13 #2
‘You’re right,’ says Owen. ‘Silly me. Just because they advertised a quiz at seven-thirty and chalked-up “QUIZ SEVEN-THIRTY”, imagine me thinking there’s going to be a quiz. What a moron I am.’
Essie and Janey exchange glances, and almost smile at one another. It’s a feeling Essie hasn’t had in quite a while, and Janey ducks her head, so it doesn’t turn into a thing.
The quizmaster, Hector the dentist, is standing up and attempting to get people’s attention – he has Owen’s, raptly – and clearing his throat and tapping the mic.
Even though he always does the quiz, he always also manages to behave as if he’s never handled a microphone, a crowd, or written English before.
‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and, um, everyone else . . . ’
Hector does his best to be up-to-date but doesn’t always manage it.
‘So, um, hi,’ the strange man Janey recognises is saying to Al, who is grimacing and trying to be polite back. Everyone else is shushing each other and taking their seats.
‘SIT DOWN,’ booms Owen, suddenly, looking up under his beetle brows at the strange man.
‘Um . . . ?’ says Lowell, looking confused.
‘So if you’d all like to sit down, it’s straight into Round One,’continues Hector.
‘I didn’t really come for a qui—’
‘Question one. Which English monarch was believed to have ordered the deaths of the princes in the tower?’
‘Richard III,’ says Owen promptly, snatching the answer sheet from the middle of the table, and wielding his pencil, one of four lining his top pocket.
‘Actually,’ says the strange man mildly. ‘I think historians now believe it was Henry VII . . . ’
Owen turned round his face scornfully.
‘ Do they ?’ he says. ‘Are you even in this team?’
Milton glances over.‘I think it is Henry VII also,’ he says, politely, then stretched his hand out to shake the man’s. ‘Milton,’ he says.
‘Lowell,’ says the man, and before he knows it, he’s sitting down.
The round finishes and they swap papers with the table behind them and, sure enough, the answer is Henry VII.
Owen goes pink.
‘Well, this is nonsense,’ he says. ‘It’s in a Shakespeare play . I challenge this answer!’
‘Evening, Owen,’ says Hector, with a certain world-weariness.
‘Might I buy a round of drinks?’ says Lowell, standing up. He glances at Janey and suddenly his face looks puzzled.‘Sorry . . . have we met?’
The entire table looks at them expectantly.
‘I’ll come and help you with drinks,’ says Janey, unwilling to share a patient’s medical history with half the town.
The local knitting circle are at the next table.
They are all terrible at the quiz – they keep knitting when they’re meant to be filling in the form – but they love a night out and they all have ears like bats.
‘Janey Munroe,’ she introduces herself once they’re at the bar. ‘I was . . . ’ She can’t remember the child’s name. ‘I was briefly your daughter’s audiologist.’
He inhales deeply. ‘Of course! That’s it. Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t realise . . . out of context, you know. And I’m getting old.’ He shakes his head.
‘That’s okay, but . . . why are you at our quiz night?’
‘I’m really not,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry. Would you like me to leave? I was just passing and . . . a quiz night kind of happened to me.’
Owen and Hector were by now having quite a noisy dispute about Catherine Parr.
‘No, not at all . . . how’s your daughter?’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Uh,’ he says. ‘It’s complicated.’
And Janey feels immediately that she’s crossed a boundary. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says quickly. ‘None of my business, of course.’
‘No, no, not at all.’ He has that slightly clipped way of speaking, as much English as Scottish, with an accent you don’t hear much on television these days.
It sounds as if it is from a slightly different age.
‘Verity is wonderful. She’s great. Thriving.
’ He bites his lip.‘Her mother isn’t crazy about me, that’s all. ’
Shelby comes to serve them.
‘Is that . . . is that the only white wine you have?’he asks, with a slightly pained expression, and Janey wants to smile; maybe Essie has a point.
Shelby folds her arms and looks at him as if he’d just asked if she was serving squirrel juice. ‘Yeah.’
‘Okay . . . a couple of bottles of that, then.’
‘That’s very generous,’ says Janey, surprised, but Hector is already starting a new round, the first question of which appears to involve listing rugby teams, and Milton is gesturing for Lowell to come over quite urgently. Owen is sullenly taking dictation with his special quiz pencil.
‘How many Doctor Whos . . . ’ begins Hector, and Owen’s eyes slowly begin to close. This is turning into the worst quiz night of all time.
‘Are you okay?’ asks Essie, slightly worried about him.
‘This is . . . an impossible-to-answer question,’ says Owen. ‘I feel I should start the steward’s enquiry now to save time.’
‘Why?’ says Essie. ‘Count up the number of actors.’
‘Audio, film or television?’ says Owen immediately. ‘And what about Doctor Moon?’
Essie does not have a clue what he’s talking about, only that he looks as if he might get some spittle on her.
She remembers, very briefly, going to the launch of a new perfume on the fourth floor of Harvey Nichols on St Andrew’s Square.
There were amazing-looking people there, and lots of Scottish celebrities.
It had been extremely exciting and there had been a specially created cocktail just for the occasion.
Alright, so a haggis martini probably wasn’t going to catch on everywhere, but, even so, it had been so very jolly that evening, looking down from the glamorous balcony on to the wet punters on the square below.
Just as she is thinking perhaps she should just sneak out on her own, as Owen has now counted up to two dozen Doctor Whos, Al leaps to his feet.
‘Yo!’