Black Lion cottage is the public convenience Patrick approaches after arranging to meet a young man away from the place where they had been talking. He descends toward it with an unusual readiness, then stops when a stranger’s slur brings the danger and emotional cost of the encounter sharply into view. The scene makes the cottage both a possible site of sexual contact and a threshold Patrick cannot cross: he leaves for home, but takes some satisfaction in having gone as far as he did.

Setting and Approach

The route gives the location a distinct physical shape. Patrick leaves the establishment where he has been drinking, crosses the road, and enters a narrow alley leading to Black Lion Street. The rain has stopped; carrying his umbrella, he walks quickly and feels light on his feet after the alcohol. From the street he takes the first steps down toward the cottage. The descent separates the public route above from the enclosed convenience below, and the narration lingers on that movement because reaching the entrance is already a meaningful choice.

Patrick does not pause to check whether anyone is watching. He says he has rarely sought this kind of encounter, particularly since Michael became a regular part of his sexual life. The decision to come here follows a sudden recognition of how much he has missed physical contact. The cottage therefore enters the scene not as a neutral landmark but as the destination of a desire that Patrick has seldom acted on since that earlier relationship.

The Encounter at the Steps

The meeting has been arranged in plain, practical terms: when the young man asks whether they could talk somewhere else, Patrick names Black Lion and tells him to come in ten minutes. Patrick pays the bill, leaving a large tip for the gaping Duchess, and makes his way there. His calm departure and brisk walk contrast with the hesitation that follows. At the cottage, another man is coming up the steps as Patrick starts down. The stranger, dressed in a smart tweed overcoat with its collar turned up, pushes past him and mutters a homophobic insult.

The interruption is brief, but it changes the scene. Patrick registers that such abuse is neither new nor likely to be the last of its kind; nevertheless, this particular insult shocks him and extinguishes his anticipation. He connects his vulnerability to several immediate circumstances: he has drunk too many martinis, the rain has stopped, and his policeman is due on Tuesday. He had hoped to enjoy the young man without letting that encounter displace the person he longs for. The passerby’s words turn a private approach into a reminder of the hostile social world around it.

Desire, Smell, and Retreat

Patrick stops halfway down and leans against the cold tiled wall. From below comes the smell of urine, disinfectant, and semen, a blunt sensory detail that fixes the cottage as a used public facility rather than an idealized refuge. He recognizes that he could continue downward and hold the young man. Yet the imagined encounter would be shaped by substitution: he could picture the boy as his policeman, replace the boy’s coarse brown hair with the policeman’s soft blond curls, and make the immediate body stand in for the absent beloved.

That imagined substitution exposes the conflict within Patrick’s desire. He has come seeking contact, but the person he wants is not the person waiting below. The cottage offers a possible encounter, not the intimacy he associates with his policeman; the stranger’s insult makes the gap between those possibilities harder to ignore. Patrick’s phrase for the protest of his own heart invokes a rhythmic measure, giving the retreat a sense of inward resistance rather than simple disgust. He hauls himself back up and takes a taxi home, leaving without meeting the young man.

Narrative Significance

The cottage’s importance lies in the contrast between arrival and completion. Patrick does not enter the encounter, but he later takes satisfaction in knowing that he went there at all. He has reached the Argyle and then Black Lion, two steps he says he has rarely managed since Michael. Despite his hangover, his mood remains surprisingly light. The episode thus ends not in sexual fulfillment but in a limited, self-recognized accomplishment: fear has stopped him, yet it has not erased the fact that he acted on his longing.

The location also concentrates the scene’s opposing pressures in a single descent. Below the street are the material signs of anonymous sexual use; above it are the route back to ordinary public space and the taxi home. Patrick stands between them, considering both the possibility of touch and the imagined presence of the policeman he loves. By turning back, he avoids the encounter, but the cottage remains evidence of a desire he has not entirely suppressed. His final lightness gives the place a double association: it is where he recoils, and where he discovers that approaching was itself a change.