Exciting Times(21)

I asked about work. ‘Busy,’ Seb said. Then I asked how he’d joined his firm. He said he’d finished uni not knowing what to do and thought law would keep him happy and solvent.

‘Has it?’ I said.

‘It’s kept me solvent.’

Seb’s composure and Julian’s were quite different. Julian’s came from an equanimous trust that most things were quite beneath his notice. Seb had a more active bearing. Every sentence seemed a decision.

As he talked, I started planning what it would be like to have sex with him. That was what I called it, ‘planning’, when I pondered how I’d fuck someone I had no current intention of fucking. One had to be prepared, I felt. For Seb, I’d spend a great deal of time with my hand near his belt buckle and see if he nudged me down to touch him or up to undo it. Julian sometimes did one and sometimes the other, so never let anyone tell you men are not complex.

Seb kept topping up my glass. I said I was fine, really.

‘Afraid you’ll end up with a red face?’ he said. ‘It’s hereditary. Happens to all the Irish anyway. One more.’

Julian’s chinless wonders often started attractive, then lapsed the more they said.

A man in an idiotic shirt asked Seb to come and tell them about the time he’d scaled the wall at Magdalen when the porters locked the doors. Julian came back over to me when he’d left, which made me smile. He must have been watching us. I hoped he’d kiss me, or at least take my arm, but I knew him better than that. He didn’t ‘mark his turf’, would sooner die than use that phrase without scare-quotes, would explain his non-turf-demarcation with reference to feminism, and felt in addition but less vocally that he was above such Neanderthal theatrics.

So he took my glass off me, gave me a tissue – to intimate I’d smudged my lipstick – and glanced in Seb’s direction. ‘Jane wouldn’t like it,’ he said. And that was that.

‘How together are they?’ I said.

‘Very,’ Julian said.

‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Would you mind?’

He looked at me with a mix of concern and derision, like I’d just asked what country we were in.

‘Don’t take coke off him,’ he said.

Numbers dwindled. I went upstairs to the bathroom and topped up my make-up, staring at my face until it seemed like someone else’s. Jane ‘wouldn’t like it’, and that made me happy. I’d only met Jane once, but she seemed like another Victoria: it was as if someone else ironed everything for her – her whole life – and her role was to make new creases.

When I came out, a dozen guests were left on the open floor downstairs. I was about to join them when I heard deep voices from the balcony in front: Julian, Seb, Ralph.

‘Where’s Galway Girl?’ Seb said.

Julian said he didn’t know.

They stood facing away from me at the railing ahead, looking down on the rest of the party. I tiptoed back and stood flat against the wall.

The playlist downstairs shuffled to Duke Ellington – ‘Blood Count’.

‘The accent,’ Seb said. ‘Like a gypo with elocution lessons.’

Ralph laughed. Julian didn’t. From the atrium the trumpets dithered like jurors. When the silence became obvious, Ralph looked between the others, who stood still.

Finally, Julian said: ‘I think you’ve had enough, mate, if you’re slurring the wrong ethnicity.’

Seb nudged Ralph. ‘If you’d seen her when I said the Irish have red faces.’

Julian reached into his pocket, then seemed to remember he couldn’t smoke indoors. Seb surveyed the party. Ralph took an interest in his watch.

Then Julian said: ‘Would you like a crack at the Polish while we’re here?’

‘My mum’s Polish,’ Seb said.

‘Really?’ Julian said.

‘And she voted Leave.’

‘Right.’

‘Plenty of Poles did.’

‘Right.’

‘And Irish,’ Seb said.

‘Your mum’s Irish, too?’

‘The Irish voted Leave. My mum’s Polish.’

‘How on earth did the Irish vote Leave?’

Ralph coughed. ‘Seb’s mum can’t be Polish,’ he said, ‘or Julian would have got to her by now.’

No doubt in Ralph’s head he had shrewdly split his fealties by alleging that Julian had sex with people who weren’t British, and that Seb’s mother had sex with anyone. His compatriots appeared not to see it that way.

‘Look,’ Seb said, ‘leave Agnieszka out of this.’

‘Words cannot express how happy I am to leave Agnieszka out of this,’ Julian said.

‘I just think it’s specious.’

‘What’s specious?’

‘Fucking an Irish girl and then saying I can’t hold my drink.’

Julian nodded, then said with some gravity: ‘I do see the hypocrisies.’

‘Beggin yer pardon for any offence,’ Seb said, ‘but you can tell she grew up in a small house.’

Julian straightened up. So did Seb.

‘How can you tell?’ Ralph said.

‘I reckon Julian’s more of an authority,’ Seb said. ‘On the subject.’