‘Craft beer hasn’t peaked yet,’ he said. ‘The market’s still growing, and artisan spirits are even stronger – so to speak. I used to work in sales for a brewery, but I’ve always wanted to run my own business, so I saved up and borrowed from everywhere I could, and here I am. How about you?’
I regaled him with the story of how I’d accidentally found myself helping Shirley out behind the bar and decided to work some shifts in the pub, but left out the bit about losing my job and being found in tears in the street by Maurice.
‘It’s kind of sucked me in,’ I said. ‘I never thought this was what I’d do with my life, but – for now, anyway – it looks like it is.’
‘So what were you doing before?’ Archie asked, biting into his bacon roll like he hadn’t eaten for months.
‘I was about to qualify as a lawyer. My boyfriend Joe still works at the firm where I was. I sometimes think he worries I’ve gone completely bonkers.’
Not to mention that he’s moved his ex-girlfriend into our spare room. But I didn’t say that either.
‘My girlfriend Nat thinks the same sometimes. She’s a physiotherapist. Works at the hospital just there.’ Archie gestured, a spatter of butter falling from his hand onto the table, as if the local hospital was right outside the door, even though we both knew it was more than a mile away.
But that wasn’t what we’d been saying, really. By acknowledging the presence in our lives of Joe and Nat, we were making this breakfast okay. We were opening the door to a friendship that wouldn’t go any further. Even though he’d been kind and helpful and we were sitting smiling at each other across the laminate tabletop, our mouths full of bacon, our relationship would develop in one direction only.
I relaxed, taking a big gulp of milky coffee and a bite of my own roll, feeling melting butter and shards of crisp bacon fill my mouth. A few minutes later, we were done. I paid the bill as a thank you for Archie roping his uncle in, and we headed back towards the Nag’s Head, just as an anonymous dark blue van pulled up outside.
‘Here he is!’ Archie said. ‘Come the moment, come the man. Hello, Raymond.’
‘When I heard there was a problem with the bogs here at the Nag, I had to come straight over,’ said Uncle Ray. ‘My prostate not being what it used to be. Got to make sure we get to play our bones in comfort, don’t we?’
After he levered himself out of the driving seat, I recognised him straight away. He was the fourth member of the dominoes group that included Maurice, Sadiq and Terry.
‘We’ll have this sorted for you in two shakes, love,’ he said to me.
‘That’s so kind,’ I gushed. ‘Thank you. Thank you ever so much. But before you start, do you mind me asking how much this… I mean, could you possibly give me a quote for the work?’
He rubbed his moustache and looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments.
‘How about a round on the house for me and the lads? I know money’s tight right now.’
I didn’t need to do the maths. I knew perfectly well that thirty days of one or two halves of Guinness, three or four of bitter and a few litres of orange juice would come nowhere close to what Ray could have charged, let alone a single round.
I found myself leaning in and hugging him, and then I turned to hug Archie too, but at the last moment we both kind of side-stepped, and he just grinned and said he’d see me around.
Twelve
In the end I didn’t get to tell Shirley about my urinal-based adventures. Although I hadn’t been expecting her to make it to the pub that morning, I was surprised when she and Juan didn’t arrive for evening service either – surprised, but too busy to give their absence much thought, and also slightly flattered that she thought I could cope fine without her. I explained to the couple of customers who asked for food that the kitchen was closed, assuming that my boss and her other half were having a high old time at their post-funeral knees-up.
Somehow, I survived the evening trade alone. There were a couple of sticky moments, like when Fat Don tried to sit back down on his bar stool and missed, ending up in a heap on the floor, but fortunately the local five-a-side football team were able to help him to his feet. It was after midnight when I got home, aching in every part of my body, my arm so sore from pulling pints that I could barely lift my toothbrush, and I slid as quietly as I could into bed next to Joe’s sleeping form and instantly fell asleep.
The furious buzzing of my phone woke me from a dream in which the beer taps at the Nag’s Head had malfunctioned and a steady tide of best bitter was threatening to engulf the place. I forced my eyes open and rolled over. Joe’s side of the bed was empty. My phone – which I reached for just in time to miss the call – told me it was eight o’clock.
The call had been from Shirley. While I waited to see if she’d leave me a voice message – whenever she had before, they’d been rambling minutes-long affairs full of general chit-chat before she got around to the actual reason for her call – I showered and dressed.
Zoë’s bedroom door was closed – presumably she too had had a late night and was enjoying a lie-in – but Frazzle was up and about, twining around my legs and crying piteously. There was a scrawled note on the kitchen worktop from Joe:
Gone to the office to catch up with some stuff. Don’t listen to Frazzle – he’s had his breakfast xxx
I laughed, feeling a rush of affection for him, and then realised that Frazzle was Zoë’s cat and the note – and therefore the kisses – were meant more for her than for me. I imagined Joe adding those three Xs to the page torn from his work notepad. I wondered whether he’d hesitated before writing them, or put one down and then impulsively added the other two. I imagined Zoë finding the note and seeing them, and smiling a little secret, satisfied smile – He gave me kisses!
I told myself that it was just a note, just a casual, friendly sign-off, no reason at all to worry. But I couldn’t help it – I was worried.
The washing machine was full, I noticed – a tangle of wet clothes bunched up against the door. If I took them out and hung them up, they’d be dry by the evening. I hauled the bunch of wet fabric out and started to drape it, rather haphazardly, over the airer. Just a few weeks ago, there would have been loads of my work clothes in there – tights and blouses and dresses. Now, the only garments of mine were jeans, jersey tops and underwear. There were a few things that must have been Zoë’s, and some of Joe’s work shirts, too.
And then I came across another unfamiliar garment, and stopped, looking at it bemusement.
It was a pair of silk boxer shorts, printed with Bart Simpson’s face.
Joe had silk boxer shorts, but they had Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer printed on them. I’d given them to him for Christmas, a kind of joke gift, and he’d been delighted.
‘Cool, thanks, Alice!’ I remembered him laughing. ‘I had a pair of these ages ago, only they were Simpsons ones. I’ve no idea what happened to them – they just kind of disappeared.’
Surely this must be some random coincidence. Surely if Zoë had a pair of men’s boxers that she wore in bed, or to watch telly in, or whatever – which was slightly weird, maybe, but not alarming in itself – they couldn’t be ones that had belonged to Joe years before, when they were together, that she’d borrowed or stolen and kept all this time?
Because that would be seriously weird.
Then I remembered Shirley’s call and hurried back to the bedroom to retrieve my phone. There was a message, as I’d expected, but it was a surprisingly brief one.
‘Hello, my love. Could you meet me at the pub early today please? There’s been a crisis.’
Oh God, another one? If it was the men’s toilets again I was handing in my notice – not that I had an employment contract or anything.
But it couldn’t be, I realised. Shirley only got to work at around nine, and from the sound of her message she’d had a late night; her voice was even hoarser than usual. Well, there was only one way to find out.
I pulled on some clothe
s, not bothering with any make-up, and hustled out of the door, ignoring Frazzle’s entreaties for second breakfast but giving him a scratch behind the ear, to which he responded with a look that said quite clearly, ‘That’s not what I wanted and you know it.’
I reached the Nag’s Head just as Shirley was getting out of her car. She used to live in the flat above the pub, she’d told me, but her relationship with Juan had put paid to that. ‘He wanted us to have a proper love nest,’ she’d said, ‘so we do. A semi in Bromley.’
‘Morning, Shirl. How are you? What’s up?’
‘Oh my days, love. I feel awful. I don’t know what they put in that Bacardi and Coke but my head’s proper banging and my stomach… I should have avoided those egg and cress sandwiches, that’s all I’m saying.’
Her face was immaculately made-up as usual, but she wasn’t wearing her normal skintight jeans and draped top, but instead a velour Juicy Couture tracksuit and trainers.
‘I’m so sorry you’re feeling rough,’ I said. ‘What can I get you? Coffee? Paracetamol?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t mind me, love. I can’t stop here anyway. That’s why I asked you to come in.’
‘What’s happened? Are you all right?’
‘I’m all right. Well, I will be, once time and Mother Nature have done their work. It’s Juan.’
‘Juan? Is he ill?’
‘If he wasn’t, he would have been by the time I’d finished telling him what I thought of him. A grown man, making a spectacle of himself like that, in front of everyone. Doing himself an injury. Bloody men, they just can’t be trusted to look after themselves.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, this wake last night, you know how it is. You want to give people a decent send-off, and Len wouldn’t have wanted his funeral to be a gloomy affair. So a good time was had by all, shall we say, including yours truly. But Juan – well, he’s never been much of a drinker, but he let his hair down good and proper.’
‘So he’s hungover, too?’
‘Hungover? If that was all he was, don’t you think I’d have told him to drag his sorry arse out of bed and get down here, same as I have?’
I had no doubt that was true.
‘It was “Come on Eileen” that did it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve always disliked that tune. Juan, though, got on the dance floor and started carrying on like a fifteen-year-old, doing all the moves and everything.’
I tried to imagine lugubrious, silent Juan tearing up a dance floor to Dexy’s Midnight Runners and failed.
‘And then what happened?’
‘And then,’ Shirley paused, ‘the dozy bugger only went and stepped on a miniature Scotch egg someone had dropped and went flying. Bloody thing must’ve been hard as a bullet; if he’d tried to eat it he’d likely have broken a tooth. I know I complain day and night about all them health and safety regulations, but I have to admit they have a place, and the management at the Spotted Dog in Plaistow will be hearing from the local council once I have a moment to get on the blower to them. But I can’t do that, because I need to get his highness off to the minor injuries unit ASAP. I’m no expert, but I think he’s done his knee in. Can barely hobble, never mind work in the kitchen. He went arse over tit, right in front of all my friends. There’s no fool like an old fool. And now I’ll have to stop at home with him, waiting on him hand and foot, helping him to the bathroom and listening to him moan on about how much pain he’s in. Pain indeed! It’s him that’s the pain.’
In spite of her ranting, I could tell she was concerned.
‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘You do whatever you need to. I’ll be absolutely fine here on my own.’
‘But what about the kitchen?’ she wailed. ‘The punters will be expecting their home-cooked food, same as usual.’
Describing the microwave cheese omelettes and powdered tomato soup Juan prepared at the Nag’s Head as home cooking was a stretch at best, but I wasn’t going to diss him.
‘They can order from Deliveroo on their phones,’ I said. ‘I’ll print off some notices and put them out instead of menus, saying the chef’s indisposed. And I’ll get extra crisps and stuff in. It’ll be fine.’
‘You’re a treasure, you know that? A real treasure.’
‘It’s nothing, honestly, Shirl. You get back to Juan. I’ve got this.’
She reached over and gave me an Obsession-scented hug, then swung back into her car and drove away on her errand of mercy.
I paused for a moment before fitting the key into the lock. I’d opened up on my own before, but this time felt different. Turning the key, stepping into the familiar-smelling interior of the pub, seeing the dust motes drifting in the morning sun, thinking of the long list of tasks that needed to be completed before eleven o’clock – all those things, which I’d done numerous times, now felt laden with a new significance.
It took me a moment to realise what it was like. It reminded me of the first time Joe and I had walked into our flat after collecting the keys from the estate agent.
‘This is ours now, Alice,’ he’d said, and pulled me into his arms and danced me around every room before we collapsed on the bedroom carpet and had a hasty celebratory shag, not caring that the bed we’d ordered wasn’t going to arrive until the next day.
The Nag’s Head wasn’t mine. It never would be – it was owned by the absentee landlady who lived abroad and, from what Shirley had said, never gave a thought to the place. But I was in charge, as least for the time being.
To celebrate, I opened the lid of the ancient piano and plinked out the first few bars of ‘Ode to Joy’. It had been fifteen years since I’d given up music lessons but somehow my fingers remembered what to do – although I could hear that the poor old thing was hopelessly out of tune.
Sitting down on the faded velvet chaise longue, I put my feet up, allowing myself a ‘queen of all she surveys’ moment, channelling Daenerys from Game of Thrones and wondering if I should pour myself a glass of Prosecco – or possibly a flagon of the blood of my enemies. Except I didn’t have any of Zoë’s blood and it was too early for Prosecco. Then, with extra vigour, I hoovered the threadbare carpet, checked the stock in the cellar and wiped the tables, which, even though they were cleaned after closing time, always seemed to have acquired a new film of dust by the morning.
I looked around my domain. It was just the same as it had been the first time I saw it – a small, dingy, shabby pub that had seen better days. But now I could see its potential. I imagined stripping off the faded flock wallpaper and seeing what was underneath it – more wallpaper, I guessed. But eventually, there’d be a wall. A wall made of honest bricks that could be revealed and celebrated. And the floor – between the islands of ugly red carpet, there were bare boards, dented with age and coated with layers of varnish. I imagined how they’d look if the carpet was taken away and they were sanded and polished, back to the natural gloss they must have had when they were new, which was probably around the same time Queen Victoria got a crown on her head for the first time.
And, speaking of crowns, there was Diana, Princess of Wales, regarding me steadily from her portrait over the mantelpiece. Was it just me, or was there a new wariness in her gaze?
‘Don’t you worry, Di,’ I told her. ‘I’m just keeping the place warm. Shirley will be back in no time. If it was down to me, you’d be straight off to the charity shop. But it’s not, so you can relax.’
I forced myself out of my daydream and took some money from the till, which I invested in stocks of crisps, peanuts and pretzels at Tesco, pausing for just a second before throwing in some tubs of the poshest olives they had for good measure.
If today was the first day of the rest of the Nag’s Head’s life, I might as well start as I intended to carry on.
Over the next couple of weeks, I worked harder than I ever had in my life. Shirley informed me that Juan had torn an anterior cruciate ligament, and that they’d both be off until he was – literally –
back on his feet again and able to walk without crutches.
‘You’re in charge, my love,’ she said. ‘Do what needs doing. Do your Deliveroo thing. Hire in some extra pairs of hands, if you can get them. We’ll find the money somehow. And give me a ring any time you need advice.’
So I did. I got a local deli to deliver platters of sandwiches at lunchtime, and charged a few pounds a head for them, which made a small profit and went down brilliantly with the local mums as well as with Fat Don, who was at least getting some vitamins down him for a change. They went from turning up their noses at Juan’s food menu and saying how they did wish there was somewhere decent and family-friendly to come to after baby yoga, to remarking how fortunate they were to have found this place – a real hidden gem.
I rented an industrial coffee machine and installed it in the corner of the bar, and started opening earlier in the mornings to attract local home workers, who came for coffee with their laptops, stayed the morning, and often wanted lunch, too. I met the rep from the brewery and asked him to recommend some decent but affordable wine to add to our order. I popped next door and asked Archie to advise me on what craft beer we should stock. I put an ad in the local job centre and recruited two part-time staff members, Kelly and Freddie, who between them could cover a few shifts a week and give me an occasional break or an evening off.
When business was slow, I spent some time sorting through the accumulated junk in the rooms upstairs. There were empty plastic crates stacked three-deep along one wall, almost up to the ceiling. There were framed prints, their paper speckled with mould and their glass cracked. There were tea chests full of old beer mats, branded pump handle clips from beers that had gone out of production years ago, chipped glasses and bottleneck sleeves. There were more chairs and stools, most of them with missing legs or cracked seats. I barely made a dent in it all, but it was something.
Just Saying: An absolutely perfect and feel-good romantic comedy Page 10
