by Paul Harris
He took a table where he could sit with his back to the wall, a habit he had developed over many years. The elderly bartender took his order and brought him a glass of cold beer. Cak sat and watched the other patrons, and listened, always with one eye on the door. His dark militia-style clothing blended in with the grubby flock wallpaper behind him, so much so that he almost seemed to disappear into it.
As the evening was drawing on, the bar began to attract a younger clientele. The dark and anonymous daytime drinkers were pushed deeper into the shadows. Three young tourists walked in and were shown to a table not far from where Cak was sitting. They didn’t even notice him sitting against the wall resentfully examining their every move. One of them wore sandals and had intermittent stains running the length of his shirt. Cak remembered seeing them walking near to Notre-Dame earlier in the day. He had been right in his assertion that they were English. He would have been able to tell Jarni that, if he was ever to see him again. They spoke loudly and without humility.
Two girls walked in shaking umbrellas. There was a sudden burst of quietness as conversations were interrupted and heads were turned momentarily, to gaze longingly at them. The man in the sandals took some money from his friend and followed the girls to the bar. Cak noticed that the friend never smiled, he never smiled once all evening. The man in the sandals was soon ushered back to his seat, with his tail between his legs; destroyed by the girls; demolished like an old tenement.
The three Englishmen sat together, trading inane insults and arguing over trivialities for most of the night. They were not like normal holiday makers. They were unclean and unkempt. They looked as though they had been travelling for a great deal of time; but not for as much time as Cak had been travelling. One of them had boils on the back of his neck which made Cak’s stomach turn. The other had some kind of a red raw rash on each of his wrists. They seemed desperately in need of dietary advice or medical attention.
In time, another Englishman joined them at their table. Cak recognised him. He had seen him before, around the town, and down by the river. He was always down by the river. His name was Peter and he was a builder and he liked the ladies. He was no friend of the first three. Cak could sense a feeling of strained animosity. He tried to hold his breath so that he could better overhear their conversation. Their talk was of mirrors and mopeds; the talk of young boys. Cak was not interested. He took a sip of beer. The Englishmen were passing a plastic bag between them. Cak wondered what was in it. He took another sip of his beer but spat it back into the glass when he heard mention of a rowing boat.
Had he heard correctly? Was his lust for vengeance fuelling his imagination? But, that boy Peter had confessed, right before his very eyes, to finding a boat on the river that evening and taking it away.
Cak pushed his table away. His glass fell over and beer spilled onto the wooden floor. He stood up and yelled, “You stole my boat!” He felt for the knife in his jacket pocket.
But, as he began his assault, a deafening noise burst from the jukebox beside him. As his glass crashed to the floor, the girls began to dance. As he jumped to his feet, so too did others. Everybody was moving and shouting and singing, not just Cak. His remonstrance was lost. Nobody heard his promises of violence and murder. Nobody witnessed his fury. But he would remember. He would remember Peter’s face. Cak Lazlo would never forget.
Chapter Seven
Rayners Lane
I took a trip down to Rayners Lane to try to find myself again. The truth is that I was feeling that I needed a shoulder to cry on and, as fortune would have it, I got a text from Moke right out of the blue. We had once been close and she had been someone for whom I had felt a great deal of fondness, but she was now a memory tinged with bitterness and betrayal. My fingers trembled as I returned her message, and a variety of emotions raced through my mind.
“You remember the Crown down Rayners Lane?” she asked, once the preliminaries were over and done with. “I’m working there now.”
“Behind the bar?”
“Well I ain’t on the bloody door, Rod!”
I agreed to meet her, not because I was interested in rekindling anything with her, as those days, and those feelings, had long since disappeared. I suppose it was merely morbid curiosity and the last cruel act of a self-destructive personality that drove me on that journey west. The train was twenty minutes late and I was twenty years too late.
“It’s not called the Crown any longer,” she had told me, “it’s called something else now, but you’ll find it.”
In a state of confusion, I had fumbled with my phone. “What’s it called?” But I never got a reply.
I left the Underground station and, walking past the incredibly ornate façade of the old cinema, began making my way towards the junction with Village Way. I walked without stealth nor guile, and more by instinct than any sense of knowing where I was going. But, soon I realised that I hadn’t needed to know what the former Crown was now called and why I hadn’t received a reply to my enquiry.
Broomhead’s Bar was a crime. They had taken a perfectly rowdy pub that had been losing money hand over fist and turned it into a soulless wooden box. The exterior was ugly and dull, and the interior was devoid of customers. The walls were painted a shade of purple that no interior designer worth his salt would have got away with had he thought of applying it to a domestic property. Where, in former times, the cigarette machine had once stood, there were polished pine shelves full of sauces and condiments: brown sauce, ketchup, tartar sauce, two types of mustard (English and French); salt, vinegar and pepper. Next to the condiments was a table with brown plastic trays stacked in a neat pile. It was almost like being in a branch of McDonalds.
There were so many different menus on the tables, all of which were gathered around a glass vase containing a plastic flower as the centre-piece of the display, that there was hardly room for you to lay your empty glass. The black-painted timber beams that criss-crossed the ceiling were, on closer inspection, made from polystyrene. I stood just inside the door, examining my surroundings. To my right, two darts were hanging precariously from the dartboard. On the scoreboard next to it, in a juvenile hand, had been chalked a poor representation of the male genitalia.
A closed-circuit surveillance camera was mounted behind the bar. Bare copper wires trailed from beneath it and were connected to nothing. A mirror hung below the optics and was emblazoned with the “Jim Beam” motif. It shone like a hyper-giant star under the glare of the strategically positioned spotlighting.
I felt an irrational fear when I spied Moke reaching up to the optics and polishing the bottles of spirits with an ardent enthusiasm. Years had dragged by since our last brief encounter. She had her back to me and, as I recalled, that was always her best side. I refused myself the liberty of interrupting her domestic chores, but stood and observed as she strained to reach. Her short blouse had popped out from the waistband of her jeans and was riding up her back. Her relatively well-toned back muscles swam elegantly against her tight white skin as she stretched on her tip-toes, and then relaxed, and then stretched again. The curves of her tight blue jeans caused me to experience a momentary Neanderthal rush.
I took a deep breath and tried to appear less distracted by her rear than I was. “Not much of a lunchtime crowd.”
She span around with her duster in her hand. “Rod!” she cried, with a big broad grin on her face. This was just the kind of therapy that my ego had been in need of. She leapt from the stool upon which she’d been hazardously perched, and threw herself across the bar at me, hugging me with an enthusiasm far beyond that of a mere acquaintance.
“I love what you’ve done with your hair, Rodney,” she yelled as she finally released me from her embrace.
“I haven’t done anything with my hair.”
“I know. That’s what I mean. It’s so eighties; so you.” She laughed like a crazy woman. Her eyes shone. She was clearly excited to see me. It felt somewhat bizarre.
“So, how have yo
u been?”
She stopped laughing and bit her lip, almost coyly. “Come.” She led me over to a table. “Sorry, did you want a drink?”
“I’m good, thanks. Maybe later.”
We sat down and she began to grin again, etching lines into one of the menus with her fingernail. “Do you ever look back on those days, Rod?”
I shrugged and committed myself to a lie. “No. Do you?”
“I guess.” She seemed quite contemplative and continued to deface the menu. “Sometimes fondly, sometimes with a little sadness.”
“Just a little sadness?”
“Just a little.”
“Why?”
She laughed. “Why, just a little, or why, sadness?”
“Why sadness?”
“Don’t you think we wasted so many opportunities, Rodney? We were young, we were at our peak, they were our salad days, and we misunderstood that. We thought it would last forever. We destroyed ourselves and ruined our futures.”
“But, weren’t we happy in the haze of those drunken days?”
“Really, Rodney? You think!”
She was making me feel anxious and, rather than bolstering my confidence, was beginning to drag me back to those dark days that I had fought so long and bitterly against reliving. “Okay, I know I’m going nowhere, but you seem to be doing alright,” I remarked in an attempt to lighten the conversation.
“I’m a barmaid, Rodney. I’m a full-time barmaid who’ll never see forty again.”
“But, isn’t this your gaff? Yours and Broomhead’s?”
“It’s Robert’s.” It was strange hearing Broomhead being referred to so formally and by his Christian name. “I work for him.”
“But, aren’t you two…?”
“No!” she cut in sharply.
I was startled by her sudden change of demeanour. “Sorry, Moke, I didn’t mean to….”
“I just work for him,” she re-iterated as if to take care of any doubt that may have yet lingered on the issue of her employment status. “That’s all!”
I took a deliberate pause and tried to think of a plan to tip-toe away from the course of the conversation. As renowned as I was for my lack of small talk I, quite typically, came up with the weakest of diversions. “I do like those condiment shelves.”
The anger visibly drained from her features and was replaced with a look of curious pity for me.
“I was wondering: don’t you have any mayonnaise?”
She held out her hand to me as if for comfort. “Rodney, what do you want mayonnaise for? You’re not even eating.”
“I was just wondering, that’s all. You’ve got everything else, apart from mayonnaise and chilli sauce.”
“If you want mayonnaise, I can get you some from the kitchen.”
Rather pleased with my diversionary tactics, I began to stall and stumble. “I don’t really want any right now, I was just wondering, that’s all.”
“Oh, okay.” She seemed satisfied, and with that subject safely put to bed, she was right back on track. “It didn’t work out with me and Robert, but you probably always knew that would happen.”
“It lasted ages though. It’s one of the longest lasting relationships I’ve ever known, Moke. Second only to the Queen and Prince Phillip.
“And Frank and Joanne?” she laughed. “Nah, Rod, it was always on and off, on and off. We went to Bangla’s funeral together but we were only ever friends by then. Just friends. We’ve stayed friends and that’s cool. He does his thing, whatever that is, and I do mine, whatever the hell that is.” She sounded a little agitated as she explained her ongoing, if unorthodox, relationship with my old friend and, sometime, rival.
“So, where do you live?”
“Upstairs.”
“And Broomhead?”
“Upstairs.”
“That’s weird shit, man.”
She seemed startled by my reaction. “Why?”
“You live together but you’re not together? Really?”
“I have my own room, all to myself. You want to see it?”
I declined her invitation.
“Just as well. I’m on duty at the moment.” She waved her hand around the empty pub. “But, maybe later, hey?”
“Maybe,” I muttered and then, as if by divine intervention, and with impeccable timing, the door opened and a customer actually ambled in.
“Be right back,” said Moke and scampered off to her post behind the bar. She was on first name terms with the newcomer and he insisted on chatting to her as she poured him a drink. This gave me the opportunity to make a further examination of the decor. Hanging from the fake polystyrene rafters were triangular pennants representing the flags of the various nations that were due to be competing in the forthcoming European Football Championships in France. Our very own England had, of course, qualified and for the next couple of weeks or so, the pubs would be full of idiots and the National Football Intelligence Unit would be camped at Dover running up a huge overtime bill.
Meanwhile, Moke was experiencing rather a sharp upturn in business herself as two more customers entered the establishment and insisted on purchasing cold beverages from her. Whilst she was serving them, her first customer zigzagged across the wooden floor in my general direction. He began impertinently asking me who I was in a form of English that resembled nothing I’d heard before. It was both incoherent and, for the most part, unintelligible. Exactly as I had feared he would, he eventually invited himself to sit with me and took Moke’s chair.
“Do you mind if I join you?” he asked rhetorically.
“Not at all,” I lied, “I used to be a pub bore, myself, once. I used to be part of the furniture in places such as this. You carry on.”
He began to relate a story about a visit to Charing Cross Hospital that he had recently undertaken. Fortunately, his disjointed speech patterns were so incomprehensible that I barely understood a word of what he was saying, and to my relief, he didn’t seem to expect me to either, never pausing for a response nor looking to my eyes for a glimmer of a reaction to what he said. The basis of his story seemed to revolve around the bus timetable and the traffic on the Fulham Palace Road at any given time of day. Beyond that, he had me stumped.
When she finished serving, Moke called me over to the bar and I was glad to be rescued from the ongoing saga regarding the diversion imposed upon the 220 bus route because of the over-running road works at the junction of Lillie Road. She was sitting on the stool that she’d been standing on when I first arrived, filing her nails and smiling vacuously. A freshly poured pint of lager was sitting on the bar. I noticed that it was flat. “Is that for me?”
“Yes, Carling aright?”
“It’s a bit too early for me, that’s all.”
“You alright, Rod?” she asked sarcastically. “Feeling unwell?”
“Maybe I changed. People do.”
She sniffed. “Whatever. We all gotta have a drink sometime, Rod.”
My wavering attention was drawn to a poster announcing forthcoming musical events. For some reason, there was a picture of Debbie Harry taken sometime around 1977 on the poster, although she wasn’t listed as one of the artists that Broomhead had managed to book to perform at his bar. Who wouldn’t be distracted by a photograph of the delightful Miss Harry? As I scrolled down the list of acts, I came across one that I recognised from years earlier; many years earlier. We would have been about the same age; they would have been as old, and presumably, as tired as Moke. I was going to ask her if they were, indeed, the same group that we’d seen in North London back in the day, but when I looked at her, she had a stony look on her face, so I tempered my inquisitiveness. Maybe, I’d come back to see Casino play on the twenty-third of the month just to satisfy my curiosity. Maybe, I’d come back and see Moke, and we could dance awkwardly on the tables again.
“Right though, innit?” and she impatiently pushed the glass of lager towards me.
I slid it back to her as if we were playing a board game. “So
metimes alcohol’s just not the answer though, Moke.” I noticed that not one bubble made the ascent to the head of the pint as it was shepherded back and forth across the bar.
Something changed; the atmosphere suddenly became charged and cold as if someone had left a door open onto an arctic tundra. I noticed that she was holding the palms of her hands flat on the bar, and was drilling into me with her dark piercing eyes. Her teeth were gritted as if she were in pain. “Listen to you, Mr Fucking Self-righteous! Who do you think you are all of a sudden?”
She had me at a disadvantage; it was a very good question, and I wasn’t sure of the answer. I wasn’t sure why she was asking it either. It appeared that I’d found a raw nerve. She was still glaring; not at me, but right into me, and began to rant. “You’ll be sorry when I’ve gone,” she hissed, and tried to put some mystery behind it. “It’ll be too late, and you’ll realise what you lost.”
I heard myself stammering awkwardly. “I lost you years ago, Moke.”
As suddenly as the chill had descended, it lifted. Instead of looking wrathful, as she had done only seconds earlier, she seemed somewhat bashful. She tried to smile back at me but couldn’t quite manage it. Her upper lip was slightly curled and her teeth were exposed. They were still as white as ever. They shone in the lights that she’d been polishing earlier; all except for where the little gap was between the front two. She placed her elbows on the bar and dropped her chin into her hands. “I just miss those days, that’s all. I hate getting older. Every day; just that little bit older, and more useless, and further away from…” She trailed off and seemed to be lost on some personal nostalgic expedition.
“Perhaps, you’re just seeing the past through rose tinted spectacles, Moke. It wasn’t always that great, was it?”
“But, it was better than now, Rod. All I feel like doing now is putting the barrel of a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger.”
For a moment I was aghast. Clearly, I’d walked into a storm of self-loathing and angst. Her phone call hadn’t been out of the blue at all, but had been a cry for help. I began to imagine her with the long hard barrel of a Colt 45 between her lips and, after a while, it felt almost erotic.