Cold, Lone and Still

‘Nonsense. Student parties are always fun and I expect they have gone to no end of trouble to organise this one. We can’t let them down. They will be giving up a lot of their summer vacation to lay on the festivities and goodness knows how much they’ll have to scrimp up out of their grants to pay for a party.’

‘We’d better take a couple of bottles along to help out, in that case, and let them know we’re bringing something,’ I said.

‘You will accept, then? Oh, good! I’ll send the answer in both our names, if you like. I know how you procrastinate over everything except business letters. I suppose they got our addresses from the telephone book.’

‘Or from the Scottish Youth Hostel registers while they were up there. All right, you answer for both of us and I’ll note down the date in my diary and see about the drinks.’

‘I wonder what we’ll be expected to wear?’

‘Casuals, of course.’

The function was to be held in one of the polytechnic’s halls of residence, a large house in Bloomsbury. Hera thought we might spend the afternoon at the British Museum and go on to the party from there. It would make for conversation, she said, if the going was sticky at first.

‘They are such serious children, that lot,’ she explained. ‘I wonder whether anybody besides The Way people will be there?’

‘Probably more of the poly students in order to make things go, but no doubt Carbridge can do that on his own — at least, he’ll think so. I expect he’ll assume charge of the whole proceedings unless the party turns out to be a student version of Top of the Pops with time out for potato crisps, salted peanuts, little sausages on sticks, mousetrap cheese, sherry which, in the classic phrase, would burn the shell off an egg, and a barrel of beer for the boys,’ I said. ‘How I do hate drinking beer at four in the afternoon!’

‘What’s wrong with Top of the Pops?’

‘Nothing, if you like that kind of thing. I always switch off the set, because I can’t stick these moronic atavisms.’

‘Don’t be so toffee-nosed.’

‘Just as you say. I’ll go, but I don’t expect to enjoy myself, that is all I intended to convey.’

‘You’ll love it when you get there.’

‘So they always told me as a child when I jibbed at going to other children’s Christmas and birthday parties.’

‘Well, didn’t you enjoy yourself?’

‘No.’ Emboldened by my uncompromising use of this splendid negative, I added, ‘And you need not think you are going to drag me to the Brit. Mus., either. I shall spend the day enjoying myself and then I shall don jeans and a Wild West shirt for the revels.’

‘And find that the other men have turned up in immaculate flannels. I shall wear a frock,’ she said.

However, her slinky little dress, which I had so admired, looked out-of-place against the slacks, jeans and, in the case of the student Patsy Carlow — who, with Lucius Trickett, was organising the dancing — Turkish trousers, gold lame chest-protectors in the shape of little targets, and a sort of Isadora Duncan turban.

The Minches wore kilts of tartan woven in a bold mixture of red and white which, as I discovered later, they were entitled to wear, his with a sporran, hers without, and both sporting vast safety-pins to keep the body and soul of the garment in decent contiguity. Todd had compromised by wearing grey flannels and a soft silk shirt, attire in which he looked both elegant and comfortable. I envied him and wished I had thought of the same clothing for myself.

The only member of the student party who had not turned up was Perth, but that was understandable as his home was in Glasgow, so it would have been expecting rather much of him to travel to London for an occasion which was of only a few hours’ duration. What did astonish me was the absence of Carbridge. Far from being the life and soul of the party, he was not in attendance at all.

The insurance-office women, Rhoda and Tansy, were present though, and had played safe by wearing light summer dresses bought (or so Hera informed me) at Marks and Sparks. I think she regretted her slinky little number and would gladly have exchanged outfits with Tansy, who was much about her size.

The music, if one calls it that — I suppose some people do — was provided by a group of young people whom I took to be fellow-students of Perth’s lot, since every so often they abandoned guitars, a trumpet, a saxophone, a trombone, the piano, a double bass and the detonation of drums and the clash of cymbals in favour of turning on a gramophone and joining in the dancing.

Our other two students, Freddie and Coral, rushed in with dishes of sizzling chipolata sausages or tin trays of hamburgers, and the food was seized on greedily by the dancers and consumed at lightning speed, to be followed, time after time, by fresh consignments of what seemed a never-ending, inexhaustible supply. There was plenty of beer and bottles of fizz to drink.

Hera, Todd and I were given the gin and tonics I had brought.

What with the fact that the size of the room was not over-adequate for its purpose — because of the area taken up by the piano, the musicians, a table for the gramophone and records, and the amount of space required by each dancer and the necessity for these to keep a clear passage for the everlasting relays of food, not to mention three long trestle tables bearing mugs, tumblers and bottles — I soon grew tired of the din, the heat, the glistening sweaty faces of the males and the screaming voices of females determined to converse, whatever odds were stacked against their being heard, and I began to feel the necessity for solitude, peace and a quiet cigarette. Hera spotted me sneaking towards the door.

‘And where do you think you’re going?’ she demanded.

‘Out for a quiet puff or two, that’s all.’

‘You’re not trying to “steal away home” like the singer of the negro spiritual?’