On Saturday I went to a wedding and didn’t touch a drop of alcohol and it was fine. I enjoyed myself more, I think, than if I’d been slinging them back. On Sunday evening, pleased with myself about this, and seriously considering permanent sobriety, I went to the pub. The England v. Germany match had been over for several hours and every face in the bar could have stood in as a model for that wonderful Picasso of the absinthe drinker, put up for auction the other week.
Of the people in the bar I knew to speak to, two were the drunkest I’ve seen them. One, a genial, chuckling character who is always pleased to see me, was unusually sullen and apparently so preoccupied with unhappy thoughts that he failed to acknowledge my greetings. Later I came across him in the gents, swinging punches at the tiled walls. Another chap, constitutionally morose and known for his cynicism, had been stripped right back by the drink to the basics, exposing an unexpectedly warm, affectionate and cheerful person underneath.
I ordered a pint and went outside for a fag. More customers were outside smoking on the pavement than there were inside. Passions were at fever pitch among the red-faced, red-shirted, glassy-eyed smokers. A debate was in progress about whether it was permissible to compliment a woman on her figure in the presence of her boyfriend. The controversy had arisen earlier in the day and now the boyfriend was having it out on the pavement with the complimenter. Both sides of the motion had their vociferous seconders. Reasoned debate was rapidly descending into shrill personal insult and seemed about to descend even further into violence. Would that the Prince of Wales were there as head of ton to make a nice judgment on the issue.
I moved away and gravitated across the pavement towards another group of smokers, just in time to hear one woman ask another woman why she was spreading an unfounded rumour that she was sleeping with a certain man. The question was asked in a matter-of-fact tone masking unfathomable anger. The rumour-spreader, blonde hair, square glasses, responded with the smoothness of a practised liar. A misunderstanding, she said, and then she proposed a plausible tale of how it had arisen. Trev was in this knot of smokers and listening gravely, head down, arms folded. I thought that he was in one of his more reflective moods until he let out a shout of hollow laughter.
‘So, maid!’ he yelled at the injured party. ‘You’re upset that somebody is spreading a rumour that you’ve slept with someone? Darling, it would make more sense if you were upset about a rumour that there’s someone in this town that you’ve missed! I can count four blokes out of four right here that you’ve slept with! Right, out of just the blokes, hands up who’s slept with Olivia.’ Five ironic hands shot up, including an ungallant one of mine and both Trev’s. And to her great credit, Olivia immediately recognised the justice of Trev’s argument and coyly acquiesced in the laughter.
While I was out on the pavement, I saw two police cars and a van drive slowly past, the officers inside keeping a weather eye out for signs of civil disorder following England’s defeat. A football match, a hot afternoon, a few lagers: all it takes, really, for our highly educated, right-thinking citizenry to revert to type and start smashing the place up. With all these police about I couldn’t risk driving home, so I inquired at the bar whether I could spend the night in one of the rooms upstairs, which the landlord lets out to workmen for bed and breakfast.
They did have a room. Fifteen quid. Did I want to see it first? No, not really, I said. The barman gave me two keys, one for the outside door and one for the room. And with keys to a room in my pocket, and no drink-drive blood alcohol limit to worry about, very soon I too could have been a model for the Picasso.
I never did get to see my room. Returning to the pub at goodness knows what time after a lock-in at a rival boozer, and then a party, I made it through the first door, eventually. But so much energy and concentration had been expended finding the right key and fitting it into the lock that I had no more left for identifying the correct door in the corridor leading to the stairs, for locating the right bedroom, or for fitting another key into another lock. Never has a tacky pub carpet in a corridor next to a gents’ lavatory been so inviting. I slid down gratefully, curled my knees up to my chest, vomited a little, then lost consciousness.
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