Talking It Over Read Online Free PDF Page A

begging a light, Stuart slipping the tortoise-shell Dunhill from the pocket of his unstructured Armani suit …
    Come on, I mean, come on . Let’s get some reality in here. I’ve heard the account in hushed and pulsing detail and frankly it was no more and no less squalid than you might expect. Some winklebrain from the bank who managed to get himself sacked the following week (and you really do have to be a winklebrain to get ejected from there) stepped out one evening with Stu for a post-Arbeit beverage at Squires Wine Bar. I made Stuart repeat the name to me several times: Squires Wine Bar.
    ‘Are we to understand,’ I cross-examined, ‘that this isan establishment owned by someone who deems himself a Squire; or, on the other hand, that this is a location sought out by Squires such as yourself when they desire to quaff?’
    Stuart thought about this for a while. ‘I don’t follow you.’
    ‘Then look at it this way. Where does the apostrophe go?’
    ‘The apostrophe?’
    ‘Is it e apostrophe s or s apostrophe? It does make a measurable difference.’
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t think it has one.’
    ‘It must have one, even if subliminally.’ We stared at one another for a few seconds. I don’t think Stuart at all grasped the point I was making. He looked as if he thought I was deliberately sabotaging his modern dress Paul et Virginie . ‘Sorry. Do go on.’
    So there they were, Vinkelkopf and Stu, lording it at Squire’s or Squires’ Wine Bar as the case may be, when who should step in but some vieille flamme of Herr Vinkel’s, and this Fräulein had in tow none other than what turned out to be our own dear Gillian. Now the course of events for the trysting quartet from here on in would normally be predictable, except that one of the quatuor was Stuart, and Stuart on a double date is defiantly cognate with a breadstick still in its wrapper. How did he burst out of his crepuscular oubliette of unnoticeability on this occasion? I put this poser to him, though in a more tactful way, you understand. And I cherish his reply.
    ‘We sort of got talking. And we sort of got on.’
    Ah, that’s my Stuart. Do I hear Tristan? Don Juan? Casanova? Do I hear the unspeakably naughty Marquis? No, I hear my mate and mucker Stuart Hughes. ‘We sort of gottalking. And we sort of got on.’
    Oh dear, you’re giving me that look again. You don’t have to say it. I know. You think I’m a patronising pudendum, don’t you? It’s not really like that. Perhaps you’re not picking up the tone. I only go on like this because Stuart’s my friend. My oldest friend. I love him, that Stuart. And we go way back – way, way back, back to the time when you could still buy mono records, when kiwi fruit were yet to be devised, when the khaki-clad representative of the Automobile Association would salute the passing motorist, when a packet of Gold Flake cost a groat and a half and you still had change for a flagon of mead. We’re like that , Stuart and me. Old Buddies. And don’t you underestimate my friend, by the way. He comes on a bit slow, sometimes, and the old turbine up top doesn’t always chug away like a Lamborghini, but he gets there, he gets there. And sometimes sooner than I do.
    ‘Could I borrow a pound from you?’ We were sitting on adjacent banquettes at whatever that school of ours was called (Stuart will know – ask Stuart). I thought it only civil to break the ice with this boy of hitherto laggardly intelligence who had somehow scrambled his way to a temporary plateau of scholastic proximity. But guess what? Instead of obsequiously handing over the dosh as any self-respecting minion temporarily permitted to breathe the upper air would have done, he started reciting terms and conditions. Interest, percentages, dividends, market forces, price/earnings ratio and what-have-you. He practically had me signed up for the European Monetary System when all I wanted was to touch him for a gold moidore. Then he asked