Page 33 of Hard Tail
And then we were there. The lane opened out into a Y-shaped junction, and right in the middle was the Oak Inn. It was a solid, squarish place, painted white with black window frames, and looked at least a couple of centuries old. To the left, I could see a farm; to the right, a green where a couple of nut-brown ponies were grazing. It was all very idyllic, peaceful and quintessentially English. There was even an old-fashioned red telephone box outside the pub, although whether it was still functional or just there for decoration I couldn’t have said. Did anyone ever use phone boxes these days in any case?
I parked the BMW next to Matt’s battered old Ford Focus. Matt grinned as I got out. “All we need is a Rolls Royce on your other side and it’ll be just like that Frost Report ‘class’ sketch, only with cars.”
I laughed, half surprised he knew the sketch. Neither of us had been born when it had first been broadcast. It was a classic, though—they don’t make ’em like that anymore. “Does that mean you look up to me?” I asked.
“Yeah, don’t worry—I know my place.”
“And apparently it’s watching old black-and-white comedy sketches on YouTube,” I teased. “Right, are we going to go in and eat before I faint with hunger? You’ve got me too used to proper food at lunchtimes.”
“Yeah? You do realise I’ve been giving you the veggie options, don’t you? Steve reckons that’s what proper foodeats.”
To be honest, I hadn’t even noticed the lack of meat. “Oh, well—I’ll make up for it by having something carnivorous today. Unless that’s a problem for you?” The last thing I wanted was to put Matt off his food.
“Nah, don’t be daft—like I said, Steve eats meat all the time.”
Okay, that was two mentions of Steve in two sentences. I hoped it wasn’t going to be like that all through the meal or I could see myself rapidly losing my appetite or, in a worst case scenario, my lunch.
The Oak’s interior was in keeping with the outside: bare wooden floors, low beams and wooden furniture. It had a cosy, relaxed feel, but I guessed it really came into its own in winter, when the old wood-burning stove could be lit. We walked up to the hop-festooned bar and ordered our lunch: local sausages with mustard mash and garden peas for me, while Matt just went for a ploughman’s. I supposed he’d be cooking tonight in any case.
Once we’d paid for our food, we took our drinks out into the beer garden. The place was pretty busy, even on a Wednesday lunchtime outside school holidays, but we managed to find a table in the shade of, appropriately enough, an oak tree. Well, I was 90 percent certain it was an oak, anyhow. If I came back in the autumn and found it dropped conkers instead of acorns, I’d have to revise my opinion.
I cast a regretful eye at the couple sitting at the table next to us. They were laughing away, each with a glass of white wine beaded with condensation in the warm air. “Seems like there’s something missing, having a pub lunch and just drinking Diet Coke.”
“You mean like the alcohol?” Matt said, swinging his leg over the wooden bench.
“Not just that. It just seems more relaxed, somehow, having a glass of wine or beer or whatever floats your boat. Like sticking two fingers up at the world and sayingsod it, I have no intention of even trying to achieve anything useful this afternoon, and I’m just fine with that.”
Matt took a swig of his Coke, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “So are you?” he asked.
I blinked. “Am I what?”
“Going to achieve anything constructive this afternoon?”
“Oh—very doubtful, I’d say. I suppose I could go up to London and fetch some more of my stuff—we’re putting the house on the market; it’ll have to be cleared—but I’m out tonight, so it makes the time a bit tight.” I shied away, as I had done several times before, from telling him I did karate. It wasn’t that I thought Matt would think it was weird or just really not me or anything—but ever since I’d got my black belt, it’d felt like bragging to bring up the subject. Like I was showing off about it. I didn’t want him thinking I was that immature. “It’d be a right pain to be stuck in traffic on the M25 and not get back soon enough,” I continued, then swatted away an unusually calorie-conscious wasp that had started taking an interest in my Diet Coke. “Thought it was a bit early for these.”
“Ah, but you’re down south now. We get summer earlier here.”
“Bollocks! North London is hardly the Arctic Circle. And the Solent isdefinitelynot the Mediterranean.”
“Yeah, shame, that.” Matt ducked his head over his drink for a moment, then looked up again. “Why’d you move to London—if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, you’re from around here originally, aren’t you?”
I shrugged. “Well, Winchester, so just up the road. London just seemed the place to be—careers-wise, I mean. And it was where Kate wanted to live.” Actually, I couldn’t remember her ever saying that out loud—she’d just more or less assumed we’d go to London when we graduated, and I’d been happy enough to go along with that.
“Do you miss it? I mean, is it all really slow and boring down here?”
I looked around for a moment at the sunny beer garden, bordered with well-established trees and full of happy people, none of whom were dressed in designer suits or tapping away on their Blackberries. The air was rich with cut grass, beer, hot food and a sort of earthy smell I supposed must be the forest itself. A sparrow darted down not three feet from me to pounce on a crumb left by a previous diner. “God, no. This is brilliant.”
The waitress arrived with our food, and I stared in disbelief at half a pig’s worth of sausages and a metric tonne of mashed potato. “Are you sure you’re a vegetarian?” I asked Matt. “Because I could really do with some help here.”
“I’ll take some of the mash off your hands,” Matt said, not waiting for me to agree but leaning across the table to scoop up a generous portion with his fork. “They do a great mash here.”
They did, too. As I tucked in, my taste buds began to regret giving half of it away, although I knew my stomach would thank me for it later.
After the first few forkfuls, I forced myself to get down to business. “So, you and Steve,” I said. “Do you, er, go out much? Evenings, I mean. To, you know”—I dropped my voice—“gay bars.”
Matt shrugged. “A bit.” He ducked his head. “Steve likes to stay in more. Or go out with his mates.”
“Where do you go, when you do go out? I mean,” I added hurriedly, “are there a lot of gay bars in Southampton? Or, you know, the New Forest?”
