by Ripley, Mike
‘You watch your fucking language, Dan Dexter. I’m not that desperate yet. We’ve got customers. There’s those lads who’ve started to come in and play darts in the week, they fill the place up.’
‘They don’t drink much, though, do they?’ Dan chipped in helpfully.
‘I rely on you and the Major for my wet sales,’ Ivy snapped back. ‘And talk of the devil, here he comes.’
She must have recognised his tread on the gravel as she couldn’t possibly have seen over the bar and out over the frosted lower half of the windows.
‘He’s not driving tonight,’ said Dan, ‘so your takings’ll be up.’
The door latch clicked and I felt the early evening air cool on the back of my neck.
‘’Evening Ivy, ‘evening Dan,’ came a clipped, military voice. ‘Had to hoof it tonight. Some damn wide boy’s parked a bloody great Panzer at the end of my drive. Couldn’t get the old motor out.’
‘Er . . . back in a minute,’ I said, diving for the door.
By six-thirty the pub was humming, the sound of merriment and laughter bouncing off its oaken beams, horse brasses and ranks of pewter and silver tankards hanging from hooks above the bar. There were seven of us in the place now and I had to resist the temptation to look around for the jukebox. There wasn’t one, but if there had been it would have played 78s. Dan was still at his corner of the bar and the character known as the Major had settled on to a bar stool into which his buttocks had made grooves.
In a corner of the bar were a middle-aged couple who had parked a Ford Mondeo at the back of the car-park so it couldn’t be seen from the road. I had noticed that, but I didn’t think the others had. It wasn’t anything seriously suspicious, they were just meeting for a drink after work as married (though not to each other) couples do every day before going home.
I had switched to bottles of Seagull Low, which might have sounded like a Battle of Britain call sign but was in fact the brewery’s version of an alcohol-free beer. The label told me it probably contained less alcohol than tomato juice. It certainly had less taste. I doubted if it was one of Murdo’s best-selling lines.
The switch was necessary for two reasons. Firstly, I hadn’t decided what I was going to do with Amy’s car and didn’t know whether I would have to drive it back to London or not. Secondly, I decided five minutes into the Major’s company that after a couple of Seagrave Specials I would probably have clocked him one.
He had opinions on every subject under the sun and was anxious to share them. All the problems of England on the eve of the Millennium were down to socialists, sociologists, illegal immigrants, graduates in media studies, the lack of policemen on the beat, spin doctors and women priests. He made the ‘Major’ character in Fawlty Towers look like a cross between Einstein and Bertrand Russell.
He also had the really annoying habit of deliberately mispronouncing things. For some reason, he started to describe his Sunday lunch of ‘swoop’ (soup), ‘roasty beef and Porkshire Goodings’ and ‘Saucyradish’, which I guessed was horseradish sauce. When my sides stopped splitting, I wondered how he had made the rank of major, and in which army.
The other two passing customers were more interesting. They were Ted and Marion and I could tell from the obvious clues – the way he looked along the bar at the levels in the spirits bottles and the amount of jewellery she wore – that they were licensees. It turned out to be a professional call and they exchanged ‘Evenings’ with Dan and the Major. That doesn’t mean to say they knew them. Maybe every pub round here had a Dan and a Major.
‘Good evening, Ted, Marion,’ said Ivy. ‘Usual? Or would you prefer a brandy and lovage?’
‘The usual, please, Ivy. Brandy and lovage, eh? Haven’t heard that one for a while,’ said Ted.
‘Ivy hadn’t heard of it at all until this young fella told her what it was.’
Dan was unlikely to get Brownie points for mentioning this but it had been a while since anyone referred to me as ‘young fella’ so he was going up in my book.
‘You in the trade?’ Ted asked me in a friendly enough sort of way, although Dan and the Major leaned closer to hear my answer.
‘No, no, just a customer. But I’ve been in a few pub quiz teams. You pick things up, you know, trivia. You’ve got a pub?’
‘Oh yes, the Old House At Home, down in Rye. Do you know Rye?’
Before I could answer him, the hand pump Ivy was pulling made a rude squirting noise.
‘Oh, fiddle!’ exclaimed Ivy on best behaviour. ‘The bitter’s gone. Won’t be a minute.’
‘Don’t worry, Ivy, I’ll have a bottle of something,’ said Ted with something close to alarm in his voice.
‘No, you won’t. It’ll have to be changed sometime and better now than when we get a rush on.’
All five of us at the bar exchanged glances at that, but said nothing as Ivy disappeared behind the bar. And I mean disappeared. The others had probably seen it before, but it was new and magic for me so I leaned over the bar to watch.
Ivy was bent over as if touching her toes, using both hands to haul back a large metal bolt in the floor. With a squeak and a snap it slid open and a square yard of trap-door fell away with a crash as it hit the cellar wall. Ivy dropped to her knees and poked one of her thin arms into the gloom until there was a click and a light came on below. I could see a set of wooden steps descending at an angle which would not have looked out of place in the last reel of Titanic. With one hand clutching her skirt, Ivy started down, smiling regally at us as she did so.
‘I won’t be a moment,’ she said gracefully.
‘You be careful, Ivy,’ Marion said with genuine concern. Then to Ted, in a whisper: ‘Those stairs’ll be the death of her.’
‘I know, I know, but she won’t be told.’
From the cellar came a metallic crash followed by:
‘Fuck! Damn! Shit! Where’s that bastard hammer?’
‘In the box with the soft spiles,’ Dan shouted down the trapdoor.
A banging noise told us she had found it.
‘You should get the brewery to do something about that cellar access,’ Marion said to her husband.
‘Pah!’ spluttered the Major. ‘Get the brewery involved and next thing you know they’ll be turning the place into one of those theme pubs.’
I wondered what theme the Major had in mind. A Fall of the House of Usher pub perhaps.
‘Look, she’s a member of the Association but that doesn’t mean I can interfere in her business,’ said Ted, wincing at another clatter of metal from below.
‘Would that be the Licensed Victuallers Association?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, but she doesn’t attend much.’
‘Does the Association have much to do with the beer-runners?’ I tried and he seemed relieved to talk about anything to take his mind off the banging and crashing in the cellar.
‘Oh, we’re suffering. Maybe not as bad as some, because we’re a big eating house. We’re sixty per cent food to forty per cent wet sales, but we’ve noticed the dip in the last few years. Oh yes, we’re hurting. All pubs in Kent are.’
He looked longingly at the unused beer pumps as more crashing and cursing echoed up from the cellar.
‘Is it a problem in Rye? Smuggling?’
‘Not directly. It’s a small port, not like Dover where you’ve got – what? – nine thousand vehicles a day landing. That’s where most of it comes in. Everybody knows that.’
Everybody did.
‘So what can you do about it?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘It’s up to the government. They keep putting the tax up, it just makes more sense to buy your beer in France. More bargains for the beer-runners.’
‘We should make the Froggies put their tax up,’ the Major butted in. ‘That would stop the smugglers in their tracks. Or we should just pull out of Europe all together. Leave them to stew in their own juices.’
‘Here we go again,’ sighed Dan.
Fo
rtunately, we didn’t as a final thump from the cellar followed by a victory cry of ‘Gotcha yer bastard!’ meant that Ivy was ready to ascend from the underworld and normal service was about to be resumed.
I leaned over the bar to watch, fascinated, but before anything happened I had time to whisper in Ted’s ear:
‘Any chance I could get any food here?’
He reached into the top pocket of his jacket and silently handed over a business card. It was for his pub in Rye. I nodded a silent thanks.
Through the trap-door I could see the sheer staircase had a thick rope running at the side of it, serving as a handrail. Ivy’s tiny hand made it go taut as she started up and I could see that she was holding a second, thinner rope as well, one with some sort of toggle at the end.
She hauled herself into the bar and smiled angelically at Ted.
‘Not long now, Ted. All good things are worth waiting for.’
‘Retirement, f’r’instance,’ Ted whispered under his breath.
Ivy hauled on the thin rope she held and the trap-door swung upwards. When it was in place, Ivy kicked the bolt shut and let go of the rope. It snaked down through a knot hole in the woodwork until the toggle hit the floor. The toggle, I could now see, was a wine bottle cork and Ivy tipped it into the knot hole and tamped it down with a dainty toe.
She grapped a pump handle and began to work it furiously.
‘Just draw the first couple off,’ she confided to Ted and Ted nodded professionally, if thirstily.
‘You had anybody round looking at your tankards, Ivy?’
Ivy grinned and her eyes sparkled.
‘Is that rhyming slang for something rude, Ted Lewis?’
Ted’s wife Marion laughed loudly in a voice which surely came in handy when it came to closing time. Dan spluttered into his beer. The Major sniffed haughtily. The married (but not to each other) couple decided to leave.
‘I’m serious, Ivy. There’s a couple of rich Americans in the area, doing the rounds buying up antiques and especially silver tankards.’
Ivy looked up at the forest of tankards hanging from hooks above her head.
‘What’s the catch?’ she said as she eventually handed Ted his drink and waved away the offered £10 note.
‘No catch, they seem dead straight.’
‘Don’t like the sound of it meself,’ said the Major as if someone had asked him. ‘Yanks buying up the country’s heritage? Bad news.’
‘Well, say what you like about that, but these two seem genuine. Downright honest actually. They came into my pub and bought an old silver mug I’d been keeping pencils in. Gave me £250 for it and then came back a few days later and told me they’d made a mistake and they’d dated it wrong.’
‘Oh yes?’ Ivy nodded knowingly. ‘Wanted their money back, did they?’
‘Yes, they did, Ivy,’ said Marion, ‘but it’s not what you think. They said the tankard was actually worth £2500 and they didn’t feel right about taking it so cheaply so they sold it back to us.’
‘How much for?’ Ivy and I said in unison, then we looked at each other.
‘Two hundred and fifty,’ said Ted. ‘Just what they paid. I thought that was a really nice gesture. They could have legged it and we’d have been no wiser. See, there are some honest folk left in the world.’
‘None of them use this pub,’ cracked Ivy and roared with laughter. Then she slapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Except for this young gentleman here. I’m sure he is. Sorry, love, I don’t know your name.’
‘Roy,’ I said and bit my tongue, leaving it there.
‘Please to meet you, Roy. You working locally?’
‘No, just driving through,’ I said, thinking rapidly. ‘I’m in the fashion business.’
‘What, like a travelling salesman?’ asked Ivy and the others all leaned in to hear the answer. Maybe they had a thing about travelling salesmen. One had probably called at the pub and sold them all nose hair clippers or run off with their Christmas Club fund round about 1930.
‘Oh no. I’m an assistant to a fashion photographer. I help the models get dressed and undressed.’
They blanked me, all of them.
‘It’s only thirty quid a week but it was all I could afford.’
More blank looks and half a minute of dead silence then they all laughed out loud, except the Major. I was just grateful they never watched old Woody Allen movies and for the old adage that the best comedian is one with a longer memory than his audience.
‘The Major here had you pegged as one of those computer boffins,’ said Dan, toying with his empty glass.
‘Computers? Wouldn’t know how to turn one on,’ I said. ‘Get you another? How about you, Major?’
‘Wouldn’t say no. Jolly decent of you. Never really had you down as one of those wide boys, y’know.’
Ivy was already filling their glasses.
‘Shouldn’t judge a man by his car,’ the Major was saying.
‘But you always say that,’ Dan exclaimed. ‘You can always judge a man by the car he drives, that’s what you always say. That’s why I ride that old bike of mine. You can judge a man by his car, but you can’t judge a man by his bicycle!’
‘Nuff and sonsense, Dan,’ blustered the Major, hiding his face in his pint.
‘No, it’s not,’ Dan protested, not letting it go. ‘You’ve been on and on like a nun’s knickers for weeks about wide boys in BMWs tearing up the village shouting into their mobile phones.’
‘Well, they do. Shout that is. Some of them don’t need a phone. Just because one is retired, it does not mean one is deaf,’ said the Major primly.
‘Tosser,’ said Dan quietly and the Major gave no sign of hearing.
‘You got tearaways in the village, Ivy?’ Ted asked her, and he seemed genuinely concerned. ‘You’re pretty isolated here, you know.’
‘Nothing to worry about, Ted, unless you’re the Major here. I reckon they’re running raves somewhere round here. Secret locations and all that. That’s why they need the mobile phones.’ Ivy thought about it. ‘Little buggers never ask me, though. I could show them a thing or two.’
I wondered whether to laugh or not, but no one else was and that was sort of spooky.
‘Anyway,’ Ivy went on, ‘the Major’s only got the hump because they’ve got better cars than he has and they’re young and some of them are black.’
‘Now, Ivy, I’ve never held the colour of a person’s skin against them,’ said the Major, blushing.
Dan’s eyebrows shot up and stayed up.
‘I wouldn’t mind holding the one I saw last week against me,’ said Ivy, putting a glass under the gin optic. ‘Fit as a butcher’s dog, that one. All muscles. He could have me in the back of his car any time. ‘Course I’d have to wear some flat shoes. Wouldn’t want me stilettos ripping the lining of his roof, would I, Marion?’
‘Ivy, behave yourself!’ laughed Marion and this time it was safe to join in.
‘It’s not them, it’s their attitude,’ the Major persisted. ‘Driving up and down, music blaring and always on their bloody mobile phones. They give you cancer, you know.’
We all looked at him.
‘Mobile phones. It’s been proved. They’re radioactive and it sets off something in the brain which makes them addictive and then they give you cancer. Should be banned. Ruining the art of conservation – conversation.’
‘Really, Major, you do come out with some twaddle.’ Ivy shook her head in despair. ‘Are you all right, Roy?’
‘Er . . . yes, fine. Where’s the Gents?’
‘Out the door, turn right and right again. I’ll put the outside light on for you.’
She flicked a switch behind the bar and I shuffled gratefully off my bar stool.
My pager had started vibrating over my right buttock and I didn’t want to answer it in front of the Major. God knew what he would have made of that.
The toilet block was basic to say the least and open to the stars and the dark night sky, whi
ch made sure the visitors didn’t linger.
Out in the car-park the pager told me Amy wanted me to call her on her mobile so I rescued mine from the glove compartment of the BMW, relieved that I hadn’t taken it into the pub.
I punched her up in the memory and said, ‘It’s me, where are you?’ when she answered.
‘I’m in Paris where I’m supposed to be. Where are you?’
In the background I could hear a not half-bad jazz band playing. She was probably on the eighth course of her dinner. The models would be sitting there watching, not eating. I hoped she was getting a feel of where I was, just downwind of the Gents’ toilet.
‘I’m on a stakeout down in Kent.’
‘Is that half as exciting as you’re trying to make it sound?’
‘Not really. I’m in the car-park of the Pub From Hell trying to decide which flavour crisps I’m going to have for dinner.’
‘Then I won’t tell what we’ve just eaten but the duck was outstanding and we’ve been promised a really special pudding wine.’
Pudding wine. She had to rub it in.
‘Great. What am I, some sort of Foodies Anonymous? Are you ringing just to read me the menu?’
‘I just wanted to tell you that we’ve wrapped here already. Nigel worked like a demon and we got some really good shots, everything we’re going to get anyway.’
‘Bully for Nigel.’
‘So we’re heading back early,’ she ignored me. ‘We’ll be back tomorrow. Any chance you could pick us up?’
Here we went again. Funny how people love you when you’ve got a taxi.
‘Tell you what,’ I said, thinking on my feet. ‘I’m only a few miles from Ashford. Get off the Eurostar there and I’ll pick you up. We could even have a day at the seaside. Go for a paddle if you fancy it.’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll go into London and –’
‘You can drive the BMW back,’ I said, knowing the reaction.
‘You’ve got my car there while you’re playing private detectives?’
‘You said I could borrow it.’
‘I did? When?’
‘Sorry, dear, you’re cracking up on me. What was that?’
