by Robert Ward
They shared a shower together to save time and then dressed in their separate bedrooms, both of which were the size of box or storage rooms in a normal house, and then emerged to view themselves in the full length mirror in the hall.
Charlotte wore a very dark blue dress and Elizabeth’s was black. They were of similar styles, long, with shoulder straps and cut quite low front and back. They took turns to smooth the material down over them in front of the mirror and craned their necks to view themselves from the back.
“Do you think my bum’s getting bigger?” Charlotte asked, viewing it from several angles and feeling it.
“No, I don’t think so,” Elizabeth answered. “You look like a stick insect, as usual.”
“Bitch,” Charlotte said, smiling. “Just because you’ve got such a gigantic arse and your thighs are covered in pendulous folds of cellulite.”
“Listen, the day I get cellulite you can phone the undertaker.”
“Are we ready then?”
“Yes, come on. Let’s walk there like a couple of tarts.”
Made-up, stilettoed and handbagged, they clattered up the steps and onto the street.
Philip and Martin had gone straight to the Smuggler’s club from the office, having worked quite late to make up their flexitime. It was a favourite watering hole of theirs as, as the hours advanced, it transformed itself from a business person’s after work place to have a couple before going home, to a proper nightclub complete with disco and plenty of females intent on being picked up, but there were usually no lager louts or hoorays and the girls often had more than one brain cell between four of them.
Not that they were in any way opposed to bimbo-bonking that is, but it was nice sometimes to have some kind of a conversation. Another plus point for the Smuggler’s was that they sold real cask beer at reasonable prices, apart from the usual pumped fizz and designer bottled lager.
They stood at the bar, in their usual place in a corner next to a wall that had a fishing net draped over it. The whole of the dark and cavernous club maintained the smugglers theme throughout in an obvious attempt to suspend disbelief, as it was neither near the sea nor a river. The building it occupied was also decidedly twentieth century. Nonetheless, fishing nets apart, there were piles of empty casks placed about the place and wooden plaques on the walls telling of Captain Morgan and Flint, and Black Beard and the island of Tortuga. They seemed to have confused piracy with smuggling somewhat, but nobody ever noticed, and they did sell Cornish smugglers punch as a speciality brew, as advertised at the bar.
Philip leaned back against the protruding wooden bar top with his pint of dark beer in his hand and the sole of his right shoe on the brass foot rail.
“I’m shattered,” he told Martin. “I hardly got any sleep at all last night. I was seriously thinking of going home straight from work and going to bed.”
“You’ll feel better after a couple,” Martin said.
“I think I’ll stay in bed all day tomorrow.”
“Yes, but who with?”
“On my own, with my luck.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m not sure that I wouldn’t prefer it.”
“You definitely need more drink,” Martin said and nodded to the barmaid, indicating that they wanted the same again.
Philip and Martin were both twenty five and were Executive Officers in the Home Office. Neither of them cared much for their jobs, in that they weren’t desperate to climb the career ladder. But it wasn’t too terrible, and if there still was such a thing as job security, they had found it. The flexitime was a curse though, as they often simply could not prevent themselves from doing only the core hours one fortnight, and having to make them up the next. They always seemed to manage it though, just, and they were never in credit.
The club was just in its change-over stage between the office workers and the nightclubbers, though a few of their earlier clientele, like themselves, had decided to stay, either through design or drink, and the disco music started up at the farthest end of the club from them, across the biggest of the bars and then the dance floor. In a moment they would get used to the crash and thud and be able to hear themselves speak again.
Philip was dark and handsome and had a still boyish, dishevelled look about him. His hair was cut in a fashionable, not quite mop-top, and his dark half day old stubble was beginning to show. He had loosened his plain red tie and undone the top button of his white shirt. His dark grey suit was a little crumpled through three days wear.
Martin, who was short, had short carrot-red hair and bright blue eyes and skin that freckled at the mention of sun on the weather forecast. He had taken off his multicoloured tie and put it in the pocket of his navy blue suit, which was a three-piece, and had unbuttoned his waistcoat. His stomach was just beginning to get a little too big for it.
“Why couldn’t you sleep, then?” Martin asked.
“Don’t know. Just couldn’t get off. Watched some all night telly. Rubbish mostly. Then I made something to eat. Cheese on toast. Didn’t really want it. I just couldn’t switch myself off.”
Martin sipped from his pint and looked around him, taking special notice of whoever came down the steps into the club.
“I don’t have that problem,” he said. “I could sleep on a clothesline.”
“You must have an easy conscience,” Philip said.
“I have, unfortunately. Besides, if I went down to make cheese on toast in the early hours my mum would be on the phone to the police thinking we had burglars.”
“You still pissed off, living at home then?”
“It is, restricting, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I can imagine. But I thought that sort of thing, having midnight feasts and that would have been easier living at home, more natural, you know?”
“Well, it is, if your mother hadn’t become a paranoid maniac since we were broken into.”
“Oh yes. I’d forgotten.”
Philip, who lived alone in a bedsit, thought about the pros and cons of both their situations and came down on the side of his own. Though his lack of a washing machine and consequent depressing weekly visits to the local launderette was a big factor against.
“My shout,” Philip said, after draining his glass, and turned to get the attention of the barmaid who now had many more customers to deal with.
Elizabeth and Charlotte carefully descended the steps into the club and then turned and walked directly towards the bar where Philip and Martin were standing.
Martin had seen them the moment they entered, and before they had had time to cross the considerable distance to the bar, he nudged Philip, who was still intent on getting served, urgently.
“Look at these two,” he said, half whispering. “Gorgeous or what? Buy them a drink, quick.”
Philip turned, with two pint glasses in his hands, just in time to see them before they arrived at the bar.
“A double scotch, straight, no ice, and a double gin and tonic, with ice, please,” Elizabeth said, leaning with her elbows on top of the bar.
“I’ll get those, if you don’t mind,” Philip said. “I mean, if that’s all right with you.”
Elizabeth looked him up and down witheringly and then directly into his eyes.
“You may,” she said. “Bring them over to that table.”
Philip followed her eyes, and then watched as Elizabeth and Charlotte walked over to a table in a secluded corner away from the bar. Martin smiled at Philip and they then followed the girls with their hands full of drinks.
“I’m Philip, and this is Martin,” Philip said as they sat down next to them.
“What are you doing?” Elizabeth asked.
“What?” Philip asked.
“I said… what are you doing?”
“We’re joining you for a drink,” he said after a moment’s thought.
“And who asked you to? Charlotte, I don’t remember asking either of these frightful oiks to join us for a drink, do you?”
“No, indeed,” Charlotte said. “I don’t, Elizabeth.”
“I said that you might buy some drinks and bring them over to our table. That was all.”
Martin laughed, nervously, not being able to take his eyes off Elizabeth, who, quite seriously, he thought was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
“We just presumed…” he said.
“Never presume,” Elizabeth said. “If that’s what you mean, rather than assume. Charlotte? Will we allow these frightful oiks to sit at our table?”
“Oh, now that they’re here, I suppose we could let them stay,” Charlotte said.
“Very well,” Elizabeth said. “But these drinks aren’t enough. Go and get more. You, Martin is it? Double scotch, no ice, double gin and tonic, with ice. Go fetch.”
Martin did as he was told and bought another two pints for Philip and himself also. As he was walking back from the bar he kept his eyes on Elizabeth, without looking away for a moment. He felt a burning chemical sensation rising inside him that constricted his throat and made his heart beat faster and his blood pressure rise so that he felt light-headed. At the back of his mind was also the terrible notion that this night might lead to the ultimate frustration of being rejected by someone he burned for, more than anyone else in his life. As the music from the disco throbbed into his ears and beat against the rushing blood inside him, he sat down next to Elizabeth, deliberately and boldly letting his thigh rest against hers.
Immediately, she moved away from him and pulled her dress over her legs, letting him know that she had done so deliberately. He felt something like a vice pressing against his temples and for a moment he was blinded with blood red hatred for himself.
“That was nice of you, Martin,” she then said. “You’re a darling, aren’t you? Thanks for getting the drinks. Let me give you a kiss.”
Martin couldn’t help himself gently fondling her thick dark hair in his hands as their lips pressed together and he felt her beautiful, sensuous face against his, and he smelt her perfume and her make-up and tasted her whisky-clean mouth.
He withdrew first, hardly believing that it had happened, and drew his head back, trying to focus on her eyes. In that moment she dismissed him again and laughed and reached over to take hold of Charlotte’s hand.
“How are you doing, darling?” Elizabeth asked loudly of Charlotte. “I think this carroty little oik is in love with me.”
“Philip and I have been getting along fine in your absence,” Charlotte said. “In fact, he and I have decided that he should buy the next round of drinks. Is that a good deal, or what?”
“My, you girls are thirsty, aren’t you?” said Philip.
“Look, let’s not piss about, we’re here to get steaming, okay? So just keep the drinks coming hard and fast,” Elizabeth said.
“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that you should buy some?” Philip said, smiling at her.
“My, you are bold,” she said, smiling back. “Okay. So you’re not a pair of congenital idiots. We were just waiting to see how long it would take. Some nights we get through an entire evening without spending a penny.”
“Your bladder must be a miracle of science,” he said, deadpan.
Elizabeth and Charlotte looked at each other and started to laugh.
“That was quite dreadful,” Elizabeth said. “But you’re okay. What is it that you’re drinking? Come to the bar with me.”
Charlotte and Martin were left sitting opposite each other at the table, which was in fact a large barrel, which made it difficult to sit comfortably, as there was no space to stretch out their legs. Charlotte leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table-barrel top.
“She didn’t mean it, you know?” she said. “What she said to me so that you could hear. It’s only a game we play.”
He just smiled at her, by way of saying, thanks.
Elizabeth and Philip rejoined them and Elizabeth proposed a toast to their roasted innards.
“God, I’m dying for a fag,” she said. “This smoking ban is a pain in the arse.”
“Those things will kill you,” Philip said, disapprovingly.
“Oh, no. Not another of the tobacco police. Another fucking coward… you haven’t got a relative or a friend who died of cancer, have you?”
“No.”
“I find your concern touching. When I’m dying in agony you can come and laugh at me and tell me, I told you so.”
“You know that human beings are the only creatures that knowingly indulge in an activity that could hasten their own death?”
“What about lemmings?”
Philip looked at her for a moment, trying to think of something to say, and then just laughed.
“I don’t know why human beings have this extraordinary desire to stay alive for as long as possible, anyway.” Elizabeth said. “We live for a ridiculously long time as it is. Some of the buggers refuse to die even when they’re blind and deaf and have had thirty seven operations and have plastic hearts, and kidneys from corpses. It’s like a collective national obsession rather than national health.”
Martin, still sitting next to Elizabeth, was staring at her without realising it, and had hung onto her every word, loving the way she spoke and the intensity in her eyes as she did so.
“I used to smoke,” he said, still looking at her in the same way. “I gave it up though, through cowardice.”
“Now there is an honest man,” she said. “I’ll have you smoking again soon enough.”
Martin’s face lit up with happiness simply because she was talking to him about him. He took a long drink, and beginning to feel a little drunk, he inched a fraction closer to Elizabeth in the movement he made to put down his pint glass on the table top.
The Smuggler’s club was by now very full, and the bar staff had increased in number in proportion to the clientele. They each wore T-shirts emblazoned with the name address and telephone number of the club, around the head of a pirate, complete with beard and bandanna. The atmosphere had become very heavy and hot due to the low ceilings and the number of bodies. Thirst was increased consequently of course.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Charlotte said as she returned with Martin from the bar. “Elizabeth and I do not dance. When drink and the throb of the music have got the better of you and you ask us, we will refuse. Just to save you the bother.”
“Asking someone to dance is just like asking them to have sex with you, you see,” Elizabeth added, as Martin sat down again beside her. “So why bother with all that ridiculous gyrating? Just come out and say what you mean. Charlotte, conference.”
Elizabeth and Charlotte went off to the ladies room, leaving Philip and Martin to wonder about what had just been said.
“I think we’re in,” Philip said. “Charlotte is like a dream. I’ve been talking to her while you’ve been ogling Elizabeth. Don’t you think she’s absolutely fucking gorgeous?”
“Elizabeth?” Martin asked.
“No, Charlotte, of course.”
“Oh, yes,” Martin said.
“Not that I’d say no to Elizabeth. They’re both fucking gorgeous.”
“That’s a lot of, fuckings, for you, Phil,” Martin said. “They seem to have made an impression.”
“Don’t tell me they haven’t on you?”
“No, I can’t say that,” Martin said, smiling to himself. “Elizabeth is fucking, fucking gorgeous.”
The ladies loo at the Smuggler’s club was very clean and nice and seemed more like a ladies only club in itself, in that it was filled with chattering females making use of the extensive wall space covered with mirrors to retouch previously made works of art. The air was thick with perfume and powder and the functional toilet cubicles seemed to be no more than a necessary irrelevance.
“Are we going to take these two back then?” Charlotte asked Elizabeth as they stared at themselves, standing together in front of the mirror.
“I suppose we could. But I fancy, Philip, really.
Martin is not my type at all.”
“But he’s besotted with you.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m considering it. There’s no bigger turn-on than knowing someone thinks you’re… his dream, or whatever.”
“Never mind the, whatever. You know what it would mean to him.”
“But he’s short and fat and ginger. I’d much rather have Philip. Can’t we swap?”
“No, we can’t. I like Philip,” Charlotte said. “And he likes me.”
“God, if we could hear ourselves,” Elizabeth said. “We’re far too old for this. We sound like a couple of teenagers.”
“Well I’m not quite in my dotage, even if you are,” Charlotte said. “They’re about the same age as us, don’t you think, give or take?”
“Exactly,” Elizabeth said. “What the fuck are we doing with these frightful oiks?”
“Philip’s nice. I’ve noticed the way he’s been looking at me. He’s really got the hots for me.”
“God, he must be blind.”
A gaggle of girls, obviously hunting in a pack, came over to where Elizabeth and Charlotte were standing and jostled around them, trying to get a sight of themselves in the mirror. Their average age must have been about eighteen.
“See what I mean?” Elizabeth said.
“Come on then, you bitter old spinster. Let’s get back to our admirers. What have we decided, by the way?”
“I suppose we’ll take them back,” Elizabeth said. “If only because I’ve never slept with a short, fat, ginger, boring person before. Not that I’ll let him do horrible, disgusting things to me. I might just tantalise him to death. Are you sure you won’t let me have Philip?”
“Yes, I’m quite sure.”
“Bitch.”
Back at their table, another round of drinks was waiting for them, and Philip and Martin made little effort to move aside as they sat down, so that they could accidentally on purpose brush against them and feel whatever they could of them, not really knowing if anything else was going to be forthcoming.