Reubyn opens his mouth but for a moment he’s speechless. Her gaze is intense, and it strips everything else away – all sight and sound; the house lights have gone down, and they’re silhouetted in a spotlight, all alone. Did she ... did she just flutter her eyelashes? Women don’t actually do that in real life, do they? Just in period dramas and rom-coms. ‘Of course,’ he says, eventually. ‘I’ll’ – he points to the bar – ‘I’ll be right back.’
He walks away, weightless, towards the bar entrance, where George is waiting for him at the door. Reubyn looks back over his shoulder to check she’s still there, to check she’sreal. His heart is trying to beat its way out of his chest. That was surreal, dreamlike. Maybe he reallycando this. Maybe he’snota complete loser. Dr Sheridan is right: it is possible; he just needs to project the right image, say the right things. This islife-changing.
George stops him at the door. His face has gone stiff, the way it does when he’s pissed off, or about to do some damage to something. ‘What are you grinning about?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What the hell are you playing at?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Drooling in the planetarium? What the hell was that about?’
Reubyn shrugs.
George leans in, so Reubyn can feel his breath. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve,mate,’ George says, ‘but if you try something like that again, you’ll be the one drooling – on a ventilator.’
Chapter 18
George
It might be busy outside the bar, but inside it’s dead. There’s no one else here in this dark wooden interior, apart from one woman – dressed in an odd summer/winter mix of vest and woollen hat – already at the counter. When a young, tattooed barmaid appears, George nods towards the other customer.
‘You go,’ the woman says, looking along a row of taps with gaudy labels. ‘I’m still deciding.’
George gives her a thumbs up. ‘What’s your finest whisky?’ he asks the barmaid. She stretches on her tiptoes for a bottle on the top shelf and places it on the bar. ‘I’ll have four doubles please, no ice. Plus, a bottle of that’ – pointing towards the empty wine bottle he holds – ‘and four pints of that’ – nodding at a tap that reads Pacific IPA.
‘Pay day, is it?’ the woman queuing next to him says.
‘Something like that.’ George turns away from her and hands out the square whisky glasses to his friends.
Elis sniffs with caution, like the glass might contain something poisonous. ‘What is it?’
George rolls whisky around the sides of his glass. ‘It’s Macallan. Single malt scotch. Aged thirty years’ – he moves in between Miles and Reubyn – ‘just how I like my friends. It’s not the very best, but it’s as good as you’ll get this far from Scotland.’
‘I’m not really a fan of whisky,’ Elis says.
‘Wait until you try this one.’
‘Are these doubles?’
George rolls his eyes. ‘Something you need to know about us lot: we don’t do single measures.’ He raises his glass. ‘Why settle for a taste of the fruit, am I right?’
This is met with a roar from Miles and Reubyn, and the three of them tip the whisky down their throats in a single movement. George blinks rapidly, his body electrified by the liquor, and looks, watery-eyed, at Elis, who appears confused, still cradling a full glass. Elis smiles awkwardly and takes a sip, grimacing at the taste.
Why settle for a taste of the fruit– it’s fast becoming the motto of this trip. Elis doesn’t understand the reference, of course – one would only know it if one went to Holvine. It was an unofficial mantra at school. O’Mara, their head of sixth, was obsessed with high-style oratory and would invent these little rhetorical phrases and idioms. This particular line he had delivered in a speech at the Letters to Our Future Selves ceremony. As the name suggested, the event involved pupils from the lower sixth opening the missives they had written to themselves six years prior and then comparing their ambitions then and now. George laughed at the trivial goals set by his younger self: make a cricket century, see the Pyramids, some nonsense about designing video games. In the time that had passed, his aspirations had become more rational and bound to well-trodden routes into financial services and politics – the big-boy stuff that came with the big rewards.
If Holvine was good for anything, it was that it sharpened one’s focus on what was important before it became too late.People who went to lesser schools spent their lives squandering opportunities through fear and applying for crappy jobs with CVs that promised theywork well as part of a team. A Holviner would never spout that tosh; they didn’t work well in teams, they ran the teams. They’releaders. They didn’t become local councillors, they became parliamentary ministers. They’re bankers, not accountants. They didn’t do am-dram – they went to Hollywood.
When O’Mara gathered them all together at the ceremony, he signed off with the line that, for various reasons, they’d never forget:why settle for a taste of the fruit, when you can have the whole vine?Whole vine ... Holvine, get it? It received a few groans, as was often the case with O’Mara’s wordplay, but without that it wouldn’t have been so memorable. And O’Mara knew that a message of this importance needed to stick in the memory. It was about grabbing the most out of life, not settling for any half measures or putting limitations on oneself or being second-best – prosperity comes when one takes full advantage of life’s bounty.
Of course, such a lesson doesn’t get through to all. So much of the wisdom emanating from Holvine was lost on Miles – or, even worse, ungratefully rejected. Miles is lucky he has his good looks to fall back on, because he is completely lacking in natural ambition. After the Letters to Our Future Selves ceremony, Miles immediately took to parroting the phrase, initially as a way of mocking O’Mara, and then, after a while, it began to take on a life of its own. It got adopted ironically by the boys as a way of offering encouragement, especially during drinking games or any activity that required a modicum of bravery. Instead ofdown that glass of wine,it was why settle for a taste of the fruit?And instead ofyou need to hit two more reps on the bench press, it washave the whole vine. When you’re at school together for long hours, you develop many of these privately shared sayings and in-jokes. Ifone is an outsider, one can’t just gain access to all of that, no matter how much one might want to – that stuff is as exclusive as the gates to Holvine itself. And that’s why George can’t be bothered to try to explain the meaning of the phrase to Elis – because even if he did, he wouldn’t understand.
Finally, Elis finishes his whisky and his chest lurches forward in a dry heave.
Miles takes his pint off the bar and takes a sip. He points to the exit. ‘Shall we?’
‘Wait.’ George thuds his glass on to the bar like a gavel. ‘You all saw how well I was getting on with Jessie, just then. Don’t do anything to ruin my chances with her, all right? You might want to keep your distance.’
