Respect. My self-respect. Other peoples.
And my heart.
“Another, hen?” The bartender, upon closer inspection, seems to be around my age.
I nod half-heartedly. I don’t feel like being a fluffy, happy hen today.
“You don’t look too sure.” The woman’s worried-looking eyebrows ride a little on her forehead. I don’t mean her eyebrows are especially worrying. I mean, they’re fierce, but it’s more that she looks a little worried for me. “Stella again, was it?”
“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “I don’t have the brainpower for inspiration.”
I really don’t know what I’m doing here, other than I had to get out of the castle after Isla seemed to think she’d rescued me from her wicked brother’s clutches. In a way, I suppose she did save me. She saved me from being tongue fucked senseless.
So I guess she saved me from myself because the good Lord knows I have no self-control when it comes to her brother. Even when his ass-holey attitude raises its head in response to being thwarted.
To me leaving with Isla.
To me not listening to him.
To me not giving in.
We are unsuited in so many ways, yet he’s the only man who’s ever made me feel like I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.
So to speak.
I just need to make it clear to him I’m not interested.
Going. So going. But only temporarily today when I’d hitched a ride into the village with wee Sophie, who was heading home after work. I thought, well, I didn’t know what I thought at that point. I just needed to get away. So I’d bought cake and coffee in Kilblair’s only café, but when the woman who runs the café started to give me the stink eye that I thought I should find somewhere else to go so she could close up. Which left me the small grocery store or one of two pubs as the only places open.
“A half of wife beater, it is,” the bartender says, pulling out a fresh half-pint glass from underneath the bar.
“Wife beater?” I repeat, taking a look at the logo on the draft beer tap. Stella Artois. “Because the logo has a white background like a T-shirt?” I know, it’s a stretch—like cotton, ha—but it’s the only thing I can come up with.
She shakes her head. “Because it’s got a kick to it.”
“I don’t get it.”
“The alcohol content is nearly five percent.”
“So, you get drunk on it before going home and beat up your wife?” I answer uncertainly.
“Aye, if you like.”
“That’s kind of . . .”
“Messed up,” she answers for me.
“Yep.” I pop the p for emphasis as she sets the glass in front of me. “But as I don’t have a wife to go back to or a husband, I don’t see a problem.”
“Ye can gi’ me a good going over,” calls the resident bar fly, I’m guessing, from the other end of the bar. Call it an educated guess. “I’d even let ye’ have your wicked way wi’ me.”
“Och, away and boil ye heid, Geordie,” the bartender quips. “You’ve a face like a skelpit arse. No way you’ve a chance wi’ her.”
Which I think is her way of telling him to cease and desist. Go away and boil your head, maybe? Skelpit arse I get—I’ve heard Chrissy say this in some variation—the pink-haired bartender just informed her customer that he has a face like a spanked ass. I think that was her way of saying I’m out of his league.
“I love you, Emma,” replies the lush with a smile full of tombstone teeth. “Put ’nother in there when you’ve a minute, hen.” He sets his empty pint glass down. “I dinnae have a wife to beat either.”
“We don’t want to know what you’ll be beating later,” she mutters with a frown in his direction. “He likes it when I treat him mean,” she says with a wink. “Isn’t that right, Geordie.”
The man laughs and nods his head.
“Anyway, wife beater,” she says brightly, ringing my beer up on the cash register straight out of the 90s. “I reckon the reason is pure bollocks.”
This one I know; bollocks = balls = testicles.
She drops the change to my hand from the Scottish five-pound note I’d handed her. I must admit to being surprised at first discovering Scotland had its own currency.
“I think there’s a more stylistic explanation,” she adds. “Wanna hear?”
“Sure,” I reply, running my finger through the condensation on the glass.
“Well.” She smiles, settling her forearms on the bar in front of me. “Marlon Brando wore a wife beater in the film, Streetcar Named Desire, did he not?”
“And he shouted Stelllaaaa!” I say without any real volume.
“Exactly!” She nods. She knows I get it. “That man could really fill out a T-shirt. Not like this lot,” she adds, her gaze falling over the pub’s clientele. “There are no decent blokes in Kilblair, in case you’re wondering. Especially not on a Saturday night. The young ones will have headed into the next town over.”
“I was definitely not wondering.”
“It’s like that, is it?” And there go her eyebrows again.
“No comment.” With a twist of my lips, I raise my glass and take a sip.
“Well, unhappy hour is nearly over,” she says. “Hang around and join me and my pal for a drink, if you like.”
And so I do . . .
“What? Because they’re wrinkly?” Allie, friend of Emma the bartender says with a sceptical twist to her lips. We’ve commandeered a corner booth, situated at one end of the long mahogany bar. An older man, the owner, Emma says, polishes glasses as he chats to the lush as a couple of other customers watch the game of soccer playing out on a TV.
“That’s not what I said.” I shake my head as I laugh.
“Did she or did she not just say she fancies the auld ones?” she asks her friend.
“I’m keepin’ out of it,” Emma says with a laugh.
“I said I like old people, not that I fancy them!”
“Well, I’d say you’re in the right place for it.” Allie’s gaze roams over the clientele of the pub. “It’s like God’s waitin’ room in here.”
“Shush!” I say, glancing around, worried that someone might hear. I was already hit on by the lush. No need to add to my man woes tonight.
“Och, half of them have’nae got their hearing aids turned on. I mean, look at the puss on that one.” She inclines her head, my head swinging in that direction with a kind of horrified fascination.
“Puss?” Surely—
“Face,” Emma explains.
“I didn’t say I fancied them,” I say, trying to defend myself. “I just like older people because they have such interesting stories.”
“Aye, usually about their bowels.”
I almost choke on my Long Island iced tea, made by Emma’s fair hand, and bought with her staff discount.
“Sounds likes she likes her men like she likes her whisky.” Allie slides her friend a look, setting her up.
“Three times her age and from Scotland?”
“I do like my men like my whisky, as it happens” I reply. “Full bodied, smooth and smoky.”