The Opposite of Godot

by Guy Ware

Of all the people I know who’ve died, the one I think about the most – I mean, apart from some of my immediate family – is Johnnie Two Dogs Patterson. If you were to assume that wasn’t his real name, you’d be wrong. It might not say “Two Dogs” on the death certificate, but that’s what he was called. What we called him.

When I first told Clare about Two Dogs, she said: ‘How many dogs does he have?’ Like she was setting up a joke, or signalling the fact she knew it was a joke. We were at that stage where you tell each other things, feeling each other out, trying to impress.

I said, ‘None.’

I said it started because Johnnie’s the kind of guy who turns up all the time. Whenever you go out, there he is, propping up the bar. If you stay in, he’ll be knocking at your door, or messaging your phone, something funny – what he thinks is funny – replying to things you’ve posted that weren’t really for him, or about him, or in any fucking way his business, really. But there he is, the proverbial, always turning up. So, anyway, one day, he walks into the Moon, and Katy says, ‘Fuck me, he’s like the opposite of Godot.’ And Stephen, that’s Stephen-with-a-ph that got him beaten up at primary school—

‘For how he spelled his name?’ Clare interrupted me. ‘That’s awful.’

Not wanting to sound like a psychopath I said it probably wasn’t really that, or not just that. There were plenty of reasons we picked on Stephen, but somehow they all came down to that ph. And it got worse again, later on, after we’d all pretty much forgotten about it, when he was finishing his second degree, his doctorate, and looking for a job in Mediaeval Lit, or some such – good luck with that, we said – and, anyway, every time anyone said anything about his PhD, even if they were being polite, pretending to be interested, he’d interrupt and say it wasn’t a PhD, right?, it was a DPhil. Because he was doing it at Oxford, you see. So, yeah, beating him up at primary school was just getting our justified retribution in early, being as we were, ahead of the curve.

‘So, anyway,’ I told her. ‘When Katy says about Johnnie being a kind of inverse Godot, Stephen straightaway says: Odog – you know, like Godot, backwards – pronouncing it Oh-dog, because, he says, it was God-oh, you know? The ‘t’ is silent. And Katy says, Yeah, we know, that’s what I said. Because we weren’t all thick, she said, even if we’re weren’t doctors of philosophy. And, anyway, someone, Matt, says Toe-dog. And in about two seconds – I mean, it’s inevitable, there’s no stopping it – Toe-dog becomes Two Dogs, even though Johnnie’s never had a dog, not even as a kid, and was actually allergic to dogs, I think, although maybe that was just his little sister. Anyway, by the time he gets from the pub door to our table the conversation has already moved on, it was that fast. But somehow the name sticks and it’s not long before Johnnie cottons on and wants to know why we’re calling him Two Dogs when he doesn’t have even one dog, let alone two, and in any case has always fucking hated dogs? And Katy says not to worry, it’s like a pet name – geddit? – because we love him so much. Johnnie doesn’t get it. Someone else, Matt maybe, Matt says it’s in reference to the only women Johnnie’s ever slept with, and Katy punches him in the face. Not hard, but still.’

Clare said, ‘You talk a lot about Katy. You know that?’

‘Well, she was there. She said those things. She’s smart.’

‘Smart?’

I should have seen the danger signs, I guess. But, what can you do? I was in the middle of a story.

So then, back in the Half Moon – which, by the way, is a stupid name for a pub, a literally half-arsed name; I mean, what even is a half-moon: one bare buttock? But we are where we are – back in the Half Moon, that first time, the good doctor Stephen-with-a-PhD said something convoluted about Brew Dog, about a time Johnnie drank two cans. Johnnie told him to shut the fuck up, told him he’s a fucking liar – which is fair enough, because, in itself, it’s true: Stephen is a liar – which he, Johnnie, said he could prove because he never drank that piss, he said, on account of the objectionable wanker who owned the company and bullied his staff and all that. Which wasn’t actually fair, or true, because whatever Johnnie did or didn’t think about employment rights and such, the fact is he’d drink anything once he’d started. I’ve seen the man drink hand sanitiser, for fuck’s sake, during the pandemic. And a man who does that isn’t going too deep into the morality of a beer he’s offered in the middle of a night out on the piss, now, is he?

But, like I say, that wasn’t why we called him Two Dogs in the first place, it was just that he turned up all the time. Like, if you went for a walk – and not just in the park or to the shops or something, but a real walk, up in the hills, or out there along the cliff path – not that I’m saying I ever did, it’s not that – but, if you did, he’d be sure to pop out from behind a fucking gorse bush or something. You’d be at your mother’s funeral listening to the vicar pretend he knew her and you’d suddenly realize he was right beside you, in the pew, at the graveside, throwing gravel on the coffin like he knew the woman, which he didn’t. I mean, they’d met, of course, when we were at school. Because he was like that even then, just as much. You’d be in the kitchen, eating spag bol, soup, salad, sausages, whatever, and – pow! – he’d be there saying Hello, Mrs. Evans, and she’d be asking him how he was and if he wanted something to eat, and not: WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU SPRING FROM? Which would be the normal reaction, and was certainly what I was thinking at the time.

So anyway, one night – and like I say, I think about this a lot: I mean, it comes to mind – one night we’re sitting there, in the Moon, with pints that’re mostly still there, mostly not drunk, just waiting to be drunk, for us to drink them all, because Two Dogs has got the round in – it’s not like he was ever completely useless, that’s not what I’m saying at all, if that’s the impression I’ve given – but, anyway, sometimes his being there wasn’t so bad, even if, even so, you might be wishing he wasn’t quite so fucking persistent, I suppose. Be that as it may, on this occasion, he’d bought us all a pint: me, Katy, Matt, Stephen-with-a-PhD, and Clare – because Clare had met him by this time, and called him Two Dogs like the rest of us, and had made her peace with Katy, I thought, with the idea of Katy. So, we all had drinks in front of us that Two Dogs had bought, and it was early on in the evening but dark outside already. It must have been winter, or autumn, anyway: getting dark earlier. The lights were all on, reflecting in the windows, in the mirrors above the bar, the bottles, light shining everywhere but, still, soft – you know? – not bright like some sort of doctor’s surgery, or hospital, even, with the machines and all that, blinking and bleeping like fuck, until they don’t. Until it’s just you, there, alone, and not your mother, not Mum, not any more, in the silence.

It was cosy that evening, I guess, is what I’m trying to say: comfortable. There could have been firelight, too. I mean, there wasn’t, the Moon’s not that kind of pub, but, spiritually, or – that sounds daft, I know: spirits only come in shots – but what I’m trying to say is that it felt right, like a pub should feel. It was busy, there were people in, a steady thrum of conversation, laughs, most of the tables were full: couples, groups, old guys alone, scrolling through their phones – which, there’s nothing wrong with, it’ll be me one day – but not too busy, you know? You could get to the bar without having to queue up all night, and Two Dogs had, he’d got the round in and he lifted up his glass, like a toast, and I said:

‘Cheers.’

And we drank, and I said:

‘This is the life. Isn’t it?’

And two days later, he was dead, Two Dogs was.

Which, to my mind, as you can see, hasn’t stopped him popping up all the time, like the opposite of Godot, although now he doesn’t even get the round in. So really, what’s even the use of him?

I bumped into Clare this morning. She was pushing a trolley through the supermarket and I wasn’t quick enough to dodge her line of sight. She asked after people, how they were, all that. We’d split up later that night, the night in the Moon where everything felt right but obviously wasn’t, so I hadn’t told her, and I realized now she didn’t know.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘How did he die?’

And I said, ’That’s another story. Are you sure you really want to know?’

Guy Ware is the author of five novels, all published by Salt, including The Peckham Experiment and, most recently, Our Island Story. Guy lives with his family in south London. His new collection of stories, A Day Like Any Other, will be published in April 2026.