‘... thinks that Rupert tried to proposition him. Which he didn’t, of course, but it was all a little embarrassing, wasn’t it, dear?’ Her happy, smiling face looked demandingly at me.
I nodded dumbly as the two men looked at me as well.
‘Embarrassing,’ I confirmed.
Ash was beaming smiles all over the place like a laser gone berserk. ‘I mean,’ she said, tossing her hair. ‘Rupert isn’t gay, is he? And Presley ...’ She looked suddenly sultry, voice slowing, going a little deeper. ‘Here ...’ She took an extra breath, her gaze flickering down from my face to my crotch and back, ‘... certainly isn’t.’
Then she seemed to collect herself and directed a broad smile to the two men. They looked suitably confused.
‘Presley? PRESLEY?’ I yelled as we walked rapidly along Thomas More Street. ‘How could you?’ I waved my hands about. A light drizzle was falling out of the orange-black sky.
Ashley strode on, grinning. She held a small umbrella; her heels clicked. ‘Sorry, Prentice; it was just the first thing I thought of.’
‘But it isn’t even very different from Prentice!’ I shouted.
She shrugged. ‘Well then, that’s probably why it was the first thing I thought of.’ Ash laughed.
‘It’s not funny,’ I told her, sticking my hands into my pockets, stepping over some empty pizza containers.
‘It wasn’t funny,’ Ash agreed, almost prim. ‘It’s your reaction that is.’ She nodded.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘There are two guys going around now who think my name is Presley, but to you it’s just a hoot.’ I stepped on a wobbly paving stone and jetted dirty water up my chinos. ‘Jeez,’ I muttered.
‘Look,’ said Ash, sounding serious at last. ‘More to the point, I’m sorry I fucked that up. I don’t know why he dashed off like that. All I said was I’d a friend with me. I didn’t even say you wanted to meet him or anything. It was weird.’ She shook her head. ‘Weird.’
We had escaped from the pub after finishing our drinks and chatting - awkwardly on my part, easily on Ashley’s - with Rupert’s two friends (Howard and Jules); a stilted conversation whose most useful result seemed to have been a general agreement that old Rupe was a lad, eh?
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I told her. I saw a taxi coming with its light on and suddenly remembered I was rich. ‘I know where I saw him, now.’
I stepped into the road and waved.
‘You do?’ Ash said from the kerb.
‘Yep.’ The cab pulled in. Things were looking up; my usual Klingon Cloaking Device - which has tended to engage automatically on the rare occasions I have felt rich enough in the past to afford a taxi - seemed to have been de-activated. I held the door open for Ashley.
‘So; you going to tell me, or be all mysterious?’ she said as she got in.
‘I’ll tell you over dinner.’ I sat beside her and closed the door. ‘Dean Street, Soho, please,’ I told the driver. I smiled at Ashley.
‘Dean Street?’ she said, eyebrow arching.
‘Amongst many other things, I owe you a curry.’
When I was fifteen I had my first really bad hangover. On Friday nights I and some of my school pals used to meet at the Droid family house in Gallanach; we’d sit in Droid’s bedroom, watching TV and playing computer games. And we’d drink cider, which Droid’s big brother purchased for us - for a small commission - from the local off-licence. And smoke dope, which my cousin Josh McHoan, Uncle Hamish’s son, purchased for us - at an exorbitant commission - in the Jacobite Bar. And sometimes do speed, which came from the latter source as well. Then one night Dave McGaw turned up with a litre of Bacardi and he and I finished it between the two of us, and the next morning I was woken up by my dad to a strange and horrible new feeling.
vho, as Rory would have written. nsg at all.
There had been a phone-call for me; Hugh Robb, from the farm near the castle, reminding me I’d agreed to come and help with making the bonfire for Guy Fawkes’ night. He was coming out to pick me up.
This, of course, was not really what I needed (any more than I needed dad lecturing me on how unsound a custom it was to build bonfires on November the fifth and so celebrate religious bigotry; didn’t I know it had been an anti-catholic ceremony, and the effigy burned on the fire used to be the