m a big girl, remember? Call me on Sunday and we’ll talk Christmas plans, okay? Go.”
MY RADIO ALARM is glowing 01:08 when I hear footsteps on the stairs, the pause, the timid tap-tap-tap on my outer door. I put on my dressing gown, close my bedroom door, cross my parlor, and open up, leaving the chain on. I squint out: “Olly? Wassa time?”
Olly looks Caravaggian in the dim light. “Half twelve-ish.”
“Shit. Poor you. How’s the bearded one?”
“If he survives the self-pity, he’ll be fine. Antitetanus booster and a glorified Elastoplast. A and E was the Night of the Living Dead. I only just dropped Cheeseman off at his flat. Did Ness get to the station?”
“For sure. Penhaligon and I escorted her to the taxi rank at Drummer Street, Friday night being Friday night. Fitz met Chetwynd-Pitt and Yasmina after you left and went off clubbing. Then, once Ness was safely off, Penhaligon followed on. I wussed out, spent a sexy hour here with I.F.R. Coates’s Bushonomics and the New Monetarism, then called it a night. Look, I’d”—I do a whale-sized yawn—“invite you in, but I’m bushed.”
“She didn’t …” Olly thinks, and Connect 4 counters drop, “… stick around for a drink or — or anything? At the Buried Bishop?”
“I.F.R. Coates is a bloke, Olly. He teaches at Blithewood College in upstate New York.”
“I meant,” how Olly aches to believe me, “Ness, actually.”
“Ness? Ness just wanted to get to Greenwich.” I’m mildly hurt; Olly ought to trust me not to hit on his girlfriend. “She’d have made the nine fifty-seven to King’s Cross, thence to Greenwich, where she’s no doubt tucked up and dreaming of Olly Quinn, Esquire. Lovely girl, by the way, from the little I saw of her. Obviously besotted with you, too.”
“You reckon? This week she’s been a bit, I don’t know, ratty. I’ve been half afraid she might be …”
I continue to act dumb. Olly lets his sentence fizzle out.
“What?” I say. “Thinking of dumping you? Hardly the impression I got. When these huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ types really fall for a guy they go all headmistressy to hide it. But don’t discount the more obvious cause of female crankiness, either; Lucille used to turn into a scorn-flobbing psychopath every twenty-eight days.”
Olly looks cheerful. “Well. Yeah. Maybe.”
“You’ll be meeting up over Christmas, right?”
“The idea was to sort out our plans tonight.”
“Too bad our Richard needed a Good Samaritan. Mind you, the way you took charge of things back at the pub impressed her to pieces. She said it showed how self-possessed you are when a crisis strikes.”
“She said that? Actually said it?”
“Pretty much verbatim, yes. At the taxi rank.”
Olly’s glowing; if he was six inches tall and fluffy, Toys R Us would ship him by the thousands.
“Olly, mate, I’ll bid thee a fair repose.”
“Sorry, Hugo, sure. Thanks. G’night.”
BACK IN MY bed of woman-smelling warmth, Ness hooks a leg across my thighs: “ ‘Headmistressy’? I should kick you out of bed now.”
“Try it.” I run my hands over her pleasing contours. “You’d better leave at the crack of dawn. I sent you to Greenwich just now.”
“That’s hours away, yet. Anything could happen.”
I draw twirls around her navel with my finger, but I find myself thinking about Immaculée Constantin. I didn’t mention her to the boys earlier; turning her into an anecdote felt unwise. Not unwise: prohibited. When I zoned out on her, she must have thought … What? That I’d entered a sort of seated coma, and left me to it. Pity.
Ness folds back the coverlet for air. “The problem with the Ollies of the world is—”
“Glad you’re so focused on me,” I tell her.
“—is their niceness. Niceness drives me mental.”
“Isn’t a nice boy what every girl is looking for?”
“To marry, sure. But Olly makes me feel trapped inside a Radio 4 play about … frightfully earnest young men in the nineteen fifties.”
“He did mention you’d been out of sorts lately. Ratty.”
“If I’m ratty, he’s an overgrown wobbly puppy.”
“Well, the course of true love never did—”
“Shut up. He’s so embarrassing socially. I’d already decided to dump him on Sunday. Tonight just seals the deal.”
“If poor doomed Olly’s a Radio 4 play, what am I?”
“You, Hugo,” she kisses my earlobe, “are a sordid, low-budget French film. The sort you’d stumble across on TV at night. You know you’ll regret it in the morning, but you keep watching anyway.”
A lost tune is whistled in the quad below.
December 20
“A ROBIN.” Mum points through the patio windows at the garden, clogged with frozen slush. “There, on the handle of the spade.”
“He looks freshly arrived off a Christmas card,” says Nigel.
Dad munches broccoli. “What’s my spade doing out of the shed?”
“My fault,” I say. “I was filling the coal scuttle. I’ll put it back after. Though, first, I’ll put Alex’s plate to keep warm: Hot gossip and true love shouldn’t mean cold lunches.” I take my older brother’s plate to the new wood-burning oven and put it inside with a pan lid over it. “Hell’s bells, Mum. You could fit a witch in here.”
“If it had wheels,” says Nigel, “it’d be an Austin Metro.”
“Now that,” crap cars are one of Dad’s loves, “was a pile of.”