The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [144]
“Only another twenty minutes, my love,” said the woman at the door.
“You’re not charging us, are you?” Jenny said, defying her to ask her her age.
The woman gazed at her, but the tickets and the cash were all put away, people pushed past, waiting and staggering out past the cloakroom, the lavatories with their stained-glass doors. So in they went.
Paul thanked god for the drink—he strode straight across the hall, round by the stage, smiling into the shadows, as if he lived in places like this—but no, Geoff wasn’t here … he came back to the others with a pang of sadness and relief; then remembered his tie, and pulled it off impatiently. He felt almost as shy about dancing as kissing, but this time it was Jenny who took him in hand—their little group started bopping together, Paul smiling at all of them with mixed-up eagerness and anxiety, Wilfrid studying Jenny but not quite getting her rhythm as she rocked in her jutting-out frock and waved her hands in front of her, perhaps waiting for someone to take them, while Julian lit and voraciously smoked a cigarette. Beyond him, peeping mischievously at Paul through the patterned light, Peter did his own dance, a kind of loose-limbed twist. Around them other couples made way, looked at them with slight puzzlement, made remarks, surely … Surely people in the town knew Jenny; Julian certainly got frowns and smiles of surprise. Paul followed two couples jiving rapturously together, with sober precision despite the abandon of their faces, back and forth in front of the stage.
A big red-faced woman in a spangled frock picked up Wilfrid … did she know him?—no, it seemed not, but he was ready for her, a gentleman, truly sober, and with a certain serious determination to do well. Paul watched them move off, with a smile covering his faint sense of shock, and Jenny leant in towards Paul and nodded, “A friend of yours.”
Paul’s hand on her shoulder for a second, prickly fabric, warm skin, strangeness of a girl—“Mm?”
“Young Paul?”
He hunched into himself as he turned and there was Geoff, reaching out to him but rearing back in broad astonishment; then his face very close, Geoff’s hot boozy breath as if he was about to kiss him too, careless and friendly—“What are you doing here!”—and showing Sandra, who shook hands and was inaudibly introduced, looking only half-amused, but Paul was a colleague, perhaps he’d mentioned him. She crossed her arms under her bosom and then looked aside, at others making for the door. “Christ, is old Keeping here too?”—Geoff big with his own joke. “Just young Keeping,” said Paul, nodding at Julian, but he didn’t seem to get it, stood nodding as the lights came teasingly hiding and colouring the contours of his tight pale slacks and the deep V of his open-necked shirt, a first heart-stopping glimpse of naked Geoff. He leant in again, his rough sideburn brushed Paul’s cheek for a half-second, “Well, we’re off”—Sandra tugging, smiling but moody, as if to say Paul mustn’t encourage him. “See you Monday!”—and then his arm was round Sandra’s waist as he escorted her in a gallant grown-up way towards the lit square of the exit.
“Well, he’s rather fab!” said Jenny.
“Oh, do you think?” said Paul and raised an eyebrow, as if to say girls were a push-over, turning to look for him as he went out into the light, and then into the dark, as though he were a real missed opportunity, then grinning gamely at Peter as he swayed and sloped towards them, biting his lower lip, and gripped them both in a loose very drunken embrace and whispered in Paul’s ear, “Tell me when you want to go.”
“A mad one and a slow one,” announced the lead guitarist of the Locomotives, the words heavy and resonant in the high roof of the hall. “Then it’s goodnight.”
“Let’s stay a bit longer,” said Paul, “now we’re here.