Francesca looked at her watch. ‘You are keen,’ she said.
‘So how are we getting there?’ he said, when they were outside. He wasn’t going to risk the bus again.
‘Taxi,’ said Una.
‘Or we could take the Underground.’ He saw his funds for the evening running awkwardly thin. ‘It’s probably quicker . . .’
‘Oh, the Underground . . . !’ – Francesca stood, in apparent indecision, gazing at a spot a few yards away on the pavement, beneath which she seemed to picture it running. ‘Is it still open?’
Johnny looked at his watch. It was ten past ten. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. And he saw in a moment the Tube as perhaps she imagined it, rather than as he knew it from frequent use – a deep proletarian labyrinth, a sort of human sewer, rumoured to underlie the whole city.
‘Oh, but look—’ and she ran a few steps into the road and somehow caught the eye of a taxi driver passing the end of the street, who backed up and turned and in twenty seconds was taking her instructions through the open window.
In the cab, as it swept round Trafalgar Square and out into Pall Mall, Johnny had the uncomfortable but elated feeling that his London life had taken off, not how he’d imagined it, but the unimagined, when it happened, had the bite of authenticity. The women travelled side by side, and Johnny sat on the folding seat, looking at them and past them, at the vanishing road and the lights of other vehicles surging up or dropping behind. He still felt hungry, he had only had one thing at the little Chinese, and then the bill was split three ways and he couldn’t protest. You ate almost in the kitchen there, with the poor splayed roasted ducks hanging just above your head like lanterns. He pushed down the window an inch but the throb of the engine shivered it shut in two or three seconds. Racing backwards to his first gay club, he felt a little queasy.
‘This is it,’ Francesca shouted to the driver, and they stopped at a narrow white building on the Earl’s Court Road. A small queue had formed outside, and there was a certain defiance in showing so plainly where they were going. The cabbie looked out warily.
‘You don’t want to go in there, love,’ he said to Una, ‘it’s a poofs’ place.’
‘Yes, we do,’ said Una.
Francesca paid him, and took the change in full, and flapped her hand in front of her face when he drove off in a loud fart of diesel fumes.
Ivan was coming down the other way, from the Tube station, his duffel coat unbuttoned, and the long fringe of his woollen scarf bobbing like a sporran between his thighs. ‘Darling!’ said Francesca, so that Johnny didn’t know where he was, after all she’d said about him earlier. Ivan kissed the two girls, dodged a kiss with Johnny by butting his head against the lapel of his coat. Johnny felt the quick squeeze of tension, was anxious and lustful, watching Ivan unwind his scarf, and was drunk enough to put his arm round his shoulders and leave it there. He seemed as drunk as they were, and engaged with the girls more than with the friend who was loosely holding him.
‘Here we all are then,’ said Francesca, as they edged a yard closer to the door. She winced at Johnny – ‘Sorry about this hideous wait.’ It was the disconcerting thing, where a brilliant person is drunk. She turned to Ivan, narrowed her gaze again. ‘There’s something funny about you. Where have you been?’
‘Me?’ said Ivan, cautious but pleased.
‘You’ve been up to something.’
‘I had to go and see that old friend of mine in Hampstead Garden Suburb . . . you know.’
‘I do think it’s good of you to go all the way out there.’
‘What’s this?’ said Johnny.
Ivan craned round to see who had lined up behind them, and when Johnny squeezed him he shrugged free and murmured, ‘I’ll tell you later,’ which seemed a promise with a hint of a threat in it.
They went into a narrow space inside the door, music audible now, swing doors beyond like a cinema and a glimpse when they opened of the bare room at the start of a party; the large man in a bomber jacket glanced sceptically at the girls. ‘You know this is a gay club,’ he said.
‘We’ve been here thousands of times,’ said Francesca, looking wanly past him.
‘So you’re lesbians, are you?’ he said.
‘Don’t be vulgar,’ said Francesca.
‘How you going to prove it?’ said the man.
Francesca sighed and looked away, as if dealing with this kind of person were a quite new indignity; then Una, with a hint of a smile on her large flawless face, pulled her towards her and with a tilt of the head started kissing her with a steady pushing and chewing motion which Francesca, while taking no active part, made no effort to prevent. Johnny giggled in amazement, and felt a sudden knot of excitement that he and Ivan might be made to do the same thing. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ said the bouncer, but it took him another ten seconds to separate them. He looked Johnny and Ivan up and down. ‘Right you are, gentlemen,’ he said, and unhitched the rope for them all.
It turned out you had to be a member – Francesca claimed she was, but this time couldn’t prove it, so they all had to sign a list and give their address, which made Johnny uneasy; he imagined them getting in touch with his aunt, and he put a different number in the street. It cost 50p each – ‘And of course you get your meal,’ said the little Irish boy in the lit cubbyhole. Then it was 10p to leave your coat. ‘Shall we put ours together?’ said Johnny, ‘save money,’ but Ivan said, ‘No, it’s OK.’
From his duffel coat Ivan emerged in a green silk shirt, rather creased, and very tight black flared jeans. It was a startling change from the Oxfam flannels and braces, and Johnny had a shivery feeling of him revealed in layers. He followed him through into the club, looking secretly at his hard round bum and the sliver of neck where his shirt collar was tucked in. They all stopped at the bar, Ivan turning and showing in his strangely amused stare round the room that standing them a drink was the last thing on his mind. ‘What will you have?’ said Francesca – and while she ordered, Johnny strolled off casually, as if returning to an old haunt, to get the lie of the club, excitement and fear mixed up in his half-drunk sweep through the space. There was the bar, and then round the corner a square room with a diminutive dance floor, a chequerboard five squares by five, the squares pulsing underneath in sequences of red, white, orange, blue, and just two men on it, staring and frowning at each other as they stalked and touched and parted and touched again. They had a long silk scarf that they trailed and drew across each other’s eyes. They were silly, but they were men, a bit older than Johnny, and they touched again and kissed so that Johnny looked away and looked back smiling in confirmation and shock. He went through further swing doors into the black-painted toilets, which like the rest of the club had an odd vacant readiness, Price’s candles on the ledge above the basins, cheap smell of disinfectant. He pissed, washed and dried his hands and looked at himself in the mirror, let his hair down, and put it up again, judging the effect as if he’d never done it before. Was he more in hiding one way or the other? No one knew who he was anyway. He left it up, and went back, past the dance floor, empty now, swinging his hips as he walked, looking forward to dancing, and into the bar, which was filling and getting noisy. He came up behind Ivan, gently straightened his shirt collar, and laid his hands on his shoulders – Ivan looked quickly back, said, ‘Ah, Jonathan,’ and passed him his beer bottle from the bar. ‘Cheers!’ said Johnny, and clinked bottles. Ivan touched him lightly just above the waist. ‘So here we are at last,’ he said.
Una bagged a table, and they sat leaning forward to hear each other over the music. ‘Did you have any luck at that sale last week?’ said Ivan genially.