‘B. J. Thomas. 1970,’ whispered Laurie.
‘Wow.’ Pete was impressed. ‘How does anyone know that?’
‘I just do,’ she said.
‘Question two: what is a Chinese gooseberry?’
They both knew that, but it was the easiest of the questions. This week neither of them thought they had sailed anywhere near to the prizewinning top three.
At the end of the quiz, Laurie stood up to buy a round before they did their marking, but found she was jammed in.
‘I’ll get them,’ said Pete, spotting a gap at the bar. ‘What do you want?’
‘A J20 please. Any flavour. Let me pay.’ She reached into her bag but Pete had gone by the time she’d found her purse. He cut through the crowd with ease and she noted that there was only one man standing who was the same height. Pete had a few inches on Alex, but Alex’s lean, long-legged build made him appear taller than he was. He had a body for suits, his mum said. He looked like a model in them, especially with a white shirt. A blink of sunlight and his skin tanned and his beautiful blue eyes popped like Paul Newman’s. How could all that life and beauty and promise be gone, she thought again and swallowed down the hard lump of emotion that threatened to clog up her throat.
Pete returned to the table with drinks and more crisps. Chicken, this time.
‘I’m starving,’ he explained. ‘And there’s only about four crisps in a packet these days.’
‘I haven’t had chicken crisps for years,’ said Laurie. ‘I didn’t even know they still made them. Reminds me of being a kid.’
‘School tuck shop?’ suggested Pete.
A pause. ‘Er, yes,’ said Laurie.
‘That’s a lie,’ replied Pete. ‘What’s the memory?’
‘I used to have to make my tea a lot when I got in from school. I was supposed to put something in the oven or the microwave but instead I’d have crisp sandwiches on that really thin-sliced bread that you don’t seem to be able to buy any more.’
Pete ripped open both packets, invited Laurie to dive in.
‘How come you had to make your own tea?’
‘Mum was working.’
‘I see.’
‘Actually I’m lying again,’ admitted Laurie, thinking that this man was too easy to talk to. ‘Mum liked to play bingo. She was very lucky at it. She won so many times that it more or less constituted a wage. In the end she won a national prize jackpot which was enough to buy her a small house in Spain. She reinvented herself there. Married an ancient expat who wanted a companion more than he did a wife and he died and left her well provided for . . .’ Laurie stopped then, before she got on to her mother’s succession of expat lovers. ‘Believe it or not the crisps do have happy memories. I enjoyed them far more than the boil-in-the-bag fish and oven chips.’
Pete didn’t say what he’d been about to in case it came out as smug. His own mum was always at home when they got back from school. He and Griff would walk into the house and be greeted by the aroma of their dinner cooking which they took entirely for granted. Only later when he compared his warm, well-fed, loving, secure childhood to the lesser experiences of some of his peers did he really begin to value it properly. He had loved his mother so much. He had a framed black and white photograph hung on the wall of her bending down to him on his first day at school, holding his face in her hands, about to give him a kiss. If his mother was ever going to show herself to him, it would be doing that – holding his face so he could feel the warmth of her fingers on his skin, transmitting through her touch that he was going to be all right.
‘Okay, the answers,’ said the quizmaster.
Pete grabbed the pencil in readiness. This week they were marking the answers of the bearded trio on the next table: ‘The Grandfather Cocks’.
‘Number one, the year was 1970 and the singer was B. J. Thomas.’ Groans around the room, fist-bumps on the Mixed Doubles table. ‘Question two: a Chinese gooseberry is a kiwi fruit . . .’
Pete carried on marking but ‘Always on My Mind’ was playing on low volume in his head like a soundtrack, a picture of him dancing with his bride, holding her close, feeling his shirt dampen. Tears of happiness, he’d always thought.
‘Oh my, that’s miserable,’ said Laurie after all the answers had been given and the sheets were reunited with their teams. ‘Thirteen points.’
‘Four more than the Grandfather Cocks,’ answered Pete quietly.
They handed in their sheets and then listened out for the results. Last of the Summer Homebrew were fifth with eight points, The Grandfather Cocks were fourth with nine points, The Three Amigos third with twelve and second, with thirteen points, Mixed Doubles.
‘Very poor scoring this week,’ said the quizmaster. ‘And the winners, with pie and peas for four, are the Four Horsemen of the Acropolis. Please come up to the bar and collect your prizes and can a representative from the Four Horsemen come up for the snowball question, the kitty of which currently stands at one hundred and seventy pounds.’
‘How the hell did we do that?’ said Pete, with stunned delight. ‘I’ll fetch our prize.’ He returned a minute later with a monster-sized bottle of Prosecco and a box of Milk Tray.
‘Here you go,’ said Pete. ‘You have them both.’
‘No, don’t be silly, we’ll split them. Which do you want?’
‘When we win the pie and peas, I’ll have those.’ Then Pete realised what he’d just said. He’d overstepped the mark, presumed they would be back. Went for damage limitation, played it down.
‘But, seeing as winning in this most obscure of all quizzes is unlikely, it’s not really worth trying. Here you take these, please and spare my figure.’
‘I insist you take one,’ said Laurie.
‘You pick, then.’
‘I’ll take the Prosecco. Bella and I will obliterate it tomorrow. She’s coming round for dinner.’
‘You’ll never get it in your fridge,’ said Pete.
Laurie laughed. On the next table, one of the Grandfather Cocks was taking the others to task, fuming that they’d missed out on a prize. ‘I told you it was a bloody kiwi fruit, not a lychee. And I said it wasn’t P. J. Proby.’
‘Some people take these quizzes very seriously, don’t they?’ said Pete in a low voice. ‘I must confess I was well impressed with you knowing the answer to the first question about the song. I think we must have been the only ones to get that right.’
‘It was a special song for us,’ said Laurie. ‘The year after Alex and I got together we split up. He met someone else. Don’t know who, never wanted to put a face or a name to her because I knew I’d obsess about her. Then he came back to me. Said he’d made a big mistake and wanted to put things right. The song was playing on the car radio once when he was driving and he got quite emotional, so much so that we had to pull over. It was the only time I’ve ever seen him cry. He said the song reminded him of when we split up. He said that I’d always been on his mind. That’s why—’ Oh God, what was she telling him all this for? She hadn’t even told Bella about it.
‘That’s why?’ he prompted.