31. That Time of the Sacred Silence

Sssshhhhhhh, ffs

Friday, 11:45pm

Shift over, pub cleared, ashtrays dusted off and towers of pint pots pushed through the cleansing steam of the chrome box glass washer, Alden pours two pints of the yellow clouded wheat beer into tall flute pint glasses, regal with their Yorkshire rose etched incongruously onto the upper bulb, and he and Med fall into the chairs opposite the bar. Not a word is spoken between them sitting, the first sip, both done with eyes closed as if it’s a first kiss with a long admired admirer, and first drags on cigarettes are taken in and the smoked is pushed out in a long delicious flume. Then a second of silence. The quietness of the pub at this hour is sacred. The buzzing of the fridges, the rattle as the glass washer charges down, and Alden groaning over his tight knee. But there is a steadiness to it after hours of hubbub and melee and leaning and reaching and ducking and swerving and sloshing and shouting and pushing and pulling and shouting and uproar and up the steps and down the steps and twisting and turning and shouting and the white noise of all these people gathered to have their say and drink their fill and take their chances. This moment of downtime is precious.

Med puts her feet up on a stool.

“You and Moses still a thing?” Alden says. He loves asking about people’s love lives. Loves it.

“I don’t know if we were ever a thing,” Med says.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know. We’ve gone to that weird place now where we’re awkward around each other. I don’t know why that is.”

“God, perhaps you really like him.” Alden says. Med can’t help but look bashful and she waves away the suggestion and buries her head in her shoulders an inch. “You don’t think he killed Aaron, do you?”

That pulls her head back up.

“Fuck no,” she half-yelps. “How could you even say that?”

“That female cop was here talking to him.”

“Because of Thursday night,” says Med.

Alden contemplates.

“What do you think happened to Aaron?”

Med blows out smoke. “I don’t know, Alden. I’m not sure I care. He was a prick, and I don’t wish anyone dead, but I’ll be fucked if I’m going to force myself to mourn over someone like him.”

“In fairness, that’s been a pretty commonly expressed attitude.”

“He always made me feel uncomfortable. Some guys you can sense are slobbering over you in their mind but he was actually doing it. Always on speed and smacking his lips and seemingly unaware his eyes are going up and down you as he licked his lips. He was fucking gross to be around. Now he won’t be around so much.”

“Again, I’ve heard others say pretty similar things.”

“And I know we’re supposed to say these sort are someone’s son and someone’s brother, but I can’t imagine he was ever not fucking gross depending on what company he was in. He seemed just so badly constructed, like a building emphasising its faults as strengths. Fucking gross.” She taps the ash from the end of her cigarette. “I hated him if I’m honest. Whenever he came into the pub, or I saw him up the Loft, he would just bring my mood down. Doesn’t matter if he spoke to me or not, or even if he noticed I was there, he just made me want to go home or just be somewhere else. I doubt he even knew my name or if he even had a clue that he made me feel that way. It’s probably how he made all women feel. And that look on my face, the one of barely concealed disgust, that was probably just what he thought women looked like as that’s how they always looked to him. I said to Moses that I couldn’t stand to be around him, and he seemed to understand that but then last night when he was in here and they were sat over there and Mo came up to the bar and I said to him, what are doing drinking with that arsehole, and he said to me they went to him to get some stuff…” she glances at Alden in the eye at this point as she knows he disapproves of people in his pub on drugs… “and he just sort of invited himself along with them for a drink, and Mo said he’s never done this before, but they never really go to him anyway but rather they have a guy who knows a guy that sort of thing, so maybe this is how he rolls and he hangs out with people who buy off him, but it just didn’t seem right. I said to Mo you don’t have to drink with people you don’t have to drink with and he turned on me like not nasty nasty or anything but he gave it all you’re not my girlfriend and what’s wrong with drinking with someone like Aaron and he said something about not being a snob and being a man of the people or some shit. I think he was probably coming up on something by this point. Getting there but not quite there, you know?”

“He seemed all right to me last night.”

“Who knows what was going on. All I know is he came in here earlier today and he was pretty sheepish toward me so he must have been up on something and then feeling a bit guilty about the way he spoke to me. Did you speak to the police? What did that female copper want with them?”

“She’d just heard they’d been out with Aaron so I think she was chasing down some leads… is that the right terminology? Seemed harmless enough.”

“Y’know, the thing that really annoys me is that Mo would rather put on a show for an arsehole like Aaron rather than talk to me straight about what it is we are to each other. You’re a man, Alden. What is it with you lot? Why are you all so dysfunctional?”

“What, were you brought up in a nunnery?”

“I did go to Catholic school.”

Alden stubs out his cigarette. “I’m sure that’s not as sexy as it sounds.”

Med shrugs and they both laugh.

“Who do you think killed Aaron?” she says.

Alden thinks for a moment.

“We don’t even know he was murdered, do we?”

“Yeah, but come on. Let’s assume the likelihood.”

Alden takes down a few fingers of his beer and wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Okay,” he says, buying in on the hypothetical game. “Probably someone from out of town we know nothing about, and they’re long gone now. These things happen.”

“Do they? Has this happened before?”

“I mean things that sound like they’re from a movie. It’s that kind of town.”

Med shuffles in her seat as if she’s getting in comfy. “Tell me,” she says.

Alden huffs and looks up to the ceiling. “Too many to tell,” he says. “You’ve been here a few years, and you don’t get much more front line than behind that bar.”

Med thinks on it. Perhaps it is better to gauge your own understanding of a place you live in rather than ask someone else, even if that someone else has been here forty years man and child. She thinks of the hairdresser shot at her workstation by the jealous husband. The Nightclub owner sectioned when he ended up on Argyle Street outside the cash and carry brandishing a shotgun in nothing but a pair of green wellies. The illegal porn studio raided above the taxi rank on Alfred Lord Tennyson Drive. The terrorist bomb maker over Somerton Park. The double decker set alight by a white supremacist group on the bridge that one time. That time a famous snooker player was busted by his wife for having drinks with another woman in here while the Welsh Open was on down at the Leisure Centre. Med had never heard of him, but he was pretty famous, apparently. That time Alden physically removed a world champion darts player for pinching Med on the behind. Med hadn’t heard of him either. This was all in the last few years since she’d got the job as a second year arts student. She’s stayed after graduation and a good twelve months after that without even noticing the passage of time. Alden had said to her to watch herself one night, to be careful she doesn’t turn around one day and she’s still behind that bar and she’s thirty. In here, he said, there is not time apart from closing time, no night, no day, just the pint in front of you going up and down like an egg timer.