‘Winceworth!’
‘Frasham.’
‘Winceworth! Thank you, thank you: twenty-seven years young!’ the birthday host hooted, unprompted. They were still shaking hands. Winceworth stared at their wrists rising and falling. He congratulated Frasham on attaining membership to the society.
‘Oh, that.’ Frasham pumped their hands and drew their heads together. ‘I formed the club on my return. Had a word with my uncle—’ He opened a palm towards a man sitting by the window who had exactly the same air of charismatic gentility as his nephew. This depressed Winceworth, who had privately hoped that this demeanour might be pummelled out of Frasham by the progress of time.
Frasham continued, leaning in too close: ‘My uncle and I managed to secure these rooms – not a bad set-up for a soirée, don’t you think?’
Heaven knows the rooms’ intended purpose before Frasham and his uncle appropriated them for this ridiculous society. There were phantom yellow nicotine stains on the ceiling that spoke of masculine company, with corresponding grubby haloes above the armchairs. There were cartouches and black bulb-buttock Hermes statuettes dotted about in alcoves. Frasham had presumably added some small props to convey the society’s claims to the outré: Winceworth almost tripped over an elephant-foot umbrella stand on the way in. He was also fairly sure that Frasham must have family connections with Kew Gardens who were not above loaning out some specimens from their Palm House – scattered about the wide room were swathes of potted reeds and long grasses, so thick and lush they could conceal a panther.
From what Winceworth could remember from previous conversations, Frasham’s uncle and the family money had something to do with rhubarb – rhubarb jam, preserves, conserves and marmalades shipped all over the world from a family estate. Winceworth never completely understood the difference between all of these things, but the emphasis was on cloying sweetness and teeth-on-edge, sour, tongue-curling congealments.
‘So,’ Winceworth said, smiling brightly, too brightly, consternation already broiling in his stomach. He worried that if he had to keep forcing this smile, the corners of his mouth would meet around the back of his head, and that then his head would detach and roll away. ‘So!’ he said again. ‘You are not only a member and founding member, but also, in fact, the sole member of the 1,500 Mile Society?’
‘One of two thus far, dear boy, one of two.’ Frasham beckoned a waiter to his side and Winceworth was suddenly holding a warmish exclamation mark of champagne. ‘When you manage to fling yourself further than Battersea you will be able to join us up there, what do you say?’
Winceworth followed Frasham’s extended hand – the man seemed incapable of pointing with a finger directly, gesturing instead as if he was taking part in a louche, dandified version of a Renaissance court dance – and let his eyeline be trained towards a wooden plate on the wall. It looked like a School House Prize commendation board.
In gold lettering, there was Frasham’s name (Cantab) above that of Ronald Glossop.
Glossop was at that moment stationed by the door and making sure everyone signed their name in a guest book as they entered. Winceworth must have walked right past him without noticing, and certainly without being asked. As he watched, Glossop passed his lime-green handkerchief across his face and caught Winceworth’s eye. He raised his glass, Winceworth sipped his champagne, Frasham quaffed. A clock struck somewhere.
A band was playing in a corner of the room, punctuating the air with occasional blarts of oboe. Winceworth considered making some uninformed compliment on Frasham’s choice of music, but even as he opened his mouth, Frasham was buttonholed by another guest and steered away. Thankful for the lull, Winceworth relaxed into his usual social routine – counting paces as if he was in a cell.
He completed an uninterrupted lap of the room before switching tactics. He decided to spell out certain invisible words against the room’s carpet. By making his way across the two parallel sides of the room and then cutting across the centre, he executed an H. He then endeavoured to complete an E, then traced two Ls across the room before concluding with another lap: a final O. As well as taking up time, this had the added benefit of allowing his face to tighten with genuine preoccupation. By spelling out letters on the carpet like this, Winceworth found he could successfully evade conversation without seeming rude – by looking genially but intently in the direction he had set his abecedarian course, nobody thought to approach and engage him in discussion. This became a slightly more awkward affair once the serving staff recognised his isolation from the herd and Winceworth became aware of them tailing his progress. To credit the 1,500 Mile Society waiting staff, they were wonderfully attentive – after two further glasses of champagne, Winceworth tried to dissuade the waiter’s advance by requesting the most outlandish drinks that he could imagine. He hoped the task would prove a longwinded one and that he would be left in peace, but almost immediately he was presented with an elderflower spirit and something that apparently was derived from rhubarb honey served in a glass urn. Thwarted. It tasted of soap used by a despot with a secret. He changed tack, and decided to be frank with the waiter. He asked for whisky. It was all going on Frasham’s bill, ran Winceworth’s logic, so who was he to argue with such generosity? He also ordered drinks for the musicians in the corner – they bobbed their instruments in thanks.
Across the room one could tell that Frasham had said something witty because a fairy ring of sycophantic university friends burst into applause. Then from a side door a cake was produced, so massive and heavy it required pallbearers. The cake was mocked up to look like a book, covered in blue royal icing with the host’s name picked out in white fondant letters in the place of a title. The band struck up the first notes of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’, Frasham cut into his cake with a huge knife and the 1,500 Mile Society rang to the clank of ice against glass, cufflinks against glass and canes upon the carpet. Glossop bent over the guest book, smiling.
Slices of cake were handed around by waiters and Winceworth, successfully spelling out the whole alphabet twice across the floor and now feeling quite drunk, decided that he would attempt one further circuit of the room before he left. He convinced himself that pacing rather than conversation brought out the best in him, reasoning that it was a product not of nervousness so much as flânerie. He helped himself to cake from a tray and had a flash of inspiration – he could pace out an alphabetic diagram of London’s streets beyond this room. Holding on to the wall, he began to devise specific routes through the city that would trace graphical Roman letters. Walking and alphabets could be, he decided, a marvellous distracting therapy. To pace the letter A he could begin at Cambridge Circus, trot up Earlham Street, turn at Seven Dials and follow St Martin’s Lane (with Tower Street forming the letter’s central spoke). Some letters were clear in his mind – D would be the perimeter of Billingsgate Fish Market, for example, and St James’s Square could form the O. If he ran its perimeter five thousand times, he thought, he too could enter the 1,500 Mile Society. A general snooze of Ss and Zs existed between the newly pulled-down church on Finsbury Circus and the lunatic asylum at Hoxton House – he added all these to his expanding index.
Winceworth was dimly aware of passing Glossop. The man was licking his thumb and turning the guest book’s pages.