Stronger Than Skin

by Stephen May

  The ketchup-faced men who made up our clientele, they’d be working hard to convince him that a son who can recite Anglo-Saxon verse was a miraculous thing. Something worth celebrating. Well done, mate, they’d say, as if it was him who got the scholarship not me. As if I was John Chadwick’s own glittering prize. Bloody well done. Their congratulations all the more forceful because their friend and host would never see his daughter graduate and they knew how much he had loved her.

  They had loved her too. Eve with her quick smile and her gentle way of teasing that somehow never caused offence. You lot, she would say, you saddoes. Don’t you have homes to go to? Isn’t there anything better you could be doing? You’ve heard there are these things called books, right? The regulars would blush and smile all sheepish into their ale. They didn’t even seem to mind being told that they shouldn’t speak when women were around. Not if it was Eve telling them. Not that it ever did stop them talking.

  We were busy. There were darts teams for both men and ladies. There was a pool team and a quiz team and we were always raising money for something too. If there was a bed to be pushed through town for charity, then the drinkists from the Blue Pig were there to push it in their PJs or dressed as giant babies.

  We did food. Of a sort. Ham, egg and chips. Pie and chips. Scampi. Nuked lasagne. Cheese and onion sandwiches on white bread.

  The Pig was a real community hub for the streets of terraced houses that hemmed it in. Yet somehow we were more or less skint more or less all the time, and always had been. When I was a kid there were always notes coming home from school about unpaid dinner money, requests for contributions to trips would be met by frowns and the sucking of teeth. Anything needing doing to the car caused a grim silence to fall over the private areas of the pub. Gloom was, of course, barred from the public spaces, there a relentless jollity had to reign at all times, and had to rule even now.

  Like all half-decent publicans my mum and dad were counsellors, psychologists, comedians, chat show hosts and impresarios. But still, in the mornings, before the doors opened, you could smell resignation. The sense of futility inadequately disguised by banter, as inescapable as damp.

  One odd consequence of my sister’s death and now my dad’s illness was that the pub became more popular. Everyone wanted to do their bit to help. They wanted to support us, to help us through.

  So we were all run off our feet, and what with the serving of beer and crisps, the barrel-changing, the cleaning of toilets, the making of cheese and onion sandwiches, the frying of chips, the paperwork, the listening to sad men tell bad jokes, the collecting and washing of glasses, the visiting of dad – with all of that to do, Cambridge and all that had happened there took on the aspect of a half-remembered dream.

  My least favourite job was the emptying of the Eazyzap, the UV insect killer. 1990 was a bad summer for insects generally. They were everywhere. We had already had the invasions of flying ants and hoverflies and German ladybirds, and now in September we had the wasps. Councils had set up special helplines for those who had discovered nests in attics and gardens, the local news was full of stories of small children being stung and having to be airlifted to hospital with their faces swelling like balloons. We had a bloke swallow a wasp at a barbecue in the beer garden.

  My phone calls to Anne went unanswered. The letters and the cards went unanswered too.

  Sometimes I thought of her in Cambridge or London, imagined her sniggering with Bim at a book launch or a private view. I had to assume our thing – whatever it was – was over now. Maybe Mish was in the past too now, and Dr Sheldon and Anne were at the stage of comparing notes about their most recent lovers as they flicked through the papers, as they listened to Radio Three, while they argued about books and music and architecture or whatever they did to get themselves through the days. After a couple of weeks I made the decision not to write or call again. I would suffer, but I wouldn’t let anyone see I was suffering.

  Sometimes I got a letter from Katy who was teaching English out in Italy over the summer. Living what she called La Dolce Vita. My replies were brief. Distracted. I was living a real life not the dream of one. Real life was the clack of pool balls, the tragic heartiness of men who didn’t want to go home to their wives or children. It wasn’t philosophy or feminism or socialism or long-dead poets. Real life was talking close of season signings with the fat men who drank the IPA.

  The Eazyzap – that was real life.

  Real life was also listening to my dad as he recovered – because John Chadwick had found a new culprit for what Eve did. Found it in a conversation with Harold Thorne of all places. Harold Thorne-Lungs as mum and I had taken to calling Dad’s roomie.

  Harold Thorne-Lungs was one of those old men who lived on their own and spent way too much time in the public library. He was a type I recognised from the pub quiz league. A man who was fundamentally none too bright but who had decided to fill himself up with facts and theories which he then poured into anyone who found themselves next to him for more than half a minute.

  But in all his stream of chatter Dad had latched on to a few words, the way a desperate prospector might seize on some tiny yellow specks glinting amid the river dirt when panning for gold.

  It was something to do with known side effects of the supposedly mild depressants Eve was taking for her anxiety. A certain percentage – a decent percentage – of people responded badly to this drug. A percentage whose worry about something daft and ordinary like GCSEs, or spots, or the situation in Palestine could turn fatally dark under their influence.

  It sounded mad to me, and my dad could be very, very boring about it but at least he seemed animated when discussing the theory and if it helped get him on his feet again, helped him on his way back to his rightful place behind the bar, well it couldn’t be a bad thing, could it?

  Six weeks into my life as de facto pub landlord – heir to the whole desperate kingdom of what’ll you have, mate? – Bim walked in to the Blue Pig and told me that there was a life that needed saving.

  24

  ‘She doesn’t want to see me.’

  ‘She doesn’t know what she wants.’

  We were sitting in the snug, the only two in there at that time. Just gone eleven and the pub had only been open a few minutes. I liked this time usually. It was a day-dreamy space in the day. Time to flick through the Daily Mirror, get my head together. Think about my dad. Think about Anne. Think about Eve. Get as much of the quiet grieving done before the day proper began.

  But now, today, I saw the pub through Bim’s eyes. Saw the scruffiness of it, the mediocrity of it. The smell of it too. Stale. All of it. Stale beer, stale cigarettes, stale lives – that slow reek seemed more pervasive than ever today.

  Bim was quite at home however. He had a pint of ruby mild and, though his suit was too well-tailored to be typical of the 11 a.m. drinkist, he didn’t actually seem out of place. A casual observer might think he was a dynamic young sales rep from the brewery outlining a new promotional strategy to one of the tenants.

  He was telling me about the mess Anne was in and I was telling him that it wasn’t my problem, though I knew already that I would do what I was asked to do. Whatever it was.

  In the day I only thought about Anne in the gaps when I wasn’t busy with the beer and the pork scratchings and all that, but in the nights she came to me with her fast car, her sharp scent, her deft hands and her enigmatic smile. In the nights she never left me alone.

  ‘All day she sits watching TV and drinking. She doesn’t get dressed. She doesn’t see friends. She can’t be bothered with Dorcas, let alone Ophelia and Portia.’

  Ophelia and Portia I’d met often. Dorcas I’d forgotten about. The girl with Bros on her wall. The keeper of the My Little Ponies.

  ‘Poor kid’s only nine. She’s been away at school and has come home to find the fairy tale has gone very brothers Grimm. Come back from Mallory Towers into a war zone. Incredibly messy. Philip’s going for custody you know. He’ll get it
too, the way Anne is now.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the best thing.’

  ‘If you knew Philip at all you wouldn’t say that. Luckily the kid is now safely at Grandma’s so she’s spared the worst of the horror for the time being.’

  I had been down from college for all of seven weeks. It was hard to believe that the poised, sports-car driving woman of not quite two months ago had gone to pieces so dramatically. I said as much.

  ‘It’s true, believe me. The car’s gone by the way. Trashed. Ended up in a ditch near Royston. Silly cow was pissed of course. Then there are the men.’

  ‘The men?’

  ‘Men. Boys. Winos. Basically anyone she happens to be sat next to in the local Dog and Duck come last orders. She’s getting quite a reputation amongst the demi-monde.’

  I sipped my coke. Kept my face blank. Told myself that it probably wasn’t true. Reminded myself of how Bim liked all his stories to be melodramatic and splashy.

  ‘But what can I do?’

  ‘I don’t know. But she’s clearly taken with you. You could take her out of herself.’

  ‘What does that even mean Bim?’

  ‘Not too sure, but it’s what people say isn’t it?’

  I asked if friends or family would not be better placed to intervene but Bim assured me there was no family that mattered. Especially as Anne’s own mum had her hands full looking after Dorcas at the minute.

  ‘Besides there are issues there,’ he said, rolling his eyes.

  ‘What about you Bim? Can’t you help her?’

  ‘I’ve tried Mark, I’ve tried, but we’ve fallen out rather. She’s not listening to me now. Anything I say seems to be unhelpful, seems to encourage her to further outrages. She can be quite childish you know.’

  ‘What about this place? I can’t up and leave it.’ I explained about my father, knowing even as I put down this obstacle, Bim must know all about my dad’s heart attack and would have no trouble brushing it aside. He had clearly been giving the problem of Anne a lot of thought and, for whatever reason, had decided I was the man who could help. I didn’t even know why I was arguing about it really.

  Bim said, ‘I could help you out running the pub.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, why not me? I used to work in bars as an undergrad. I don’t suppose it’s changed all that much. Tell you what, audition me this evening. Let me do tonight’s shift and if it goes okay you can shoot off up to Cambridge tomorrow morning, help Anne get her head straight, let her know what’s what and come back the following day.’

  ‘You reckon I can sort it in a day?’

  ‘You can make a start, dear thing, you can make a start. Let her know she’s not alone, that brighter days are on their way. She needs a friend, Mark.’

  The first of the day’s customers drifted in soon after that, and Bim went off to take in the delights of Colchester – the castle, the clock museum, St Mary’s church from where, it was popularly believed, the rhyme Humpty Dumpty had originated.

  ‘According to my handy tourist guide Humpty Dumpty was a Royalist civil war cannon perched atop the church tower and was shelled by the besieging parliamentarians until tower cannon and, presumably, cannoneer were no more. Until they were beyond the help of the king’s men and, indeed, horses. I will go there and mourn the death of handsome cavaliers and curse the memory of Cromwell and his repulsive roundheads. And yes, I know the roundheads were the good guys.’

  I stayed in the bar through a quiet lunchtime and a slow afternoon. I ran the idea of a relief Friday night barman past my mother who had seen Bim when he came to the pub asking for me. She wasn’t keen on the idea, though she agreed to see how he got on, to give him a chance.

  He got on fine. Bim – the regulars loved his ridiculous name – vamped the camp, did outrageous and outspoken in the way only gay men are allowed. Did banter that veered pretty close to the borderland of flirtation in my opinion, and the customers lapped it up.

  I’d noticed before how, when a group of straight men were in the company of an openly gay man, one they liked, they all became just a little bit ooh-la-la themselves. It seems the English working class adore a bit of camp. Look at the success of Larry Grayson, Liberace, Julian Clary, Graham Norton, Dick Emery. A bit of you are awful, but I like you. A bit of shut that door. All goes down an absolute storm with the masses. The same masses who can be brutal if they so much as catch a glimpse of a gentle male goth in make-up on the street.

  But Bim didn’t just do the chat. He also did the basics properly: served the right drinks, charged everyone the right money. And at the end of the night he beat the shit out of an obnoxious drunk.

  It’s fair to say he passed the audition.

  The drunk was a guy called Andy Hemingway. Ham-faced, late twenties, solidly muscled at one time, but already running to flab. A nuisance well known to most of the local pubs, not to mention the probation service. Nice enough when sober, he was an evil sod with a few beers in him. So why did the pubs serve him? Because serving people intoxicating liquor was our business and people like Andy Hemingway are just an occupational hazard. Collateral damage. The unfortunate by-product of what pubs do to make a living. Toxic waste yes, but also an important revenue stream.

  Anyway, quite often we didn’t have to serve him. Someone like Andy H spread himself about. He went out of a night, had a few of jars in various different boozers, moving on when they stopped serving him. Each pub got unlucky enough to be his last port of call every now and again, and then he had to be humoured, while the pub’s nicer regulars supped up and left. Had to be nursed through the door and gently pointed the right way home and the publican had to ignore the nasty little remarks he made, the vicious racism, the squaring up to any strangers that might be in.

  The night Bim was working, Hemingway was already loaded when he arrived at the Blue Pig. Only we didn’t know it at first. He drank one pint quietly, listening to the fruity chat between Bim and the regulars. Then, just as we’d rung last orders, he started telling the bar how queers should be treated. Not well, it’s fair to say. Not in Andy Hemingway world.

  Bim ignored him.

  I called time. Bim asked everyone to drink up now ladies and gentleman. Asked if they hadn’t got homes to go to. Cheery stuff. Quite like how Eve would have done it actually. With panache. With charm.

  Hemingway refused to surrender his glass, said he was still drinking. Called Bim a fat faggot. Bim just smiled. Hemingway stood up asking him what he thought he was smiling at. Bim raised his hands in the universal gesture of I don’t want no trouble mate. He looked like a weary soldier surrendering. Hemingway sneered.

  Bim jabbed both forefingers fast and sudden into Hemingway’s eyes.

  As Hemingway doubled over, squealing, hands to his face, Bim hit him – hard – right in the solar plexus. Twice.

  Hemingway sprawled on the carpet, coughing and gasping, trying to clutch his stomach and claw at his wounded eyes simultaneously. He was writhing on the floor, thrashing like a landed fish.

  Bim knelt over him, pulled his head up by his hair and – gently, reasonably – explained that if he ever saw him again he would really, really hurt him. Furthermore, he continued, still gentle, still reasonable, if there was any future damage or vandalism to the pub, if there was any comeback to the staff or patrons of the Blue Pig, then he, Bim, would assume, rightly or wrongly, that it was Hemingway’s responsibility and he would burn his house down. ‘Regardless of who is in it at the time. Of course, you might feel that I wouldn’t have the balls to actually do that, just being an old faggot and everything, but are you going to test me, old son? I mean, are you?’

  With that he hauled the whimpering Hemingway to his feet and sent him out into the night with a sharp cuff to the side of the head and a well-aimed boot to his arse.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said a regular.

  ‘No swearing at the bar please,’ said Mum automatically. ‘He had that coming a long time, mind. Might do him good.’

&nbs
p; Her eyes were shining.

  ‘Welcome to the team, Bim,’ I said.

  25

  They are there by the side of the pitch, buttoned up against the chill breeze and squally rain. Katy and Ella. Katy’s mum and dad, Claude and Alice. All there to watch Jack’s debut for Barton Street. I imagine Ella’s loud complaints about being made to stand out in the cold and the wet and the adults taking different approaches to dealing with her moaning – Claude will tell her that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. Alice will have brought sweets to bribe her into silence.

  Katy’s mum spoils the kids with the treats Katy and I don’t allow them. For a while we tried to persuade her not to, tried to tell her she was undermining our authority, told her that as far as we were concerned she was poisoning her own grandkids. She just smiled and took absolutely no notice whatsoever. We gave up in the end. We had no choice, her will so obviously less wavering than our own.

  My own mum would no doubt have been the same had she got the chance to be a granny, had liver cancer not got her fifteen years ago, just months after that second heart attack got my dad. I remember her funeral, Colchester cemetery on a day just like this one. I didn’t feel particularly orphaned. Didn’t feel anything much. The family had died years before. When Eve killed herself she took the whole family with her. Mission accomplished because isn’t that what every suicide really wants if they’re honest? To wipe out everyone close to them.

  Eve. The best of us. The one we all looked up to. And, it turns out, the cruellest of us all. Though it was Eve who taught me you could live without those you love. Maybe I should be grateful.

  The game is also watched by a scattering of other parents, other grandparents, other siblings all standing, similarly hunched against the weather, watching the boys run after a ball that looks too big for them. Some dads can’t help themselves, can’t stop themselves shouting frustrated encouragement and advice. Mark up. Find some space. Make the tackle. Look for someone to pass to. Man on. Pass. Shoot. Get stuck in. Break his legs. Break his flipping legs.