Phil Rickman - The Secrets of Pain

‘You’re no fun, Barry. You’re no fucking fun.’

‘Actually,’ Barry said, ‘this is me at my most fun. You want to see me at my most no fun, you’ll leave that thing behind on these premises. You get where I’m coming from?’

There was a scary kind of deadness in Barry’s voice. Jane had heard stories about what Barry had been known to do, the odd times it had got rough in the public bar. The yard went momentarily black as the door was shut, and – oh, shit – the mobile started vibrating in Jane’s hip pocket. She was gripping the phone through the denim as Cornel totally lost it, started snarling at the closed door.

‘This is not over. It’s not fucking over!’

Just like the other night. I just want you to know it doesn’t end here. Only losers walked away. Limited repertoire. Tosser. Jane stayed tight between the perimeter wall and the toilet block, trying to breathe slowly in the stale-beery air, not wanting to think how Cornel might react if he found her here, witness to his humiliation. Again.

The moon showed her Cornel’s foot coming back, maybe to kick the closed door, and then it got confusing.

‘Didn’t handle that very well, did we, Cornel?’

Another voice. Someone had come into the yard from the alley.

‘Pick it up, eh?’

An ashy kind of voice. Not Barry. A bit Brummy.

‘I thought you’d gone,’ Cornel said.

‘Thought? Yow don’t think, Cornel, that’s the problem. Now pick it up. Take it somewhere and bury it, then go and cry yourself to sleep.’

Cornel’s voice came back, petulant.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’

‘Go home any time y’want, mate. No skin off my nose.’

‘You’re just a-’

A movement. Not much of one. A chuckle. Then a short cry, more shock than pain.

‘ Uhhh! ’

‘Ah, dear, dear, you’re really not ready. Didn’t see that that coming either. Not as hard as we thought, eh? Long way to go, Cornel, still a long way to go, mate.’

Jane breathed in hard, through her mouth, and the breath dragged in something gritty.

‘I’ve told you,’ Cornel said. ‘I’ll pay the extra.’

‘It’s not about money. It’s about manhood.’

An indrawn breath, full of rage, a scuffling, like Cornel was finding his feet. Jane tasted something disgusting, realized she was inhaling a cobweb full of dead flies.

Cornel was going, ‘You sanctimonious fucking… Awwww…’

From the yard, a bright squeak of intense agony. Piercing violence lighting up the night like an electric storm, and Jane, choking, clawing at her mouth, was really scared now, sweat creaming her forehead. Trying to meld with the toilet wall, breathing through her nose, holding her jaw rigid, not even daring to spit.

‘Come and see me again, look, when your balls drop,’ the guy said.

This kind of tittering laugh. A sound you’d swear was the guy clapping Cornel on the back in a don’t take it to heart kind of way.

Departing footsteps, light and casual in the alley, but in the yard there was only retching and then Cornel going, ‘ Shit, shit, shit, shit…’ like he was walking round in circles, while Jane clung to the jagged stones in the toilet wall, her head ballooning with a suffocating nausea.

‘…shit, shit, shit…’ from the alleyway now, receding.

Cornel had gone.

Jane sprang away from the wall, coughing out the cobweb and the flies, coughing and coughing, wiping her mouth on her sleeve as she went staggering out into the warm smell of new vomit in the yard.

She was at the top of the alley, where it came out onto the square, when she saw Cornel again.

He was on his own, dragging the black bin sack across the cobbles like some vagrant. He was moving jerkily, his body arched. Jane saw him stop. She saw him pick up the plastic sack with both hands, his gangly body bending in pain like an insect which had been trodden on.

Cornel dumped the sack into one of the concrete litter bins on the square, ramming it in hard before walking crookedly away.

Jane didn’t move until he was long gone and the village centre was unusually deserted in the amber of the fake gas lamps.

Beyond the glow, gables jutted, like Cornel’s chin, into a cold, windless night sky, and the church steeple was moon-frosted as Jane moved unsteadily across to the concrete bin.

‘ You don’t have to take that crap,’ Barry said. ‘There comes a point where you just… you realize you just don’t.’

He’d come back from the kitchens looking dark-faced, angry, and that was rare. A few more customers had come in since, and Marion, the head barmaid, had taken over. Barry had poured himself a Guinness and come to sit with Merrily and Lol.

‘Behaving like a servant is one thing. Being treated like one is something else.’

‘He’d killed a pheasant?’ Lol said.

‘Don’t matter. None of it matters too much now, anyway. When the worst happens, I’m not going to be around.’

He got up suddenly, unhooked a big black poker, turned over the last big apple log, and the flames were instantly all over it. Barry came and sat down, rubbing soot from his hands.

‘The worst?’ Merrily said.

‘I apologize.’ Barry drank some Guinness, wiped his lips almost delicately on a white pocket handkerchief. ‘There’s no reason at all for me not to tell you. Savitch is buying the Swan.’

Pool balls plinked off one another in the Public. Lol put down his pencil.

‘When you think about it, it was only a matter of time,’ Barry said.

‘I didn’t…’ Lol’s voice was parched. ‘The Swan’s for sale?’

‘Way things are now, Laurence, any pub’s for sale. Every day, somewhere in Britain, another one shuts down.’

Merrily stared into the fire. After Christmas, it had become known that the Black Swan’s elderly owner had handed it over to her son, who ran a building firm. The building trade would revive, but the future for pubs…

‘Savitch put in an initial offer last week.’ Barry’s voice was flat. ‘Ridiculously low, and it got turned down, of course. But that was just round one. He’ll be back.’

‘Why’s he doing this?’ Lol said. ‘Why not just, you know, live here?’

‘He’s a businessman. The place you live, you want it to look like an enterprise, not a loser’s refuge.’

‘This can’t happen,’ Lol said.

‘It could happen tomorrow, mate, if he doubles his bid. Which I’m sure he can afford to. But I think he’ll wait.’

‘What can we do?’ Merrily said.

‘Pray?’

‘What are his plans, exactly?’

‘Village is set to grow. Maybe he’s on a promise. All too friendly with Councillor Pierce these days.’ Barry leaned his chair back against an oak pillar where a wall had once divided the bar into two rooms. ‘End of the day, we’re just the little people. These things don’t happen on our level, do they? I mean, the word is he’ll ask me to stay on, but that’s… not for me.’

‘I’m so sorry, Barry.’

‘Nah, I’ll be all right. Not sure about Ledwardine, though.’ Barry settled into his chair, evidently more relaxed now it was out. ‘So what’s the problem with Syd Spicer, then, Merrily?’

‘Didn’t think you wanted to talk about him.’

‘I didn’t. Now, suddenly, it seems like light relief. One of your lot now, last I heard.’

‘Actually, one of your lot again. Been made chaplain at Credenhill.’

‘Has he now?’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘They don’t put out a newsletter. Chaplain, eh? Padre. Well, well.’

‘Barry, could I ask you something in general? About the Regiment?’

Barry shrugged, his jacket tightening, a sleeve rising to expose a purplish scar snaking up his wrist from the palm of his left hand.