501

  Contents

  About the author

  Acknowledgements

  A darts’ match on a Monday night in October. The George versus the Naggers. Katy.

  Thursday night darts’ practice. Katy.

  Saturday night in the George. Still Katy.

  Monday night’s darts in late October. The George versus the Phoenix away from home. Irish.

  Monday night darts in November. The George versus the Drapers’ Arms. Maggie.

  Thursday night practice in November. Pegs.

  Another Thursday night darts’ practice in November. Lena.

  The last Monday night’s darts in November. The George versus the Queen’s Head. Scottie Dog

  Monday night’s darts in December. The George versus the Red Lion. Katy.

  A Friday night in early December. Irish.

  A Thursday night practice in December. (Even closer to Christmas.) Still Irish.

  Monday night darts, even closer to Christmas. The George versus the Fishwives. Maggie.

  Thursday morning at the George. Christmas Day.

  A Thursday night’s practice in January. Pegs.

  Monday night darts in January. The George versus the Dragons. Lena.

  Monday night darts in January. The George versus the Queen Elizabeth. Scottie Dog.

  Thursday night practice – February. Katy.

  Monday night’s darts in February. The George versus the Insteads. Maggie.

  Going home Monday night. The same Monday night in February. Irish.

  Thursday night practice in February. Lena.

  Same night – Scottie Dog at home.

  Katy – Monday night’s darts. Still in February. The George versus the Bell Ringers.

  Thursday night practice at the George – early March. Still Katy.

  Monday night darts in March. The George Ladies versus the Dairy Maids Lena.

  Monday night in a Glasgow hospital in the month of March. Scottie Dog.

  A Wednesday night – for a change – in March. Maggie.

  Thursday night practice in April. Maggie.

  Monday night darts in April. The George versus the Gatehouse. Katy..

  Thursday night practice. Katy.

  Saturday morning in town. Katy.

  Monday night darts – the end of May. The last game of the season; the title decider. Still Katy.

  The George versus the Lamb Chops. The first game of the new season.

  Copyright

  About the author

  Robert Field was born in the midlands into a large family who were frequently on the move. He now lives in Devon with his wife.

  501 is one of four books he has written.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Kerry Carroll for the cover photographs and Phil and Dee Sargent for the use of the Village Inn. Thanks also to Team Scottie Dog for their support and promotion and to all at Camelford Novel Surgery - especially Karen Hayes - for their encouragement. And thanks and love to my long suffering and often ignored wife, Debbie.

  A darts’ match on a Monday night in October.

  The George versus the Naggers.

  Katy.

  It’s Monday night – my night – and Jerry’s sitting in front of the fire toasting his toes while I’m running around like a blue-arsed fly. I’m clearing up, washing up, sorting out Laura’s clothes for the morning. I say, ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to help.’

  Jerry says, shifting himself into a more comfortable position, ‘I’ve been out in the bloody rain all day.’

  ‘You know it’s darts.’

  ‘It’s always darts for you, Katy.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? So who cooks the meals? Who cleans the house? Who looks after…?’

  Then I can’t be bothered to go on and he’s not listening anyway.

  My lovely daughter Laura, soon to be sixteen, belt for a skirt, lolling in the armchair, rolls her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘If you two are going to start, I’m off to my room.’ She flounces out looking like me but talking like him.

  I say, ‘Look what you’ve done.’

  He says, ‘Look what you’ve done.’

  He draws out the ‘you’ve’ in a taking-the-piss, condescending, ‘of course it’s your fault’ intonation.

  I just want to spit at him but I light up a fag instead, cos that really gets his goat since he gave up smoking.

  ‘Not in here, Katy,’ he snaps at me.

  And because he’s going bald and is really conscious of it, I say, ‘Okay, keep your hair on,’ and he says, ‘Hah bloody hah.’

  It’s five minutes till I have to leave and I’m looking in the mirror, putting on my face. Jerry’s still flopped in his chair, staring at the telly and mumbling, ‘What a load of bollocks,’ but he doesn’t take his eyes off the screen. And you know what? I briefly feel sorry for this deflated man whose hair is peeling back from his temples. Is he as unhappy as I am? But the moment doesn’t last because he opens his mouth and belches really loudly – sickly, almost.

  ‘Pig,’ I say.

  ‘At least I don’t look like one.’

  This cuts me because I’ve been trying to lose a bit of weight; you know, easing down on the chips, only having two slices of cheese on toast. I’m not fat, just a bit over the ideal. What’s the word? Voluptuous. That’s it. Voluptuous. Like Nigella Lawson – big and beautiful.

  Well, I’m dark anyway.

  ‘You used to fancy me,’ I say.

  ‘Used to fancy a lot of things.’

  I shake my arse at him as I squint through my eyeshadow, leer at him from the mirror. ‘Fancy a bit of action?’

  He says, with no interest, ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘When? After you’ve filled your guts with lager?’

  He grins then. ‘It deadens the pain.’

  I have to laugh at that, and there’s a second of how it used to be.

  I check my handbag, check I’ve got my darts, and then I’m ready to go. I say, ‘Make sure Laura goes to bed on time.’ As if he will, and as if she would, but I’ve got to go through the motions.

  So I leave Jerry, warm and comfortable and fucking selfish, to his evening in front of the fire, to his collection of porn DVDs and cans of lager. He’ll come along to the George a bit later, in time for a couple of pints before closing and in time for a couple of sandwiches off the team’s plate.

  In the George, my girls are practising for the game, taking it in turns to throw at the board. At the bar, Danny the landlord is playing about with his new toy, his CCTV monitors.

  I interrupt him. ‘Any chance of getting served here?’

  Danny turns around, his eyes wandering up and down my body. ‘There’s every chance of that, Katy.’

  I tell him that I’m fed up, not hard up, and he shrugs, says it’s my loss and do I want the usual.

  So it’s six drinks I buy for the George Ladies, Six Of The Best, and it’s:

  For me: vodka and Coke. Me, Katy Jones, thirty-five, heavy smoker, and thinking my life’s over. Well, the fun part of it anyway.

  For Irish (Mary O’Brian): ‘Mother’s ruin and tonic.’ She’s blowsy and pushing fifty, and always moaning about her Gobshite of a husband.

  For Maggie: half a cider but partial to a rum and pep.’ Won’t see sixty again.

  For Lena: WK Blueberry. She’s twenty-five years old and the biggest flirt in the pub – short skirt, low top and big, big eyes.

  For Scottie Dog: whisky and water, ‘and go easy with the water’ – lives alone with her cats in a smelly terraced house with a jungle for a garden. Must be seventy if she’s a day.

  For Pegs: ‘Um. Same as you, Katy.’ Lives in a park home on a travellers’ site. Twenty years old and darkly pretty but keeps herself that little bit apart like gipos do.

  So we sip our drinks, throw at the board and wa
it for the opposition, the Nag’s Head ladies team, The Naggers, to turn up. Irish, already ordering another drink, says to Danny, ‘So what’s with that then?’ On a shelf to the side of the bar are the five small screens of the CCTV, all showing different views of the outside of the George. The pictures jump from area to area.

  ‘Had them put in last week, in case of thieving,’ Danny says.

  ‘Who’d want to steal this shit-hole?’ says Irish.

  Scottie Dog says ‘I bet the perv’s put one in our bog.’

  Danny laughs. ‘Shouldn’t think anyone’s seen yours in thirty years, Scottie.’

  Scottie Dog says, ‘A Sassenach’s never going to see it, Danny boy.’

  Old Bob, standing close but with his own conversation going on, says, ‘Would have been better to spend the money on a pot of paint; place ain’t seen a brush since V.E. Day.’

  He’s probably right; the ceiling is that dirty yellow from generations of fag smoke and on the wall by the Gents is an enamel poster for Craven A cigarettes.

  Our opponents – that’s too strong a word, friendly rivals is better – arrive to start the game. They’re a gentle team, about halfway in the table, and that’s enough ambition enough for them.

  ‘Bad luck in the cup this year, Katy,’ says their captain as we make the draw. She adds, ‘Again.’

  As if I didn’t know.

  I’m thinking that at least we’re putting in some good results in the league. We’re a quarter through the season and lying third behind the Dragons and the Battersby Babes. But you know how sometimes you get that feeling of it’s your turn, a time for you? Well, that’s how it seems to me. I go to sleep at night playing out the games that we’ve got left, imaging winning – actually winning – the Division One Ladies’ League. Jerry reckons I’m obsessed and I cut him a blinder and tell him that’s all I’ve got to look forward to.

  And the horrible truth is that it seems to be true.

  Anyway, Danny wants some silverware for the shelf behind the bar, and ever since we’ve been playing here he’s said, ‘If you lot cut down on the boozing, you’d start winning.’

  Lena, leaning forward to show off her boobs, says, ‘You’re a fine landlord telling us not to drink.’ And Danny’s not really hearing her; he’s fighting a losing battle trying not to look down her top.

  So that’s where we are on this Monday night, recovering from being knocked out in the cup and wanting to keep this good run going in the league.

  ‘Nearest bull then, Katy,’ says the Captain of the Naggers, and promptly launches her arrow into the twenty-five to start pole position in the team game.

  I’m first throw on our side and I get us away with a sixty. In fact all of my side score well, but so do the Naggers, and it’s a only a flukey treble eighteen that leaves me wanting double sixteen with a dart still in my hand.

  Irish, in my ear, whispers, ‘Give it fuck, Katy,’ and the double seems to beckon my dart in and we’re out.

  I can hear Irish giggling behind me. ‘Well, they didn’t keep up with the Joneses.’

  So it’s been close this team game and, gasping for a fag, I head outside for the table and chairs of the smoking area. There’s a light rain falling and it’s starting to get dark and I’m thinking, ‘Bloody smoking ban, sending me out on a night like this.’

  I’m only there a minute when Johnny James comes through the door rolling up a cancer stick.

  ‘Chilly out here, Katy,’ he says and lights up.

  Now I don’t know what to make of Johnny James. I always seem to be bumping into him. We’ll have a chat, a few words about nothing much, but he has this habit of looking directly into my eyes with his dark grey ones and I… Well, it’s a stupid thing to think – he must be five years, perhaps a little bit more – younger than me, and I’m slightly plump, and how could he possibly be remotely interested? Anyway, I’ve got enough trouble with one man without going off into fantasy-land with another.

  Johnny says, ‘How’s the game going, Katy?’

  ‘One up, Johnny.’

  I’m puffing furiously at my fag, guiltily hoovering up the nicotine when I should be inside encouraging on my team. I drop my half-finished habit onto the slab floor and grind it to death with my toes.

  ‘Better get back, check how the girls are doing.’

  ‘See you a bit later?’ He holds me with those eyes.

  I think he means the next fag break but it sounds like an invitation to… No, it doesn’t – he’s just being pleasant.

  I say, ‘I expect you will; I’m out here every hour.’ And that sounds like a confirmation to a question not asked.

  Inside Pegs – quiet Pegs – is on the board and she’s struggling through her game. The chalkboard shows her inconsistency with a forty-five, a thirty, a twenty-six. When she comes back to the oche, Irish shoves a drink into her hand.

  ‘Get that down yer neck.’

  I say, ‘Just slow down. Think about it,’ as Pegs nervously, quickly, drains a half glass of vodka and Coke. (So the ‘slow down’ didn’t apply to spirits.)

  ‘That was my drink,’ I say to Irish but Pegs has thrown a ton and Irish laughs. ‘It went to a good cause, Katy.’

  I go to the bar to order up and, from the pool-room side, Johnny James is paying Danny for a pint. When Danny serves mine he says, ‘All done, Katy – your admirer bought you it.’

  ‘Admirer?’

  From the other bar Johnny James raises his glass in a toast.

  ‘Don’t be daft, Danny.’ But I can feel myself, of all things, starting to blush.

  Whenever we play at home, we have support from a quartet of regulars. These are the guys who seem to live in the pub. Whenever I call in for a packet of fags, or if Jerry and I visit on one of our rare nights out together, some of them are always here. Danny calls these waifs and strays the Motley Crew, and they drink the day, and night, away. Jerry says the George would go bust without them.

  I tell him Carling would be in dire straits without his contribution to their sales.

  He doesn’t think this is funny.

  ‘If you slimmed down you could get in the door to Weight Watchers,’ he says quite nastily.

  I reckon that if he smartened up he could become a slob.

  And that’s how it seems to go on between us, this kidding that’s not really kidding.

  Anyway our local support of the Motley Crew – from Old Bob to Jilted John to Pikey Pete (Peg’s cousin and, although only twenty one, training hard to become a fully-fledged member of the Crew)’ to Paddy – are fun drunks, not nasty falling-down trouble-making drunks. They booze and joke and laugh at each other. Tonight they’re in a singing mood and, half-cut, they drift over to watch the game.

  So our local support, starved of entertainment and loyal to anything with George in the name, get behind us.

  ‘Come on, the Georgie girls!’

  ‘Come on, luscious Lena!’

  Lena perks up at the attention. She starts to pose on her throw – bottom pumped out, bosom thrust forward. When one of her darts bounces out of the board, and she bends over to pick it up, the whistles and cheers must be heard halfway across town. But this distraction is fatal for Lena and a set-back for us. Her game goes to pieces and she’s well and truly trounced.

  If you couldn’t see the next three games you’d know who was playing by the lines of songs the wags of our supporters put together.

  Scottie Dog gets, ‘Donald, where’s your trousers?’ Lead vocals by Old Bob and Pikey Pete.

  Maggie gets ‘Maggie May’ – choir led by Jilted John – and she moans to them that Maggie may not, if they don’t give her a bit of hush.

  But it’s Irish they love and every time she throws her darts it’s, ‘When Irish’s eyes are smiling.’

  This is started by Paddy because this is the song he sings every night, without fail, at chucking-out time.

  ‘Saves me shouting “last orders”,’ says Danny.

  Irish tells them they won’t be smili
ng if she doesn’t win this effing game, but she keeps her cool and collects her double out as the Naggers fall at the last.

  So it’s drinks all round – again – and my head’s becoming a bit fuzzy. The girls, my girls, are on a high. Maggie, on several ciders too many, keeps saying she ‘must go home, cos he really shouldn’t be on his own. Okay, I’ll just have the one – only the one, mind.’

  Even Pegs, our lucky gypsy mascot, is letting her hair down. The trouble is the more she drinks, the quicker, the thicker, her traveller accent becomes. ‘Dordee, dik o racklee,’ she says to Pikey Pete. (Don’t ask, I’ve haven’t got a clue.)

  What with the same effect on Scottie Dog – ‘Ye canna tale me thaat’ – and Irish – ‘Oi’m ater tinking dis is a greatest day in moi loif’ – there’s only half the team speaking proper like.

  I’m thinking that I’ve nearly had enough for one night when Danny lines up a round on the bar.

  ‘For Christsake, Danny – I’ll be on my arse in a minute.’

  Irish says, ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth.’

  I say, ‘I’m off to put a fag in mine.’

  Outside, in the dim lighting of the leper colony, Johnny James is smoking his roll-up.

  ‘Katy,’ he says, feigning a cough, ‘I’ve been through three fags while I’m waiting for you.’

  I have to laugh but, inside me, I wonder if it’s true. The waiting, I mean.

  As Johnny’s going in, he says, ‘I’ll be out here again at ten. Might see you then?’

  ‘Might do.’ The way I say it sounds teasing, like I’m flirting. I make a mental note to steady up on the vodka.

  Our fan club have retired to the bar to be closer to the beer and my girls have commandeered a table to sit at.

  ‘Been on my feet all day,’ says Maggie. ‘Twice my Ken went walkabout. Second time he nearly made the bypass.’

  I’ve seen her holding her husband’s hand, leading him back to their house through the streets like a scolded schoolboy.

  Maggie says, ‘They want him to go in a home.’

  ‘I wish I could put Gobshite in a home,’ mutters Irish.

  ‘My aunt Zilla had Alzheimer’s,’ says Pegs. ‘She used to get up in the middle of the night, walk round the site like a ghost.’