by Ripley, Mike
And because I was high on adrenalin from the fear of being seen, filthy from falling over so many times scrambling across the hop fields, and in agony as every tendon in my legs twanged as I pedalled, cars began to pick on me. I hadn’t seen a car on the road all night, but suddenly, when I was most vulnerable, it was rush hour. On the road into Whitcomb I was buzzed four times by overtaking cars and twice almost clipped into the hedgerow. I had no idea where they were all coming from, but I soon discovered where they were all going.
For the first time since Mr Mercedes or Mr Benz (whoever) ran over a hedgehog, the car-park of the Rising Sun was full to overflowing and I had to get off Dan’s bike and wheel it through the maze of cars.
Every light in the place seemed to be on and the jukebox was pumping out something at full volume. I couldn’t tell what it was but I guessed it would be something from the mid-Eighties, which seemed to be the last time the man from the music company had called.
I replaced Dan’s bike against the front wall by one of the windows without being noticed. No one in the pub was looking out and although it was only a trick of the light, I swore that the walls of the pub were bulging outwards.
The clientele were not exclusively male, just mostly. There were half a dozen women there, dressed for a night out and looking rather bemused as to why their partners had brought them here. Every seat in the place was taken, some of them twice, and the shutters on the dart board had been closed to discourage anyone from playing, which was just as well otherwise the local ambulance would have been on its way by now.
As it turned out, I could have saved time by ringing them then had I only known how the evening would pan out.
I dipped round the back of the pub to the back door and as I passed the Gents’ toilet I heard the distinctive sound of someone thumping on an empty, echoing condom machine and moaning softly, ‘Oh no, please, no.’ Still, I suppose it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
The hens squeaked in protest as I disturbed them again and then I was in the kitchen and sneaking upstairs to Ivy’s private living-room and, as far as I could tell, I hadn’t been missed.
In Ivy’s bathroom I washed and cleaned as much of the mud from my jeans and shoes as I could, ran my fingers through my hair, checked my smile in the mirror and went downstairs prepared to play the genial host.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Max hissed at me as I entered by the door at the side of the bar.
I leaned in to her ear so she could hear me above the music and the throb of chatter and laughter.
‘Doing the books, creating a business plan, stocktaking, thinking up a new marketing strategy, that sort of stuff. How’s it going?’
‘We keep running out of things but Dan the Man seems quite happy to go down into the cellar for supplies. Poor Neemoy’s got him looking up her skirt half the time and the psycho at the bar looking down her top full-time. He’s an indecent assault just waiting to happen, that one.’
I scanned the bar and silently agreed with her. The one they called Axeman was slumped against the other end of the bar near the bar-flap opening, his shoulders drooping and his mouth fixed in a lopsided grin. It was difficult to tell, given his condition, whether his eyes were glazed.
‘One of his mates had a right go at him half an hour ago,’ said Max, ‘and it looked like he wanted him to go home but he just told him to piss off. I think he’s got just the one thing on his mind.’
I looked at Neemoy’s chest straining the stitching on her TALtop.
‘Maybe two,’ I said.
‘Coming up!’ somebody shouted and I leaned over Max’s shoulder to see Dan climbing out of the trap-door from the cellar.
He had two bottles of vodka wrapped in his arm, a red flush in his cheeks and a dreamy look in his eyes. He climbed up the ladder slowly, inches away from the back of Neemoy’s long black legs, then pulled the hatch up and secured the bolt. He patted Neemoy on the backside and did a little pantomime telling her to be careful of the door and the bolt.
‘I think we’ve made an old man very happy,’ I said to Max.
I scanned the bar, checking out the faces through the fog of smoke. There was no sign of the Major, which didn’t surprise me, nor of Scooter. Some of his boys were there, in fact quite a lot of them – the ones called Combo and Painter and the two anoraks, Chip and Dale, and the two who had almost illuminated me out at the aircraft hangar. It got me thinking that if he still had pick-ups on the road ferrying beer off the Shuttle, just how many did he have on his payroll in total? And that wasn’t counting the mad Axeman, although he didn’t seem to be one of the regular drivers. At least he had not been involved in the previous night’s beer run and tonight he wasn’t able to find his wheels let alone France.
I spotted Melanie in a corner, sipping delicately from a bottle of Beck’s, staring lovingly into the eyes of a young man sitting across the small round table from her. He wore the only three-piece suit and the most expensive haircut in the building and had a glass of orange juice in one hand. With his other he occasionally reached out and stroked Mel’s arm as he talked. She nodded and smiled at everything he said. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to tell she was in love. We publicans tell you things like that for free.
I pushed my way over to her, picking up some empty glasses on the way to make it look as if I knew what I was doing.
‘Hi, Mel, how’s Ivy?’
It took her five seconds to realise someone was talking to her but eventually she tore her eyes from the guy in the suit and looked up. I realised it must be worse than I thought.
‘Oh, hello . . . Roy,’ she said eventually.
I could see her thinking: What was the question?
‘Ivy, the landlady. Hospital?’ I prompted, but sarcasm was wasted on her.
‘Oh, yes. Christian drove me there. And back.’
She had no idea how goofy she sounded.
‘You must be Christian,’ I said, ‘the chauffeur.’
The suit made to stand up and offered his hand to shake. He had the best set of manicured nails I’d ever seen on a man – and quite a few women.
‘I don’t mind driving Melanie around,’ he said smoothly as we shook, then looked down into her eyes. ‘I’ve offered to do it on a permanent basis.’
Christian smiled, Mel blushed, I felt nauseous.
‘Your friend Ivy’s going to be laid up for quite a while, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Bones get very brittle at her age and she has got a break, but it’s a clean one.’
‘Christian’s a doctor, you know,’ said Mel soppily. ‘Actually, a consultant in private practice.’
He didn’t look old enough to be a medical student to me but perhaps that was a sign of me getting older, when the consultants start looking younger.
‘How long?’ I asked him.
‘Three months, perhaps longer, before she can even think of coming back here unless she has someone to look after her and she certainly won’t be able to run a pub single-handed. I’ve told Mel to tell her she really should think about retiring.’
‘I’m not going to tell her that,’ said Mel sharply, snapping back to reality.
‘Me neither,’ I agreed. ‘Look, I’ll have to ring the brewery tomorrow and tell them. Let them put it to her. I’m sure they’ll want to send a bunch of flowers or something anyway.’
‘I’m sure that’s the best way,’ said Christian, dripping with concern. ‘Does she have private medical insurance?’
Mel and I both shrugged. Behind me a cheer went up as somebody put ‘Be Happy’ on the jukebox again and the girls behind the bar went into their routine.
Christian looked at the Rolex on his wrist.
‘We ought to going, Mel dear. I really must get back to town tonight.’
Mel immediately placed her beer on the table even though it was still half full and pulled her jacket around her shoulders.
‘Ready when you are,’ she said obediently.
‘Let me see you out,’ I sa
id, dumping the glasses I had collected on their table. So much for my career as a pot boy.
Christian positioned himself behind Mel’s chair so he could push and I stepped in front of her and acted as a crowd marshal, touching people on the shoulder, asking them to give us room to move.
Once in the car-park, Christian wheeled Mel towards a top-of-the-range Mercedes and he bleeped the remote locking from ten yards away.
‘Could you get the passenger door, please?’ Christian asked me politely.
As I did so, he picked Mel up out of her chair – the classic bride-over-the-threshold pose – and they gazed longingly into each other’s eyes. For a moment, I thought Mel was starting to drool.
Christian placed her carefully in the front passenger seat and even clipped her seat belt in for her. Then he pushed her chair to the back of the car, opened the boot and folded it with practised ease so that he could pack it away.
‘Goodnight,’ he said with a wave before he climbed into the car and started the engine.
Mel didn’t even look at me let alone wave. She only had eyes for the driver as the Mercedes pulled smoothly away.
I memorised the number plate and made a mental note to add it to my next report to Nick Lawrence, just for the hell of it.
My watch told me it was ten minutes to eleven and that seemed as if it should somehow be significant. Then I remembered, that was closing time or at least ‘last orders’. I had been a publican for a whole day almost and still not pulled a pint for a real customer. The least I could do was ring the bell on the bar and shout at them, asking if they had homes to go to.
The punters, though, showed no signs of wanting to go home as I elbowed my way through them to get to the bar. By the time I got to the bar flap it was exactly eleven o’clock.
‘There’s a bell somewhere,’ I said to Neemoy. ‘Let’s tell ‘em it’s chucking-out time.’
I made to lift the bar flap but it wouldn’t move. A leather-jacketed forearm was resting on the edge, holding it down.
I did say ‘Excuse me’ but there was a lot of noise and perhaps I did jerk the flap up rather hard. Whatever, the arm was dislodged but so too was its owner who took a pace backwards as lager from the glass in his other hand missed his mouth and soaked the front of his T-shirt.
It just had to be Axeman.
‘Sorry, mate, you’re blocking the bar exit. Health and Safety at Work Act. They could have my licence for that,’ I waffled, moving quickly behind the bar.
With superb timing, Neemoy found the bell and began to ring it, almost decapitating Sasha who obviously thought it was the start of some bizarre form of karaoke.
Neemoy and Max yelled: ‘Time, ladies and gentlemen, please! Can we have your glasses?’ in unison, like they had rehearsed it, with Sasha following about two beats behind them. Neemoy rang the bell a final time and Sasha finished: ‘. . . your glasses?’
To my amazement, people started to pack up and leave. It was like the climax of The Wild Bunch where an entire Mexican army starts to surrender to the four heroes, but then that didn’t go to plan either.
‘You spilled my beer,’ slurred Axeman, steadying himself by holding the edge of the bar.
‘Sorry about that, sir. Get you one tomorrow. We’re closing now.’
I was being nice to him, I really was, though I refused to make eye contact.
‘You don’t fucking treat me like that!’
He was getting louder but there was still music on and glasses clashing and chairs being scraped so nobody took much notice.
‘I want another lager!’
‘We’re closed.’
I looked around for something to do to ignore him. Sasha swayed by me to open the flap on her way to collect glasses. Axeman grabbed it and held it open.
‘Get me a fucking top-up drink!’ he snarled. His eyes were near to bursting and a vein on his nose began to throb.
Neemoy, well aware of the situation, squeezed in front of me so I could hide behind her.
‘Come on, lover, it’s time to call it a night. I need my beauty sleep, you know.’
She had a cloth and was wiping the bar in front of Axeman. Smoothly, she lifted his pint glass to wipe underneath and somehow just forgot to give it back to him. She swung away and poured what was left of his beer down the sink, putting the empty glass in the open dishwasher, then turned back to him with a big smile.
It was the smile that defused things. Axeman had to smile back, even though it looked as if it was being wrenched from an intestinal tract.
‘See you tomorrow?’ Neemoy asked him sweetly.
‘Yeah, oh yeah. Definite.’
He began to step away from the bar, zipping up his jacket over his soaked T-shirt, trying to look cool, making for the door as if he’d planned to leave that way all along.
I put an arm around Neemoy’s waist. In the cramped conditions behind the bar I was surprised it hadn’t happened before.
‘Thanks,’ I whispered into her ear as she leaned back into me. ‘I thought you were going to have to get down and dirty with him.’
She laughed, put her head back even further and said: ‘He wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.’
Unfortunately, he didn’t like her when she was being friendly, or at least not with me, for that was the moment he chose to stop and turn round and catch us in what must have seemed a compromising position. (And to be honest, I’d seen porn movies with less sense of direction.)
‘Oi! Don’t you fucking touch her,’ he growled as he stomped back towards the bar.
The pub was emptying and I looked around frantically for any of the other ‘boffins’ from Scooter’s set-up but they had all disappeared. None of the remaining customers seemed to have noticed anything untoward and none seemed likely to rush to my aid.
‘I said don’t touch her like that!’ He had his finger out like a gun, stabbing the air as he said each word.
‘Now calm down, lover boy,’ said Neemoy.
‘Let her go, you shitarse!’
I presumed that was meant for me as I somehow still had my arm round Neemoy’s waist and it must have looked – looked, mind you – as if I was keeping her in front of me as a human shield.
‘Hey, no trouble in here, OK?’ I said over her shoulder.
‘I’m having you,’ he snarled and lunged for the open bar flap.
He was less than a yard from me when I pushed Neemoy to the right and moved as far as I could, which wasn’t far behind that bar, to the left feeling behind me for the bell or a bottle or a baseball bat or Neemoy’s handbag. Anything to hit him with.
As he came through the bar flap, he bunched his hands into fists and pulled his right back and up. One more step and he couldn’t miss. I could almost smell his breath. I could certainly see the whites of his eyes. They were huge.
I slid my right foot forward and kicked the bolt on the cellar trap-door. The trap fell open inwards and Axeman, shuffling sideways through the bar flap, probably couldn’t have stopped himself even if he had been looking down rather than straight at me.
He didn’t make a sound as he disappeared downwards as if in some invisible elevator right in front of me, but there was a hell of a crash as he bounced off the ladder and sent goodness knew what flying once he hit the cellar floor.
Even old Dan heard the noise of breaking bottles and clanging metal barrels being knocked over and he leaned over the bar in case he missed anything.
‘What’s going on?’
Neemoy and I peered cautiously over the edge of the trapdoor. Axeman was spreadeagled on his back on the cellar floor, his head resting against a steel keg of lager. He wasn’t moving but he was breathing.
‘One of Neemoy’s friends dropped in to see her,’ I said, then winced as she playfully backhanded me in the stomach.
‘Is he all right?’ asked Dan anxiously. I didn’t think he would ever forgive me for making his life so interesting.
‘You remember where the phone is?’ I asked him.
‘’Course I do.’
‘Well, you know the number.’
It was the same two paramedics as the night before. We were getting to know each other quite well.
‘You haven’t given this one a brandy as well, have you?’ one of them shouted up from the cellar.
‘It wasn’t me that gave Ivy brandy,’ I protested. ‘Anyway, this one didn’t need one.’
‘You’re not kidding,’ said the paramedic wafting a hand in front of his nose. ‘If I gave this guy mouth-to-mouth, I couldn’t drive the ambulance.’
‘Mmmm, mouth-to-mouth,’ Sasha said dreamily from behind me. She was sitting on the bar, legs dangling over the inside, rolling a joint between forefingers and thumbs.
‘No smoking this side of the bar,’ I reminded her primly, so she swung her legs round, giving Dan a great view, until she was facing the other way.
The paramedic standing over the trap-door shook his head slowly.
‘Can you still be charged with “running a disorderly house” these days?’ he asked me.
‘Dunno,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got a feeling we could find out by the end of the week.’
‘How long has he been unconscious?’ the one in the cellar shouted.
‘He was out for about ten minutes,’ Neemoy told him as she ripped open another packet of crisps. ‘Then he came round and started swearing and then I think he just sort of passed out.’
‘How much had he had to drink?’
‘Seven pints and two vodka and tonics,’ Neemoy said without hesitating. When everybody looked at her she shrugged and said: ‘What? What?’
‘There doesn’t seem to be any ID on him,’ the medic shouted up. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Alex something, we think,’ I said.
‘Where does he live?’
‘No idea,’ I said, glaring at Dan so he wouldn’t say anything.
‘Is he a regular?’
‘He might be, but we’re not,’ I said. ‘We’re just the temporary management.’
‘You’re not kidding there,’ said the other paramedic.