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, which 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.
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
