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The conversation must have taken an intellectual turn, because Ken was asking one of his rhetorical questions about what Christopher Marlowe had said when he walked into that pub where he was killed. “A pint of mild, please,” Dave suggested, and we all started laughing. It was at this point that the two girls entered the bar.

     I don’t know their names, but the previous week we’d all decided we’d like to sleep with the one who wore glasses. Someone said he could imagine her taking them off and saying, “Will you put these on the bedside table for me, darling?” and for a moment we were all quiet and thoughtful.

     The beer soon got the better of us and we forgot about the girls, or at least found it amusing the way some of the men were buying them drinks. One of them particularly caught our attention. He was a small, rat-faced type in a grey suit, and looked like he’d turn you in if he thought it would get him promotion or an increase in pay.

     It was funny, really, because he bought the girls several expensive drinks, and around ten o’clock they went to the Ladies and didn’t come back. Later, we saw them standing at the bar with some other men. Rat-face was glaring at them. We thought there might be a fight, so decided to leave. I can’t stand fighting in pubs. The girls are frightened, and the beer gets spilled. As W.C. Fields once said, “It gives drinking a bad name.”

     To get back to the week I’m talking about, though. Ken was still talking about Marlowe and I was watching the girls. They had the usual crowd around them, buying their drinks. Rat-face was there, too, but they didn’t want to know him. The girl with glasses was talking to a beefy character who looked as if he might be a salesman or maybe manager of a furniture shop. Her friend, a blonde, seemed to be trying to make up her mind about which of the men to pay most attention to.

     At ten-thirty the girl with glasses slipped on her black leather coat and said goodbye to her friend. Rat-face sat watching her with bleary eyes, but the man she was with was obviously too big for him to tackle.

     We finished our drinks and left the pub, so I can’t say who the blonde finally went with. Ken was still trying to explain about Christopher Marlowe, but we were all too drunk to take him seriously. We kept asking him what Marlow would have said had he seen the girl in the pub, but he didn’t think it worth considering, because girls didn’t wear glasses in those days.