The Odd Angry Shot by William Nagle Page A

hope not. How’d a man go trying to get on to a bird if he smelt like we do now, back home?’ demands Harry, worried. ‘You’d have no bloody hope against all those sweet-smelling bastards who cover themselves in aftershave every day, I can tell you now.’
    â€˜Anyway,’ says Bung, ‘a lot of birds back home haven’t got a great deal to rave about.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t say that,’ says Harry.
    â€˜Shit, I would,’ says Bung.
    â€˜Well in fuck’s name, tell me why?’ says Harry, a look of annoyance on his face.
    â€˜OK. Prepare yourself for a lecture, my boy,’ says Bung, walking over and leaning on the sandbags beside Harry. ‘I’d say that women, especially in the mornings, are the most shit-awful things a man can lay his eyes on.’
    â€˜Go on,’ says Harry, amazed.
    â€˜They belch and groan and fart and complain and half of them look nothing like they did the night before when you met them.’
    â€˜Yeah, I’ll agree with you there,’ says Harry his eyes full of interest.
    â€˜On the other hand,’ says Bung, now seating himself on the sandbag wall, ‘you can take a bloke, roll him in the shit, jump on his head, get him pissed and so on, then shove him under a shower, give him a bit of a scrub and nine times out of ten he’ll come up good as new.’
    â€˜You’re right, you know,’ answers Harry thoughtfully.
    â€˜Think you’ll ever get married again, Harry?’ asks Bung, his eyes fixed in the dirt.
    â€˜Not much chance.’
    â€˜Why’s that?’
    â€˜Well, I could say that I got married when I was too young.’
    â€˜How old were you?’
    â€˜About twenty. No, nineteen.’
    â€˜What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?’
    â€˜Well I got married with the idea of settling down and looking after the woman. You know, I’d been out rooting birds since I was sixteen, and going nowhere. So I think to myself, now here’s one that’s different, this one I can really do the right thing by, look after and all, so after a few bust-ups and a few things like an abortion, and her going out with other fellows, we finally get down to the business of getting married. Anyway, from there on in, well from about ten months after the event, she starts to ring up now and again saying she’s working late, or at a work party or something, or one of her old girlfriends is in town.’
    â€˜What, was she in and out of the cot with other fellows?’
    â€˜Don’t think so, well I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t then. It just seemed like she didn’t want to be with me.’
    â€˜Shit.’
    â€˜Yeah, that’s what I thought. Anyway, one weekend, she rings up on the Friday night, it was our anniversary, and says she’s been invited out by some people she works with.’
    â€˜Christ, what did you do?’
    â€˜Well, I cut up rough and yelled for a while. Then I started to plead with her.’
    â€˜So what did she say?’
    â€˜She just said she’d been invited and that she wanted to go. Simple as that.’
    â€˜Didn’t you ask her if you’d been invited as well?’
    â€˜Yeah, and you know what she said?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜She said that they weren’t my sort of people and that I wasn’t really the type that would fit in with them. So I hung up the phone, packed my case and put it in the wardrobe. I didn’t really know if I’d leave, until she came home about three in the morning rotten drunk. Well, she just collapsed on the couch and went to sleep.’
    â€˜What did you do?’
    â€˜Well, I got dressed, took the case from the wardrobe and went and stood at the end of the couch. You know, I stood there for about an hour just looking at her and wishing she’d wake up and say that she was sorry. Anyway, she didn’t. So I went up and kissed