A Question of Us

by Mary Jayne Baker

  ‘What?’

  Si followed her gaze to a group of little kids playing on the bouncy castle, pushing each other over and giggling when they bounced back up again.

  His voice was gentle when he spoke again. ‘Is that what’s behind all this?’

  ‘That along with everything else. Not being able to cope with being an adult. Ruining things for people other than just me, all those times I can barely manage to look after myself.’

  ‘You think you’re the only one who feels like that?’ Si said softly. ‘Everyone worries about not coping, having responsibilities. It’s part of finding your place in the world.’

  She laughed. ‘Thanks, Dear Deirdre.’

  ‘Common sense.’ Si pressed her hand, a half-comforting, half-impatient squeeze. ‘You wouldn’t have to go through that stuff alone, Clarrie. You’ve got me.’

  ‘Jeff and Polly had each other too. All it taught them was to hate each other’s guts.’

  ‘I keep telling you, they’re not us. It’s not the same.’

  ‘Isn’t it though?’

  ‘Jesus, you’re hard work sometimes.’ Simon lifted her hand to his cheek and held it there. He glanced at the laughing kids again. ‘Look like we used to, don’t they?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yeah. Especially that little bugger who keeps pushing the girls over and screeching with laughter. He’s the spit of you.’ For some reason Clarrie felt tears rising, watching the boy who reminded her of the young Simon tease his friends. ‘I wish we could be that happy again, Si. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I wish you could too, Clarissa. I really wish you could.’

  22

  ‘How’d it go then, Sonny?’ Clarrie asked later after she, Sonny, Dave and Gemma had left their old folk to get drunk together and grabbed themselves a table inside the pub. Si was outside getting himself a burger, and Lyndsey had been swept off for a girly chat by Dave’s mum. Polly seemed to have taken quite a shine to her.

  ‘Awful. Well, I dunno, maybe all right.’

  Gemma shook her head. ‘Don’t listen to him, Midwinter. It went great.’

  ‘Your dad still likes him then?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Yeah. No accounting for taste, eh?’ Gemma nudged Sonny in the ribs. ‘So now I just need to finally meet your mum, don’t I?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Clarrie said, raising an eyebrow. ‘You were going out for two years.’

  ‘You’ve met my mum loads of times, Gem,’ Sonny said.

  ‘Yeah, when us lot used to come round yours after school and when she picks you up from the pub,’ Gemma said. ‘Never officially as your girlfriend.’

  ‘Look, just give it time, okay? It’s… delicate.’

  Dave pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Right, I’m going to the bar. Can I get anyone another Oedipus Complex?’

  Sonny glared at him. ‘You what?’

  ‘Just asking if you’d like a drink, mate.’ Dave gestured towards Sonny’s half-empty Guinness. ‘I mean, are you okay with that one or do you want your mother?’

  ‘I do not have an Oedipus Complex.’

  Dave threw his hands up. ‘Woah, where’d that come from? I think you’re hearing things, sunshine.’ He grinned. ‘Mind you, you’re missing out. Your mum’s great in the sack.’

  Clarrie groaned. ‘Not the “I’ve had your mum” jokes again, lads. Honestly, you’ve done them to death.’

  ‘A bit like me with Sonny’s mum.’ Dave smirked round at them. ‘Never gets old. Right, same again for everyone, no excuses. Back in ten.’ He headed off to the bar.

  ‘Well?’ Gemma said to Sonny.

  ‘Just let me build up to it, okay? I’m all Mum’s got since Dad did a bunk. And you know she always wants me to go out with Sikh girls.’

  ‘Come on, your mum’s not that scary. And she knows we went out before.’ Gemma’s eyes widened when she caught his guilty look. ‘You’re kidding me. You never told her we were going out, did you?’

  ‘I meant to, I just… never got round to it.’

  ‘In two bloody years? Jesus, Sunil!’

  ‘Your mum knows you’re not a practising Sikh, Sonny,’ Clarrie said. ‘She made her peace with that years ago. Surely she knows you go out with non-Sikhs.’ She paused, catching his expression. ‘She does know, doesn’t she?’

  Sonny started peeling the paper off a beer mat, looking sheepish. ‘Yeah, she knows, but… there’s a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” thing going on.’

  ‘Sonny, come on, you’re nearly twenty-seven. And your mum’s pretty cool, I bet she’d be glad to see you happy with someone.’

  ‘It’s okay, Clar, I’ve got this,’ Gem said, putting up a hand to silence her. She turned back to Sonny. ‘Take as long as you need, Sunil. I can wait.’

  ‘Really, Gem?’

  ‘Yeah. Take your time, eh? Whenever you’re ready.’

  ‘You’re pretty awesome, you know that?’ Sonny leaned in for a kiss. ‘Love you.’

  ‘Er, yeah, don’t mind me, guys,’ Clarrie muttered. ‘No, no, please, just carry on, I insist. Pretend I’m not here. Oh, you are, aren’t you?’ She glared at the pair of them, locked together at the lips. ‘Fine. I’ll go help Davy with those Freudian slips at the bar then.’

  *

  ‘What’s he setting up now for?’ Sonny said a little later, watching Maserati Tim fixing up his microphone. ‘There’s ages till the quiz.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Si, who’d joined them. ‘There’s another thing. Wait and see.’

  ‘Ahem. Evening all,’ Tim said once his mike was fired up. ‘Got something special for you tonight, might add some flavour to your drinks.’ He nodded to Pete and Yvonne, sitting at a window table with Kath, Greg and the Hendersons. ‘So our regular quizzers will have noticed a couple of old friends back to see us – Pete and Yvonne Dewhirst, late of the Dalai Farmers. Some of you will also know Yvonne’s about to start treatment for breast cancer.’

  A buzz of low voices and some sympathetic clucks suggested this was new information for a few of those present.

  ‘So in honour of Yvonne, a brave lass and tough old bird, before we start the quiz proper we’re going to hold a just-for-fun charity game. I’ll be passing round a tub for everyone to stick in whatever they’d like to give towards a cancer charity picked by the Dewhirsts, and the first three couples up to the front can take part in a game of Mr & Mrs.’

  There was a chorus of ‘ooohs’ and a few groans from the regulars.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, whose bright idea was this?’ Sonny muttered.

  Si glared at him. ‘My mum’s.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry, Si.’ Sonny shot him a double thumbs-up. ‘Top idea, mate.’

  ‘So now I’ll be handing over quizmaster duties to Yvonne for the next hour,’ Tim said as she went up to join him. He unscrewed the microphone from its stand and handed it to her. ‘Here you go, love. Better explain the rules for them too young to remember the telly show.’

  ‘Thanks, Tim.’ Yvonne glanced down at a piece of paper in her hand. ‘So, I’ll be asking the couples taking part a series of questions about each other. My lovely assistant Pete will be keeping score, and the couple who get the most right win a bottle of wine or the equivalent in beer. Everyone clear?’

  There was a hum of affirmatives. Yvonne beamed as a plastic tub chinked generously with coins.

  ‘Right, five minutes to get up to the front if you want to play, then we’ll kick off.’

  ‘You doing it then?’ Si asked Sonny.

  Sonny looked enquiringly at Gemma, who shook her head.

  ‘Nah, sorry,’ he said. ‘Don’t think we’re ready for that level of public humiliation yet.’

  ‘I meant you and Dave.’

  ‘Fuck off, Si.’

  Si glanced at Clarrie. ‘So, kiddo, how about it?’

  She frowned. ‘What, me and you?’

  ‘Yeah, come on, it’ll be a laugh.’

  ‘Your mum said couples though.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, does i
t? You know me pretty well. Plus we can win beer.’

  ‘Good point. Let’s do it.’

  She stood and followed Si to the front, where the landlady was arranging six barstools in two facing rows.

  ‘Oh God. You two aren’t doing it, are you?’ Clarrie said to Kath, who’d also made her way to the front leading a reluctant-looking Greg by the hand.

  Kath shrugged. ‘I had wine.’

  ‘Yeah, I can tell,’ Clarrie said. ‘Don’t embarrass me, Mother. I don’t want to have to disown you again.’

  ‘Oh please. You disown me at least once a week.’

  Greg mouthed a ‘sorry’ at Clarrie as Kath pushed him down onto a barstool and took her seat.

  Dave and Lyndsey were up next. Lyndsey claimed a stool next to Clarrie on the girls’ side, Dave sitting down opposite.

  ‘We won’t win, Lyns.’ Dave jerked his head at Si. ‘Not against these two. They’ve been best mates for like a hundred years.’

  ‘Yeah, but they haven’t seen each other’s bits,’ Lyndsey said. ‘I bet there’ll be questions about that.’

  ‘There better not be. My mum’s here.’

  ‘How do you know they haven’t seen each other’s bits?’ Kath said, leaning unsteadily over Clarrie to talk to Lyndsey.

  Clarrie frowned. ‘Don’t start, Mother, or I’ll cut off your wine supply.’

  ‘You have though, Clarrie,’ Yvonne said, grinning at her as she handed each player a chalkboard. ‘Simon stuck his willy out the window for you to have a look at once when I was drying him after his bath.’

  ‘Ha! When was this?’ Dave asked Si.

  He shrugged. ‘Last year some time?’

  Yvonne hit him over the head with his chalkboard. ‘You were six, you cheeky bugger. Remember, Clarrie?’

  ‘As if she’d forget that,’ Si said, waggling his eyebrows. ‘Impressive, eh, Clar?’

  ‘Sorry, Si, don’t remember it.’

  ‘Actually she cried for an hour,’ Kath said in an audible whisper to Yvonne. ‘Then we had to have the birds and the bees talk.’

  Si winked at Kath. ‘That wasn’t crying, that was her eyes watering.’

  Yvonne shook her head. ‘You know, you get more like your father every day.’

  Pete, seated next to the microphone with his scoring pad, grinned at Simon. ‘Just glad to hear you’ve inherited my greatest asset, son.’

  ‘Shush, you,’ Yvonne said. ‘Scorer has to keep quiet and be eye candy.’

  ‘I can manage that.’ He pulled her between his knees and tickled her hips. ‘You lucky, lucky lady.’

  Yvonne giggled. ‘Get off me, you dirty old sod.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Clarrie buried her face in her hands. ‘Somebody kill me. I mean it. I need to die.’

  Dave patted her knee in solidarity. ‘This is like them drunken family murder mystery nights at your mum’s. Only worse.’

  Si shrugged. ‘Speak for yourselves. I’m having a great time.’

  ‘That’s because you have no shame,’ Clarrie said.

  Lyndsey nudged Clarrie. ‘Are Si’s mum and dad always like this?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yeah, bloody embarrassing Dewhirsts. Pete and Si are a bad influence on each other too.’

  ‘God, I’d be devastated if it was my mum and her boyfriend.’ Lyndsey glanced at Pete and Yvonne, giggling together on Pete’s stool. ‘Still. Looks like a laugh.’

  Yvonne finally extricated herself from her husband’s wandering hands. ‘Okay, let’s get cracking. Welcome to our three lovely couples. Representing the old people, we’ve got Kath and Greg.’

  There was a semi-enthusiastic round of applause from the gathered drinkers.

  Kath shot her best friend a look. ‘Old people. You’ll be getting a slap in a minute.’

  ‘Watch out for her, she’s a mean drunk,’ Clarrie mouthed to Yvonne.

  ‘Shush.’ Yvonne raised a finger for silence. ‘Right, next up we’ve got my own little angel Simon and his friend Clarrie.’

  ‘Angel my arse,’ Dave muttered.

  ‘And finally, young David Henderson and his girlfriend Lyndsey. Kath won the toss so she gets to go first.’ Yvonne turned to her friend. ‘Okay, Katherine. I’m going to ask Greg a question about you and he’ll write his answer on his slate. Then you tell me your answer and we see if they match. Understand?’

  Kath nodded.

  ‘Right then. Where did you have your first kiss?’

  Clarrie retched theatrically. ‘Please, God, not that…’

  ‘I think it was just under Greg’s moustache,’ Si said. Greg smiled good-naturedly as he scribbled down his answer.

  Yvonne held the microphone to Kath for her answer. She leaned over to Clarrie and clapped both hands over her ears.

  ‘Outside Denworth Memorial Hall, waiting for a taxi after race night,’ Kath said.

  There was a cheer as Greg held up his chalkboard to reveal the right answer.

  ‘I heard that.’ Clarrie shook her head at her mum. ‘Can’t believe you let him snog you the night you met. Kiss slut.’

  Kath flicked her daughter’s right earlobe. ‘Oi. Don’t call your mother a slut. I’ll ground you.’

  ‘Twenty-six, Mother.’

  ‘Don’t care. I had wine.’

  ‘Yeah, I think everyone in the pub’s worked that out by now.’

  ‘Okay, Clarrie, you’re next,’ Yvonne said.

  ‘All right, what’s my question?’

  ‘Same one, that’s how it works.’

  ‘Oh, what? That’s not fair, we aren’t even a couple.’

  Yvonne shrugged. ‘Game’s called Mr & Mrs, you knew that when you volunteered. Just make something up if you haven’t got an answer.’

  Clarrie scuffed her foot against the crossbar of the barstool. ‘Got an answer,’ she muttered. Si was already scribbling, grinning from ear to ear at the prospect of embarrassing her.

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Corridor outside our Geography classroom, Year Nine. We’d been sent out for talking and chewing gum.’

  Yvonne glared at Si. ‘’Zat so, son of mine? Talking in class and then snogging girls when you were supposed to be getting punished? I’ll be telling your father of you.’

  Pete gave him a thumbs-up. ‘That’s my boy.’

  ‘Cheers, Dad,’ Si said, nodding at his father. ‘Not the answer I’ve got on my little chalky thing anyway, Clar.’ He held it up.

  ‘Kiss Chase?’ Clarrie shook her head. ‘Doesn’t count.’

  ‘Why doesn’t it count? Kissed you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah, but not with tongues.’

  ‘I should hope not,’ Kath said, sending her a look. ‘Can’t believe you called me a kiss slut, Little Miss Tonsil Hockey.’

  ‘Yeah, well. You’re an old lady.’

  ‘At least I am a lady.’

  After Dave and Lyndsey both correctly remembered they’d first kissed on the dance floor at the Hole in t’Wall a few months earlier, Yvonne moved on to the next question.

  ‘Right, at the end of that round Clarrie and Simon are behind, so they get to go first. What film does your partner choose to cheer herself up? Boys guess this time, so off you go, Clarrie.’

  ‘Easy,’ Si said when Clarrie had finished scribbling. ‘Cheesy action film, every time.’

  ‘Going to need a specific title, Simon.’

  ‘Top Gun then.’

  Clarrie smiled and held up her board to reveal he’d got the right answer. There was a loud cheer from the pub, which seemed to have decided it was Team Si for some reason.

  ‘Okay, Dave, you’re up next,’ Yvonne said. ‘What’s her cheer-up film?’

  Dave frowned. ‘Dunno, we’ve not watched many films. Er… something with Audrey Hepburn maybe, she’s got a poster of her. Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’

  ‘Sorry, Davy.’ Lyndsey held up her board to reveal Reservoir Dogs.

  Dave’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really? How do you get from Hepburn to Tarantino?’

  Lyndsey shru
gged. ‘I’m a woman of many parts.’

  ‘He knows, he’s seen them,’ Si said. ‘Ow.’ He rubbed his thigh where Dave had punched him.

  ‘And you watch that to cheer yourself up, do you? With the ear bit and everything?’ Dave shook his head. ‘You know, I’m starting to worry you might be a psychopath.’

  ‘Bother you?’ Lyndsey asked.

  ‘Nah.’

  After Greg failed to guess Kath’s cheer-up film was Gigi, the teams were equal on a point each and Yvonne announced that the next round would move to lowest score elimination.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Lyndsey, you’re first. What would your partner say is his favourite part of your body?’

  A massive shout of ‘tits!’ went up from the audience. Dave’s predilection for that particular part of the female anatomy was well known around the Denworth pub circuit.

  Lyndsey blushed. ‘Er, yeah, what they said.’

  ‘Hey, I am not that predictable,’ Dave said with an affronted air. ‘There’s more to me than tits, you know.’

  Clarrie raised her eyebrows at him.

  ‘Ugh. Fine.’

  He held his board up in front of his chest to reveal a sketched pair of breasts, then looked down, head cocked, to appraise the new addition to his body.

  ‘Nice,’ Lyndsey said, nodding. ‘You’ve worked in some good detail around the nipples there. Flattered you were paying such close attention.’

  Si was already scribbling. Clarrie narrowed her eyes at him.

  ‘We’d better not be getting three sets of tits in a row here, Simon Dewhirst. Bloody blokes.’

  He glanced up from his board. ‘Don’t talk about that many tits around Dave, you know what it does to him.’

  She grinned. ‘Yeah. Go on, Davy, cross your legs.’

  Lyndsey nudged her. ‘Oi. I will be providing all Dave’s leg-crossing stimulation from now on, ta very much.’

  ‘Love it when you go all bunny boiler for me, Lyns.’ Dave blew her a kiss.

  ‘Have you got an answer, Clarrie?’ Yvonne asked.

  It was a tough one. Clarrie tried to think about the times she’d been alone with Si, all the occasions he’d asked her out. All she saw was his face, those long lashes and dark, expressive…

  ‘Um, my eyes?’