The Nag and Noose

The Nag and Noose

He took her hostage the moment he saw her. That’s what they do, you know. Alcoholics. They don’t take lovers or make friends. They capture and kidnap and he wrote her ransom note the first time he spoke to her. He sent it out as he settled himself on his habitual barstool, the leather worn away by years of his rear end calling it home.

“You all right, wee girl? You’re new, aren’t you?”

She had never really known this kind of pub in any intimate way before. Her parents hadn’t been big drinkers, and her student years had been spent stumbling between anonymous bars. She had never before frequented anywhere that bore the imprint of a personality or an arsecrack. Regulars, that’s what they called them, as though they were any of them regulated. Her manager had warned her about him, as part of an introductory lecture given on the species of this ecosystem:

“For a start, dinnae let anyone put Cliff Richard’s ‘Miss You Nights’ on on the jukebox. It makes Jimmy Randall greet and start taking oot pictures of his daughter what died. On Sundays, John Roy brings in his wife for a roast and naebody’s to let on about his affair wi’ the lassie in the Post Office. Jenny Logan’s no’ allowed to do the pub quiz for she cheats, and Ross McCall isnae allowed to use the fruit machine, cos one time he punched it. Joe Jamieson is an alchie, no’ a bad man despite a’ that trouble a few years back. Does most of his drinking at home, just comes here for the company. Don’t let him have more than a few glasses; don’t want him getting pished under my watch. That foreign man, Louis…cannae mind where he’s from, Serbia or Latvia or somewhere like that…he usually keeps him right.”

Yes, she told Joe Jamieson, she was new. This was her first shift. Funny, she thought, he doesn’t look like an alcoholic.
“What’s your name? Where did you escape from? How the hell did you end up here?”
She told him. His eyebrows rose when she confirmed she was English, but this didn’t stop him eyeing her hungrily. She had just finished university, and was here to work as the assistant librarian. Well-paid jobs were rare; she’d top up her income here.
“What a TRAGEDY, a lovely wee lassie like you, ending up here! Which university did you go to?”
She named his own alma-mater, and she was surprised when he told her that. He gripped this common ground with the same desperate tightness that he gripped his glass. She answered his every question, and there were many. She would later find out he was a Catholic too; perhaps this explained their dynamic. Inquisitor and confessor.

“Did you like it, Annie?..What did you study, Annie?..Do you know Dr. Miller?...Aye, he’s a bam…Do you have a boyfriend?”
Yes, she told him. Three hundred miles away and being without him is like being covered in nettle stings. She didn’t tell him all that, her “yes” was enough to momentarily halt his investigation but he wasn’t the kind of man to let such things put him off. If he was devouring her, she wasn’t stopping him. In fact, she leaned forward slightly.

“Do you know why this bar’s called The Nag and Noose, Annie? Local story about a girl wrongfully accused of murder. She was a servant up at Lochy Manor and the laird’s son ended up with a kitchen knife in his gullet. Knife was found hidden in her undergarments, so she was sentenced to be hanged. But the night before her execution, she vanished. Somehow, through witchcraft or some other means, she had escaped and in her place was a fine piebald mare!”
He paused to have a slug of his wine, red staining his lips. He was enjoying this.
“The laird was a superstitious man Annie, and reckoned she had somehow bewitched herself into becoming the horse so he ordered that instead they would hang the mare in the village square. And so they did. Hence The Nag and Noose, Annie.”
Poor horse, she said. There was a moment, but then the barstool next to him was occupied by another arse. Younger than Joe but still, this new man was so much older than her. His cheekbones looked ready to balance a pint glass on. When he sized her up, he looked at her as though he was tasting her. Joe was clearly irked by the interruption, but he made the introductions.

“This is Louis, He escaped from Hungary, but the daft bugger ended up here instead. Louis, this is Annie Masters. Fresh out of university and now here catering to the whims of we wastrels!”
“Hello Annie,” said Louis, his voice delicately cut with an accent. It was like balm to her ears after the open fire of Joe’s patter. Louis was a cellist; Joe a bugler.
“Louis is a writer,” Joe told her, and she was immediately interested. She straightened up, unfolding before them.

So they played on, sitting by Carling and Carlsberg. She witnessed with delight their toing and froing, their flirtations with Voltaire and Keynes and each other and her. The blethering only stopped when Andy Gray put “Miss You Nights” on the jukebox because Jimmy Randall had beaten him at pool. The trio commiserated with Jimmy as he wept into his cheese and onion crisps, and soon after Joe and Louis departed together.

Later, she was trying and failing to polish old glasses. Raising one up to the light to see it refracted through the marred glass, she saw the distorted figure of Louis. His shirt was crumpled now. He looked far scruffier than Joe, the alcoholic.
“Annie, I just walked Joe home and I wanted to…well, he wouldn’t stop talking about you.” He paused, looking up at her and her army of dirty glasses. “Be careful. He gets like this. Particularly after all the trouble. You know what happened?”
No, she didn’t know. And that night, as she lay in bed with her laptop, Google open and asking only for his name, she decided she didn’t want to know. Ignorance was bliss.

***

She settled in, sort of. The library was old and outdated but that rather suited her. She enjoyed making things new- polishing boots, restringing necklaces, making up beds with clean sheets. She gave disproportionate amounts of her pay packet to salary, trying to find distraction through starving children, lonely old folks, missing teenagers. She enjoyed the transformation, which is why she occasionally wrote poetry.

The best part of the week became the three evenings where she poured herself into The Nag and Noose. They would be waiting for her without fail, as she made her entrance at 7pm. Their attentions make her glow and become her only fixed possession in this new, outdated place. Neither had wives; Joe’s had seemingly abandoned him for someone who didn’t drink two bottles of wine a night. Louis had married young, but married life had grown old quickly. He’d never marry again, he told them. Joe was aghast.
“You’re talking shite, my boy! What if you meet some fine lassie who will only stay put if you put a ring on her finger?”
“Then she won’t be fine for me.”
“I’d get married again, if I found the right girl.” He looked at Annie. The wine had not robbed him of his romantic sensibilities; or perhaps they were only found at the bottom of the glass. Annie said she believed in marriage. Joe beamed.
“There you are Louis, you bam!”
“Youth is easy to deceive; for it is quick to hope,” was Louis’ frowning response.
She came to dread to the moment anyone else ordered a drink because it took her focus away from them. She would miss a quotation, a statistic, a joke or a story. She would miss one or both of them staring at her. She would lose for a moment the blurry light they shone upon her, and for a moment she wouldn’t glow.

***

Then came Joe’s 41st birthday party, held, of course, in the pub. Not a glamorous affair, but as Joe was his best customer the manager bought in some sausage rolls and crisps and brought his old boom-box to play. No Cliff Richard tonight, and even Jimmy Randall was up dancing. Joe, always smart, was wearing a tie with bicycles on it.
“Bought it in Amsterdam, Annie. I was there for four months, sharing with a racist Swiss fella who kept trying to get me into acid. I read the whole Dickens catalogue while I was there...”
She swallowed it, as she did all of his stories, and then gave him his card. It had a Jack Russell on it, as he’d mentioned he’d had one as a child. He was stupidly, childishly pleased and went off to be gregarious and rambunctious and loquacious with renewed fire. He quoted Oscar Wilde to anyone who’d listen, or pretend to. It was his birthday, they all pretended.

Louis stayed close to her, by the bar.
“Be careful, Annie. You’re giving him ideas. You know you are.”
“Ideas?”
“He’s nearly twice your age.”
She felt like he’d caught her climbing out of the shower, or cheating on a test.
“I wasn’t aware that giving someone a birthday card was an open invitation.”
“I don’t like it.”
“It’s really not your place to like it.”
“He is my friend. I don’t want to see you hurting him.”
“Why is he your friend?” Her grip on the tap tightened and she glared at him.
“He is my friend because we’ve always understood if we weren’t friends, we’d be enemies. It would be war.”
Joe came back to the bar and forced a ceasefire.
“Come and dance with an old man, wee girl. Louis will look after the bar, won’t you?”

When closing time came, Louis made his excuses, leaving Joe to stumble her home. He grabbed her hand, knotting them together. He began to rant at her; tonight he’d had more than just a few glasses.
“You know, long distance relationships never work, Annie. Why are you wasting your time with that wee scunner? You need a real man, Annie. One who can teach you about the world, not some milksop cunt fresh away from his mother’s teat! One who knows what he’s been doing! Look at me, Annie! I know how you’ve been looking at me, don’t you pretend! You’re not so innocent, Annie. Look at me, Annie!”

Interjection was impossible, and the only way to shut him up was to kiss him. And the only way to regain control of herself once more was to fuck him. He didn’t shout or repeat her name when she was on top of him, he just groaned. Finally, she rendered him speechless. He smelled of wine, and when he was sleeping, she allowed herself a moment of sickened tenderness. She rubbed the places where his hair was fading away, and she looked around his empty room. He lay spread awkwardly on the bed, his body like a broken doll or smashed bottle. She was innocent now, she had done her penance. She got up and left a piebald mare in her place.

***

A few years later, Joe is still sitting in his habitual position but the bar stools have been changed. Time had eroded both the leather and his arse. In his hands, he holds her debut novel and he is delighted to read his presence throughout. He takes this as confirmation, as commitment. He doesn’t notice her biography in the dust-jacket, detailing how she lives in London with her Hungarian husband. He often sits alone now, as he has no one to keep him right. He’s more of a three bottle a night man now, but this book is his consolation. His ransom.