He drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel of the old Triumph Vitesse, craning his neck out the window to see if there was any sign of movement farther up the line, and then bringing his head back in to glance both at the clock and the temperature gauge on the walnut dashboard. It was ten to one. He was already five minutes late and he could detect light wisps of steam rising from the car's radiator. Dammit, he really
should
have just walked!
Leaning over to the glove compartment, he took out a handful of unsleeved tapes and proceeded to go through them, chucking the rejected ones onto the seat beside him. At that moment, the traffic ahead started to move. He let out the clutch without putting his hands on the steering wheel, and selecting a
Motown Greatest Hits
album, he pushed it into the slot of the new Phillips stereo tape deck, a recent and much valued twenty-first birthday present from his parents.
As the second track was finishing, David eased his car into a space between two rows of bicycles twenty yards from the Kings Arms. Jumping out, he locked the door and hurriedly dodged his way along the pavement to the large double doors of the pub. He pushed at them with both hands, only managing to get them a quarter of the way open, such was the resistance of bodies on the other side. Sliding through the gap into the hot, smoky atmosphere, he slowly threaded his way through the throng of lunch-time drinkers, stretching up to his full six-foot-two height to see if he could locate his friends. A shout rose above the clamour.
“Oi, David, we're over here!”
He looked round and spied Toby, standing on a chair and waving a beer-mat above his head, his square frame silhouetted by the dusty shaft of sunlight that angled through the window of the pub. He pushed his way towards him, eventually extricating himself at the crowded table where his friend now sat, resplendent in cricket whites.
“Look, I've got one in for you,” Toby said, pointing to a pint on the table. He looked across to the person sitting opposite him. “Here, budge up, Henry, there's room enough for one more on that bench.”
As David perched himself on the small space that Henry had vacated, a brown-haired girl sitting close to Toby's right-hand side on the window bench looked up briefly from the book that she was reading and combed her hair back off her face with her fingers. She picked up her glass and took a drink, her brown eyes catching David's gaze over the rim of the glass. For a split second, they lit up into a captivating smile, before she replaced the glass on the table and returned to her book, her hair once more falling back across her face.
Toby, who had been continuing a conversation with Henry, caught this interchange out of the side of his eye and looked quickly from one to the other. He leaned forward across the table. “Listen, David, if I could possibly drag your attention back here for a minute, I want to introduce you to Jane.” He turned to the young blond girl on his left, who grinned inanely at him. David smiled and nodded a greeting at her. No doubt yet another of Toby's attempted first-year conquests, he thought to himself.
“Jane,” Toby continued, “this is David Corstorphineâoops, sorry, the
HONOURABLE
David Corstorphine, second lieutenant-in-brackets-on-probation, I hasten to add, in Queen's Own Highlanders, and owner of one of the only private malt whisky distilleries in the
WHOLE
of Scotland, thus an extremely good guest to invite to a booze-upâ”
“All right, Toby,” David interjected, embarrassed by his friend's incorrigible attitude. “That'll do me fine.”
“No, come on, let me finish. I'm building you up here.” Jane let out a high-pitched giggle, giving Toby ample encouragement to continue with his monologue, and he proceeded to count out David's attributes on his fingers. “Oxford Blue at tennis, erstwhile lead guitarist with that well-known university band, The Tenement Blok, and owner of the most amazing car stereo in the whole of Oxford.” He looked across at David. “There, that's it. I'm finished. That wasn't so bad, was it?”
David smiled sardonically back at him and took a drink from his glass, at the same time once more catching the eye of the brown-haired girl, who had again momentarily looked up from her book. She raised her eyebrows and almost imperceptibly shook her head before looking down again.
“So who won the tennis match?” Toby asked.
“We didâjust,” David replied. “That's why I'm so late. The final set went up to 13-11. What time does your cricket match start?”
“Two o'clock.” Toby sucked in a shivering breath and executed a short drum roll on his knees with his hands. “And I'm nervous as hell. Somebody, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that I should open the batting.”
“Hell's teeth!” David said, rubbing his hands together in evil glee. “I'm not going to miss that!” He got to his feet. “Come on, you'd better have another one. Build up your Dutch courage. What do you want?”
“Well, it'll have to be quick. Just a half of Flowers.” He stretched his arms above his head, then placed one with awkward nonchalance around Jane's shoulder. “And you can get a half of lager for Jane while you're at it.”
David pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his tennis shorts and headed off towards the bar, leaving Toby to continue his somewhat clumsy seduction of Jane. He had only taken a few steps when he stopped and turned to look across the table at the brown-haired girl. “Would you like another drink?”
She continued to study her book, seeming not to have heard him above the general noise. He leaned over towards her. “I wondered if you would like another drink.”
She glanced up, starting back with surprise when she realized that David was looming over her. “What? Oh! Well, that's very kind of you.” She picked up her glass, drained it and handed it to him. “An orange juice would be lovely! Thank you!” She flashed her smiling eyes once more and immediately returned to her reading.
It took two trips back and forth to the bar to get the whole order complete on the table. Finally he placed the glass of juice in front of the brown-haired girl, and as he sat down she looked up and smiled a thank-you at him. Just then, Toby turned to witness this further exchange. He suddenly picked up his beer, drained it in one gulp and jumped to his feet.
“Right! The time of reckoning is nigh!” He clasped his hands theatrically across his heart and looked down at Jane. “But after the battle is won, I shall return to claim my prize!” Bending down, he delivered a long, loud kiss on the cheek of the giggling girl. Then he turned to David with a sly grin on his face.
“And I think I'll give one to your friend as well!”
Before David could utter a word to stop him, Toby had put his hand on the head of the brown-haired girl and bent down towards her. It had been his intention merely to give her a peck on the forehead, but the unexpected and unsolicited contact made the girl jerk her face upwards to look at him, her mouth open to issue some exclamation of surprise or rebuke. This movement and Toby's forward momentum were so perfectly yet unintentionally synchronized that he found himself administering a kiss not to the planned target, but directly onto her open mouth.
Her reaction to this unwelcome infringement could not have been more immediate. The book left her hands and flew up in the air, and David reached up and caught it with one hand as it sailed over the top of his head. Her arms flailed and her legs kicked out as she freed herself from Toby's embrace, throwing the table violently forward before it crashed back down again on its four legs. Glasses fell over and rolled across the surface of the table, liberally spilling their contents over the people who sat nearby. Warning shouts filled the air as everyone jumped up in the confined space, trying to avoid the cascading flow by opening their legs under the table or pulling their knees round hard against their seats.
In one movement, the girl rose to her feet and gave Toby a mighty open-handed clout on the side of the face. He reeled back from the force and sat down in a pool of beer.
“Sorry! sorry!” Toby exclaimed, holding his hands up in defence against a further attack. “I really didn't mean to do that!”
The girl looked at him angrily, her eyes narrowed. “What the
hell
do you think you're doing? How
dare
you?”
She started to move away, but as an afterthought she turned back and aimed a sharp and powerful kick at his shin under the table before stamping off towards the door of the pub, the packed and silent crowd parting for her as willingly as the Red Sea had parted for the Israelites.
As the door slammed shut, laughter first bubbled, then erupted everywhere in the pub but at their table. Toby sat with a shocked expression on his face, slowly rubbing his cheek with one hand and his shin with the other, while the others around the table, attempting ineffectively to wipe down their sodden clothing with their hands, glared disapprovingly at him.
“Sorry about that,” he said defensively, holding up his hand in apology to the assembled company. He looked across at David. “Christ, she's a bit unpredictable, isn't she, your friend?”
Still clutching the girl's book in his hand, David sat shaking his head in disbelief at Toby's actions. “She's not
my
friend, you bloody fool! I've never seen her before in my life!”
“Come on! I saw you buy her a drink!”
“So? I bought her a drink. Doesn't mean you have the right to molest the poor girl.”
“I didn't mean to do, well,
that!
It was a mistake!” he whinged, rubbing hard at his face and his leg. “Jesus, I hurt all over.”
David got up from the bench. “Serves you bloody right, you twit.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I've still got her book. I'll go and see if I can catch her and try to apologize for your ⦠lunatic actions.” As he turned and started to make his way through the crowds, Toby called after him in a disappointed voice.
“Does that mean you won't come to watch me bat?”
David stopped and looked back at him, shaking his head. “Listen, I'll try, but I think she's the priority right now, don't you?”
He pushed his way through the doors of the pub and stood blinking on the crowded pavement, trying to get his eyes accustomed to the bright sunlight. There was no sign of the girl. He moved ten paces to his left and caught a glimpse of her as she made her way purposefully along the Broad, dodging through the mass of pedestrians. He jogged along the pavement, clutching the book in his right hand, every so often jumping up to keep sight of her bobbing brown mass of hair amongst the mêlée of hatted heads and sunglassed faces. Then, finding it too hard to navigate through the crowd, he stepped out onto the street and started to sprint along the gutter.
He caught up with her just as she passed the gates of Balliol College, and slowed to a fast walk beside her, matching her pace. “Listen, I'm sorry about all that.”
She looked sideways at him, then, without speaking, turned eyes front and kept walking.
“I just wanted to apologize⦔
She stopped and turned to look directly at David. “Look! Let's just leave it, shall we?”
David held up his hands in an act of appeasement, the right still clutching the book. She took off again, taking David's lead in stepping off the pavement and making her way along the gutter. He sighed resignedly and watched her go, her long legs, clad in a pair of faded Levi's, stretching out and away from him, his eyes focusing on her neat denim-clad bottom as she walked down the street. It was only when he saw her veer across the Broad and disappear around the corner into Cornmarket that he was brought abruptly to his senses.
“Shit! Her book!” He took off at full tilt, dodging through the oncoming cars, taking the straightest line to the point where he had lost sight of her. Skidding his way round into Cornmarket, he saw her immediately, twenty yards in front, still striding up the gutter. At last he caught up with her.
“Look, I've got your book for you,” he said, exasperated, holding it out towards her.
She stopped and turned to him. He smiled at her, trying to show that he was friend, not foe. “You left it in the pub,” he said quietly.
The girl reached over and grabbed the book and was about to make off again when she turned to him, a thunderous expression on her face. “Do you know, there just happens to be one thing I cannot
stand
and that's the taste of beer, and what's even worse than drinking it is being forced to taste it via someone else's mouth!”
For a moment David looked at her incredulously, then felt the overpowering urge to start laughing. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his tennis shorts and glanced down at his feet so that she wouldn't see his reaction to her remark. When he eventually did look back up at her, his face still bore the merest hint of a smile.
“Well, I'm glad
you
think it's funny,” she said sharply, and turned to walk off.
David quickly jumped in front of her, and held up his hands to halt her passage. “Please listen, just stop for a minute ⦠erm⦔ He looked around, desperately trying to work out his next move. The shop immediately adjacent to them was an off-licence. “Look, would you stay here,
please,
just for a minute.”
He moved sideways towards the off-licence, watching her warily in case she decided to bolt off again. He dived into the shop and reappeared thirty seconds later clutching a half-bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne. He blew out a sigh of relief when he saw she was still there.
“Look,” he said, holding out the bottle towards her, “this is just a small peace offering to say I'm sorry for what happened in the pub. It was unforgivable, and I hope ⦠well, I just hope that this'll help you get rid of the taste of beer!”
As they stood there, bumped and jostled by the passing crowds, David watched her closely. She started to bite at her bottom lip, and his heart sank as she half turned away from him. For a moment, he thought that this last chance to make amends had flown out the window when she looked back at him, her eyes creased into the same captivating smile that she had given him in the pub. Suddenly she broke into a laugh, and eyeing the bottle in his hands, slid her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.