Invention is the one we all talk about, but Necessity is the mother of an entire brood, including Desperation, Humility and Pragmatism. How else to explain my presence behind this narrow length of sticky timber? I’m pretty confident that if I were to wander into this pub off the high street, I’d never make it through the door, let alone all the way to the bar. More likely, I’d glance around, rapidly taking in the tatty décor and scowling faces, then pretend my phone had just rung, hold it to my ear with a look saying Gotta take this, then back out of the door and stride off looking for somewhere less authentic. Yet here I am, pulling pints and slinging peanuts.
The regulars are lovely, actually, even if they do look like the cast from some BBC2 crime drama set in Victorian Lahndan Tahn. Half of them would have your wallet given the chance, but they would spend your money behind the bar, buying drinks for their friends, and you too, if you happened to stick around. Plus, big bonus, no one knows my boyfriend died. People make tasteless jokes in front of me, they tease me about being single, ask ‘Who died?’ when I’m in a bad mood and snap at me when the cloud is over them. They treat me like a normal person. And as therapy goes, it beats the biscuits off the old widows’ support group where, anyway, I felt like such a bloody imposter.
Even so, I’m still not convinced this is where I’d choose to spend my wages, which, by the way, are paid in cash at the end of every shift. And without which, I could forget about travelling in September. But besides the tax-free top-up, the Duck and Cover is also a welcome distraction; the locals have accepted me as one of their own – the ‘token posh bird’, according to Winston, the landlord. He struggles with the concept that it’s not appropriate to pat me on the bottom (‘I’m a product of me time, Duchess’), but he means well, and we’re making progress.
What else I get out of the Duck and Cover is a free meal every shift. ‘Anything off the menu, sweetheart.’ Legend has it that this stained piece of card once featured such exotic items as halloumi cheese, Cajun chicken and ‘them pies with just the lids’, but after a sudden influx of ‘ponces, puffs and prima donnas’, the chef (Winston’s nephew, Gary) reverted to the standard fare of bulk-bought burgers and steak ‘n’ kidney with a full casing of pastry. The Duck and Cover does a fine trade with home-grown custom, thank you very much. And while the ‘trendy types’ are more than welcome, Winston – ‘to be quite frank, Princess’ – doesn’t need the earache if your romaine lettuce is a little limp.
The burgers are a long long way from wonderful, but with cheese, bacon and a ton of mustard, they’re passable. And the chips are pretty bloody good. With a side of coleslaw, my Saturday night supper must come to fifteen hundred calories, and is generally enough to keep me going until the following evening, when I’ll have a bowl of soup and a slice of toast. Lord knows what it’s doing to my cholesterol, but I’m cycling about eighty miles a week and I’ve dropped a dress size since Christmas. You won’t find it recommended by the NHS anytime soon, but it works for me.
Winston starts on the music round (‘For which band did Stuart Sutcliffe play bass guitar? That’s Stuart Sutcliffe.’), which means I have about seven more minutes to finish my supper before the pub quizzers drop their biros and run for the bar. Me and Winston will serve in the region of fifty drinks in a ten-minute window during which we really could use an extra pair of hands, but Janice has phoned in sick and there’s no one else to cover her shift. It’s a slog, but the upside is I won’t have to listen to Janice catalogue every wrong her boyfriend has committed in the last seven days. Besides, when the rush is over everyone will return to their quiz sheets and I’ll have precious little to do except polish the glassware. Silly night for a pub quiz, if you ask me, but Winston has found that a midweek quiz attracts too many ‘bleeding students, graduates and whatnot, no offence, love’. Winston’s theory is that having built up that huge loan attending university, the effing eggheads can’t handle losing to teams of builders, plumbers, cashiers and market traders – which tends to generate all kinds of unnecessary agro and split lips. So it’s rubber burgers, a Saturday night quiz, and everyone’s happy, darling.
I’m struggling with a particularly tough mouthful when Henry walks through the door. He hesitates, taking in the décor, the locals, the ‘Which artist wrote “Islands in the Stream”?’, before spotting me, almost choking on my Duck and Cover burger.
There’s nothing else for it, so I turn my back and cough a mouthful of burger into the bin. Please God, don’t let him notice. It’s bad enough that I’m wearing knackered jeans and a t-shirt so old it’s forgotten what colour it’s supposed to be. It occurs to me that I might have ketchup around my mouth, so I duck behind the counter and give my lips a quick once over with a licked finger.
And what the hell is he doing here anyway?
‘Hello stranger,’ I say, dialling up the nonchalance as I pop up from behind the bar. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I was in the . . . you know, neighbourhood,’ he says apologetically, and whether it’s deliberate or not, his awkwardness is gently endearing. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not. But . . .’ I lean over the bar, going through a small pantomime of looking for something on the other side, ‘didn’t you have a date?’
Henry smiles sheepishly. ‘She er . . . photographed her food.’
And damn it if I don’t laugh so hard I snort. ‘Hah! You should have brought her here, no one photographs the food here.’
‘Sorry,’ says Henry, pointing at my half-eaten burger, ‘was I interrupting your supper?’
‘What, that? No. I mean, I was, but I’m a bit, you know . . .’ I pat my stomach.
Henry slides up onto a stool, then leans forwards and whispers: ‘Aretha Franklin.’
‘I peg your pardon?’
He nods towards the tables of scribbling quizzers. ‘Which soul sister contributed to the soundtracks of both Bridget Jones movies?’
‘Aretha?’
‘Franklin. “Respect” in the first, “Think” in the second. I think.’
‘Very philosophical.’
Henry laughs. ‘So . . . am I allowed to buy you a drink?’
‘God yes. I’ll have a large red, please.’
Winston gives his staff one free drink a night, and I’d finished mine by the end of the science and nature round. I pour a very generous measure of the most recently opened red, and tilt my glass towards Henry before taking a sip.
‘Any chance I could have one of those?’ he says, raising an invisible glass.
‘Sorry, manners, Zoe!’
‘Is it that good?’
I shake my head. ‘No, but it gets better if you drink enough.’
‘Best make it a bottle then.’
And as I pull the cork, it’s as if someone has fired a starter’s pistol. The sound of fifty chairs sliding simultaneously backwards sets my teeth on edge as I brace myself for the onslaught.
‘Good luck,’ says Henry, taking the bottle and a glass to a table in the corner.
Imagine a zombie apocalypse in which the insatiable dead have retained enough of their civilized nature that they are prepared to pay before taking a bite out of your frontal lobe. That’s the half-time rush at the Duck and Cover quiz night; fifty thirsty punters, leaning over the bar, glass-eyed and frenzied, shouting orders, waving money in your face and giving you every impression that if they can just catch hold of your wrist, you will never see your arm again. Fending the buggers off is hard work, requiring concentration, coordination and stamina. I don’t know what I look like at the end of this short ordeal, but it’s a look you won’t see on the front of Cosmopolitan any time soon.
As the undead traipse back to their tables, Henry returns to his stool. I place an empty glass on the bar, and Henry fills it silently. He waits until I’ve taken a good drink before speaking.
‘How was that?’
‘I won’t miss it when I’m gone,’ I say, instantly regretting the reference to my imminent departure.
Henry smiles awkwardly. ‘September, right?’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘In which film,’ says Winston, ‘did Donald Pleasance play Bond villain—’
‘You Only Live Twice,’ whispers Henry.
‘God that annoys me.’
‘I’m sorry, I was just . . .’
‘No, not you, the film. Because you don’t, do you. I know I’m being a twit, I know it’s not meant to be literal, but it irritates the hell out of me. You live once and that’s it; that’s all you get. And it pisses me off when people take what they’ve got for gr— God, I sound like such a psycho. Sorry, I think I’m slightly pissed. Do you want to play Scrabble?’
Henry looks at me – quite rightly – as if I’m foaming at the mouth. ‘Yes?’ he tries. ‘To the Scrabble part, that is. Not the . . . psycho bit . . . so much . . .’
‘We’re missing a few tiles,’ I say, extracting the Scrabble set from underneath Monopoly, Buckaroo, Tumblin’ Monkeys, Jenga and so on. ‘But I think it adds an element of mystery.’
After the final round of questions and another zombie apocalypse, the board is crowded with tiles and, to my dismay, my hairdresser is a good fifty points ahead. So much for private school.
‘Put’ I say, laying down two tiles. ‘Five points.’
‘Nice,’ Henry says, nodding in mock appreciation. As if I’d dropped punitive, pupate or putative instead of this puny three-letter disappointment. ‘Putty,’ he says, laying down two tiles and holding eye contact for a second. His lips part, as if he’s about to speak, then he looks away and smiles.
I don’t know if this counts as a date, but if it had been set up that way, I’d have to count it as a success. We have talked and laughed, easily and for the most part about nothing, flitting from topic to topic, taking our conversation cues from the random words laid down on the board:
Yowl: How Henry came by the scar on his forehead
Fin: My favourite film
Ray: His favourite song
Shade: My first picture book
Something and nothing.
It has crossed my mind that if I ever do date, then at some point I will have to tell someone about Alex, and how will that play out? But Henry doesn’t appear interested in the standard first-date inventory of where did I study, what degree did I do, why did I choose my career. So we paddle and splash in shallow conversation, avoiding all the rocks and dark shadows of the deeper regions. What we talk about isn’t important; it’s the way we talk that gives it value. Most men want to tell you about their job, their car, their plans, this one time when, but Henry doesn’t talk about himself other than in anecdotes and abstracts teed-up from the letters in play. It’s refreshing, amusing and – like Scrabble with a few missing letters – not without an element of mystery.
Henry upends the wine bottle over his glass, but the wine is done. ‘What time do you finish?’ he says.
‘Depends how quick she can collect the glasses, wipe down the tables and put the empties out,’ says Winston, appearing beside me.
I glance at my watch and see that my shift finished five minutes ago. The bar is mostly empty now. A few stragglers nursing their drinks; a couple necking in the corner; a table of regulars, arguing about football and showing no sign of slowing down.
‘Shit, sorry, Winny, I lost track of . . . you now.’
Winston smirks. ‘I noticed. We haven’t been introduced,’ he says, extending a hand to Henry. ‘Winston, I’m the landlord.’
‘Henry, I’m—’
‘My hairdresser,’ I say. ‘He’s my . . . hairdresser.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ says Henry, still shaking Winston’s hand.
‘Hairdresser? What, like . . . hair?’
Henry nods, shows Winston a pair of finger scissors.
‘Fair enough,’ says Winston, shrugging – each to his own.
‘Listen,’ Henry says, looking out at the sticky tables, ‘I could help.’
‘Go on,’ says Winston, opening the hatch, ‘I’ll take care of it tonight.’
‘You sure, Winnie? I don’t mind.’
‘Get out of here before I change my mind,’ he says. ‘You owe me one.’
I kiss Winnie on the whiskers, and he pats me on the bottom as I make my way out from behind the bar.
‘Hands, Winston.’
‘Apologies, Duchess, force of whatssaname. And nice to meet you,’ he says to Henry. ‘Good job on the Barnet, by the way, suits her.’
‘Does, doesn’t it,’ says Henry, and before I can quite figure out what’s happened we’re outside and all alone.
And then Henry is kissing me.
Did he kiss me or did I kiss him?
At my third meeting of the heartbroke widows, I had stubble burn on my neck. That evening I wrote in my black notebook: No more meaningless sex.
And while it feels in no way meaningless, this kiss is leading somewhere.
‘We shouldn’t,’ I say.
‘I know,’ his lips not losing contact with mine as he whispers this.
‘We can’t stand here all night, either,’ I say, even though I sincerely wish we could.
‘Walk you home?’
I have had men back to my house before, but no one I intended to see a second time. So it didn’t matter when they asked who was the guy in the photographs. I could lie, cry, laugh it off or ignore the question. But I don’t know what I’d say to Henry, and I’m not ready to find out.
‘House is a mess,’ I say.
Something catches Henry’s eye and he leans away from me, extending his arm. A taxi pulls to a stop beside us.
‘Where to?’ says the cabbie.