Wanoah

Scott Reid swore as he tripped over the chalk­board sign. Gusts of wind were howl­ing out of the North tonight, let­ting every­one know that winter still had some bite in it yet, and cas­u­ally mak­ing Scott’s life miser­able. He hadn’t grabbed his coat on the way out and, as a con­sequence, he was bloody frozen. Now, the wind had con­spired to knock this sign over for him to trip over in the dark­ness. The sign announced “Quiz Night!” to the sky. Scott kicked it out of his way, only slightly hurt­ing his foot, his mood unim­proved by the new intel­li­gence that the pub he was going into was hav­ing a quiz night.

Quiz nights, of course, are the enemy of any­one who is head­ing to the pub for a quiet drink and a chat with a friend. Lots of people seem to enjoy quiz nights. Scott wasn’t one of these people. He hoped that by kick­ing the sign into a dark corner he would have struck a small blow against the Quiz Night Tyranny.

The pub was too large for meet­ing people really. It had two levels and two entrances and plenty of scope for wan­der­ing around fail­ing to find your friends entirely. Still, it also had sofas for set­tling into for an exten­ded ses­sion of drink­ing, so that was some­thing in its favour. Scott opted to prop up the bar where at least he could see most of the room and spot his mate when he arrived. Scott was early, Jon was always late. That’s the way it had always been, and prob­ably always would be. He ordered a bottle of Beck’s and settled in to wait.

He observed people arriv­ing in their twos and threes with a vague dis­in­terest. No one was famil­iar, and why would there be now? It had been years since he’d really known any­one in this town other than his par­ents. Except for Jon, who was the only guy from the old days to have hung around. Scott drif­ted into remin­is­cence then, as he sipped on his beer. What had this place been back then? Some ter­rible townie shite­hole that they’d never gone to. Probably.

He found his eyes sud­denly com­ing sharply back into focus and his dis­in­terest evap­or­at­ing as the lone girl walked in. She moved uncer­tainly, look­ing for someone, and not see­ing them, moved up to the bar next to Scott. She had his full atten­tion, because in con­trast to every­body else he’d seen in here, this girl was attract­ive. She was small, although he wouldn’t go quite as far as petite. Partly because, if pushed, he’d struggle to define exactly what petite even means. She was wear­ing sneak­ers, jeans and a faded red hoodie — all of which barely registered with Scott because his eyes wandered to her face and stayed there until she glanced his dir­ec­tion and he had to look away. Light brown hair framed a face with high cheekbones, a del­ic­ate mouth and light brown almond-shaped eyes. She had a nat­ural, unaf­fected look. Scott could ima­gine girls that slaved over hot make-up for hours every day just to leave the house bitch­ing and grous­ing about this girl’s appar­ently effort­less attractiveness.

With a small sigh of regret, Scott sipped at his beer and indulged him­self in a small fantasy where he actu­ally star­ted talk­ing to this girl, and it was all nat­ural and easy and right. This flight of fancy was inter­rup­ted by his phone announ­cing an incom­ing text. He pulled the phone out of his pocket, and as he looked at its screen, he tried another sur­repti­tious glance at the girl and flushed as he saw she was look­ing in his dir­ec­tion. She was drink­ing Beck’s too. ‘Could even be a con­ver­sa­tion opener?’ he thought, but the next thought quickly trounced that idea: ‘Nah. Lame.’ And it was.

The text was from Jon: “What time were we sup­posed to be meeting?”

Scott sighed. The guy never changed. “NOW!” He replied.

A minute passed, then, “OK hav­ing shower then omw.”

Scott muttered darkly under his breath, “Some fuck­ing people.”

Prop­ping up the bar, he scanned the room, watch­ing other people jok­ing and laugh­ing. The girl next to him was clearly employ­ing the same strategy as he was to spot who­ever it was she was meet­ing. He assumed it would be her boy­friend, and it would nat­ur­ally fol­low that the boy­friend would be a god amongst men. Scott hated him already. Still, the god­like boy­friend had so far failed to show, so obvi­ously he hadn’t attained a state of per­fec­tion quite yet. Every so often, Scott risked another glance at her, and on one occa­sion he caught an expres­sion of such pro­found sad­ness on her face that he felt a small lurch in his stom­ach. Or maybe he was just pro­ject­ing? Look­ing for reas­ons to ride in on his steed, with the shiny armour and shit? Scott did that.

Soon, too soon, he needed another beer. He waited to catch the barman’s atten­tion, and after what felt like an inter­min­able wait, the bar­man sauntered over. Then ignored him com­pletely. Of course.

“I’ll have another Beck’s please,” said the girl. Well of course the bar­man would serve the pretty girl with the sad brown eyes first. Scott would have done the same.

“You tak­ing part in the quiz tonight then?” the bar­man asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” said the girl. Her voice was soft, accentless.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I don’t really like quizzes anyway.”

“Alright then,” he turned to Scott, “What about you then?”

“Nah. I’ll have a beer though, cheers.”

The bar­man plonked a bottle of Beck’s in front of him. “Look, I tell you what,” he said look­ing at the girl and includ­ing her, “Why don’t the two of you just form a little team and enter, eh? It’ll be fun!”

Scott’s heart skipped a beat, and he opened his mouth to say, “Yeah. OK.”

Before Scott could say any­thing, though, the girl had glanced at him without really see­ing him — she looked through him — and said, “No. No thanks.” Scott and the bar­man were thus dismissed.

Time passed. Another beer was drunk. Another beer was ordered. Scott’s irrit­a­tion grew, and he noticed the girl’s own irrit­a­tion grow­ing in tan­dem with his. They had so much in com­mon. He noted the thin lips and the line grow­ing deeper between her eye­brows. Her eyes glittered. After a time, she walked off, leav­ing her beer half-finished. After a few minutes, she returned, a phone pressed to her ear and her face thun­der­ous. “So, that’s it then? That’s all you can say? Right.” No good­bye. She hung up and smacked the phone down on the bar. Grim-faced, she drank her beer with determination.

Another text, then. “Run­ning late. GF called.” Fuck­ing Jon. It’s alright wait­ing five or ten minutes for someone. Any more than that and you start to feel a bit of a dick. Like a spare dick at a wed­ding, as Jon might say. If he was there.

The bar­man reappeared to serve the pretty girl. She ordered beer and a whisky chaser. She meant busi­ness, it seemed.

“You sure you won’t enter the quiz?”

The sigh was aud­ible, even above the babble of voices in the now busy pub. “Oh, OK then.” The girl relen­ted and handed over money in exchange for a pen­cil and an answer sheet.

“What’s your team name going to be?”

“Oh, for f– I don’t know,” she thought for a second, her eyes nar­rowed, then, “Yeah. Lady Vengeance.”

Scott spot­ted the con­ver­sa­tional oppor­tun­ity. He’d seen Lady Ven­geance only recently. They could talk about films and Korea and sub­titles. It could be awe­some. He held his tongue, how­ever. He didn’t even exist for this girl, and he didn’t want to risk fur­ther humi­li­ation. Besides, either the myth­ical boy­friend, if that wasn’t him on the phone earlier, or the starting-to-seem-mythical Jon would show up at any minute and des­troy any pos­sib­il­ity of…well, anything.

The quiz got under­way, and was intensely irrit­at­ing. As expec­ted. The quiz­mas­ter was loud and jolly and amp­li­fied. He was the sort of per­son that ended every sen­tence with an exclam­a­tion mark. Scott decided that he would always type in CAPS if he ever used a computer.

Just as things seemed to be com­ing to a mer­ci­ful and rel­at­ively quick end, it was announced that it was the end of Round One. Scott wondered just how many rounds there would be, and just how long it would be before Jon finally showed. He played Tet­ris on his phone. Badly.

At the end of the second round, the answer papers were col­lec­ted and after a few minutes, the cur­rent stand­ings were announced.

“Aaannd in third place, with 36 points, we have Uni­ver­sally Chal­lenged!” There were some half-hearted whoops from a dark corner.

“Aaaaan­nnd neck and neck, in first place, we have Team Smarty Pints, who have won the last five weeks in a row lest we for­get!” Loud men cheered loudly and drummed their palms on their table, “Aand tied with them — ooer!” More cheers, “We have new­comer Lady Ven­geance! Both teams are on 40 points! Give us all a wave, Lady Vengeance!”

The Girl remained per­fectly still.

“Aww, come on little girl, gis a smile!” Shouted one of Team Smarty Pints.

“Dunno about a smile. What about a kiss, love?” Another Smarty Pint leered to gen­eral laughter.

The Girl looked mur­der­ous, but said nothing.

Scott tried to fil­ter out the rest of the quiz, but it is impossible in the end. The ques­tions start to pen­et­rate your con­scious­ness. You start to answer them. You start to think about them. You start to get involved. By the end of the final round, Scott was fully pay­ing atten­tion, hav­ing given up Jon as a lost cause. This was spec­tac­u­larly late even by Jon’s standards.

If and when Jon did turn up, Scott felt like sug­gest­ing they should imme­di­ately decamp to dif­fer­ent loc­a­tion. The atmo­sphere here had changed with the quiz. It was nor­mally a fairly quiet sort of pub: com­pletely inof­fens­ive. As the quiz ques­tions had gradu­ally intruded on his thoughts, how­ever, he’d become aware of the rivalry between some of the teams. Team Smarty Pints were espe­cially vocal as things pro­gressed. Scott couldn’t see them clearly, but he had an impres­sion of a table of over­weight middle-aged men. The banter had an ugly tone to it. He’d heard it all before, of course, but usu­ally out­side foot­ball grounds. He could sense the ten­sion rising. He could hear the implied viol­ence in the tone of voice and the crude jokes that were loudly told for the bene­fit of out­siders and rauc­ously respon­ded to. It felt like things would kick off any minute. He’d also noted the com­ments dir­ec­ted towards The Girl and he felt the begin­nings of a sense of pro­tect­ive­ness towards her. He was sure she could look after her­self, but nonetheless…

Jon arrived then, in a flurry of apo­lo­gies and excuses. Beer was bought.

“I didn’t real­ise there’d be a fuck­ing pub quiz for feck’s sake,” Jon moaned, look­ing around with dis­gust, “We gonna fuck off some­where else or what?”

“I was think­ing that, but I’m not sure,” Scott said, glan­cing over Jon’s shoulder at The Girl.

Jon turned to fol­low Scott’s gaze, then looked back at him with a grin, “Ah! I see we have an agenda here, then.”

“No, it’s just-”

“It’s just that she’s pretty and you want to be cook­ing her break­fast tomor­row. That’s per­fectly fine,” Jon took a big gulp of his Guin­ness, giv­ing him­self an off-white mous­tache, “And frankly, my man, it’d be about fuck­ing time.”

“I don’t think so, to be honest.”

“In the TV series Star Trek, how many crew mem­bers were aboard Cap­tain Kirk’s USS Enter­prise? Plus or minus 20.”

“Jesus,” said Jon. It was a gen­eral statement.

“It’s just that there’s some wank­ers over there that look like they might be trouble, and I just want-”

“To be the knight in shin­ing armour? You are such a romantic twat, Scott Reid. I thought you journos were sup­posed to be hard-nosed cynics!”

“I inter­view authors for the Lit­er­ary Review. Last week, I took tea with that crazy cat guy. I’m about as far from the hard-nosed journo ste­reo­type as you can get. It’s not exactly what I dreamt of doing, quite honestly.”

“Oh? What did you dream of doing?”

“Well, Wood­ward and Bern­stein, you know? Chan­ging the world with the power of the writ­ten word. That sort of thing.”

“Which former ward attend­ant in a psy­chi­at­ric hos­pital wrote ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’?”

“I think you missed that by a mar­gin there,” said Jon, “Still, there’s worse ways to make a living.”

“Aye.” They drank in silence for a minute. “Any­way, I just want to make sure she’s OK.”

“Sure you do.” Jon drained his pint, a man on a mis­sion to catch up with his friend, “You know, there’s one thing I don’t get wit you, Scott.”

“What’s that?”

“You talk to people. For a liv­ing. How is it, then, that you have failed to talk to this girl a few feet behind me that you can’t take your eyes off?”

“The name of which fabled food means ‘immor­tal’ when translated?”

“It’s dif­fer­ent,” said Scott.

“Dif­fer­ent? You mean they’re different?”

“Well, no, but yeah, they are.”

“Oh, not so dif­fer­ent really. I mean, they look just like us: two arms, two legs, two eyes…”

“Two faces. Aye.”

“Oh, so bit­ter. I mean: fuck. How long’s it been? Eight­een months? Two years? You have to get back in the cock­pit or you’ll for­get what all the con­trols do.”

“OK, last ques­tion folks, then we’ll be col­lect­ing up your answer sheets!”

“I’m picky,” Scott shrugged.

“You ask me, beg­gars can’t be choosers.”

“I wasn’t ask­ing you.”

“No, but I told you any­way. Let’s get another one in, eh?”

“Ladies and gen­tle­men! We have ourselves a tiebreaker situ­ation! The lovely Lady Ven­geance and Team Smarty Pints are tied in first place with a max­imum sixty points each!” There was a mix­ture of groans and applause around the room.

“I’m off to drain the python,” said Jon.

“Thanks for sharing.”

“Quiet please. This is the ques­tion that will decide who walks away with tonight’s grand prize. Here we go, then. Who scored the win­ning goal in the 1967 European Cup Final?”

There was a silence, then: “You are fuck­ing jok­ing. A fuck­ing foot­ball ques­tion?” The Girl prac­tic­ally exploded. Her voice had risen an octave, becom­ing almost a squeak. There was jeer­ing laughter from Team Smarty Pints.

“Stevie Chalmers,” Scott whispered, going for the loudest stage whis­per he could man­age. If The Girl had heard him, there was no indic­a­tion. She simply walked. She didn’t look right nor left as she made a beeline for the nearest exit. There were whistles from the Smarty Pints table, and Scott saw one of them lean out as The Girl passed them and try to grab her arse. He missed, and lean­ing too far, fell sprawl­ing on the floor to rauc­ous laughter.

“Well then! Well then! It looks like Lady Ven­geance won’t be get­ting any tonight!” The quiz­mas­ter paused for the inev­it­able laughter, “And this means that Team Smarty Pints win by default!” There were cheers from the Smarty Pints and a loud shout of ‘cheat!’ from else­where in the room. “Con­grat­u­la­tions lads: six weeks in a row now.”

“Well thank fuck that’s over,” said Jon, return­ing from the toilets.

“Quite.”

“Oh, I see your girl­friend has left for the even­ing. Pity.”

“Well, you say that, but any­way, what are the chances of find­ing someone right for you at ran­dom in a pub? It’s a ridicu­lous notion.”

“I like to look at it like this. I mean, what do we know? Let’s look at the facts. Just the facts, Jack. We know that she likes a drink. So do you. We know that she’s know­ledge­able about sev­eral areas, includ­ing lit­er­at­ure. You at least know some use­less bol­locks about wanky books: you write about that shit for a liv­ing for chris­sakes. You know, I’m already see­ing a com­mon ground here.”

“Pfft. She has a bad tem­per, though. You should’ve seen her when she walked, no, stormed out of here.”

“Fiery, eh? Well, I bet that would trans­late in the bed­room, you know?” All that was miss­ing was a nudge and a wink.

“Mebbes, but still, it could never work.”

“Why’s that?”

“She knows fuck all about football.”

Over the next twenty minutes, a kind of calm des­cen­ded on the pub. Num­bers thinned as some of the quiz night losers depar­ted. Team Smarty Pints were still loud and obnox­ious, but it was an inwards kind of obnox­ious­ness rather than dir­ec­ted at other people. Jon and Scott settled in for more drink­ing and the talk rambled over the famil­iar and safe ter­rit­ory of the world of football.

“You know, I still think the best thing would be a mer­ger between the two com­pet­i­tions, Celtic and -”

“No, that would just be wrong.”

“Wrong? What kind of argu­ment is that!”

“It’s the kind of argu­ment you deploy when you need a piss!” Jon grinned broadly and staggered towards the gents.

Mira­cu­lously, Scott man­aged to attract the atten­tion of the bar­man straight away, “I’ll have another Beck’s. No I won’t. Er…two pints of Guin­ness, please.”

“Two pints of Gui-”

BOOM.

The noise was shock­ing. It imme­di­ately over­rode all senses. After­wards, the silence rang.

A girl screamed then.

BOOM.

May­hem star­ted. There were screams. Lots of screams. People ran. Oth­ers peered round look­ing shocked and con­fused, before con­clud­ing that they should be run­ning from whatever was hap­pen­ing as well. Scott stayed where he was, unwill­ing to pile into the back of a crowd of pan­ick­ing people. Later, he jus­ti­fied it as an unwill­ing­ness to aban­don his friend, but the truth was that he was simply stunned into iner­tia. What the hell was happening?

As people ran, some fall­ing to be trampled, Scott could see a calm centre to the storm. He saw The Girl. She was stand­ing by the table that Team Smarty Pints had occu­pied — still occu­pied, he saw. She was calmly break­ing a shot­gun and remov­ing the smoking shells. It was almost a ludicrous sight: the shot­gun was far too big for her, giv­ing her an almost child­like appear­ance as she struggled to wield it. At her feet, how­ever, some­thing bloody twitched and tried to crawl, and there was noth­ing inno­cent about that. Almost lost in the noise, Scott could hear a man’s voice, “No…no…please…please.” The Girl fin­ished load­ing the shot­gun. “Ohgodplease-”

BOOM.

The plead­ing stopped. The Girl turned and -

BOOM.

- fired into the back of the flee­ing crowd. She stepped closer to the bar, paus­ing to pick up a duffel bag. Scott was still rooted to the spot. He stared at her. Her face was an impass­ive mask. She broke the shot­gun again, rum­maged in the bag for shells and reloaded. She scanned the almost-empty pub, then her gaze fell on Scott. He wished that he’d run with every­body else. Why didn’t he run?

“So is this it then?”

The Girl didn’t hear him. He couldn’t even be sure that she saw him. He saw her, though. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Blood spattered her hoodie. She looked beau­ti­ful. Ter­ri­fy­ing. Insane. But beau­ti­ful nonetheless.

The spell broke as she put both bar­rels in her mouth. It wasn’t going to work. The gun was too long for her. She couldn’t reach the trig­ger with the bar­rel in her mouth. The impass­ive mask shattered as fear and anguish chased each other across her face. For a second, she made eye con­tact with Scott, and there was a look of mute appeal. Scott shook his head.

He watched as The Girl sat on the floor and pulled off her shoes. Con­verse All­stars he noted: one of those irrel­ev­ant details that incon­gru­ously sear them­selves into the memory. She pulled off her socks too. Then, she lay down on the dirty pub car­pet with its gar­ish col­ours. She curled up into a loose foetal pos­i­tion, hug­ging the shot­gun like an ugly lover, her lips closed over its busi­ness end. She was able to reach the trig­gers with her toes, and -

BOOM.

Scott looked away. But he had to look back. He didn’t want to, but there was a com­pul­sion there. She had rolled over on to her back, her knees still together and point­ing in one dir­ec­tion. Her arms were spread out like some par­ody of a cru­ci­fix­ion. If you dis­reg­arded the cone of gore pro­ject­ing away from her, you could almost believe that she was asleep. Her face was still intact and looked unreas­on­ably peace­ful given what had just occurred. She was still beautiful.

Later, as he waited to give his state­ment to the police, the head­line for the story that would revital­ise his career came to him: Sym­pathy For Lady Vengeance.