This Must Be The Place and Other Stories

John & Victoria 🏆

Victoria, from her vantage point in the centre of the disaster, shook her head. 

Empty pizza boxes, stacked up like architects' models of futuristic council estates. Scraped-out take-away tandoori packaging strewn under the coffee table and starting to smell like a Mumbai back alley. A trail of dirty clothes lead from the bedroom to the bath. 

And John, in the middle of the chaos, laid out on the sofa, long legs dangling over the end, eyes glued to the telly.

"Let's go sky-diving," Victoria said, throwing her handbag onto a chair and watching as it, along with a pile of newspapers, avalanched onto the linty carpet. "Naked."  

"Don't feel like it."

"Ya don't feel like plummeting earthward naked? Wind whipping at yer tackle? Where's yer sense o' adventure, man! Life can only look rosier after."

John's eyes flicked from the telly to Victoria and back again.  

When he first met her at uni, her oh-no-you-don't manner, wild halo of coppery ginger hair and complicated Highlands accent --as if speaking were a laborious task -- had intimidated him. That was, until he'd been forced to work on a physics project with her and realised just how unique and fabulous she really was. 

"Still don't feel like it," he mumbled. 

"John." Victoria raised an eyebrow. 

"Victoria." 

A small grin flashed across Victoria's face. She set herself down on the sofa, jerked the remote out of John's limp hand and turned off the telly. John sighed and closed his eyes. 

"Now listen. That woman -- I won't be saying her name --  was a right cow for leaving ya like that. But it's been almost three months. Time ya rose like Lazarus and rejoined the living." She cast an observing eye on the state of John's T-shirt and the compact form underneath that tended to run to pudge if he wasn't careful. "Before ya chemically bond yerself to the furniture."

"I have no desire to get up and I'm not going to."

"No? Not even if I tickle ya until ya canna breathe?"

John simply shook his head. 

This always happened. John took break-ups so hard. The moment anyone left him behind, it was like he floundered and stumbled into depressions as deep as fantasy lagoons.

And those depressions he could drag out like a world champion. The grieving, the memories, the sighing and caressing of the wallet photo of his ex could go on until all his other friends couldn't stand it anymore, and it was back to just him and Victoria again. 

Victoria could always stand it. Victoria always cycled round when he was feeling his worst. Victoria poked and prodded at him, always finally managing to get him out of his stagnation. Get him up and moving again. Get him out of his black mourning clothes and into the sunshine. 

"Fine," said Victoria, looking around at the mess as an idea struck her. "Well, iffen I'm gonna sit in this misery for another hour, I'm gonna want something ta drink. Got any lager?" 

"Try the fridge."

In the kitchen, Victoria squinted into the white, blank expanse of the fridge's interior: small cluster of withered apples, dodgy litre of milk and impressive array of diet salad dressings. A cold, silent memorial to the last woman to break his heart, surely. 

Victoria dumped it all in the bin. 

"Yer dry, man," she called, "Time for the pub!" 

Forty-seven minutes, and an intense discussion of whether red trainers could be worn with a purple jacket (they can't) later, John and Victoria entered the loud, artificially-cheerful interior of the Dog and Dart.

Since it was a Friday night, and the pub not terribly large, most of the tables were already taken up by groups of friends. Victoria scanned the crowed until she found what she was looking for. She steered John to a table near the windows where three women about their age sat chatting, glasses of white wine in front of them. 

"Hi ya," she said, pulling two empty chairs closer. "I'm Victoria and this is ma friend, John. He's been recently dumped and needs ta get some fresh air. He's a pleasant guy. Don't bite. Could I trouble the three of yas to mind him while I fetch our drinks?" 

"Victoria," John shook his head and looked away, red starting to rise on his cheeks.

One of the three women giggled and they looked at each other to see if they were willing to babysit a male charge for a few minutes. 

"Sure, have a seat. . .uh. . ."

"John," Victoria said helpfully and tugged at John's sleeve until he sat down heavily in one of the chairs.  

When Victoria returned with their drinks, she found the three women pelting her friend with all sorts of questions about himself and his life. She sat back and watched, occasionally throwing in a sentence, or slapping John on the arm to encourage him to say more. She bought the next rounds to keep them talking. When the time bell sounded and they said their goodbyes, John had the phone number of one of the women and a printed invitation to a reading at a bookshop in town the following Friday. 

"You're going to make me go to this, aren't you?" he said, holding up the invitation card as they left the pub.

"Even iffen I have ta drive ya there myself like I was yer mum," Victoria answered. "She's pretty. Don't lose that number."

"I'll try not to." John smiled sheepishly.

"That's ma lad," Victoria said, and wrapped her arm around his neck in a half-hug as they walked down the road and into the night.  

----

This story is based on the the friendship between Queen Victoria and her Scottish groom, John Brown, who it is said was instrumental in getting her over the death of Prince Albert. I've switched their roles in their new incarnations. Victoria is now the Scot and the active one. John is now English and the one with relationship problems and a tendency towards long-term melancholy.

The painting at the top of the story shows the originals together.

This was the winning entry to the AmbassadorsUK "Friends Forever Challenge" September 2019. Here's the sticker.