The Ascendant

Chapter Forty-Two

It had been another tumultuous week. Early mornings, late nights, sex, pressure, relief, worry, tension, and more sex would be an apt summary.

Dawn was alarmingly insatiable, though she explained this was related to the pressures of work. Apparently the company doctor told her she should have as much sex as possible to keep her blood pressure at a desirable level. I had no objection to this, of course, but I had a few new problems of my own: in particular doing my own work, as opposed to watching others do theirs, and reporting back to Hobbs with my progress and results. This had caused my stress levels to take an incredible incline. I also had a client meeting of my own to attend to on Monday, with a considerable amount of preparation required beforehand. It was a very serious business.

Thoughts of Monday would be put to one side for tonight, however. I had accepted Iain’s invitation to visit some of the local hostelries, quoff some ale in a manly fashion, talk of our conquests, leer at the women, and have a generally very laddish time. Striding to the pub, enjoying our new found camaraderie, I awaited my first drink with uncommon zeal.

The pace was frantic, the conversation even more so. Iain was as eager as ever to discuss Glasgow Rangers’s faltering attempts to close the gap on their arch rivals, Celtic. I nodded along sympathetically, adding the odd conciliatory remark, but Iain wasn’t listening: he was among the more talented number of my brethren; able to do two things at once (drink and talk), but adding a third to the list (listening) was proving to be a major stumbling point. For my part, I decided to concentrate solely on my drinking.

Iain gulped down the remainder of his pint and called for two more. I finished my own drink off but was feeling a little bloated already. We had only been out about two hours but my tummy was starting to strain and my eyes were losing their focus; that old vertical-hold problem was playing up again.

‘I’m gonna take a piss,’ I shouted at Iain, and he gave me a thumbs-up approval.

I staggered off in the direction of the toilets, marauding my way through the human obstacles, eventually; if this were a game of pinball I’d have been leaving my initials on the leader board. In reality, of course, there are few plaudits for bumping into even the fastest of moving objects, particularly those with four pints of lager balanced precariously between their figures, but all major disasters were somehow averted, for the time being at least.

I arrived in the toilet and began to wade through the piss which is customary on all Camden pub toilet floors; if there are insufficient quantities of the stuff on to have a satisfactory paddle and splash about then the local authority comes round to dish out a formal warning. A group of German guys were shouting loudly in their mother tongue, but I staved off my strong sense of paranoia and put their aggressive chanting to the back of my mind, as I stood relieving myself, the bottoms of my jeans now sufficiently soaked to appease the strictest of council inspectors.

The soap dispenser was brimful but none of the taps were connected up, so I wiped the sticky detergent on my jumper and drifted past the Germans, back out into the pub and set about re-establishing my co-ordinates, plotting my course back to Iain: past the fag machine, the Ramones poster and the framed Arsenal football shirts, through the gaggle of goths and round the bar towards the exit.

‘All right?’, said Iain, handing me a fresh pint of Stella.

‘Cool,’ I said, sipping through the froth. ‘You?’

‘Pretty good. Ben, don’t look now, but there’s a couple of birds over by the stairs. I reckon they’re up for it.’

I waited a moment, placed my pint on the bar and took a casual look round the pub before my gaze eventually settled on two scrawny teenagers who were leant up against the stairs.

‘That’s it, just look straight at them!’, said Iain. ‘For fuckssake, Ben, could ye nae be a wee bit more obvious about et?’

I turned back round and grabbed my pint. ‘You said to look at them Iain, what do you want me to do?’

‘I said “don’t look now”. I can see subtlety is not one of your strongest points Ben. Never mind, what d’ye think?’

‘I’ve seen more flesh on an anorexic dung fly.’

‘Anorexic dung flies don’t even come into the equation. They’re up for it mon, what’s wrong with ye?’

‘I don’t know Iain. I’ll lend you a bit of moral support if you like but I don’t fancy either of them. Plus, I’ve got Dawn to think about.’

Dawn was out with her work colleagues, getting drunk in some wine bar in the City. We hadn’t yet reached the stage of moral obligation or emotional commitment but the sight of a Bonnie Langford look-alike emerging from my bedroom might well put the kibosh on any further horizontal aerobics I had planned.

‘Y’big pussy,’ said Iain, not entirely resentfully. ‘Get ‘em in. I’m off for a slash.’

I ordered two more pints, by now having lost count on the number we had drunk. It was a quarter to ten so we had at least two hours drinking before the pubs shut, plus extra time if we caught the urge to go to a club, though this seemed unlikely, on my part at least.

I treated myself to an eye watering burp and gave the barmaid some money and an apologetic smile.

Iain’s attempts to charm the two aesthetically challenged horrors lasted nearly a third of a pint, not bad baring in mind my rate of consumption had slowed significantly.

‘Lesbians,’ said Iain. ‘I thought they were winding me up to start with, but I think they really are. Not the kind that’ll let yeh watch either. Fuckers.’

‘Never mind,’ I said, handing him his drink. ‘I thought you were in there for a minute or so.’

‘You and me both, Benny boy, you and me both. Where next?’

‘You tell me.’

‘How about Belushi’s? It’s open till two on Fridays.’