“Silence! In peace there’s . . . something, something . . . but when the blast of empty glasses blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger! Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood . . . Disguise fair nature with . . . something. What do we disguise fair nature with? A wig?”
“He’s really making a meal out of this,” Yash commented.
Even for him, this was a touch over the top, a sketch that went on longer than it should.
“And . . . scene,” Peter said, dropping to his knees and crawling over to Sebastian. Sebastian held out his hand dramatically to pull his friend in.
“And you, good yeoman!” Sebastian replied. “Whose limbs were made in England! You come to help your king! A horse! My kingdom for a . . .”
“Bottle of whisky,” Peter replied, taking the keys from Sebastian’s hand before he carved the cabinet to shreds. Sebastian face-planted and pretended to be dead as Peter worked through the keys and found the right one. As soon as the cabinet door opened, Sebastian popped back up.
“You are the light of the nation,” he said to Peter. “I’ll see you’re remembered on the honors list.”
He plunged his arms into the cabinet, shoving bottles out of the way, causing them to violently clank together as he sought his prize.
“Ah,” he said, sliding one toward himself. “Here we go. The 1936. The most precious.”
He kissed the bottle reverently.
“Should we at least wait for Rosie and Noel to open it?” Theo asked.
“No, it will be waiting for them when they decide to come in.”
Sebastian poured nine glasses with great ceremony, muttering some kind of incantation as he did so. These were distributed to the seven people in the sitting room.
“A toast!” Sebastian said, raising his glass. “To us. The most brilliant, talented, attractive, and humble group of wastrels in all of Cambridge, perhaps even the world. May we always land the punchline, play the fool, embrace disaster, and love absurdly. I adore you all to the bottom of my black and cold heart, and my life would be nothing without you.”
Angela audibly sniffed.
“You wrote that in advance,” Yash said.
“Maybe I did. Now drink, you disgusting peasants.”
Sebastian had not lied. The whisky tasted of ancient fires in the Highlands of Scotland. It rolled smoothly down the throat, sending a column of warmth up the bridge of the nose and into the third eye. It slipped into the blood like an eel, and in its thrall, all the legends were true. The morning would be bad—even the soon might be sticky—but the now was exceptional.
“Oh God,” Yash said. “I can’t feel the palms of my hands. I only have fingers now. Loose fingers.”
“Tell me more,” Sooz cooed.
The group lost themselves for a moment in the warmth of the whisky, and the fire, and the booming storm outside the window. After what could have been five minutes or several hours, Peter rose unsteadily to his feet.
“I,” he said formally, “am going to be very sick. I may be some time.”
Soon after, Angela also acknowledged defeat and decided to go to bed. Theo followed, first stopping in the kitchen to pour a few glasses of water for herself and her friends. This was Theo’s way: after every night of hard drinking, she left a glass of water by her friends’ bedsides.
Sebastian, Julian, Yash, and Sooz remained in the sitting room. The night was long now, and the dark crowded them. Sebastian put on Blur. The three of them fell into a pleasant silence for a while, enjoying the fire and the blankets and the whisky. Sebastian’s head tipped back awkwardly in what was either sleep or a long consideration of the plasterwork on the ceiling.
“Rosie and Noel have really committed to this,” Yash finally said. “What time is it, anyway?”
Julian raised his hand in the direction of the fire to consult his watch.
“Three thirty.”
“Anyone else notice they’ve been getting a bit close in the last week?” Sooz asked. “I hope they’re out there shagging away in the mud all night.”
She glanced over at Julian, who looked unconcerned as he sipped his whisky. Sooz was not going to be ignored, not after a night in the rain and the better part of two bottles of champagne and one of Scotland’s finest whiskys.
“You were all over that Canadian at the pub a week ago, Julian,” she went on. “You can’t complain.”
“I’m not complaining,” Julian replied, looking up from under the thick curtain of lashes that shaded his eyes. “I didn’t say a word.”
“What Canadian?” Yash said, but Sooz did not appear to hear him.
“Now that we’re here—you know—now that we’re leaving—we need to be honest,” Sooz went on. “We need to resolve things. If anyone’s got things to say, we need to say them.”
“I always have things to say,” Sebastian said.
“I mean important things.”
“What Canadian at the pub?” Yash asked again woozily.
“Some Canadian at the Horse and Feathers,” Sooz said.
At this, Julian did look uncomfortable, and he stared down into his glass.
“The Horse and Feathers?” Yash mumbled. “I met a Canadian girl at the Horse and Feathers . . .”
“It was the same girl,” Sooz said. “Julian got in there before you showed up.”
“What? Oh, come on, mate . . .”
“You got together with her on Saturday,” Julian cut in. “This was Friday. I wouldn’t do that to you. You know that.”
The room settled into an uncomfortable but familiar silence. To be one of the Nine was to live with the twitching underbelly of feeling, and dramatic pauses were common.
Yash stood, wobbling a bit.
“Right, well . . . I’m . . . I have to . . .”
With that, he left the room, taking a slightly sinuous path that included a direct hit on a side table and the edge of the door. A minute later, the distant sounds of retching came into the room, echoing from one of the downstairs loos.
“I can’t believe you sometimes,” Sooz said after a while. “Betraying Rosie and Yash in the same moment. A new achievement for you.”
“I didn’t . . .”
“You did.”
Julian got up and started walking around the edges of the room, running his hand along the books on the shelves. He cut the figure of a romantic poet in the flickering candlelight, with his sparkling eyes and beautifully furrowed brow—he was Lord Byron in a flannel shirt, oversized jeans, and shell necklace.
“I didn’t betray Yash,” he said. “He hadn’t even spoken to her yet. You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“And Rosie? Well, that’s a given, isn’t it? You certainly betrayed her. But that train is never late, is it?”
“Sooz, are we going to do this forever? Can we do anything else? Is it always Berate Julian O’Clock?”
Sebastian broke into a dramatic snooze and a sharp snort.
“What’s that?” he said. “I died just a moment there, when you two were doing the thing you do where you yell at Julian for being Julian and you, Julian, do the dramatic thing and try to get out of whatever you’ve done by being good-looking. You two—either shag each other or shut up. Make a choice. I don’t care which you choose, but you have to choose one.”