12. Three Men in a Pub

The trouble with Alden's back passage, and the shadow of Jerome K. Jerome

Friday, gone two

Inside, sucked into the soupy amber darkness of the pub, Alden clocks them immediately and beckons them over. It’s busier in there now with the lunch crowd and the boys wind their way over to the bar through the punters, all of whom they know and exchange acknowledgements as they go. One lad, Graves, named not because of his surname but because his skin is the colour of an old headstone, resplendent as always in his scruffy office attire, tie loose, short-sleeved shirt creased line rice paper, tells them he’ll be in The Loft tonight and he wants a promise for some Teenage Fanclub and Moses says, “Of course – do we ever fail you?” and Graves says “All the fucking time” and Moses shrugs high and blows a raspberry without breaking pace. But he stops when he turns and sees Meredith in front of him. She’s doing the ashtrays, a cloth in one hand and that little metal tin with the flip clip lid in the other. Moses wasn’t expecting to see her. She looks tired, but even with the silvery bags under her eyes and the spots on her chin, she has those big eyes and always the threat of a sarcastic smile on those lips, and he loves her hair, the colour of it, the mass of it, even when it’s up in a bun it’s like a bale of hay, sun-kissed ginger.

“Lunchtime shift on a Friday?” he says.

“Donna called in sick,” Med says. She smiles at him, a hard smile that has a punch waiting behind it for Moses, and he recognises this immediately. Vardaman has gone on to the bar.

“Rough night?” she says, pushing back strands of hair that have come loose from her hairclip and fallen across her face. He loves that she’s always struggling with it, and in this heat it’s an ongoing wrestle.

“It’s wearing off,” Moses says.

“Looks it,” Med says, and that hard smile grows wry.

She’s about to say something else as her body language shifts the weight on her feet indicating she needs to continue on her journey from ashtray to ashtray, but Moses cuts her off.

“Don’t say it,” he says.

“You haven’t told him?” she says.

“Just leave it be, will you?”

Med’s head hangs back and she clasps the gum she has in her mouth between the front of her teeth. “Seriously?” she says, exasperated. “Why can’t you just tell him?”

Moses takes her elbow, as if keeping her to one side quietens her. It doesn’t.

“Mo, let go. If Alden sees he’ll have a go at me, and I don’t need that today. I have a hangover of my own to get through.”

“Where did you go last night?” Moses says.

“Out to the village for quiz night,” she says and pulls her elbow from his fingers. “But that’s beside the point. When are you going to tell Vardaman you’re leaving? I mean, you’re going next week. You don’t think you should have mentioned it to your best friend?”

Moses huffs.

“It’s going to piss him off,” he says. “He’ll be gutted.”

“You didn’t have any problem telling me,” Med says.

That stops Moses dead, and she cocks him a look, cracks her gum, and goes off to her chores.

“You and fucking barmaids, mate,” Vardaman scoffs when Moses catches up with him at the bar.

“There’s nothing going on between us,” Moses says.

“You two have sex and then both act really awkward and coy. Totally the wrong way round. That’s fucked up.”

Alden leans in.

“You just missed Aaron again,” he says.

Vardaman and Moses still can’t shake the fear at the back of the throat when Aaron’s name is mentioned, but Vardaman leans in on the bar and says, “It’s fine, Alden. We’ll stay here now and he can find us and join us for a drink and we’ll take it from there.”

“Yeah,” says Moses. “He just wants to get on it with us. He obviously had his eyes opened to the power of partying proper last night and he wants to celebrate his case crashing in court this morning.”

“Not quite,” says Alden.

It takes Vardaman and Moses a second or two to break out of their self-erected protective bubble.

“Not quite?” says Vardaman.

“He said he’s looking for you because you two fucked up his flat last night and he wants to fucking bash your skulls in and then get you to pay for all the stuff you smashed up.”

Speechless.

Alden pulls two lagers while the boys gather their thoughts, pale and very very still.

“Why were you hanging out with a bloke like Aaron?” Alden says putting the pints on the bar and waiting for the payment.

“Complicated,” says Moses.

“Circumstances twisted us into it,” says Vardaman.

“Well, I’d neck those and go home,” Alden says now holding out his hand. “He looked like he was really looking forward to fucking you both up.”

Moses puts a fiver into Alden’s hand and Alden walks off to the till.

“Bad news, Vardaman,” Moses says.

“Yeah,” says Vardaman. “Bad news.”

Med comes up in front of them to pull a pint.

“You boys okay?” she says, her arms up to the tap in that famous pose.

Vardaman doesn’t hear her. Moses blinks, some colour comes back to his face, and he says to Med, “How did you do in the pub quiz?”

Med huffs, her shoulders sink, and she shifts weight from one foot to the other. “Lost on a tie-breaker,” she says. “Capital cities.” She flips the lever on a perfect thick-headed lager and turns to deliver it further down the bar. “Who the fuck knows the capital of Burundi?” She walks off.

“Gitega,” Moses says to no-one, watching her go.

“I think you should come to mine,” Vardaman says. He’s been thinking. He looks at Moses. The smell. “I’ll open a window,” Vardaman says.

“But we can’t hide from Aaron forever,” Moses says. “We’re DJing tonight. I can’t dip out of that. I need the fifty quid.”

“You need your arms and legs unbroken more though, right?”

Moses has to think about it. Fifty quid is fifty quid.

“Maybe I should just go home,” Moses says. “Get my head down. Come back out tonight fresh. Clear head.”

Vardaman scoffs. “When has a clear head ever done you any good?”

Moses looks at him. He needs to tell Vardaman he’s leaving. Needs to just get it out there, say it, handle the fallout. Vardaman is a grown man, for god’s sake, and it’s not like he’s going far anyway. Brighton is only four hours on the train. Three hour’s drive if Vardaman times it right and avoids the traffic on the south coast road and its thousand fucking roundabouts. Not that he’ll visit. What’s the best way to sum up this town, and get Vardaman’s back up at the same time? Quote The Eagles. You can check out but can never leave. Vardaman fucking hates The Eagles.

Graves has come over to them. He stands too close, as he often does. “What is it about Teenage Fanclub you boys hate so much anyway?” he says.

Moses doesn’t want to get into it, even though there’s fun to be had in getting into it with Graves. On a Friday, Graves has three pints at lunch and then half a packet of extra strong mints before returning to his desk at the job centre. He once ate two packets of mints and shit himself in a traffic jam, scooted his arse over the passenger footwell and dropped a curly one onto the mat. Bad way to find out mints have laxatives in them, but he never showed any shame in telling the story.

“Shit yourself in a traffic jam lately, Graves?” Vardaman says.

“That was years ago, Vardaman,” Graves says. “And is no reason to be prejudiced against Teenage Fan Club.”

“That’s not why we don’t play them,” Vardaman says.

“Why then?”

“Because not playing them winds you up,” Vardaman says.

“Twats, the both of you.”

Vardaman laughs. Moses feels a half smile emerge on his face. Graves puts a hand on his hip and finishes his pint, checks his watch, and as his head dips to look at his wrist, Vardaman sees a figure at the door of the pub. It’s fleeting, a big guy seen for half a second between doorframe and throng of people. He feels it in his gut. Aaron.

Vardaman pushes Moses in the arm, harder than he meant to, and Moses spills a gob of lager over the edge of his glass.

“Careful.”

“Aaron’s here,” Vardaman says.

“Oh yeah he’s looking for you two,” Graves laughs. “Hopefully I’ll have better luck with whoever DJs up The Loft to replace your murdered arses.”

“Yeah, thanks, Graves. Good luck with that,” says Moses.

Graves moves off. “Don’t want to get caught in the crossfire,” he says.

“We need to go,” Vardaman says.

“How? The only way out is past him.”

“Not true. The fire exit.”

“Alden doesn’t let anyone use it,” Moses says.

Near the entrance to residential rooms upstairs is a corridor that leads along the back of the bar and out to the front door, an artery with red painted concrete floor and wonky walls maintained to give people sitting at the back of the pub a clear way out should a fire start at the front. Alden was passionately protective of it. No one could go down it. Some suspected you’d have to talk him round even if there was a fire.

“We’ll sneak through,” Vardaman says.

“Insane. I’m more scared of Alden than I am Aaron.”

“That’s insane.”

“He will go fucking ballistic if he catches us using the corridor.”

“You say it like it’s a sacred route to a place of pilgrimage.”

There was the suspicion Alden banned all use of it after a protracted piss take, years ago, maybe a decade, that riffed on the phrase “Alden’s back passage”.

“Fuck it,” Vardaman says. “We don’t have any choice.”

Moses swallows hard.

“Maybe we can reason with him,” he says. “Aaron, I mean. Obviously, Alden is a no go for using the fire exist.”

“He doesn’t like anyone going up his back passage,” Vardaman says.

Moses rolls his eyes. Sniggers.

“Come on,” Vardaman says, and then pauses to neck the half pint he has left. Moses hurriedly follows suit, and they move quickly toward the back end of the pub to the fire exit door. Moses looks back over his shoulder, but can’t see Aaron, even as his vantage up the three steps to the back room means he can see the whole bar.

“Are you sure you saw him?” Moses says.

“I’m not taking any chances,” Vardaman says and puts his shoulder to the door.

Moses’s heart thumps as they make their way down the fire exit corridor, and he notices when they come out the other end that he had been holding his breath the whole way down. They burst into the light, Vardaman leaning too heavily on the release bar and he stumbles into the porch. Vardaman straightens – he’s tall, broad, but there’s something about his posture that means he is far from imposing – and he finds himself looking down into Alden’s angry eyes. Alden was just out on the street side amending a sales board.

“The fuck?” he says.

“Ah,” says Moses. “We can explain.”

“Aaron’s in there,” Vardaman says and takes a step back from Alden, back into the pub.

“Don’t give a fuck, boys,” Alden says. “That is not open to the public.”

“No harm done,” Moses pleads, and closes the fire door behind them.

Vardaman slides past Alden and out into the street.

“Aaron is the least of your worries now, boys,” Alden says, his bald head glistening in the hot light.

But Vardaman and Moses are a few yards up the street by now. Moses is gesturing apology with his arms, but then Vardaman turns at the waist, unable to resist, calls back, “Sorry we come down your back passage, Alden.”