The Pink and the Grey Read Online Free PDF Page B

together.
    “Oh dear, you did start early, didn’t you?” she said accurately, patting my hand. “I have lost weight, in fact, thank you for asking.”
    “You look ravishing, Claire, I’m sure.”
    “I do. And you seem to have mislaid your axe and a forest, as well as your razor.”
    “One can hardly wear black tie on a permanent basis. The checked shirt is, I am told, very a la mode .” It was a mix of reds and blues and purples, under an admittedly tatty blue fleece. College dress code extended to attractive and decorous and placed no further burden upon you, and as ever some students delighted in testing its boundaries.
    “Well,” said Claire, “I shall alert you if I spot a beaver. Now, where are we going? The usual, I suppose?”
    I nodded sheepishly.
    “Fine, if we must,” she sighed, and took my arm.
    It was only a short walk at the slowest of paces, no more than a couple of minutes. I explained my present predicament as we strolled, hesitating on occasion to focus my attention upon any gentleman proportioned, scrubbed up and tailored within acceptable margins of error.
    Our destination was Bar Humbug, hidden along a narrow passageway where it could attract a more select clientele. By night it was unofficially rechristened Bar Bumhug: Cambridge’s most cocktail-friendly homosexual establishment, the watering hole of choice for those who are, those who might be, those who aren’t but like to dabble, those who aren’t but like to be dabbled, and unsuspecting tourists. By day it lowered its rainbow colours and used its more pedestrian name to draw in any passing trade, so to speak. As the sun set the lights were dimmed and the music grew feistier, and the shirts lost a button or two. It was usually busy and often packed, and any straights caught in the glare either promptly reversed and screeched away or were subject to trial by tequila. Some were found very guilty indeed.
    My man Eddie was tending bar, as usual, with two of his imported minions. I say my man, we once enjoyed a minor dalliance. Brief, and yet something more, I thought, than the typical soulless encounter. He had an arresting effervescence and he amused me: but we had nothing in common. He was a fair distance along both the chunky and camp axes, not my usual preference at all. It could never have worked. I’d have drunk the place dry. Eddie never warranted a code ten , but our thing, whatever it was, was sustained enough for me to feel moderately protective during the lubricated dust-up the early hours inevitably brought.
    My own drunkenness was never unduly troublesome. As Claire said often, I was verbal enough while sober and my bile was reserved only for those unable to distinguish “your” from “you’re”. The effects of alcohol manifested themselves in me purely via excessive and uninvited touching. The touching occasionally had its advantages, though, leading to further touching.
    Pleasingly, Eddie had plonked a G&G&T on the long, scratched chrome bar — one of the few straight things there — almost as we stepped over the threshold, and it was still early enough to navigate the few metres to it without slicing through too many cosy groups. The usual vultures had, however, already begun to circle and to mark their territories: the haggardly optimistic, the over-dressed, and the under-dressed. Their prey — the twinks and the twonks — herded together for safety, with an occasional shepherding lesbian.
    Dotted about the place were the weirdos and their hangers-on, such as the odd man beside us with the wispy salt-and-pepper beard wearing an exotic waistcoat and hat with detailed and expensive-looking embroidery — some kind of Arabian or Afghan contrivance, I shouldn’t wonder. He always propped up the bar. There was often also an exotic creature possibly deposited straight from a shadowy Romanian castle, who stood large and lumbering with piercing blue eyes, and with whom I resolved never to make eye contact lest I fell