Jake remembered what his Grandmother used to call it: ‘your grandad is away down the doctors’. That’s what she called it – the pub at the end of the street.
“If life wasn’t so shit, there would be no need for pubs”, was her usual follow-up. “Don’t matter what it was; just back from the war, or the birth of his first-born, the night his mother died, the day his brother got thrown in jail – those times all ended up with your grandfather down the doctors”.
Andrew looked on the pub across the street as some sort of church. Whatever sin he had committed, all he had to do was spend a few hours in the pub and it was all sorted between him and God. I mean it wasn’t his fault, it was always Karen who started the arguments. The way she’d serve his dinner warm, rather than piping hot – or the fact that she’d run out of chips when he wanted nothing else in the world. Sometimes she wouldn’t get his coffee fast enough – so who could blame him, if he had to raise his hand and give her a gentle slap now and again? He’d tell the lads in the pub the story as he saw it, and none of them seemed to object, ‘Just natural, init?’ So, he’d go back to the house that night, say he was sorry to his darling Karen and then he’d enter her little body until he fell asleep on top of her.
Annie slipped into the pub at the corner at 5.20 every night. They always said in the bar, that if she missed a night they would have to send a wreath and a condolence card around to her house; ‘cause only death would stop her having her ale’. Annie did the same thing each evening. She’d give her mother double the dose that the doctor had recommended, and that would keep her mother fast asleep for a few hours while Annie had a drink or two. What harm was she doing? After all, wasn’t it her mother’s fault that Annie had never married? She was stuck with an old woman who couldn’t speak anymore. When Donald, her man, had run off with her sister – she thought she had known loneliness then - but this living, night after night wasn’t a life – Annie felt she was only existing. She lifted her head and asked the barman for another drink to wash away the day.
Jacob was a happy sort. Everyone said so. He’d pop in the bar at the corner of the street and he’d buy the person next to him a drink – be it stranger or best friend. There was a little jukebox in the corner that was seldom used during the day, but in the evening the younger drinkers would pile their coins into it. It was then that Jacob would put on that tune. He only did it when the person he wanted to hear it was in the pub. He wondered did they ever notice it was Jacob who put it on, and even more curiously, he wondered did they ever listen to the words.
Leona, only went the pub when she felt crushingly lonely. Then she’d wear her lowest top, push up her chest and wait on getting drinks bought for her. Some mornings she’d waken next to the last person in the world that she wanted to be there. Some mornings, she woke alone – as some always left after they got what they came for. All she really wanted was for someone to put their arms around her, and hold her while the sun came up.
Connor only went into the pub because it was a happy place, and everyone in it was happy too - and uncomplicated – just like his life.
bobby stevenson 2017
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