the champagne party was breaking up, under pressure from Jenny I took Norman to the hotel bar before following on to Holland Park. I suppose the idea was to get him to calm down, but I had never seen Norman as collected as he was that evening. 1 remember he told me that he had the previous afternoon been gobbled by the Scottish assistant manageress of his Tufnell Park second-hand refrigerator showrooms in his Tufnell Park second-hand refrigerator showrooms. It was clear to me, though, that he mentioned the incident merely by way of polite small-talk; this was no weary vaunt, no another-good-man-gone lament. He added conversationally that he hadn't dared actually poke her in case she still had the clap. She had had it so long and so often that antibiotics didn't mean shit to her any more.
Norman, or, temporarily, Bill Sikes, went into action as soon as we got back to the house. My parents' sub-celebrity friends all tried to behave as if they thought he was drunk; the fact that he so obviously wasn't drunk was the key to the whole performance. He asked a more-or-less dead failed philosopher how his sex-life was shaping up these days; he biffed a pancake-bosomed minor poetess on the back, whispered evilly among her jangling earrings. At dinner he abstained from the carefully chosen table-wines, fetching himself a pint beer glass which he filled with neat Benedictine. His voice went Bow Bells barrow-boy. He tucked his serviette ('serviette, it's called a serviette') into his shirt-collar. He took soup by dipping his face in the bowl and sucking through pouted lips; he frayed the veal with his bare hands. He up-ended whole plates of gherkins and cashews into his mouth. He drank boiling coffee straight from the percolator, without blinking.
The post-prandial stage of the evening was little more than a swirling blank as far as I was concerned. And yet, as I lay on the floor of the upstairs bathroom, cradling the lavatory bowl tenderly in my arms, I could hear the horrible sound of Norman's voice, a skirling whine from below. One would have expected something bawdy, wouldn't one? However, it went like this; I couldn't catch the words until what seemed to be the last verse:
This owd yowe was whetting her pegs, She run at the butcher and broke both his legs ...
slowing down
This owd yowe went to fight for the prince ...
to a funereal decrescendo:
And no living man has ... heard ... of ... her ... since.
The sound of hesitant applause could be heard. But Norman was off again, with a
ooooooooooooHHHHHHHHHH,
there was an owd yowe wi' only one horn,
Fifty naw me nonny.
And she picked up her living among the green com,
So turn the wheel so bonny.
The nine-stanza cycle was repeated five times. Then there were some shuffling noises and banging of doors. When I came out half an hour later Norman was on the landing, patiently waiting to use the bathroom. He came forward and put his hands on my shoulders, as if in order to steady me.
'Your father's gone so I've made up a bed for you on the couch.'
He stared at my face and suddenly threw his head back in a roar of black, anarchical laughter. I groaned halitotically at him.
'773 4417.'
'Hello, good morning, I mean afternoon. May I speak to Rachel Noyes, please?'
Silence.
'Hello, Rachel ? Ah. My name is Charles Highway. You may remember we met at a party you gave last month. Then, some days later, we —'
'Yes, I remember.'
I gave her time to whoop with delight and say, 'And I don't mind telling you it's fucking great to hear your voice.'
'Well!' I said. 'And what are you up to these days ?'
As if to an elderly relation, she said, 'I'm cramming for A Levels.'
'What a fantastic coincidence. I'm cramming for Oxford! Where's yours?'
'Bayswater Road.'
'NO.' So's mine! Whereabouts?'
'The Holland Park side.'
'Oh, huh, the right side of the Bayswater Road.'
'No it's not. It's on the left.'
'No, no.' I chortled uncomfortably. 'I meant right side as opposed to wrong