Dark Places by Kate Grenville Page A

part—admittedly a somewhat shadowy and peripheral part—of this circle, which devoted itself to pranks of various kinds, and to entertainments.
    And what entertainments! There were banquets upstairs in the private rooms of Juliana’s, where the cigar-smoke hung in a cloud below the gilt ceiling and the bottles kept arriving while various entertainments were performed before us. There were more intimate parties of cards and whisky, in the college rooms of the bolder men, where we had to tiptoe out in the early hours onto crisp lawns without waking porters; oh yes, I was there, the education of Albion Gidley Singer was progressing apace.
    There was a particular evening, upstairs at Juliana’s. It was an evening unclear in its precise shape, when many bottles of wine were opened and the cigar-smoke hung blue under the ceiling, and Ogilvie had done his imitation of a lady with a poodle better than I had ever seen it. I raised my glass in dozens of toasts, drained it again and again, confident after all my practice in my own room that I would not disgrace myself.
    No: Singer, for all his residual awkwardness when stone-cold sober, was a stayer when it came to liquor, and I could see that they thought me much improved by a drop or two. When I rattled off an alphabetical list of the capital cities of the world, then in clockwise order the mountains of Europe, Ogilvie raised his glass to me solemnly, and Burgess actually laughed, not in an unkind way, but with drunken wonder. Under such approval, Singer blossomed. I was even bold enough to try the one about the blind man and the fish-shop: ‘So he tips his hat and says, Good morning, ladies!’ and there was general laughter. I caught glances between my companions that meant, ‘Singer is not such a dull dog after all,’ and I felt that at last I was making progress with this business of being sociable.
    As the hour grew later, and the pile of empty bottles grew higher, the talk turned to females. I was the only one who did not join in their various boasts, though I tried to look as if it might be modesty that was keeping me silent, and I joined in admiration at exploits even when I was not one hundred percent sure just what one was supposed to admire.
    Burgess boasted of three in a night, but Ogilvie laughed him to scorn and maintained that he had done six in three hours— virgins at that , he kept crying, bona fide virgins , every one! Before long they seemed to run out of figures, and Ogilvie began to talk of the real thing, of smuggling one or two females in, and was opening and closing a door which revealed and concealed, revealed and concealed, a bed, placed there for the convenience of parties of young bucks like ourselves. Ogilvie winked and grinned with fearful animation, and we all stared past him at the bed appearing and disappearing in a vertiginous way.
    I felt myself growing sober with dread: beyond every hurdle there seemed always to be another. Ogilvie extracted pound notes from each of us and left in search of females, and I boldly called for a few more bottles. The mood had changed now. The room was quieter as each man appeared to be deep in thought, having to rouse himself to join in a bit of dispirited chat about what a young ruffian Ogilvie was. Delany began to swig down wine as if it were water, and Quince, who was not much of a drinker, took a huge tot of whisky at one gulp.
    I was toying with the idea of a sudden bilious attack, or a shocking chest pain out of the blue, but others were ahead of me. By the time Ogilvie returned with three gaudy females, it was obvious that green Delany was about to disgrace himself, and Quince had lost control of his consonants. Ogilvie gave them a look that said he guessed, and despised, and glanced at the rest of us challengingly.
    These smuggled females were another type altogether. I had not before seen such saucy eyes, such red cheeks and lips, curls of such contrivance, or such compressed