On my way upstairs for some tea the telephone rang. It was Geoffrey.
‘Hello,’ I said, pleased. ‘I was going to ring you tonight.’
‘Mm…” There was a five-second pause. ‘I wouldn’t have been in.’
‘Are you okay?’ Another pause.
‘I want to come round. I’m Mandied. I can’t make it back to the Park.’
A drugged distress-call ?
‘Where are you now, Geoffrey?’
‘Er, hang on, I’ll look around. Yeah … South Ken tube. But look I don’t want to come round just yet. I’ve got a … scene I’m trying … to get together but I can’t get it… on cos there’s all this … scene…’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ I inquired. ‘Look, you can come round now and wait here while I go out to tea. Or what? Do you think it would be slightly more underground to turn up later? Say around seven ?’
‘Cooler,’ he said, still rather guardedly.
‘Or later still. About eight. Or nine?’
‘Cooler.’
‘Look, why don’t you come round when you like?’
Silence, then a mumbled ‘yeah’, then more silence, then a lethargic click.
He rang back five minutes later to say that he had a couple of girls with him.
I thought for a moment. ‘Fine. Bring them round and I’ll try and screw the one that’s not yours. Have you got any incredible drugs with you?’
‘Yeah, some.’
‘Bring them round too. I’ve got to rush. I’ll probably be in from about seven or someone else’ll be here. But listen: if my bedroom door’s locked, don’t try and get in, okay?’
‘Creaming?’
‘Could be.’
I allowed only eight minutes to get there. Holding my hair in place with my hands, I ran out of the house and down the steep square to the main road. Geoffrey was bringing more girls. It hardly seemed to matter what happened now.
Rachel was alone in the kitchen, emptying ashtrays into a postbox-shaped rubbish bin the colour of baby’s crap. I said in a robotic voice:
‘Christ I’m sorry about that I had no idea it was your party and I wondered whether you might possibly let me make it up to you and will you come to a film with me next Wednesday. God, I’m so sorry about that, I really am.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
I waited, but she said nothing more. ‘Shall I at least ring you,’ I said, ‘or what ? … Not ring you.’
Rachel smiled. ‘One of the two anyway. Yes, all right. It’s 773 4417. Will you be able to remember that?’
‘Do you want a hand,’ I gushed, ‘there’s quite a lot of —’
‘No, honestly, I’ll manage.’
Rachel came over to the table on which I was vulnerably half sitting and started to pack unused wine glasses into a cardboard box. I got that make-or-break, do-or-die feeling, the feeling not only that I must stake my claim but also that claims must be staked, the feeling not only that I must act but that actions must be put through – or some flushed confusion of these that made me stand up, and reach out, trance-like, towards her.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said.
I backed into the passage. ‘373 1417! Great party! See you soon!’
A quarter of an hour with directory inquiries and I rang her the next Tuesday. I had beside me: a typed-out shooting script, a photograph of Audrey Hepburn, an empty quarter of gin, and Geoffrey. Geoffrey, electrified on cut-price death-pills, nodded his head at me throughout.
Two nights later we saw a film about the ups and downs of some Icelandic subsistence farmers. Of course, I had visited the cinema the previous afternoon and had rehearsed an amusing commentary to be whispered at Rachel in the dark. But the atmosphere was wrong and I stayed quiet.
Having cashed my penultimate traveller’s cheque I was big with taxis and cinema seats. Dropped her off and didn’t try to kiss her goodnight, almost laughing out loud when she asked if I’d like to come in for coffee. ‘Not tonight,’ I said haughtily. (Moreover, her parents were there.) The evening cost six pounds. By the weekend I was back in Oxford, anyway.