The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [36]
Seaton kept only two things from his past. The one was his brother, of course. The other was his boxing. He’d boxed as a youngster, scrupulously and well, learning at and then competing for the St Theresa’s club on Dublin’s northside. He enjoyed the rigour, maybe even the pain. The discipline of it seemed to seep into his soul. So he kept up his road-work when he moved to London and, in Lambeth, he ran laps of Archbishop’s Park and trained at the Fitzroy Lodge club housed in a railway arch on the corner of Hercules Road. Two nights a week and on a Saturday morning he would skip and hit the bags and work the speedball and do floorwork on one of the canvas mats. The club was run by a thin chain-smoking trainer called Mick. Mick’s office was a plywood and Formica den poised on a shaky balcony above the floor and twin training rings. Now and then he would emerge from its bitter Benson & Hedges fog to ask Seaton to spar with one of his prospects. So it was that Paul Seaton kept his body hard, attending his church of choice, honouring vanity and faith, always doing his regular penance.
On a Friday, his habit was to leave the Gazette office on Kingsland Road never later than four. He would head up West, meet his brother, have a Friday-night drink with the boys. But he’d taken to doing this early, curtailing it, besotted as he was with Lucinda Grey. So he’d meet the boys and then seek out Lucinda later, in the Dive Bar or the Cambridge or the Spice. She wasn’t hard to find. And it didn’t matter how packed with other people a place was. She was impossible to miss.
So it was at five o’clock on a Friday early in June, he sat drinking Lambrusco from a big two-litre bottle bought from an Italian deli on Old Compton Street. They were on the flat roof of the St Martin’s building on Charing Cross Road and London undulated around them through heat ripple and the smells of softening tar and street cooking and pollen from the flowers and leaves of summer trees in the squares. Hank Williams sang, keening and plaintive on a tape playing on Foyle’s paint-spattered beatbox. Seaton sat on the low wall surrounding the roof, at a spot above the open windows of their studio. Now and then, the smells of oil and turpentine rose to clash and coalesce on the hot breeze. It was very hot. The sun was very bright above them. They all wore Ray-Bans, except for Foyle, whose habit it was to narrow his eyes and squint into the light.
‘I saw a rehearsal for Lucinda’s degree show this morning,’ Lockyear said. Lockyear was dressed entirely out of Lawrence Corner, in a khaki shirt with pleated pockets and voluminous Desert Rat shorts. With his blond slicked-back hair, Seaton thought he looked like Franchot Tone in Five Graves To Cairo. ‘Her show was really good. The knob of the donkey, as they say in fashion circles. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she gets a first.’
‘I’ll be surprised if she gets a pass,’ Foyle said, who looked like Kerouac, like Kerouac would like to have looked, in his 501s and his print shirt and the haircut he still had then.
‘Some disparity there, boys, between a fail and a first,’ Seaton said.
‘I’d forgotten about the dissertation,’ Lockyear said. ‘Greg’s right. It’s a shame, because her degree collection is really strong.’
‘The knob of the donkey,’ Patrick said, nodding, sipping Lambrusco from a plastic cup. He was looking towards where the Post Office Tower undulated through heat ripple, from this distance like some frail and improbable movie prop.
‘Every silver lining has a cloud,’ Lockyear said.
Foyle was nodding, agreeing with him. ‘It’s a shame,’ he said. ‘A damn shame.’
‘What are you all talking about?’
His friends looked at Seaton and at one another. It was his brother who said, ‘Her dissertation. She hasn’t done it. She’s asked for and been given an extension on it and she still won’t get it in by the deadline. If she doesn’t, it’s an automatic fail. I can