Huts75

Baba-ra, Barbaaara, Barbie the barmaid, prodded at me and told me not to sleep at the bar. She didn’t understand and didn’t look too great herself. I was just about to tell her that when my mouth slammed shut, like a mousetrap that had caught a stray thought.

‘That’s what you think Cyclops,’ I said, snatching my pint from her grasp.

I couldn’t remember if Cyclops had one big eye or two. Brilliant film. Brilliant film. Apart from that Jason and the Argonauts fighting wee skeleton men, that kept getting broken and jumping up again, with wee tiny metal skelfs for swords. They were rubbish. Made out of Plasticine or something.

‘Where do you want me to sleep then Baaaarbara, next to the pool table,’ I said, but she was already away annoying somebody else, which I thought was very ignorant. If she was going to start an argument it was only fair that she stuck about until it was finished.

‘Whoa,’ said Barry Ferguson, making a grab, for me. ‘You almost fell off your stool.

‘A know,’ I said, ‘It’s no really my fault. It’s my eyes’.

‘Watch it,’ said Barry, dragging me away from the bar, but it was only somebody fighting beside me and nothing to do with me. ‘Will you be ok?’

‘Course I will,’ I replied, ‘all I need’s another pint. What you having?’

‘Nothing,’ said Barry shaking his head and pulling me away from a flying bar stool.

‘C’mon,’ I said, ‘have a wee half?’

‘The bell went for the last orders half an hour ago,’ he said.

‘A know, they might not serve anybody, but they’ll serve me,’ and I wandered over to the bar.

‘Cyclops,’ I said, using her other name, because I’d forgotten her Christian one. But I hadn’t forgot my manners. I put each word in its proper order, picking them out and lining them up, before trying each word on my tongue, like a doubloon, but also stringing it out, like a real conversation at the bar, ‘how about You, giving Me, a Half of Whiskey, and Half of Lager, for my very good friend, Barry Ferguson. And the same for myself.’

Cyclops just ignored me and continued stacking the glasses piled up at the bar into the dirty basin and the clean basin, underneath the pint taps.

I said nothing more and might even have rested my eyes.

‘A half of whiskey,’ I shouted.

But she just glared at me and went on banging glasses together; a miasma mist of steam falling around her like bad breath on a clear day. She looked at me as if it was my fault she wasnae serving me. I turned my head slowly so not to rush things too much. I was just going to say to Barry that you’d have thought that a woman with one eye would have been glad of the attention, but he was gone; had sneaked away and left me, which was good because I’d have probably told him what I really thought of him.

‘Up the road you,’ said Pat Loch, the owner.

The Kray twins would only have argued with Pat because they were two of them. I was just myself, so I said nothing.

‘It’s ok, I’ll make sure he gets home,’ said Gillian Ambrose, in her Brummie accent and slipping her arm through mine.

‘What did you do with…’ I couldn’t remember his name. Then I saw him, standing at the edge of the stage like a Snoddy Snodgrass, nursing the last of his pint and looking over at us as if he’d lost a ten bob note.

Ha. I wanted to shout over at him. But then remembered that although Gillian smelled nice, as fresh as packet of Polo mints standing next to me, I was in love with Maureen Hargreaves and I wasn’t ever going home without her. Gillian tugged at my arm and pulled me off balance so that I almost fell and she stumbled with me toward the exit.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said.

But it was too late; we were outside. A couple of my dad’s pals shuffled by us, made small, bent over, weighed down with the drink. I couldn’t remember their names, but I didn’t think they could either. Gillian stood beside me patiently, as if I was a horse ready to bolt, her breath making plumes in the air. I turned my head sharply to look at her. But she had hold of my arm tugging me gently away from the pub doors and up towards the bluebell woods.

‘How did you fail that exam?’ The thought had come suddenly up and out of my mouth without me thinking it, as if someone else, perhaps James Munn, had put those very words in my mouth.

‘Just did,’ she said, biting down on her thin lips.

‘But howww? We knew the questions.’

I was going to say that Barry Ferguson had given us the questions, but some part of me didn’t trust her Englishness, especially if she was shagging James Munn.

‘I need to pee,’ I said pulling away from her warmth.

‘Go on then,’ she said, looking at me.

‘A cannae pee if you’re looking at me,’ I said.

She snorted. ‘It’s not as if I’ve not seen it before. A peck on the cheek. Every chance you get you’re bouncing it off my body.’

I didn’t think she’d noticed. I stumbled behind some bushes glad she couldn’t see my red face. I was half hoping she would be away and half hoping she wouldn’t. But she was still standing on the dirt path, with her arms folded like a teacher, waiting for a progress report.
‘You go up that way,’ I said, waving my arms about to show her the path the Halls of Residence love-rat nest she shared with James Munn.

‘If you weren’t going to walk me up the path I’d have went by the main road.’ She wiped her knickers down and peed like a wain at a stank. ‘What?’ she said, still angry, ‘do you think all girls are like the Queen, with a portable toilet always two-steps away?’

I didn’t know what to say; ran out of words. She pulled her pants up and put her arm through mine. I tried not to look down and check that she hadn’t wiped her hands on my best shirt. We came to the Y in the path, where I went down through the bluebell woods and over the stepping-stones and home, and she went up by the Old Folk’s and into the Halls. She said nothing, just tugged at my arm, like she was flying a kite and guided me up and up the way.

We stopped just at the wall to the Old Folk’s. Her tongue found mine and we got as close as two Rizla papers I tried not to think about my growing hard on and what she’d said earlier.

‘Are you coming up?’ she said breathlessly, licking, rather than kissing at my lips.

‘What about James Munn?’ I asked.

‘James Munn. James Munn. You don’t believe all that hogwash about me and him do you?’

Her eyes were those of a Gorgon, but it was her body that pulled away from me that was flinty and hard.

‘No,’ I said, ‘of course not. But you do spend rather a lot of time together’.

‘He is our tutor,’ she said, ‘and I’ve got a very important re-sit. So yeh, he does help me. And yeh, he does want in my pants, but that’s never going to happen. And who else is there? I’ve tried to make friends, but it’s so insular here. Everybody knows everybody else. And you hate outsiders. Even you. The only reason you’re here is so you can put your little thing inside me, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘of course not.’

She pushed me back two steps and looked at my face, until I had to look away from her prying eyes. ‘So why are you here then?’ she asked.

I tried to close the gap between us, to kiss her lips and hold her tight, in a clinch, but she pushed me again, so that we were like two boxers waiting for the bell. I took a deep breath.

‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ I finally said.

That seemed to satisfy some part of her. Her body slackened and she reached out and gently touched my arm, as if to say ‘there, there’, and I felt better telling her the truth.

‘Seriously, you didn’t think I was shagging James Munn, did you? I mean, he’s much older than me.’

‘No, NO,’ I said perhaps too quickly. ‘But you’re three years older than me’.

‘C’mon,’ she giggled, leaning in to kiss me, ‘you can tell me. You didn’t think I was shagging him, did you?’

It was a joke now. ‘No,’ I said pecking at her lips.

‘Look,’ she said, pulling away from me like a wraith once more, ‘what are you doing? You can come up and stay, or you can go home. I’m sick of this sneaking about. We can be girlfriend-boyfriend or we can be just friends. It’s up to you, what do you want?’

I stood looking at her eyes, her lips and her mouth, weighing them up, as if she was a stranger. My brain paused, told me to go down the road and go to my bed. But my body said different. The truth stuck out like a flagpole.

‘I want to be girlfriend-boyfriend,’ I said firmly, as if I was reading my rights.

‘That’s good,’ she said, just as firmly taking my hand, and leading me up the step and into the Halls of Residence.