Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

part of all that was poxed and ulcered at home. Yet here it was regular, cleanly-dressed citizens – he would have said sober citizens – who were casting off their daylight selves upon the sulphurous apron of the fire, and drinking, not to be convivial, not to take off the cold edge of the night, but to dissolve as much of themselves as spirits would eat away.
    Already the younger prentices had started to spew, and laugh, and try the liquor again; already gestures were growing bigger and rougher, and steps more lurching. The women were not drinking, except a few haggard-looking drabs over in the poorest part of the ring around the fire. The good wives, the respectablemaids, the well-dressed ladies were melting away into the shadows, homeward bound, their part of the evening done. The circle rocked, and reeled. One man, receiving his mouthful of spirits, ran with his cheeks distended forward into the zone of intolerable heat close to the fire, and blew it at the coals, so that a line of dripping yellow-blue flame lit on the instant, and he seemed dragonish as he wove back grinning. Cries of laughter and applause; immediate imitation by three or four others dashing toward the blaze, till inevitably one too incapable to manage the trick cough’d at the critical moment and spilled blue flaming gin down his chin and clothes. Louder laughter, and a pause of admiration while he rolled on the ground screaming and beating at himself, before his friends stumbled to the rescue, dragged him back into the shades, and, lacking other resources, pissed him out.
    Smith having sipped, not gulped, had the little glow in his belly, not the raging melting demon his neighbours had eagerly imbibed, and now the night was getting rowdy, he judged it best to fade away too. But he had missed his moment, it was past and of a sudden seemingly long past the stage of the carouse when a man might bow out and still be counted a good fellow, for instant offence bloomed on the face of the burly prentice to his right when he refused the next drink, and, backing, he only backed into the hot damp weight of the prentice’s friend, who gripped him.
    ‘Wassamatter? Where you creeping off to? ’S Pope Day. Have a drink.’
    The one in front shoved the bottle at his mouth, like someone trying to push a spoon past the resistance of a baby. The glass banged his teeth, and he got his hands up to grip the neck, before it could knock any out. The prentice didn’t want to let go. He was only about seventeen, but he had the same milk-fed mass Smithhad seen in Lovell’s Isaiah. Smith twisted, and the bottle came free. The boys were very close round him.
    ‘Thanks,’ said Smith, and took what he meant to be a hearty stage swig; but the base of the bottle was slapped at that moment, the hard rim struck his palate like a hammer, and he choked. The liquor sprayed. This they found very funny, the one behind creaking out a fit of mirth that broke down into hiccups.
    ‘Gotta have a drink on Pope Day,’ said the first.
    ‘Yuh!’ agreed the second. ‘Birth! righ’! ovva Eng! lish! man!’
    ‘Abfolutely,’ said Smith, tasting blood. He passed the bottle over his shoulder. ‘Here you go.’ As he’d hoped, the hiccupper let go to take it. Smith wriggled left, and stood back from them both. Another step and he’d be away.
    ‘Have a good evening, lads,’ he said. ‘This Englishman’s for his bed. Hey,’ he added, beginning to back, ‘do you know the fellows who drew the cart?’
    They weren’t listening. The first one was staring at Smith’s shadow-dappled face, with the dark line running down from the corner of his mouth, and his neck-cloth loose, as if the backstep into the dark had revealed a strangeness there that hadn’t been apparent when they were nose to nose.
    ‘Fuck,’ said he. ‘’S him.’
    ‘Who?’ asked the hiccupper.
    ‘The heathen. The one as is rich as Creezus.’
    ‘That you?’ asked the hiccupper, muzzily interested, as you might