Love

by Roddy Doyle

  We must have looked like that. We were working and twenty-one but we must have looked like two boys chancing their arms, hoping to get served in a real pub, in daylight. Served by a grown-up. That was how I felt, even though we’d already been drunk once that day and had had no problem being served in any pub in Dublin; I hadn’t been refused service since my second-last year in school. But this one was different. This one felt like a club. Its lack – no radio, no television, music, no framed Doors of Dublin poster – seemed like more.

  It was quiet.

  —I love this, Joe said – he whispered.

  —Me too, yeah.

  I hadn’t read a newspaper in a pub before but this was where I was going to do it. I hadn’t sat by myself and drunk a slow pint; I’d never had a pint alone. I would now, here. I’d sit and look in front of me. I wouldn’t shift on my stool or look over my shoulder. I’d be a man.

  I didn’t say this. I didn’t think this. I felt it. For a while, I noticed no one else. I didn’t see the women and the man pick up their instrument cases and leave. I must have heard them, I suppose, and I probably turned and looked at them as they left. It’s not that I don’t remember; I didn’t care – that was what mattered. I remember how I felt. I’d entered a new state. I’d put on a man’s jacket. I was a man. Because I’d walked into this particular pub. The boys who’d pissed in the bucket across in Mercer’s Hospital were gone.

  The place emptied and filled, and emptied again. The man with the magazine – it was Private Eye – stayed. But after the musicians had left, the place quickly filled again, this time with people with shopping bags. Previously, even earlier that day, we’d have sneered. Fuckin’ shopping. Now we smiled. These were adults. Having a drink like us. It was women with shopping bags, and men with women. They were damp – it was raining out there – and happy. There were bursts of quiet laughter. There was no one trying to lasso the room. They all knew the barman. He was the landlord and, that afternoon, he ruled alone; he’d no help behind the bar. He beamed at the customers, greeted them all like they were fresh off the mailboat. And they beamed back. They’d known him for years, and he’d known them. He served them drink but it seemed incidental. They’d come in for a chat and approval, and he gave it. He really knew who they were. He liked them and they loved him.

  He was called George. The name was in the air, never out of it. George? It was in the smoke. George. It was never a demand, always a greeting. He never rushed but he was always there. He smiled at us whenever he passed.

  —Gentlemen, he said.

  He wasn’t being sarcastic, or snide. This was the thing: he respected us. And this is true: no adult male – no man older than me – had ever respected me before. Except, perhaps, my father. But he was my father, and a widower. There were just the two of us in the house and we got on fine without having to try too hard; I loved my father and I hated him. George didn’t know us but he gave us the time he gave everyone else. There were generations of his customers there, in that hour between five and six. Some came in earlier, and some stayed longer. But they were all there in that hour, every Saturday. It became my favourite time of the week. There was no television or radio to give us the football results but I didn’t miss them. We were going to become those people; we already were those people. There was a handsome man who hadn’t shaved for a few days, with a bit of good grey in his hair. He was with a great-looking woman with a Switzer’s bag. I’d be that man in ten years, maybe fifteen. I’d be here at teatime every Saturday. It would never be teatime in this world.

  —How long’ve we been here? Joe asked me, that first afternoon.

  —Don’t know, I said.

  I looked at my watch.

  —Two hours? More? Three, maybe.

  —How many pints have we had? he asked.

  I had to think about it.

  —Two, I said.

  I looked at my pint. I wasn’t ready for a fresh one.

  —One an’ a half.

  —Jesus, said Joe. —That’s fuckin’ amazin’.

  Ordinarily, we’d have been on our fifth, becoming just us, closing off the world around us. Protecting and building ourselves. We’d been drunk already that day, so we were just topping up what was already there. But it was different. We were here. We didn’t need to cower or snarl, turn our backs on people who wouldn’t have noticed. We didn’t have to make our own noise. It was a dream; it had all the qualities of a good one. It was the drink, I know, the holes and fuzz it could give to the surroundings. Nothing was sudden or unwanted; there was nothing beyond the afternoon. It was the perfect state and I know now, decades later, it was only possible on a Saturday afternoon, in George’s. I don’t think I’m being sentimental, or just sentimental.

  I smiled at George.

  —Two, please, George, I said.

  I don’t recall smiling but I must have. I was twenty-one. In the ten years before that afternoon I’d smiled only when I’d decided to. This, again – here – was different. I watched George fill the glasses and leave them on the towel, beside four other waiting pints. He smiled at the line of six, then turned to fill glasses with gin and vodka. I looked at Joe. He was smiling, so I must have been too. It wasn’t a grin. It wasn’t because I’d been cheeky, because I’d called a middle-aged man I didn’t know George. I hadn’t been cheeky. Cheek was a thing of the past, as were anger and resentment, stupidity, exclusion. That was why Joe was smiling. We were in a new, unexpected life and we were at home in it. Adulthood wasn’t too bad at all.

  There was another thing too, another ingredient. We were being shown a new life; we were observing the middle-class world, an ease, a grace we’d never seen before. It could be ours if we wanted it.

  —Gentlemen, said George when he put the pints down in front of us.

  —Thanking you, George, said Joe.

  It was his turn to call a grown man George.

  —They look the business, he said.

  George chuckled and accepted the money. He brought back the change – ‘Now, sir’ – and left it beside my pint.

  —Thanks, George.

  We were pissed, of course. Rat-arsed. I knew that when I stood up and went downstairs to the Gents. I was counting the steps down. I heard myself and stopped. But even that, the trip to the jacks, was different. My feet on the wood gave back the self-assured taps of a man who knew where he was going. I even looked back to see who was coming down behind me. There was no one; it was me who owned the self-assurance.

  I came back up from the toilet and the place was emptying. The shoppers were heading home, and so was the man with the Private Eye and ponytail. For a minute – a minute – it was just us and George. It was thrilling.

  —It’s quiet now, said Joe.

  —Yes, said George.

  He was gathering the empty and half empty glasses and bottles from the three tables behind us. He put them on the counter.

  —The calm before the storm, he said.

  He was still smiling. He loved the storm, he loved the calm.

  I looked around. It was a black and white world. White walls, black window frames, black counter, the white shirt on George.

  —The jacks, I said quietly.

  —Wha’? said Joe.

  —You should see it.

  —I will.

  —It’s clean, I said.

  —Fuck off.

  —It’s well lit, I said. —There’s a fuckin’ bulb.

  —My God.

  —I’m tellin’ yeh now, I said. —You’d eat your fuckin’ dinner off the floor.

  The room was warm and the cold that rushed in when the door opened was dramatic and welcome. But the intruder wasn’t. We’d had George to ourselves and now we didn’t. It was a small young man who’d come in – he wasn’t a man at all; he was just a boy, a Dickensian kind of kid – and he took off his anorak while the door was
still swinging shut. He was wearing a white shirt. He was staff, the apprentice.

  —William, said George.

  —George, said William.

  —Did you have your dinner? George asked him.

  —Liver, said William.

  George clapped his hands and rubbed them.

  —Lovely, he said. —With onions.

  —I don’t like onions, said William.

  He’d disappeared behind a door and he came back out without the anorak. He looked at us and nodded. I didn’t like it. He was seventeen, maybe eighteen, and he was nodding at his peers, two lads from across the river. He didn’t see what he should have been seeing. George would look at us now and see kids.

  —Did your mother put the onions on your plate? George asked William.

  —She did, yeah, said William.

  —Then I hope you ate them, said George, and he winked at us.

  And that was it. We were still adults. William absorbed the lesson and George put the last of the glasses and bottles onto the counter. Then he went back behind the bar and started to wash them. George washed, William dried. He dropped the bottles that George rinsed into a crate and carried the crate away, downstairs. I expected George to look at us again, and smile. But he didn’t. I was yearning – dying – to say something softly cruel about the kid. But I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been welcome; I knew that. It would have been childish.

  —Good man, George, said Joe. —The lad should know his onions.

  George laughed. He dried the last glass and put it on a shelf below him. His laughter wasn’t loud or conspiratorial, or diplomatic or forced. He’d heard something amusing and he’d laughed. Joe wasn’t asking him to betray his apprentice, or to give us permission to tear into him when he came back upstairs. He’d said something funny – onions were always good for a laugh – and, while he was at it, he’d asserted our right to a vote in the land of the grown-ups. And George’s response had affirmed that right.

  —Two more, please, George.

  The door swung open, and open, and open, and a new population slid in and took over the room, younger than the shoppers from earlier but two or three significant years older than us. We were at the back, near the coat hooks and the two flights of stairs, down to the Gents and up to the Ladies. People flowed in so quickly, it was as if one big gang of friends was arriving at once. They occupied the area near the door, then seemed to send out scouts to the remaining corners. Passages opened and two or three stepped in and took the remaining stools at the bar and the tables and benches along the walls. They were all at home, all of them linked, somehow. Although I could see now, it wasn’t just one polite mob. There were men in twos and threes, there were two men alone, there were couples, and couples with couples, and two bigger, looser groups of friends. But there was something about them. Confidence, perhaps. Physical ease – they stood and leaned and sat, crossed their legs like they’d been trained to do it properly. It wasn’t Christmas or coming up to Christmas but they all seemed like returned emigrants who’d picked up ways, notions, a body language that they could never have learnt in Ireland.

  They were gorgeous.

  William topped up our pints and placed them in front of us.

  —Did you get the results? I asked him.

  I needed a blast of familiarity and William was the nearest thing to us in the shop.

  —Which do you want? he asked.

  —Leeds.

  He smiled.

  —Lost.

  —Liverpool, said Joe.

  —Won.

  He gave Joe his change.

  —Now, sir.

  That was enough; it steadied us. I’d felt the urge to leave or get plastered. I’d been panicking a bit and Joe, I knew, had too. But we said nothing. We sat and watched, and listened. It wasn’t the fact that most of these people had a few years on us. I wasn’t sure about that now, either. I was looking at young faces around me, and in the long mirror behind the bar. I reminded myself: I’d be twenty-two before the end of the year. I was educated; I had a degree. Joe had been working for more than three years. These people were at home; that was it. At home here, with George. At home everywhere, I suspected. We’d just arrived. We were only in the door. We’d none of their blood.

  Joe was better at it than I was. I was good in my head; I was debonair, polished, ready to talk. But – I see it now; I see myself – I sat there. I looked at them all in the mirror. I didn’t feel excluded. That was the big advance. But I was shy.

  Joe wasn’t. Or, I don’t think he was. He didn’t turn on his stool, to join in with the group of men and women behind us. He didn’t offer anything on Ronald Reagan or the state of Irish rugby. He didn’t, as my father would have put it, butt in. But he was lighter, somehow – looser. He sat on his stool side-saddle and helped pass back pints and change. He joked with people he’d never seen before. He smiled at women. He was there, much more than I was or could be. I loved him for it, and I didn’t.

  She was there. The woman we’d noticed earlier, the girl we’d find out played the cello – she was back. I saw her properly now. I realised first that I’d seen her before and I was a bit slow grabbing the fact that I’d seen her here, once, just three hours before. She – the sighting of her – seemed much more important. She felt long lost and suddenly found. I even thought I’d know her name.

  She was beautiful. Something about her was beautiful. Gorgeous was our usual word but there was something about her: she wasn’t real; she was more than real, or less – too real.

  She’d changed her clothes and done something with her hair. It had been in a ponytail earlier – I think – maybe even a bun. Now it was free and long, like a veil or a scarf. She was wearing a black leather jacket, a biker’s jacket. I hoped she’d look at me; she’d see me in the mirror, over her friend’s shoulder, and she’d smile. I’d smile back at her reflection. I’d turn in my stool and smile at her. Then something magic would happen. She’d come to me or I’d get off the stool without deciding to; I’d go over there and I’d make her laugh. I’d stop being drunk but the courage would stay with me. She just had to look. To smile.

  But she didn’t do either. I remember nothing else. But we were there again the following Saturday.

  * * *

  —

  —So she phoned you, I said.

  He looked at me. He hesitated.

  —Yes.

  He seemed happy with the answer. We were back to facts, events.

  —Not immediately, he said. —Not, like, that night or the next day.

  —How long after?

  —End of the week, he said.

  —Friday?

  —Thursday.

  —I’d have guessed that, I said.

  —Why – how?

  —She’d phone you on Thursday, arrange something for Friday. End of the week. TGIF. That kind of shite.

  —Don’t get fuckin’ snide, he said.

  He meant it. He was hurt.

  —Sorry, I said. —I was just imagining the start of something – an affair, I suppose. A fling.

  —And have you ever had an oul’ fling, yourself, Davy? he asked.

  The anger was gone. For the first time that evening he was curious. The question was defensive but he wanted to know the answer.

  —No, I said. —I haven’t.

  —Okay.

  —What about you? I said. —Have you? Before –.

  —Yeah, he said. —Yeah. Once – one. A woman in work. The Christmas party, believe it or not. All the fuckin’ clichés. A good while ago though – ten years. More. It was stupid.

  —Did Trish find out?

  —No, he said. —No, she didn’t. Thank God. It was –. Ah, Christ. She was unhappy.

  —The woman?

  —The woman – yeah. She was getting married.

  �
��Jesus. And did she?

  —Yeah, she did, he said. —But, no, it didn’t last long.

  —The marriage?

  —No, the fling, he said. —The whatever. I don’t know about the marriage – I’d have my doubts. But it was just, really – we needed some sort of a justification for the sex. I think. We couldn’t admit that we did it because we were drunk. Too old for that or something. So we met up again twice after Christmas. Three times – yeah, three. And we were drunk then as well. It was fuckin’ terrible, really. Jesus, when I think about it.

  —Did she invite you to the wedding?

  —No, he said. —God, no.

  —Anyway.

  —Yeah.

  —She phoned you, I reminded him. —Your woman. After the parent–teacher meeting.

  —Yeah. Yeah – she did.

  He smiled now.

  —She did.

  —What’s her name? I asked. —She must have said it when she called – when you answered.

  —Jessica.

  Nothing happened. Nothing rolled in my head, clicked into place. I couldn’t remember her being called Jessica.

  —How long did it take? I asked.

  —What?

  —To find out her name.

  —You’re asking strange questions, he said.

  The wrong questions, he meant. Her name didn’t matter.

  —Just curious, I said. —These things can be awkward, I suppose. And you said it, yourself – you didn’t know her name. I’m always forgetting people’s names. Especially these days.

  Six months before, the last time we met, we’d have had a laugh about the indignities of ageing, the list of daily humiliations. Especially these days. What I’d half intended telling him about this time was the sheer scale, the limitless variety of the surnames I had to deal with at work, and the first names too – never the Christian names, how the names accompanying the English accents had changed, or been added to, since I’d moved to England. I was good at it, in fact. I made sure I knew the names – Okeke, Igbinedion, Anikulapo-Kuti, Sargsyan, Dewab, Ali, Smith, Bautista, Chan. I enjoyed it. I made sure there was never the hesitation before the name, or a little question mark after it – Mr…Okeke? More important things, vital things I forgot – completely. But not at work, not the names. I made lists. I conquered the names and voted Remain. I’d intended – half intended – telling him that.