Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

I kept my eyes closed and took no part in conversation, if the mass of cross-purpose non-sequiturs endlessly being repeated around me could count as conversation. Since no one was willing to take me to the toilet, I concentrated my mental powers on reversing the normal renal function, so that urine was driven back into the kidneys which had distilled it, and then back into the bloodstream. Better poisoned blood than soaked trouser. There was a jukebox in this pub. A vintage song was playing. ‘All Right Now’. By Free. Perhaps that was a good omen. Free right now . But when does Maya ever play fair?

There was the usual interminable routine of getting beers. From the muffled thud at close quarters I could deduce that once again I had been included in the round. Beer I didn’t want in a glass I couldn’t lift. Then Thomas da Silva and Benedict sat down, one on each side of me.

‘Cox? Cox?’

‘What’s his name? His actual name?’

‘Never caught it, Benny.’

‘Do you think he’s asleep?’

‘Might be faking.’

‘Why?’

‘To get out of buying a round?’

‘Don’t judge him by your own low standards, Wop. I think he’s really asleep.’

‘Maybe the poor little chap can’t hold his drink. Maybe that’s it. We should wake him up. COX! COX!! What a terrible thing to have to live with. Imagine not being able to hold your drink! Another thing, Benny. Have you noticed? There’s something not quite right with his legs. It’s more than just being small.’

‘Car crash?’

‘I expect so. Hurt his arms too, poor bugger.’

‘I’m not sure we should wake him. Maybe he’s better off as he is.’

‘Don’t be stupid. We have a certain responsibility here.’ This was Thomas da Silva talking — my abductor-in-chief.

‘Nothing’ll happen to him if we just leave him be. Someone will look after him.’

‘We can’t take that chance. And how will he feel if he wakes up and finds we’ve abandoned him? We don’t want to perform auto-prosopectomy thingummy … sorry, vocab all gone. It’s all Etruscan to me … Don’t want to cut off our nose to spite our face.’

Give the man his dignity

‘Good point. He wouldn’t want to miss being there when we cross the finishing line. In fact … do you think we could apply for him to do the Run with us, on the actual day, and get a proper tie on half-pints? Maybe a half-sized tie. Seeing as he’s so small?’

‘Dunno. It’s always a pint for him, isn’t it? I suppose he doesn’t want to get special treatment. Give the man his dignity, Benny. Leave him some pride. Let him make his own choices.’

‘No, think about it, Wop. This is serious. You and I weigh, what, fourteen and a half stone the day of a regatta? Fifteen stone the next day, obviously …’ These figures seemed fantastic. Is it possible for hefty but not freakish-looking youths to weigh so much, or were they joking? ‘And Cox is going to weigh no more than, what, two stone?’

‘ Two stone? Are you sure? He has to be heavier than that!’

‘All right, three at the outside. Call it three. So for every pint we drink he can drink … a lot less. Try it the other way round. For every pints he drinks, we can drink, what, ten? Five, anyway. We can’t let him go on drinking pints just to keep up with us. He’s going to kill himself. He may be in a coma already.’

Then they were both shaking me and roaring ‘COX! COX!’ There was nothing much I could do but open bleary eyes before their shaking became too painful on my shoulders. Then we were off to the final stages of the King Street Run.

Pubs that hosted the early pints of the Run might be reasonably grateful for the custom involved. Pubs towards the end of King Street, and the Run, had drawn short straws. They might value Varsity trade, but not the sort represented by Write Off Tuesday, sozzled and more than likely to puke. There were no longer a full eight pubs on King Street, so the Zebra, round the corner on Maids Causeway, had been requisitioned for the last two pints. Its publican was less than thrilled.

He intercepted us. He was a large, imposing man, wearing a V-necked pullover with a shirt and tie underneath it. The voice that emerged from his large neck was soft and deep, perfectly friendly but not to be trifled with. ‘Are you on a bender, lads? Some sort of competition? If so I don’t want your business. I don’t want your mess. I’ve seen enough sick at this address. If you throw up I’ll give you a mop, but that’s my limit.’

The assembled members of Write Off Tuesday tried to head off resistance with a synchronised display of undergraduate arrogance. They didn’t do a bad job, considering. They squared their shoulders and drew on surprising reserves of physical control. Benny said, ‘By no means, landlord.’ He indicated me. ‘Our handicapped friend here requires a pint of your best bitter. We will keep him company out of good manners, but we are hardly in any sort of competition.’ This I suppose was strictly true, if the whole appalling expedition was a rehearsal. And they weren’t in competition with me.

I wondered, after what had been said in the last pub, when it was that Benny had noticed that I was disabled. Perhaps it was a wild guess, a piece of pure bluff. It was just my luck that this new insight gained us admission to yet another pub. The landlord hesitated, then stepped aside. ‘Just one pint, mind.’

Perhaps trade was bad enough for him to fear being put on a blacklist. Certainly there were fewer than a dozen drinkers present. Unless placated, I might put the word out on the disabled grapevine that these were premises which could usefully be fire-bombed come the next Day of Action.

I clung to the idea, despite everything that had happened, that given time I would be able to impose my will on my kidnappers. All I needed was a quiet moment to get the psychic electromagnets going and work my personality magic. But the quiet moment never came.

Any sobriety the group had been able to muster on their way into the pub soon deserted them once we were inside and had been served. Thomas da Silva’s face was now by turns red and sweaty-white, at the mercy of the swilling beer inside him. Every few moments he would fill his cheeks with air and breathe out unhappily. He looked like someone with numbed lips trying to whistle. He whispered loudly to Benedict, ‘We need to have two pints here, Benny. This is only pub number seven, and we need to tot up the full eight pints. It’s the magic number. The full gallon, or no dice. No dice, no tie.’

Benedict shushed him. ‘We’ll have to play it by ear. Maybe if Cox orders the next round the landlord will oblige. I don’t know why he’s being so snot-nosed. With a shabby place like this you’d think he’d be grateful for the business.’

‘About time Cox paid his whack anyway. I don’t approve of freeloaders, do you?’

That was it. I could endure no longer. My small No was suddenly too big to be contained. They’d been going too far from the moment they had entered the Cambridge Arms, but now they were beyond the pale in absolute terms. I pitched my voice at a level that a cox would only need on a windy river with a flight of jet planes roaring overhead, and I bellowed, ‘Shut up this instant! I NEED TO PEE!! Right now! ’

‘All right, little man, no need to shout,’ said da Silva. ‘You’re quite right, though, we should attend to our cox. Our cox!! ’ Finally there it was, out in the open, the double meaning that had been hovering over the conversation for so long. He fought off an attack of the giggles. ‘I could do with a bit of a slash myself.’

As he was clearly the most unstable of the group, I tried to head him off. ‘Perhaps Benedict could oblige …?’