‘Alice nags me about how crap I am at making beds,’ Joe said.
‘No she doesn’t,’ Zoë almost snapped back. ‘She points out your strategic incompetence. You can’t make a bed properly, what happens? Alice does it for you. Classic man move.’
Zoë met my eyes across the table. I might have smiled, but my mouth was full of blazing hot, unexpectedly delicious chilli. So I had to wait until I’d swallowed, and the moment had passed.
‘What would you call it then? Not that I’ll have a say in the matter. I’m just a part-time barmaid.’
There was a meow from under the table, and Frazzle leaped up, via Zoë’s lap, almost knocking over her wine glass.
‘How about the Ginger Cat?’ she suggested, pinching up some cheese and feeding it to him.
Eleven
Over the next few weeks, I found myself spending more and more time at the Nag’s Head. I arrived at the pub at around nine most mornings, and cleaned and tidied anything that hadn’t been done the previous night. I opened the doors at eleven and welcomed the first regular customers of the day. Maurice was usually the first to arrive. I’d carefully laundered the handkerchief he’d left me and returned it with a little thank-you card, and we’d fallen into the habit of having a five-minute chat, touching on the weather, the cricket score and the ongoing, seemingly endless Brexit negotiations before his friends turned up and settled themselves in their usual corner table, sipped their half-pints of Guinness and bitter (or, in Sadiq’s case, orange juice) and started their game of dominoes, which would continue into the early afternoon.
Watching them, I found myself picking up some of the rules of the game. I overheard Ray talking about sharp practices involving rubbing some of the little plastic tablets so they could be identified by touch. I learned that they weren’t called tablets, but ‘bones’. And crucially, after almost calling 999 because Terry appeared to be having some sort of seizure, I learned that he was just doing the funky chicken dance to celebrate having played all the bones in his hand.
I served behind the bar, I washed glasses, I restocked the packets of crisps, peanuts and pork scratchings that no one ever seemed to actually buy apart from Don, the fat man who appeared to spend all day, every day at the Nag’s Head and worked his way steadily through pack after pack during his long hours perched at the bar. Shirl even showed me how to clean the beer lines to stop sinister-sounding things called ‘beer stones’ crudding up the pipes and spoiling the punters’ pints.
The rhythm of the pub and the street outside was becoming familiar. I found myself anticipating the sound of the police horses’ hooves as they clattered down the road on their morning exercise. I recognised the voices of the group of mums who passed by outside after doing the school run on the way to their yoga class. When I arrived in the morning, the florist next door would be setting out her display outside, and I grew used to the scent of flowers as I unlocked the cloudy glass door to the Nag’s Head.
But it wasn't just that the pub seemed to have a particular power to lure me in – or that the meagre wage Shirley was paying me was a particularly powerful motivator. Home – the home that had been Joe’s and mine – was feeling increasingly alien, even hostile, with Zoë there.
She was always perfectly friendly to me. She didn’t put salt in my coffee or stick my cashmere jumper on a boil wash or replace my conditioner with hair-removal cream or anything like that. Not that I was tempted to do those things to her either – honest.
But she was there. And, more specifically, she was where Joe was. One Sunday, when he settled on the sofa for a nice long session playing Resident Evil, she joined him and turned out to be ace at it, and I couldn’t even muscle in and be a third wheel because I’d told Joe many, many times that computer games bored me witless. She offered, ever so helpfully, to cook dinner some evenings, and made all Joe’s favourite things – mac and cheese, jacket potatoes with beans, carrot cake – and although they were all vegan versions, he tucked in and had second helpings of everything. She wandered into the bathroom when he was in the bath, and although I heard her say, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise you were in there,’ it took a good ten seconds for her to re-emerge. Long enough for her to have had a good old stare at my boyfriend’s naked body.
And, one Saturday morning in early October, I woke up later than usual and rolled over in bed, reaching out for Joe. But there was no warm body next to me under the duvet – not even the warm indentation his body would have left if he’d just got up. The other side of the bed was empty and, I realised, the flat was silent. I sat up, pushing my tangled hair off my face and rubbing a lump of sleep out of my eye. It was raining; the sky outside was leaden and the light coming through the window was grey and gloomy.
That must have been why I’d overslept. I didn’t need to be at the Nag’s Head until eleven; Joe and I could have enjoyed a long lie-in together, a leisurely brunch, maybe even a sneaky shag, if Zoë had taken herself off somewhere.
Which she clearly had; angling my head, I could just see more dim light filtering through her open door. She was out, and so was Joe. Out together? Surely not.
Fully awake now, I picked up my phone, but I had no new messages from either of them, just a note from Heather saying she had the most brutal hangover in human history and were we still up for lunch on Tuesday.
Then I heard an unfamiliar, clicking sound on the floor, like the world’s tiniest pair of stiletto shoes cautiously entering the room. Not a pair though – four. I looked down and saw Frazzle next to the bed, looking up at me with an expression that was half-wary, half-hopeful.
‘What is it, cat? I bet you’ve had your breakfast.’
Frazzle meowed, then opened his jaws in an enormous yawn. I couldn’t help it – I found myself yawning back at him. He looked at me steadily for a second, then jumped up onto the bed.
‘Hello there. Have you decided you want to be friends?’
He butted his fluffy ginger head against my hand, angling it just so, so that my fingers reached the space behind his ears. The fur there was bright orange and softer than the softest thing. I started to scratch and, seconds later, was rewarded with thunderous purring.
‘Awww. You’re a good cat, aren’t you? You just wanted a cuddle.’
I talked nonsense to him for a bit, and he graciously accepted my fuss, but soon he made it clear that he’d come here for more than ear scritches. He walked over me to Joe’s side of the bed and pushed at the duvet with a fluffy paw.
‘What? You want to get in?’
Clearly, the answer to that was yes. Frazzle’s head joined his paw, burrowing determinedly under the duvet. I lifted it up, curious to see what he’d do, and within seconds, like a ginger guided missile, he was under the covers, thumped onto his side, kneading away at my bare stomach with his paws, purring like a maniac.
I turned over, pulling the covers up over us both, and lay still. I had the feeling that I’d been awarded some kind of rare privilege, and I wasn’t going to blow it. By some form of cat willpower, Frazzle was making it quite clear what he expected of me: I was to be warm and still for as long as he required it.
The sound of his purring was soothing, and the pressure of his claws against my skin oddly comforting, and I found myself drifting back into sleep, and into a strange half-dream in which it wasn’t Zoë’s cat in bed with me, but someone else – a different body that certainly shouldn’t have been there. In my dream, I tried to move away – and I must have done so in real life too, because Frazzle squirmed away from me, snaked his head out from underneath the duvet and wriggled out, walking back over me and jumping to the floor with an affronted meow, just as I heard the front door opening and voices in the hallway.
‘Oh my God, I’m absolutely soaked through! That was mental.’
‘We’d better take our shoes off here – they’re covered in mud.’
‘We’re basically wearing half your local park.’
Joe. Joe and Zoë. Laughing together like
they were having the best fun two people can have.
Wide awake now, feeling a hollow coldness in my stomach, I pulled on my dressing gown and left the bedroom.
Zoë and Joe were in the kitchen, dressed in running kit, both covered in mud from their ankles up to their thighs. Joe even had a smear of it on his cheekbone.
They must not have heard me approaching in my bare feet, because they carried on talking as if I wasn’t there.
‘You’re bloody quick, though,’ Joe said. ‘Your first Parkrun and you totally killed it. What do you reckon your time was?’
‘Twenty-two thirty, maybe?’ Zoë said. ‘I’m not normally a runner but I guess the stuff I do in the gym helps.’
She turned round, and the smile faded from her face when she saw me. But still, even with her hair scraped back from her face, not a trace of make-up and a grass stain on her white top, which had gone see-through from the rain so I could see the turquoise sports bra she had on underneath, she looked bloody gorgeous.
‘Morning, Alice. Did you enjoy your lie-in?’
‘I did try to wake you,’ Joe said. ‘But you weren’t having any of it. I know you hate running in the rain anyway, so I left you to sleep.’
‘Hello, Frazz,’ Zoë said, bending over to fuss her cat. ‘Where have you been?’
Standing there, looking at the two of them, contrasting Zoë’s lithe vitality with my own frumpy sleepiness, the sound of her and my boyfriend’s laughter echoing in my ears, imagining the admiring glances all the men would have given her as she raced past them, I didn’t think I’d ever felt more inadequate.
I had only one weapon, and it was a pretty feeble one. But I used it anyway.
‘Frazzle came into bed with me,’ I said. ‘He slept under the duvet for, like, ages.’
Zoë’s face registered surprise, then outrage, and I felt a small twinge of triumph.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’d better get out of these wet things and into the shower.’
‘And I’d better get myself off to the pub,’ I said, wondering with a sick-making blend of fear and resentment what the two of them might get up to together while I was at work.
But when I opened the door of the Nag’s Head, all thoughts of Zoë vanished from my mind. The pub was never the most fragrant of places – decades of stale beer and an even older ghost of cigarette smoke permeated the atmosphere. But this time, there was a stronger, more pronounced smell – so strong it made my eyes water. I switched on the lights and stood there for a moment, breathing shallowly.
‘What the hell…?’ I said aloud, my voice sounding small in the silence.
But there was no mystery – not really. There was no mistaking that smell. It was like the Portaloos at the end of a festival, or a nightclub toilet at three in the morning. I followed it easily to its source: the men’s toilet.
When I opened the door, I was smacked in the face by a wave of it. The floor was soaking wet, and I could see a creeping tide of liquid flowing slowly over the edge of the metal urinal at the end of the room.
I slammed the door shut and hurried outside, taking deep gulps of fresh air.
I’d come, over the past weeks, to feel like I was beginning to understand the pub: the way that it worked and the things that didn’t; the routine of its days; the people who came and why those that didn’t stayed away. I’d begun to become quite fond of it, as if it had a personality, like a cantankerous old car that ran more or less okay so long as you checked its tyre pressure once a week and topped up the oil and water, even if you’d just done so the day before.
But now, it had revealed a side of itself that I hadn’t known was there: a rebellious streak that I was going to have to tame – and on my own, too, because Shirley was out at a funeral all morning, and had said that if the wake was anything like the last one she’d been to, she’d be in no fit state to work for the rest of the day either.
Only there was no way I was opening the door to that men’s toilet again without some serious backup.
I took my phone out of my bag and googled emergency plumbers.
Ten minutes later, I was still standing outside the door. But now, I was staring at my phone with growing bewilderment and frustration. I’d called no fewer than six different plumbing firms, trotting out a speech that had become second nature after the third call.
‘Hi, I’m calling from the Nag’s Head pub on the high street in Brockley. We seem to have a blocked urinal.’
The responses had all been slightly different, but they might as well have been the same.
‘We’re booked solid right now, love. We might be able to make it out to take a look in a few days.’
‘That’s a big job, darling. We can come out this afternoon but you won’t get much change out of a thousand pounds for the work.’
‘My guv’nor’s out on another job. I’ll ask him to ring you back, but don’t hold your breath.’
As if, considering the stench I could imagine spreading out from the gents through the rest of the pub, I had any option other than to hold my breath.
Finally, on the last call, I got an answer that might not have been what I wanted to hear but was at least honest.
‘I’m not coming out for that, love. Not for all the tea in China.’
‘But it’s your job!’ I said desperately, but it was too late. The line had already gone dead.
I had no idea what to do. The dominoes players would arrive in just a couple of hours, followed shortly by the other regulars. Most of them were men – men of a certain age. Which meant they went to the loo often. If I didn’t sort something out, the whole place would be awash.
I was staring at my phone in frustration, as if a solution might appear by magic on the screen, when a van pulled up outside the empty unit next door to the Nag’s Head. The driver reversed expertly into a parking space, just inches from the kerb, and seconds later he appeared around the back of the van.
Rattling a set of keys, he hurried over, rolled up the shutters that covered the unit next door’s bare windows, then turned and began to walk the few steps back to his van. Then he saw me and turned around again.
‘Hello! Are you working at the pub?’
‘That’s right. My name’s Alice.’
‘Archie.’ He held out a hand and I shook it. ‘I guess we’re neighbours, then. I’ve taken over the shop next door. Craft Fever, it’s going to be called. We’re selling artisan beer and locally made wine, and gin I distil myself. Oh, and honey. My sister has beehives on the roof of her house.’
He was a guy about my age, wearing camouflage shorts and a white T-shirt worn almost transparent with age and washing. His hair was somewhere between blond and brown, and his teeth were very white against his tanned skin when he smiled. He must have been on holiday recently, somewhere hot.
‘We should have a coffee sometime,’ he said. ‘Catch up on the local gossip.’
‘That sounds great,’ I agreed. ‘Only not right now. I’m a bit snowed under. Or rather, pissed under. I’ve got a plumbing problem and no bugger will come out and look at it.’
‘Let me guess. It’s a blocked urinal, right?’
‘Yes! How did you know?’
‘My uncle’s a plumber. He used to tell me and my brother stories – you know when you’re, like, twelve and you love hearing about gross stuff?’
I didn’t; when I was twelve I’d been into ballet and Cosmo Girl magazine. But his smile was so warm and infectious that I felt myself smiling too.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Yeah, so we used to get Uncle Ray to tell us all about rats climbing up drainpipes and being found swimming around in people’s toilets, and fatbergs and all those good things.’
‘Fatbergs? What the hell are those?’ As soon as I asked, I wished I hadn’t.
‘They build up in sewers. They’re solid lumps formed from congealed cooking fat and wet wipes and… uh—’
‘Stop! I’ve heard enough!’
‘Sorry.’ Archie grinned.
‘But anyway, Uncle Ray reckons the grossest thing he ever had to deal with was blocked urinals in pub toilets.’
‘I can kind of see where he’s coming from. The smell in there is… Well, it’s quite something.’
‘Ray told us what happens is – tell me if you want me to stop – the urine forms crystals in the pipes that build up over time. And that, together with the urinal cakes and cleaning products and stuff, gradually builds up into a kind of slime and clogs up the whole pipe. And loads of pubes get stuck in the blockage too, and—’
‘Stop! Too much information!’
Archie laughed. ‘Sorry. Anyway, it’s basically every plumber’s worst nightmare. So lots of them won’t touch it, and those that will charge an absolute fortune.’
‘That’s exactly it! I called five different ones and none of them would come out for less than a grand. So what the hell am I going to do?’
‘You don’t have to do anything,’ Archie said. ‘I’m going to ring Uncle Ray. He’s semi-retired now and he was always kind of old-school, so he never had a website, which I guess is why you didn’t find him online. But he’s based just down the road. He’s got this secret formula he uses to deal with it. Involving Fairy Liquid, apparently.’
‘What? You mean ordinary washing-up liquid?’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. Or was it fairies? Anyway, I’ll call him and then we can go and get a coffee. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said, bemused. ‘I mean, if you’re sure…’
But Archie was already on the phone.
‘He’ll be here in half an hour,’ he said, after he hung up. ‘So we’ve just got time for a coffee. And possibly a bacon roll. Shall we head to the greasy spoon?’
So I locked the front door of the pub – relieved to leave the stench behind – and Archie and I walked the few steps to the Express Café, one of the high-street businesses that had so far escaped the creeping tendrils of gentrification and redevelopment.
Over coffee and breakfast, he told me how he’d taken out the lease on the shop that was to become Craft Fever four months ago, and was refitting it with the help of some mates in the building trade.
Just Saying: An absolutely perfect and feel-good romantic comedy Page 9
