Joanna Cannon - The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

He felt a line of sweat edge into his collar. He didn’t know how long he’d been watching, but she looked up and saw him. She lifted her hand to wave, but he turned just in time and got back inside.

He put the ashtray on the footstool.

‘Make sure you’re home by ten,’ his mother said, ‘I’ll need my ointment.’

The Legion was empty, apart from the two old men in the corner. Every time Brian saw them, they were sitting in the same place, and wearing the same clothes, and having the same exchange. They looked at each other as they spoke, but had two separate conversations, each man lost in his own words. Brian adjusted his eyes after the walk down. It was cooler in here, and darker. Summer soaked into the flocked walls and the polished wood. It was swallowed by the cool slate of the snooker table, and fell into the thread of the carpet, worn down by heavy conversation. The Legion didn’t have a season. It could have been the middle of winter, except for the sweat that caught the edge of Brian’s shirt and the pull of walking in his legs.

Clive sat on a stool at the end of the bar, feeding crisps to a black terrier, who stamped his paws and whistled at the back of his throat if he felt the gap between crisps had become too long.

‘Pint, is it?’ he said, and Brian nodded.

He eased from the stool. ‘Another warm one,’ he said, and Brian nodded again.

Brian handed his money over. There were too many coins. He lifted his pint and beer slipped from the top of the glass and on to the counter.

‘Still looking for work?’ Clive took a cloth and ran it across the wood.

Brian murmured something into his glass and looked away.

‘Tell me about it, love. If they cut my hours any more, I’ll have to go back on the game.’ He turned his hand and examined his nails.

Brian stared at him over the top of his glass.

‘It’s a bloody joke,’ said Clive, and he laughed, and Brian tried to laugh with him, but he couldn’t quite get there.

*

He was on his second pint when they arrived. Harold walked in first, all shorts and shouting.

‘Evening, evening,’ he said, even though the bar was still empty. The men in the corner nodded and looked away.

‘Clive!’ Harold said, as though Clive was the last person he expected to see. They shook each other’s hand and put their other hands over the top of the shake, until there was a pile of shaking and commotion.

Brian watched them.

‘Double Diamond?’ Harold nodded at Brian’s glass.

Brian said no, he’d buy his own, thanks, and Harold said suit yourself, and he turned back to Clive and smiled, as though there was a whole other conversation going on that Brian couldn’t hear. In the middle of the unheard conversation, Eric Lamb arrived with Sheila Dakin, and Clive had to disappear into the back to find a cherry for Sheila’s Babycham.

By the time Brian followed them to the table, he found himself wedged against the wall, trapped between the cigarette machine and the mystery of Sheila Dakin’s bosom.

She wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Have you started smoking again, Brian? You smell like an old ashtray.’

‘It’s my mam,’ he said.

‘Maybe think about getting your hair cut as well,’ she said, and dipped her cherry in the Babycham. ‘It looks a right bloody mess.’

There was a radio on somewhere, and Brian could hear a slur of music, but he couldn’t tell what it was. The Drifters, maybe, or The Platters. He wanted to ask Clive to turn it up, but Clive had been standing at the end of the bar for the last five minutes, twisting a tea towel into the same pint glass and trying to listen to their conversation. It was the last thing he’d want to do.

‘Order, order.’ Harold said and tapped the edge of a beer mat on the table, even though no one was speaking. ‘I’ve called this meeting because of recent events.’

Brian realized he was nearly at the end of his pint. He swilled the glass around to try and catch the foam which patterned the sides.

‘Recent events?’ Sheila twisted at her earring. It was heavy and bronze, and Brian thought it looked like something you might find on a totem pole. It dragged the flesh towards her jaw, and pulled the hole in her ear into a jagged line.

‘This business with Margaret Creasy.’ Harold still held the beer mat between his fingers. ‘John has it in his head it’s something to do with number eleven. Got himself in a right state after church last weekend.’

‘Did he?’ said Sheila. ‘I wasn’t there.’

Harold looked at her. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t expect you were.’

‘Cheeky sod.’ She began twisting at the other earring. Her laugh took up the whole table.

Harold leaned forward, even though there wasn’t any space to lean into.

‘We just all need to be clear,’ he said, ‘about what happened.’

The music had finished. Brian could hear Clive’s tea towel squeak against the glass and the hum of the old men shuffling their words.

‘You might as well sit down, Clive, as stand over there.’ Eric Lamb nodded at the empty stool with his glass. ‘You’re as much a part of this as any of us.’

Clive took a step back and pulled the tea towel into his chest, and said he didn’t really think it was his place, but Brian saw Harold persuade him over with his eyes, and Clive dragged the stool across the lino and pulled himself between Harold and Sheila.

‘I deliberately didn’t ask John tonight.’ Harold sat back and folded his arms. ‘We don’t need another scene.’

‘What makes him think it’s anything to do with number eleven?’ Sheila had finished her Babycham, and was turning the stem of the glass between her fingers. It crept towards the edge of the table.

‘You know John. He’s always looking for something to worry about,’ said Harold, ‘he can’t keep his mind still.’

Brian agreed, although he would never say so. When they were kids, John used to count buses. He reckoned they were lucky.

The more buses we see the better , he said, it stops bad things happening . It would make them late for school, walking round the long way, trying to spot as many as they could. Brian would say, It’s made us late, how can that be lucky and laugh, but John would just gnaw at the skin around his fingers and say that they can’t have seen enough.

‘John doesn’t think that pervert’s done her in, does he?’ said Sheila. The glass tipped towards the floor, and Eric guided her hand back.

‘Oh no. Nothing like that, no. No.’ Harold said no too many times, they came out of his mouth like a string of bunting. He looked down at the beer mat.

‘Wouldn’t surprise me if he has,’ said Sheila, ‘I still reckon he took that babbie.’

Harold looked at her for a moment, and then lowered his eyes.

‘The baby turned up safe, though, Sheila.’ Eric took the glass from her hand. ‘That’s all that matters.’

‘Bloody pervert,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what the police said. It’s a normal avenue, full of normal people. He doesn’t belong there.’

A silence unfolded across the table. Brian could hear the Guinness slide down Eric Lamb’s throat, and the tea towel crease and pleat between Clive’s fingers. He could hear the twist of Sheila’s earring, and the tap of Harold’s beer mat on the wood, and he heard pockets of his own breath escaping his mouth. The silence became a sound all of its own. It pushed against his ears until he could stand it no longer.

‘Margaret Creasy talked to my mam a lot,’ he said. He put the pint glass to his mouth. It was almost empty.

‘About what?’ said Harold. ‘Number eleven?’