Magnus Mills - All Quiet on the Orient Express

“Peace and quiet at last,” said one man as he walked in, and immediately moved a bar stool so that he could sit with his back to the corner wall. This reminded me of an incident I’d witnessed the previous week when a customer had carted a stool from one end of the bar to the other. The landlord had been on him immediately, ordering him to leave the ‘furniture’ where it was, and if he didn’t like it he could take his custom somewhere else. The hapless victim had been with a large group of others, all tourists by the look of them, and shortly afterwards the whole lot had drunk up and left. Somehow I couldn’t picture a similar episode taking place with any of the present crowd. The rules were different now that the tourist season was over. Locals, it seemed, were free to move the stools wherever they pleased. Nevertheless, at the time this treatment of a paying customer had struck me as quite rude. I suspected that Tony was the landlord’s son, since there was a noticeable resemblance between the two, but fortunately the similarity ended there. Tony couldn’t have been more pleasant, and even though I was technically a ‘tourist’, he’d gone out of his way to make me feel welcome. The same applied to Gordon. Both junior barmen appeared to be roughly the same age as me, and I felt an affinity with the pair of them. I was unable to tell, however, whether they were permanently attached to the Packhorse. They each seemed the type who would probably have been expected to do something ‘better’ than just work in a pub, and I liked to imagine they were only doing this until something else turned up. The idea of just staying here for ever, and never moving on, seemed quite unthinkable.

After a while the two bars became busy enough to keep Tony fully occupied, so he was forced to abandon the darts. Other players came forward, though, and I had several more games, and even won a few. Shortly we were joined in the bottom bar by the man in the cardboard crown. He’d obviously come down for a game of darts, because he went and added a ‘B’ to the list of people waiting to play. The local rule was winner-stays-on, and there were two initials ahead of his, so in the meantime he went and talked to the man who’d moved the bar stool.

I wasn’t really taking much notice, but I thought they nodded towards me a couple of times during their conversation. A moment later the one with the crown addressed me directly.

“Was that you who painted the green square up at Tommy Parker’s?” he asked.

“Well, sort of,” I answered. “But it wasn’t entirely my fault.”

They were both grinning at me, and I suddenly became aware that the other customers standing round the bar were all listening to the exchange.

“Whose fault was it then?”

Not wishing to incriminate anyone I said, “It was just an accident, that’s all.”

“You mean you accidentally painted a green square?”

This caused several people to laugh out loud.

“No,” I said. “But that’s how it ended up.”

“Well, Tommy’s not going to be best pleased about it.”

“Isn’t he?”

“No, he is not.”

The laughter faded away.

“I suppose you won’t have seen him lose his temper yet?” said someone over by the dartboard.

“Er…no,” I replied. “I haven’t, no.”

I must have started to look quite alarmed because the man in the crown suddenly stepped forward and slapped me on the back.

“Don’t you worry about it, lad,” he said. “It’s not the end of the world. Come on, we’ll buy you a drink.”

Next thing there was a full pint of beer in my hand, paid for by the man in the cardboard crown. The rest of the evening passed in a haze of beer drinking and darts playing. I ended up buying him two pints back for the one he’d bought me, but as I told myself later, it was the thought that counted. When last orders finally came I decided I’d had enough drink for one night, and left them all buying further rounds for each other. Ten minutes later I was wandering along the side of the lake, tripping over tree roots as I tried to follow the footpath in the dark.

It was the drink, I suppose, that made me decide to come this way instead of going along the road. Just as it was the drink that impelled me on to the jetty when I got to the boat-hire place. I went and stood at the very end, from where I could just make out the seven rowing boats lined up on their mooring. There was another road running along the far side of the lake, and while I was standing there I noticed a vehicle’s lights coming up from the south. It was over half a mile away, but even from that distance it struck me as being very brightly lit. As well as the headlights I could see a number of glowing shapes on the roof, but I was unable to make out what they were. The vehicle disappeared for a moment or two as it passed amongst some trees, and then emerged again further along the lakeside. By now it was almost opposite to where I stood. A slight breeze had got up during the evening, and this carried the noise of a whirring engine, and the rumble of tyres on the distant road surface.

And then another sound drifted across the lake. It only lasted for a few seconds and I couldn’t tell where it came from, yet it seemed vaguely familiar. A remote melody was being chimed out in the darkness, and I recognized a small segment from a nursery rhyme. The part that went ‘Half a pound of treacle’. Then it had gone again, and all that remained was the sound of the trees gently stirring, and the lake lapping against the shore.

♦

I had a headache when I woke up next morning. It had been my intention to take a drink of water from the standpipe before I went to bed, but by the time I got back to the campsite I’d forgotten all about it. Instead I’d crawled into my tent and gone straight to sleep, and now I had a hangover. This was the price for drinking five pints of Topham’s Excelsior Bitter. Or was it six? I couldn’t recollect clearly, but I decided that a quick shower would clear away the fuzziness. As I approached the shower block I remembered about having to turn the supply on, so I discreetly entered the ladies’ and went through the routine the schoolgirl had shown me. It all seemed to work OK, but when I went round to the men’s block I found the water was running completely cold. I then realized that the few moments of warm water I’d enjoyed the previous evening must have been the last drops of the heated supply. From now on, if I wanted a shower, it was going to be cold water only. This struck me as a bit of a swizz. After all, if someone paid rent to stay at a campsite, they should surely be entitled to some hot water. Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually paid any rent for this week. I’d painted a gate instead. Therefore I had no choice but to brace myself for a thirty-second cold shower. I stepped under the nozzle and stood naked and shivering in the icy deluge.

Which was when I recalled the man in the cardboard crown, and his questions about the green square. Had he really interrogated me in front of the entire pub? Yes, he had. They’d all stood round listening, and then someone had asked if I’d seen Mr Parker lose his temper yet. Obviously, of course, I hadn’t. I’d only been here a few days and had barely set eyes on him. Yet they’d all behaved as though the matter was of great importance. Well, personally I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Alright, so I accepted that Mr Parker wouldn’t be delighted by the sight of a green-painted square in the middle of his gateway. This was fair enough, but I could hardly imagine him losing his temper over it. On the contrary, he seemed to be the sort of man who took such things in his stride. He’d been nothing but polite and courteous in his dealings with me so far, and I had no doubt that he would remain the same despite this episode with the spilt paint.