by Limmy
A few days later, I head back up to his for a rematch at FIFA. That’s what he always calls it: a rematch. It’s a bit daft, because ‘rematch’ sort of implies that it’s a decider, like it could go either way. But I’m winning all the time.
Anyway, on the way there, I thought it would be good to pop into the shops and get some new biscuits for him. I grabbed a packet of this and a packet of that. I cannae remember what I got, but it was a mix of cheap one and fancy ones, a bit like what he had in the jar.
So I took the biscuits up to his. But you know what I thought would be funny?
If I filled up his biscuit jar, but didnae tell him.
I thought it would be funny if I filled it up without telling him, and if he was to ask me ‘Did you fill that up?’ I’d say no. Like it just filled up by itself.
I knew he’d work out it was me, because nobody else ever went up to his. He didnae even get his family over. But I thought it would be funny for a few minutes, just a wee joke.
So when I got into his, he got things started with the PlayStation in the living room, and I went into his kitchen to get a drink. And then I took the biscuits out of my pockets and filled up the jar.
I never told him that I was gonnae do that, he didnae know it was happening.
Anyway, I went through to the living room, and we played FIFA for a bit. I didnae take the jar through. But after a while, I said to him, ‘Can I have some biscuits?’
And he said, ‘Aye, if there’s any left!’
He knew the biscuits were almost finished, right?
And I went into the kitchen and brought back the jar, the jar that I had filled with biscuits without telling him, and I started pulling out biscuits and munching them. Biscuits that I bought.
He didnae notice, though. So I said, ‘See? There’s plenty.’
But he just said, ‘Ah, right. Good,’ and kept on playing.
So even though he knew that there were hardly any left before, and he knew that he hidnae bought any new ones himself, suddenly there are these new biscuits filling the jar right up to the top, and he didnae think that was anything out of the ordinary.
I asked him if anybody had been up to his flat since the last time I was there. I didnae say I was asking because of the biscuits, I told him I was just wondering. But what I was really asking for was to find out if maybe somebody visited and brought biscuits. But he said nobody had come. Nobody ever went up to his flat, it was always just me.
Yet somehow these biscuits had appeared and he didnae notice. Mental. He’s the sort of person that notices things, by the way, he’s not a dope. That’s what was so mental about it.
Then I left, without saying anything about the biscuits. I was waiting for him to say something about it just before I left, like ‘Nice try winding me up, by the way’. But he didnae.
And during the week, I was waiting for him to give me a text saying that he’d just noticed that biscuits had magically appeared in the jar after I turned up. Sometimes it takes a bit of time for you to notice something, for it to click. I was waiting for that moment during the week.
But no. Nothing.
I went up to his about a week later, up for another game and a drink, and I sneaked in some more biscuits. I reckoned he’d probably munched a few himself after I left the time before. So I was gonnae top up the jar again, to see if he’d notice the second time around.
I went into his kitchen to look at the biscuit jar, and I could see that I was right about him munching a few. When I left the time before, I’d eaten the biscuits to about halfway down the jar. Since then, he’d almost finished the rest, there were just a few left. I’m talking about two or three biscuits at the most.
I filled it up again. I filled it right to the top. It was even more obvious than before, I think. But this time, I didnae take the jar through to the living room. I thought I’d just leave it like that, full up to the top. That way, he’d look at the jar, and see it full, which would look completely different from the last time he saw it, which was almost empty. I cannae really explain my thinking, but I thought that would make it more obvious.
Anyway, I leave at the end of the night, having said nothing about the biscuits. Neither of us mentioned them.
And I come back a few days later, up for another game, and about half the biscuits have been eaten. He’s eaten half the jar of biscuits. Biscuits that he didnae have before.
And he disnae say a thing about it.
I asked him if anybody had been up since the last time I was up, just pretending I was making conversation, and he said there hidnae been.
Think about that.
He knows that the biscuit jar is empty.
Then it’s suddenly full of biscuits.
And it’s only him that’s eating the biscuits now, it isnae somebody else. I don’t touch them. I don’t bring the jar through to the living room.
He’s eating the biscuits until the jar is almost empty, then it gets full again, without explanation. And he’s saying nothing.
You’d think he’d have said something. You’d think he would have said, ‘Here, the strangest fucking thing is happening to me right now. It’s that biscuit jar, you willnae believe it.’
But he’s said nothing.
I really don’t understand that. I cannae get it out of my head.
It’s all I think about when we’re playing FIFA.
And he’s been whipping me.
Absolutely whipping me.
Suzie Spunkstain
Davie was getting married. He was waiting at the altar, waiting for his bride to show up. Her name was Suzie Milligan. But to some of the other people here, she was known by another name.
Suzie Spunkstain.
He didn’t know that, he’d only just found out. He’d only just heard about it the night before, at the stag do. He’d known her for over three years, but that was the first time he’d heard the nickname. He learned that she got it when she was younger, where she grew up, here in Manchester. And he wasn’t from here.
He’d moved down for a job, and it was in work that he met Suzie. She was from Manchester herself. They got on right away, going out for a drink together on the same week that he joined the company. There was nothing sexual in it to begin with, not in a way that they’d admit to anyway. It was just a friendly gesture. Suzie asked Davie if he fancied coming out for a drink after work, and the pair of them thought that more people from their office would come along, but it ended up just being the two of them.
And one thing led to another.
Now here he was at the altar, waiting for Suzie. Suzie Milligan, soon to be Suzie McIver.
Suzie Spunkstain.
He couldn’t stop thinking about it. It had been stuck in his head since last night, when he first got told.
He’d brought down a load of his mates from Glasgow, and they all teamed up with a load of his new mates from down in Manchester, including a few mates of Suzie’s brother Stuart, who was also there. They’d all got steaming. Stuart’s mate Harvey was in a particularly bad way, talking mumbo jumbo to himself and winding people up.
He spoke to Davie in one of the pub toilets.
‘Suzie Spunkstain,’ Harvey had said, while pishing into the urinal next to Davie.
He hadn’t said it very loud, he hadn’t directed it at Davie to start a fight. He’d just said it while looking into the bowl.
‘What was that?’ asked Davie.
Harvey told him that he didn’t mean anything by it. He pulled up his zip and tried to leave, but Davie wouldn’t let him. He’d had enough of Harvey that night.
‘What did you say?’ asked Davie. ‘You said Suzie. Suzie something. Suzie what?’
So Harvey told him.
He said that Suzie’s nickname was Suzie Spunkstain. She got it when they were all younger, when they were teenagers. That’s all. ‘That’s her nickname,’ said Harvey, as he looked between Davie and the door. ‘Don’t blame me, that’s her nickname. Everybody says it.’
; Davie wanted to know why. But in a way, he didn’t need to know. He already knew why. He knew about nicknames like that.
He once knew a lassie when he was younger. It was a lassie that he liked, but he never went near her, because of the nickname she’d been given.
Quickfuck. That’s what they called her. Quickfuck.
He used to ask people why she was called that, but nobody knew for certain. He got two different answers: one was that she shagged quickly, like a rabbit; the other was that you could get a quick shag off her any time you wanted.
Whatever the reason for the name, he knew the reason why she was given it. It was to shame her. It was to bring shame upon her, and anybody who went near her.
And it worked.
Despite liking her, he just couldn’t get past that name.
She knew he liked her, and she liked him as well, so she could never understand why he never wanted to be with her, alone. If the two of them were left alone, he’d always be asking where everybody was and he’d be wanting to find them, or he’d simply avoid being left alone with her in the first place. She once asked him to walk her home through the park one night, because it was too dodgy to walk through herself. But he said no. He let her walk by herself, a 14-year-old lassie, a lassie less than half the age he was now, because of that nickname.
He didn’t tell her why. And she couldn’t guess why either, because she didn’t know. She never knew about her nickname. She couldn’t say, ‘Are you treating me like shit because of that fucking nickname?’ Because she never knew.
He’d lost out. She’d lost out. And it wasn’t because of her, it was because of him. That was the shame. The shame was on him, and it stuck like shite.
He was only young at the time, he could almost forgive himself. Yet here he was doing it again. When Harvey told him Suzie’s nickname, he did it again. He would have expected himself to not care. But he did. There was still a part of him, a teenage part, that still cared about all that. If he didn’t care, he would have let Harvey go or he would have walked out of there himself. But he didn’t.
Instead, he asked, ‘What was she called that for?’ He tried to look happy, not ashamed, like he was nothing more than curious. But he wasn’t just curious. There was that part of him, that teenage part, that wanted to gauge how much he should be ashamed. Ashamed of her. He wanted to know how much had she shamed herself on a scale of 1 to 10.
Harvey told him where the name came from.
She used to go out with some guy when they were young. At the weekends they’d hang about the school at night, when it was shut. She walked away with her boyfriend on one of these nights, over to the shelters, then she came back later with him, hand in hand.
One of the crowd pointed at her leggings and shouted, ‘Look! A spunkstain!’
And that was her from then on.
Suzie Spunkstain.
Davie laughed, like it did not bother him one bit, like he was looking forward to laughing about it with Suzie herself. He patted Harvey on the back as Harvey left the toilet, but Davie stayed inside. Then he walked to the cubicle and sat inside to think about it.
His wife to be was Suzie Spunkstain.
Suzie Spunkstain.
So?
Well, he would just like to have known, that’s all. He wouldn’t have minded. He’d just like to have known. But she didn’t tell him, now he was hearing it from this Harvey cunt.
And?
So?
So fucking what?
The voice inside his head was right. So what?
He stood at the altar and thought of last night, why he let it get to him, it wasn’t like him. He was drunk, that was it. Last night, he was drunk. That’s why it got into his head, because when a person is drunk, it can make them childish. It can make them think like a child.
But he was an adult now. A grown up. Here at an altar, waiting to be married. Waiting for her.
Waiting for Suzie Spunkstain.
It was funny. That was a good way to look at it. It was funny.
He’d joke about it later. He’d show her he didn’t care. Of course he didn’t care, he was a grown man, we’ve all got histories. He’d tell her he found out, and that he just laughed when he heard. And that would be it. That would put it to rest.
It would perhaps even put things to rest with Quickfuck.
He thought about her, about Quickfuck, or whatever her real name was. He hoped that she was somewhere in the world, happy. Happy in herself. He wondered if she ever found out about her nickname, and he hoped that she laughed it off. Maybe she had a daughter, and told her daughter all about it, and how none of that shite matters. Fuck them.
He hoped she was happy. As happy as he would make Suzie.
He looked back towards the front door of the church. Suzie’s brother Stuart was walking swiftly up the aisle towards Davie. He was smiling at the guests, but it wasn’t a relaxed smile. It wasn’t a happy-go-lucky smile. It was a reassuring smile, where you’re trying to tell everybody that everything’s fine, despite it not really being fine.
Stuart told Davie the news.
Davie looked to his family in the seats. They looked back at him with questioning looks on their faces.
He shook his head.
His mum knew something was wrong, her boy looked heartbroken.
Davie asked Stuart if it was a joke. If it was a joke, he wanted to know now, because he could see that it was upsetting his mum.
But it wasn’t a joke. Suzie had called the wedding off.
Davie asked Stuart why, if he knew the reason why, if she said why. But Stuart didn’t know. He really didn’t, Suzie wouldn’t tell him.
She was ashamed to tell him.
She’d found out last night, at the hen night. She’d found out from one of Davie’s sister’s pals, Anne. Anne told Suzie she was so happy for Davie, so happy that he’d found somebody, because it had been so hard for him up in Glasgow.
Because of, well, you know.
But Suzie didn’t know.
And when she found out, she knew she couldn’t go ahead. She was sorry, she loved the guy, but there was just no way she could marry Davie.
Davie McIver.
The Moggy Muff Diver.
He Licked Oot a Cat for the Price of a Fiver.
The Curtain
Iain had bought a curtain, for his and Maggie’s bedroom. He thought it was just a normal curtain, but it wasn’t. It was alive. It would wake them up during the night, and batter fuck out of them.
Maggie told him she wanted it out the house, but he told her that the curtain was probably behaving that way because it was in a new house, with new owners. It was probably something like that. It would settle down eventually.
She said she’d never heard anything so stupid in her life. When had you ever heard of anybody having a problem like that with any other curtain? When had they themselves ever had any problems like that with curtains in the past?
Iain told her that it obviously wasn’t like any other curtain. She told him that she didn’t need convincing when it came to that. It certainly wasn’t like any other curtain, she agreed with him there.
‘Just give it a chance to settle in,’ he said.
‘No, Iain.’
‘Please,’ he said. ‘It cost a lot of money.’
‘Well,’ said Maggie. ‘That’s your problem.’
‘Well,’ said Iain, ‘it’s not really.’ And he reminded her that they had a joint bank account.
‘You are a fucking idiot for getting that curtain,’ she said. ‘You really are.’
But he asked her again to please give the curtain a chance. One more chance. Please, just one more chance.
She thought about it, and said yes.
They didn’t know if the curtain had been listening to the conversation, listening to how it was on its last chance, but for the next few days Iain and Maggie had a good night’s sleep with no disturbances.
Maggie had trouble nodding off for the first few nights, thinki
ng at the back of her mind that she was going to get attacked the second she closed her eyes. But then she relaxed and told herself that everything was all right now.
Then, on Wednesday, in the middle of the night, she got woken up to the curtain whipping her face.
It was floating in the air and whipping her in the same way that boys in changing rooms whip each other with towels. Wa-disssssh. It looked like it was having a right old time.
Maggie slapped Iain across the cheek. She didn’t bother shouting his name, she was well past that point. She slapped him hard, again and again, until he woke up and saw what was happening.
‘Oh fuck, no,’ he mumbled. Then he stood up, still half asleep, and tried to grab the thing.
It flew out the way and wrapped itself around Maggie’s throat, then yanked her up from the bed.
Iain jumped on both of them and wrestled the curtain away, until he and the curtain fell off the bed and the curtain stopped moving.
Maggie looked at the time. It was 2.32 a.m.
‘Right,’ she said, rubbing her throat. ‘I want that curtain out of here. I want it out of this house right fucking now.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Look. Listen.’
‘Right now, Iain,’ she said. ‘Right fucking now. Right fucking now!’
She was shouting.
‘Right, right,’ he said, and carried the curtain out of the room.
A while later, he came back without the curtain. She shook her head at him and turned off the light.
A few days passed. It was a few lovely nights of uninterrupted sleep. A few days without that curtain.
Then, one morning, Maggie walked into the living room with her breakfast to watch the telly, and there was the curtain hanging up in the living-room window.
She nearly dropped her bowl.
‘Iain!’ she shouted. ‘What the fuck is this? Iain!’
Iain started talking before he walked into the room.
‘Right, listen. Listen, right?’
‘I thought you got fucking rid of it,’ she said.
‘Listen, right?’
‘Don’t want to hear it, Iain,’ she said, having a spoonful of Alpen, shaking her head. ‘Hmm-hmm. No. Want it out. Now.’