quietly. ‘Sam’s right. You are acting weird. It’s OK, we’re off the clock, I can be an active participant rather than just an observer, so things needn’t be awkward.’
‘Nothing’s awkward. Everything’s cool,’ Nina said, and Posy and Verity were still going on about the bloody tote bags and Tom was now talking to Sam about Sam’s revision techniques and Sam was looking as if he wanted to die and Mattie was taking forever at the bar and Nina was racking her brains for something to talk about with Noah that was non-controversial and she’d never been so relieved to hear a little squeal of feedback as Clive switched on his microphone so he could start the quiz.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, you know the rules, I know you know the rules, but I’m going to go over them anyway,’ he began and everyone in The Midnight Bell gave a collective groan and Nina could relax, knowing that they were about to get their quiz on.
Although The Midnight Bell Thursday Night Quiz wasn’t often that relaxing. Posy always insisted on being in charge of the pen and writing down the answers, but she always got side-tracked and would lose her place and Verity would have to keep a keen eye on her to make sure that she didn’t write down the answers for the previous round in the wrong place.
Then Tom would get cross when they all looked to him to supply the answers in the sports round because Sam only knew about football and only from 2012 onwards. ‘So heteronormative to insist I know about sport just because I’m a man,’ Tom would hiss if anyone dared to ask him who the captain of the England rugby squad was.
To make matters worse, there would be the smug hoots of glee from The Battering RAMs in the opposite corner as they made short work of each round, when there were very few questions on literature or baked goods for Team Tote Bag to excel at. (Though being a vicar’s daughter, Verity really came into her own if there were any questions about saints or religious holidays.)
So, the quiz was not usually an enjoyable experience and as Clive led them into the first round, Inventors, Nina feared the worst.
‘One for all the ladies,’ Clive declared. ‘Who invented the first bra?’
‘Oh, I actually know this,’ Nina exclaimed excitedly. ‘Wasn’t it Jane Russell, the actress? She was in a film called The Outlaw and …’
‘Actually, it was a New York socialite called Mary Phelps Jacobs, who was granted a patent in 1914 for what we now know as the modern bra,’ Noah interrupted. ‘She used two handkerchiefs and a pink ribbon to create what she called The Backless Brassiere.’
‘My hand’s cramping and it’s only the first answer,’ Posy complained while everyone stared at Noah, who blushed a fiery red for knowing so much about the history of women’s underwear.
‘Second question, who invented the first flush toilet?’
Team Tote Bag looked at each other. ‘Thomas Crapper?’ Verity ventured, as The Battering RAMs high-fived each other and Big Trevor wrote the answer down on their quiz sheet. ‘I’m pretty sure it was Thomas Crapper sometime in the nineteenth century.’
‘I think it was a bit earlier than that,’ Noah said apologetically. ‘Between 1584 and 1591, Elizabethan poet John Harrington designed and installed a flushing toilet in his new house, The Ajax. Queen Elizabeth was so impressed that she ordered him to make one for her too.’
‘Oh my goodness. How do you know this stuff?’ Posy asked in amazement.
Noah shrugged. ‘I just have one of those memories. Every single thing I read or hear stays in my brain. Quite useful when I’m doing a crossword.’
It was also very useful when doing The Midnight Bell pub quiz. There was no question that fazed Noah. No answer that managed to elude him. Whether it was classic British sitcoms, political dissidents or the infamous cheese round, Noah came through for Team Tote Bag again and again and again.
When the last question had been answered (‘Beaufort. It’s a French Alpine cheese, quite similar to Gruyère, very good in a fondue.’) and the quiz sheets collected, the Happy Ever After gang turned to Noah with matching expressions of awe.
‘You’re like the god of pub quizzes,’ Posy sighed dreamily in a way that would have had Sebastian challenging Noah to a duel if he hadn’t been in San Francisco doing techy entrepreneurial things. ‘This is what you’re doing on your Thursday evenings from now on until the end of time.’
‘We don’t know that all of my answers are correct,’ Noah said modestly and he bashfully smiled into his pint glass, which even Nina was forced to admit to herself made him look cute. Mattie and Verity seemed to think so because they both made silent ‘ah’s in appreciation. ‘The political dissidents round was very hard. All those foreign names! You don’t really expect to find a political dissidents round in a pub quiz.’
‘Ever since Clive was on Fifteen To One, he’s had delusions,’ Nina explained. She dropped her voice to a whisper because it was still a sensitive subject. ‘He fumbled a really easy question about ABBA winning the Eurovision Song Contest and ever since then, he’s had a point to prove.’
‘1974 with “Waterloo”,’ Noah said immediately, then slapped his forehead. ‘Sorry, I’m in full quiz mode now.’
Nina was keen to rise to the challenge. ‘OK, name all of the Strictly Come Dancing winners in chronological order.’
Noah thought about it for a second, green eyes almost crossing with the effort. ‘Right, um, Natasha Kaplinsky, Jill Halfpenny, Darren Gough …’
Sam muttered something about how they shouldn’t treat Noah like a freakshow, but Noah wasn’t a freakshow. He was Wikipedia in human form. Google made flesh. Ask Jeeves but not a butler. So, it wasn’t much of a surprise when Clive came over to them with their answer sheet and made them promise on their collective mothers’ lives that they hadn’t sneaked a rogue mobile phone past him.
‘You got one hundred and seven out of a hundred,’ Clive admitted at last. ‘Had to give you some extra points for additional information supplied.’ He shook his head in disbelief then stared at Noah with a slightly bitter expression. ‘You should think about going on Mastermind. You’d clean up.’
‘Oh, I was just having a good night,’ Noah muttered.
Noah was very respectful of other people’s feelings. Not once had he made any of his teammates feel bad about their own general-knowledge shortcomings. Nina mentally scrolled through her list of exes to see if any of them would have behaved in a similar fashion. Not that a single one of them would have been able to correctly answer a question about political dissidents or cheeses of the world and if they had, they wouldn’t have been very gracious about it either.
And if they had single-handedly led their team to victory as Noah had, none of them would have ducked their heads and insisted that everyone had contributed as Clive announced Team Tote Bag as the winners, to stunned disbelief then a smattering of applause.
‘We couldn’t have done it without you,’ Nina told Noah, having to raise her voice over a commotion in the corner where The Battering RAMs were not taking the news of their defeat quietly. ‘Honestly, we usually manage second from last. This is all down to you.’
‘It is,’ Posy agreed fervently, waving the envelope with their winnings in it. ‘And now we’re rich! Rich beyond the dreams of avarice!’
They’d
