That’s Your Lot Read online

  Donnie just replied with ‘Thank you, wordsmith.’

  By replying with that, he wanted to gently suggest that Toby was being a smart arse, without it looking too sarcastic. It was Donnie’s first week, after all. He didn’t want to go in hard with the cheek when he’d barely got his feet under the table. But he also didn’t want to be picked on. He wanted his reply to be just enough to put Toby off criticising him in the future, knowing that Donnie would fire back.

  But as it turned out, Donnie wasn’t being picked on. As time went on, Donnie discovered that Toby did it with everybody, all the time. But nobody else seemed to mind. They would either reply to the corrections with ‘Thanks, Toby’ or say nothing at all.

  Nobody even seemed to bitch about him, not in front of Donnie anyway. If anything, they would defend Toby, even if they were the victim of Toby’s cuntishness. Like when Toby corrected Alice.

  Alice had sent an email where she said the word ‘colour’s’ instead of ‘colours’. She was talking about the colours in the colour printer that they had up the back of the office, because it wasn’t working properly. She’d said ‘And there’s something wrong with the colour’s on all of the printouts.’

  Toby had replied with ‘The plural of colour is colours.’

  Donnie asked Alice how she felt about that. It was verging on nasty, as far as Donnie was concerned. It was one thing to correct somebody’s grammar, but another to type a reply like that.

  Alice said that it was okay, because Toby corrects people’s mistakes all the time. But Donnie said that there was a difference with this particular reply. It implied that Alice didn’t just make a typo due to typing fast or autocorrect or losing concentration; it implied that she didn’t know how to make a word plural, like she would make the mistake again because she just didn’t know to do it, like she was in nursery school.

  That’s the impression that Donnie got, and he wanted Alice to be upset about it. But she wasn’t. She just shrugged it off and said it was okay, and that it was a silly mistake anyway.

  Donnie said that somebody should say something, but Alice said that it really was okay and that Toby was a nice guy. Just leave it.

  Donnie tried to leave it, but when you’re seeing somebody correcting everybody’s grammar on a daily basis, you just want to say something. You just want to tell the guy to give it a rest with the corrections. What does it matter?

  It’s not as if the mistakes are being printed on the pamphlets and sent out, resulting in embarrassment for the company. It’s not as if Toby was some kind of copyeditor or sub-editor, where it was his job to correct everybody’s spelling and grammar before it went to print. He worked in accounts. His job was to do with numbers, not words. Just stick to your fucking job, mate.

  Donnie tried to leave him alone, he tried to forget about him. He tried to ignore his ways.

  He managed it for almost a month. He told himself that he wouldn’t react or bitch or try to get anybody else bitching. He’d just be like everybody else and take no notice. Almost a month he managed it.

  But then it all came out at the office party. They’d all booked a big table at a restaurant, and they all got drunk.

  Donnie wasn’t sitting near Toby, but he’d look over to Toby now and then, and try to listen in to his conversations. There was nothing interesting to listen to, but then Donnie heard something that he had to jump on.

  He heard Toby say ‘It depends who you send it to.’

  It was a mistake!

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Donnie, pointing at Toby.

  Toby didn’t hear, but Alice did, and she stopped talking to see what Donnie was doing. It didn’t look good to her.

  ‘Toby!’ shouted Donnie again, and Toby looked around to see Donnie smiling and pointing. When Donnie saw that he had Toby’s attention, he asked him, ‘What did you just say there?’

  ‘What did I say when?’ asked Toby, looking at everybody else.

  To Donnie, Toby seemed sober, while he himself felt drunk. He knew he probably wouldn’t fare well against somebody so alert, but this might be his only shot. It was too good an opportunity to miss. Even with the rest of the staff looking at him with their straight faces, looking concerned, he knew that they’d appreciate somebody just telling it like it is.

  ‘What did you say when?’ asked Donnie, grinning. ‘What did you say when? I’ll tell you what did you say when. You said, and I quote, “It depends who you send it to.”’

  Toby gave a confused smile, and searched the faces of everybody around to see if they were equally as confused. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Well,’ said Donnie, raising his eyebrows. ‘I’ll tell you what on earth I am talking about. You said “It depends who you send it to.” But should it not be something like “Depends to whom you send it”?’

  Donnie was half out his seat, and somebody put their hand on his shoulder to gently put him back down. Some people were asking him to just leave it.

  Toby wasn’t smiling anymore. Donnie reckoned he looked caught out, that’s what he reckoned. He looked caught the fuck out.

  ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ said Toby. ‘And you’re right. But …’

  ‘Ahhhh!’ laughed Donnie, pointing at Toby, looking at Alice, looking at everybody around, at his audience. ‘I’m right. And therefore you are wrong! Ahhhh! Not so perfect after all, is he? Not so fucking perfect after all.’

  Somebody said ‘Don’t, Donnie. Don’t.’

  But there was no way he was letting this one get away. And he knew that he spoke for everybody. For whatever reason, nobody wanted to say a thing, they were too polite. But Donnie knew it was doing their heads in, bottling it all up. Well, this was it. This was it.

  ‘Seriously, Toby,’ said Donnie. ‘Seriously, mate. What’s it all about?’

  ‘What’s what all about?’ asked Toby. He looked at Donnie and the others. He tried to smile the confused smile from before, but it was without the same confidence. It was forced, and Donnie could see right through it. He had Toby on the ropes.

  ‘The grammar thing. The spelling and the grammar thing, the fucking emails. Ever since day one. Ever since day fucking …’

  ‘Just leave it,’ said Alice. ‘Please.’

  ‘No chance,’ said Donnie.

  ‘Look,’ said Toby. ‘I just think it’s important that certain rules are followed, certain consistencies are kept so that …’

  ‘Depends who you send it to,’ said Donnie, repeating Toby’s mistake. ‘Depends who you send it to. I don’t think that’s in the rule book. Let me just check …’ Donnie licked his thumb and leafed through an imaginary rule book and said ‘Nope’.

  ‘Sure,’ said Toby. ‘Sure. I take the point. But language evolves and …’

  ‘Oh!’ shouted Donnie, his eyes lighting up. ‘Oh! Did you hear that, everybody? Language evolves.’

  ‘B-b-but,’ stuttered Toby.

  ‘B-b-but?’ said Donnie, taking the utter piss. Alice stood up and walked away.

  ‘But,’ said Toby. ‘Certain rules should be obeyed, or at least …’

  ‘But not by you, eh, Toby? By us, but not by you.’

  ‘By all of us,’ said Toby. ‘S-s-so there’s some consistency, so there’s, there’s, there’s …’

  ‘Why?’ said Donnie, banging his hand on the table.

  ‘Because,’ said Toby, looking flustered as fuck. ‘Because without, without knowing what, what, what …’

  ‘Why?’ said Donnie again, giving the table another bang. He looked at the people around him. They were neither joining in nor trying to stop him. They were looking down at their drinks in silence.

  Toby stuttered on. ‘Because … because … b-b-because …’

  ‘Why?’ asked Donnie, his eyes wide. ‘Whyyyyyy?’

  Toby stood up sharply, bumping the table with his legs and spilling the drinks around him. Then he shouted at the top of his voice.

  ‘Because it’s all I’ve got!’

  The pub, w
hich was previously loud with chatter, fell silent.

  Donnie looked at the rest of the staff to see if this was some kind of act. He’d never seen somebody shout like that before, he thought people only snapped like that in soap operas or on a stage. Not in real life.

  Donnie looked at them all, waiting for them to laugh. But none of them looked up from their drinks.

  Toby spoke again, but this time, with the pub being silent, he only needed to whisper to be heard by everybody in there.

  ‘It’s all I’ve got.’

  Toby picked up his coat from the back of his seat and left.

  What Donnie didn’t know, but what he found out later, was that Toby’s wife and kids had died in an accident.

  Stookie

  Gerry had broken his arm. He fell in his back garden and landed in a bad way on the steps. He didn’t think he’d broken anything, his arm felt intact. But the pain just wouldn’t go away, even after a week. So he went to the hospital, where he found out that he’d broken the thing. It was a surprise. He didn’t think he’d done that much damage, he expected there to be much more pain from a broken arm. But no, he’d broken it, and he’d need to wear a plaster cast.

  A plaster cast.

  Or a stookie, as they used to call it when he was wee.

  He never had a stookie himself when he was wee, but every now and then, somebody would come into school with one on, usually on the arm. It was usually boys that got it, he couldn’t remember any lassies wearing one, it was always the boys. That was maybe something to do with all the climbing about that boys did, all the climbing up drainpipes and trees, which lassies never seemed to do. He did sometimes see lassies wearing a kind of stookie, though. The soft ones that went around the neck. The cream-coloured ones made of foam. It made them look so stupid.

  The nurse began putting on Gerry’s stookie. It was a new experience for him, even just to watch. He didn’t know how it was done. He had a memory of being in school and asking somebody how the stookie was put on, but he’d forgotten. He watched the nurse wrap the dry bandages around his arm. Then, when that was done, she began wrapping a wet bandage around. Wet with plaster.

  He thought back to the lassies in school that used to wear the soft stookies around the neck, and wondered why they were always soft and never hard like a normal stookie. He wondered if a normal one would have made them look any less stupid.

  God, he was such a cheeky cunt in school.

  He couldn’t remember the names or faces of the lassies he slagged off for wearing the neck thing, but he remembered doing it. He remembered how it made them look like dogs, when dogs have to wear that thing that stops them licking their stitches when they’ve had an operation. He used to love laughing at the lassies that had to wear one, and he loved the way they couldn’t turn their neck for a quick comeback. It was funny saying something cheeky to them, then watching them have to turn their body all the way around to look at you because they couldn’t turn their neck.

  Guys didn’t really get that type of slagging by having a stookie, though.

  They were never laughed at, because having a stookie was almost something to be proud of. It was like a war wound. It meant you’d been up to stuff, something dangerous, and people would ask you what happened and how sore it was. Anybody that had their arm in a stookie would get all this respect, and people would cover the stookie in menshies.

  There’s another word he hadn’t heard for years. Menshies. Mentions. People would write stuff on the stookie.

  They’d write things like their name, or ‘Get well soon’, or write something funny. The rule was that you shouldn’t write anything dodgy, even for a laugh, because then the person with the stookie would get into the trouble. The teacher would just end up asking who wrote the thing on the stookie, and the person who wrote it would be grassed up.

  The nurse finished putting on the stookie, and told Gerry that he’d have to wait a short while in the hospital while the plaster dried.

  As he waited, he thought about if he’d get his son to draw some menshies on it when he got home. Alex wasn’t able to write yet, but he could draw some squiggles, or maybe get out his paints and paint some flowers. That would be nice. There was the potential for some embarrassment, going around with a stookie covered in daisies, but it would be a nice embarrassment.

  Gerry remembered a boy from school.

  There was one boy in school who came in with a stookie on. But he didn’t get any respect. Nothing like it.

  People wrote stuff on his stookie, but it was nothing nice. It was nothing but fucking horrible stuff, and he had to just take it. They’d hold his arm and then write all this horrible stuff on it. Nobody had any fear of being grassed on, because the boy knew what would happen if he grassed.

  The nurse came and tapped on the stookie with her finger. She told Gerry that the plaster seemed to be dry enough now for him to leave, so he was free to go. He left the hospital and headed for the bus stop.

  As he waited for the bus, he felt his arm begin to itch. He looked at his stookie, and thought back to that boy from his school.

  He could barely remember the boy’s name. It was maybe William. William McDonald or William Campbell, one of these Scottish surnames ‒ he wasn’t sure. But Gerry remembered what was on the stookie. He looked at his own stookie and he could remember what was on William’s stookie like it was right there in front of him. He remembered that there were lots of things written on it, lots of drawings as well, but biggest of all was the word ‘TRAMP’.

  The bus came and Gerry got on. He realised as he tried to get the change out of his pocket that things were going to be a lot harder with the stookie on. It was his right arm that was in the stookie, leaving his left arm free, but his change was in his right trouser pocket. Getting the change out of his right pocket with his left hand felt like he was using his left hand to shake somebody’s hand when they were using their right.

  ‘Hurry up,’ he heard somebody saying on the bus. Somebody up the back.

  He looked towards the voice, but he couldn’t tell who said it. The bus was busy, with most of the people looking at him and the rest looking elsewhere. Nobody looked guilty.

  The bus driver, who hadn’t yet moved the bus away from the bus stop, stepped on the pedal and moved the bus away sharply. Gerry stumbled, and banged the stookie against one of the metal bars. It went clink.

  Somebody laughed.

  He heard a woman somewhere say something about how Gerry was going to break his arm again, or break the other one. A couple of other people laughed at that and said something else.

  By the time the bus was slowing down for the next stop, Gerry still hadn’t managed to get his money out. He took a step towards the bus driver and said, ‘Sorry, I’ll just …’ meaning to say, ‘I’ll just be a second,’ but the driver interrupted him.

  ‘Give me it when you get off,’ said the driver, pointing his thumb to the back of the bus. ‘You’re blocking the aisle. Move.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Gerry, and he walked down the aisle.

  He looked for a seat, but there weren’t any. There was a guy up the back sitting next to a spare seat, but he had his bag on it. Gerry was sure the guy had seen him but was pretending that he didn’t.

  The bus got moving again, and Gerry held onto one of the metal bars so he didn’t fall over. He glanced at a few people, and saw that some were still looking at him, even from close up. He looked away, and down to his stookie.

  He kept his eyes there, on the stookie.

  As he looked at it, he thought back to the stookie on William, and what was written. He remembered. He couldn’t remember every word, but he could remember their shape, like he was looking at it on his stookie with half-closed eyes. He remembered how the word ‘TRAMP’ was written. They were in capitals, but the line on the letter p dropped down like a small p. It had looked too much like the letter D, so he drew the line down further to make it more like a p.

  He remembered that it was him that wro
te ‘TRAMP’.

  He wrote about half of the other stuff as well. He forgot that. He couldn’t remember if he started it, but he wrote at least half of the stuff on that stookie, or told people what to write or what to draw.

  He remembered that he drew a picture of William with flies around his head, like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown. He could see it on his own stookie, down near the fingers, down at the bottom right of the word ‘TRAMP’, near the line that came down.

  Gerry looked away.

  He looked up from his stookie and saw that he was being watched by a boy on one of the seats. He was maybe about six or seven, a couple of years older than Alex. Gerry looked down so that he wasn’t staring back. He saw that one of the boy’s socks was white, but the other was light grey.

  A thought came to him. He never found out how William broke his arm.

  Gerry looked at the boy’s face again, and saw that the boy was now looking at the stookie. Gerry turned the stookie away quickly so that the boy couldn’t see what was written there, before coming to his senses and remembering that there was nothing there.

  The stookie began to make his arm itch again. His skin felt hot and sweaty.

  He thought about getting home, and letting Alex draw some menshies on his arm. The idea didn’t appeal to him as much as it did back at the hospital, but it was maybe because of being on the bus and how much his arm itched.

  He looped his left arm around the bar that he’d been holding onto, his good arm, and poked the fingers under the stookie to give it a scratch, where it was itching. But he couldn’t quite reach it.

  And oh, it itched like fuck.

  Keys

  Gary had made a stupid mistake.

  Him and Linda had a back garden, and at the back of the garden was their garden fence. It was a high wooden fence with a padlock on it, and behind the fence was a lane, where the bins were kept. The key for the padlock was on a keyring that also held a key for the back door of their house.

  Gary had taken a bin bag out to the bins. He’d unlocked the padlock and left the key in the lock while he put the bag in the bin. But while he was there, he saw the bin for bottles and glass, and remembered that they had some bottles in the house that he’d like to bin as well.