Peach and Kidneys

The Peach and Kidneys was a student pub in Shiz, a gathering place for the circle of friends from Crage Hall and Briscoe Hall. It became the setting for the group's final collective gathering, a memorial celebration for Ama Clutch that dissolved into drunkenness and marked the end of their shared youth.

The Funeral Gathering

After Ama Clutch's modest funeral, the mourners retired to Madame Morrible's private parlor, where the Head provided stale tea and hard biscuits, with no saffron cream or tamorna marmalade. Glinda reproached her, and Madame Morrible replied that conditions verged on famine and cows were dying of starvation two hundred miles away. The friends then reconvened at the Peach and Kidneys to hold a more honest memorial service. Avaric plunked down an embarrassment of coins to demand a salver of saffron cream in Ama Clutch's memory. Money did wonders and the cream was found in the larder, which gave Glinda an uneasy feeling, though she did not know why. They spooned the airy mounds into one another's mouths, sculpted with it, mixed it in their champagne, threw it in small gobbets at one another until the manager came over and told them to get the hell out.

The Last Night Together

After being ejected from the pub, the group stood close together in the streets, still noisy with runoff from a brisk rain. Avaric proposed a visit to the Philosophy Club. Nanny refused, but Nessarose, swaying more than usual, insisted she wanted to go, saying she did not want to be left out. Elphaba tried to stop Boq from going, telling him he did not want to visit that disgusting place. Boq replied that he always thought and never felt or lived, and asked if he could not live once in a while. Glinda, who had been drinking, also wanted to go. Elphaba grabbed her by the elbow and whispered that they were going to the Emerald City that night, that they had no time to waste on sex. Glinda stumbled and asked what Elphaba had just said. Elphaba replied that she had already said it and was not saying it again, and that they were going back to Crage Hall only to pack a valise before leaving over the garden wall to see the Wizard, come what may and hell to pay.

Aftermath

The group that went to the Philosophy Club included Avaric, Shenshen, Crope, Boq, Tibbett, Fiyero, and Pfannee. Boq did not know it was the last time they would all be together, or he might have lingered. The Peach and Kidneys thus stands as the threshold between the innocence of student life and the violent dispersals that followed: Elphaba and Glinda's flight to the Emerald City, the traumatic events at the Philosophy Club, and the permanent scattering of the circle that had formed around Crage Hall.