My Favourite Part

38(b): boys will be...

02:13am

Eric had long given up on trying to decide which of his friends from university was the worst. Mostly because it was inevitable that when he thought about it for long enough, the finger ended up on him. 

"I've invited some of the Billy Boys for your game," Kitty had told him with all the nonchalance she could muster, although she knew that her son was too sharp to be fooled - that was how she'd raised him. He knew exactly what his mother was up to.

The group she was referring to comprised of the haughtiest and most highest-ranking of his friends from Oxford. In first year, they'd started a secret society, and named it The Billy Boys after some folk song Eric couldn't remember anymore. The idea was simple: excess. Drinking 'til they couldn't walk straight, eating until they couldn't walk at all, and screwing girls like it was going out of fashion. To a gaggle of 18-year-olds freshly freed from Mummy and Daddy's watchful eyes, the mindless concept was irresistible.

All the society had amounted to, beyond faux philosophy and latent alcoholism, was cult-like loyalty. Inexplicable allegiance to one another and to the unprincipled principles of elitism, excess and arrogance. In truth, the Billy Boys were part of the reason Eric had gone to London. He preferred to interact with his past in his own time, on his own terms. Around them, Eric wasn't the man Evangeline had come to know. He was lewder, easier to control - usually on account of intoxication - and his morals seemed to slink into an alleyway, letting reckless egotism take the lead. That was why Kitty had invited them to take over the poker game. She loved her son, certainly, but he was so much easier to love when he thought the same way she did.

"So, Milo, you're telling me," Eric laughed, "that you've never donated to a single charity?" The poker game had finished, and fifteen-odd men remained. Milo had been the most eager to strike up the banter, given that he was the victor. Eric laughed and wisecracked along where he could, in a hope that if he told enough jokes, they'd leave sooner, and he could finally spend what was left of his birthday the way he'd wanted to all along – with his Evie.

"Not a shilling," Milo retorted with pride. A diamond heir and sporadic photographer, Miles Selwyn was a perfect stereotype and didn't seem to mind it at all. His slender face gleamed with dastardly pleasure,

"Whole thing's a charade. It's leaving my pocket for some other clever bastard's. I'm a frank man, gents, I say we call a spade a spade."

"A spade's a spade, and a Selwyn's stingy," Eric quipped, smirking into his port to the sound of laughter. Milo winked at him without shame.

"I prefer selectively spendthrift."

Early on, London had taught Eric shame. How to lower his voice when he said his name in the presence of too many people; how to only carry £20 at a time, when he was used to pockets full of hundreds. The Billy Boys easily disregarded feelings like shame, and no matter how he tried, Eric found that his own disgust for it was hard to shake off.

"Have you boys heard about James? St. Hill?" Miles asked with occupied eyes as he shielded the fire lighting his cigar.

"I hear he's been an absolute state since his mum passed."

"I heard he's been living in his father's hotel in London."

The oak-walled room shook with the reverberation of malicious laughter at the misfortune of the poor sod. Eric only remembered the name vaguely from boarding school, but he laughed along all the same.

Really, who 'James' was was of no importance. The group was bound by a shared worldview, in which they were the principal actors, and the lives, tears and tragedies of others were little more than entertainment.