Page 18 of Pansies

Love always,

Fen

5

Greg had found this bar in Earl’s Court which was disguised as a speakeasy disguised as a detective agency. It was the sort of thing you were supposed to love about London.

Except it was the sort of thing Alfie hated about London.

And he’d only been back a week.

Greg had to make an appointment to discuss their “case,” and they’d spent the first twenty minutes of the evening being semi-interrogated in a detective’s office before they were led through a false bookcase into a basement bar. The sort of place that had been carefully designed to look like shit.

Alfie whispered this to Kitty, and she told him it was chic, not shit, and that Prohibition was veryinright now. She wrote forTatler, so she would know.

Eventually they found their table, which was tucked into a dark corner beneath an overhang of exposed brickwork. Greg looked delighted to be on what he was probably thinking of as “an adventure,” but Alfie had worked a long day, in a long week, and all he wanted was a drink. He snagged the menu from a typewriter and held it up to the nearest candle so he could read the damn thing. He remembered from school that one of the effects of Prohibition had been to push up the price of alcohol so, in that respect at least, the place was pretty realistic.

J.D. Jarndyce (formerly Jarndyce & Dance)1 paid him enough that he didn’t have to care. But it was a matter of principle. He pointedly ordered the cheapest thing he could find, a pint of London pale ale, which he didn’t like anyway, and was, on this occasion, dispensed from a radiator. Kitty’s wine was smuggled over in a brown paper bag. And Greg had a cocktail called a Grapefruit Blossom which was thankfully served quite conventionally. Albeit pinkly. Alfie didn’t trust pink drinks.

“So.” Greg leaned back in his chair and draped one long leg over the other. He had a way about him that made public places feel like they were his living room. “How was t’north?”

Alfie gave him a look of mingled affection and irritation. “I think you mean oop north. T’north would only get you as far as Yorkshire.”

“Yorkshire, Manchester, same difference.”2 Greg had literally never been further than Barnet. He was proud of it. Alfie had tried to ask him about it once, and all he’d said was, “Darling, you know I prefer going down.” It hadn’t been much of an answer, but it had led in a suitably interesting direction, so Alfie hadn’t cared much. At least, not at the time.

“You know,” said Kitty, “there are studies showing that shameless displays of snobbery are thirty percent more likely to get you laid.”

Greg’s head whipped round. “Really?”

“No, of course not. I can’t imagine anything less attractive, can you?”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just”—Greg sighed dreamily—“I love London. It’s full of places like this. There’s nothing exciting up north. Just hills and sheep.”

Alfie stared at him, deadpan. “Yeah, last time I was in the city of Newcastle, it was full of hills and sheep.”

“Also,” added Kitty, “places like this usually turn out to be stupid.”

“Hey.” Greg gave them a wounded look. “You said it wasin.”

“Oh, because fashionable is never stupid.”

“If it wasn’t for me,” he muttered, “you two would sit at the same table in the same pub drinking the same drinks every day for the rest of your lives.”

Kitty propped an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “Sounds like heaven to me. What do you think, Alfredo?”

“I’m in. As long as it’s a proper English pub, not too quiet, not too busy—”

“Always the same two men always propping up the bar—”

“Good selection of booze—”

“And they know how to pull a pint properly—”

“And,” finished Alfie decidedly, “they do egg and chips for £4.99.”3

That did, in fact, sound just about perfect. The sort of pub his dad went to, and his granddad, and probably his great-granddad.

“Well, the next time I find a restaurant in a hydraulics plant or a bar with beds in it or a rooftop hot-tub cinema, I’m not going to invite you.” Greg paused. “So I’d have to go by myself. And sit there weeping into my hot tub.”

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