Thicker Than Water

Inside, the Breeze continued to give that same impression of inelegant confinement. The main room is long and narrow, with the bar running the whole length of it: there’s just enough room between the bar and the wall for one row of people standing up and one row sitting down. When my parents were regulars here, social propriety dictated that the standing drinkers were men: tonight there was a fair mix, but I noticed that there was a heavy age bias, with most of the faces - both at the bar and along the wall - belonging to my mum and dad’s generation. The Breeze clearly wasn’t managing to sell itself as a happening place for the younger social drinker: no widescreen TV, no games machines, no jukebox even. There was a one-armed bandit sitting in an unfrequented corner, which probably made less income in a month than the bar staff earned from tips, but that was the only concession to the modern era.

I didn’t recognise more than half a dozen people, and none of them seemed to recognise me. Life is the best disguise of all, and I’d been through a lot of it since the last time I’d bought a round in this place.

But Harold Keighley hadn’t changed a bit. Standing dead centre at the bar, he was pulling a pint of Stingo from a chipped black hand pump with a golden liver bird perched on its apex, expertly tipping the glass to a shallower angle as it filled so that the head would be an even half-inch or so. He’d always been a big man - Hungry Harold, Harold the Barrel - and now he’d filled out to even more heroic proportions: his size, and his fearsome flatulence, were legendary, as was his refusal to treat drinking yourself into oblivion as anything other than a strict business proposition. His face, which I couldn’t remember in any other condition than flushed hectic red, was heavy-jowled and pugnacious, topped with a full head of hair the colour of the snow you’re not supposed to eat. Mind you, it would probably have been pure white if Harold hadn’t been a forty-a-day man: even now, in defiance of the recent ban, he had a fag hanging from the corner of his mouth - inspiring other, similar beacon fires around the room.

He finished pulling the pint, set it down, took the money, gave change. I waited patiently while he dealt with two other customers who were at the bar before me. A younger guy with a nose-stud who was also serving asked me if he could get me anything, but I sent him on his way with a curt shake of the head. Harold had seen me by this time and I waited patiently while he worked his way around to me.

‘Matty Castor,’ he said, wagging his pudgy finger at me. ‘I thought you were a priest now.’

‘He is,’ I confirmed. ‘I’m not. I’m the other one. Felix.’

‘The little bugger who used to steal the beer mats.’

‘The same. I’m done with them now if you want them back.’

He pursed his lips as though he was actually considering the offer, then made an obscene gesture. ‘What can I get you?’£can"1e he asked.

‘Pint of Guinness,’ I said, not being a big fan of Tetley beers. While he poured it I took another look around the room. Still just that thin leavening of people I vaguely knew, none of them likely to lead me onwards in the direction I needed to go in, even if they decided to talk to me.

So I went for the big man instead.

‘Richie Yeats still drink in here, Harold?’ I asked.

The Guinness was on an electric pump, so Harold didn’t need to give it much attention as it sluggishly climbed the glass. He looked at me shrewdly. ‘Well, now,’ he said, with a humourless smile. ‘If I had a fiver for every time I got that question . . .’

‘Yeah?’ I was interested. ‘Who else is looking for him, then?’

‘Who isn’t, these days?’ Harold countered. ‘That’ll be two sixty.’

‘And whatever you’re having.’

‘I’m having rectal surgery. Stick it in the lifeboat.’

He took my money and gave me my change: true to his word, he’d just taken the cost of my pint, refusing the offered drink. Since I mentioned Richie, the temperature had cooled. I fed my change into the RNLI money box, a coin at a time. Harold waited, staring me out.

‘What about Anita?’ I asked, changing tack. ‘Ever see her around?’

To my surprise, Harold’s dour face suddenly cracked open in an involuntary smile that had real warmth in it. ‘Not in too many years,’ he said. ‘Light of my life, she was. Even as a kid. She should have gone on the telly or something. A girl like that, her face is her fortune, innit? Her fortune or her falling down, as our Nan used to say.’

That reflection seemed to sour his mood again. He shook his head, his lower lip jutting out like a shelf weighed down with all the world’s woes. Down at the other end of the bar some other guy’s hand was waving with an empty glass in it. Harold noticed it and turned, starting to head in that direction: I put my own hand out to detain him.

‘Could I leave a message for Richie?’ I asked.

He stared at me hard, frowning so that his eyes almost disappeared as the topography of his corpulent face shifted seismically. ‘Could you what?’ he echoed.