The air was thick with the fumes of beer and frying steak and the smoke of self-rolled cigarettes, but luckily for Fagermo this was not one of the evenings with live jazz. Then you had to bellow your lightest inanities, and take your companion’s reply on trust. So up and down the narrow L-shaped room conversation was rife, insults passed from table to table, girls passed from hand to hand, and lonely men on shore leave lurched around in search of confidants for their boozy, lying tales. It was not a smart place: jeans predominated, and heavy jerseys like dead, matted jungle undergrowth. The smart people went to the clubs and the hotel bars, where their sense of importance burgeoned in proportion to the grossness of the overcharging. The clientele of the Cardinal’s Hat went there because it was cheap and good; they ranged only from the middling well-off down to the middling hard-up. Bjørn Korvald and Fagermo collected their litres of beer at the bar counter and pushed their way through the dark-panelled room round to the foreigners’ table.
