Kevin Barry - Dark Lies the Island

‘Stuff them is my view,’ said Everett Bell.

‘We’d lose a lot if we lost the charter,’ said Mo. ‘Think about the festival invites. Think about the history of the branch.’

‘Think about the bloody future!’ cried Tom N. ‘We haven’t come up with a new system to be awkward. We’ve done it for the ale drinkers. We’ve done it for the ale makers!’

I felt a lump in my throat and I daresay I wasn’t alone.

‘Ours is the better system,’ said Everett. ‘This much we know.’

‘You’re right,’ said John Mosely, and this was the clincher, Big John’s call. ‘I say we score nought to ten.’

‘If you lot are in, that’s good enough for me,’ I said.

Six stout men linked arms on a hot Llandudno pavement. We rounded the turn onto the prom and our first port of call: the Heron Inn.

Which turned out to be an anti-climax. A nice house, lately refurbished, but mostly keg rubbish on the taps. The Heron did, however, do a Phoenix Tram Driver on cask, 3.8 per cent, and we sat with six of same.

‘I’ve had better Tram Drivers,’ opened Mo.

‘I’ve had worse,’ countered Tom N.

‘She has a nice delivery but I’d worry about her legs,’ said Billy Stroud, shrewdly.

‘You wouldn’t be having more than a couple,’ said John Mosely.

‘ Not a skinful beer,’ I concurred.

All eyes turned to Everett Bell. He held a hand aloft, wavered it.

‘A five would be generous, a six insane,’ he said.

‘Give her the five,’ said Big John, dismissively.

I made the note. This was as smoothly as a beer was ever scored. There had been some world-historical ructions in our day. There was the time Billy Stroud and Mo hadn’t talked for a month over an eight handed out to a Belhaven Bombardier.

Alewards we followed our noses. We walked by the throng of the beach — the shrieks of the sun-crazed kids made our stomachs loop. We made towards the Prom View Hotel. We’d had word of a new landlord there an ale-fancier. It was dogs-dying-in-parked-cars weather. The Prom View’s ample lounge was a blessed reprieve. We had the place to ourselves, the rest of Llandudno apparently being content with summer, sea and life. John Mosely nodded towards a smashing row of hand pumps for the casks. Low whistles sounded. The landlord, hot-faced and jovial, came through from the hotel’s reception.

‘Another tactic,’ he said, ‘would be stay home and have a nice sauna.’

‘Same difference,’ sighed John Mosely.

‘Could be looking at 37.2 now,’ said the landlord, taking a flop of sweat from his brow.

Billy Stroud sensed a kindred spirit:

‘Gone up again, has it?’

‘And up,’ said the landlord. ‘My money’s on a 38 before we’re out.’

‘Record won’t go,’ said Billy.

‘Nobody’s said record,’ said the landlord. ‘We’re not going to see a 38.5, that’s for sure.’

‘Brogdale in Kent,’ said Billy. ‘August 10th, 2003.’

‘2.05 p.m.,’ said the landlord. ‘I wasn’t five miles distant that same day.’

Billy was beaten.

‘Loading a van for a divorced sister,’ said the landlord, ramming home his advantage. ‘Lugging sofas in the piggin’ heat. And wardrobes!’

We bowed our heads to the man.

‘What’ll I fetch you, gents?’

A round of Cornish Lightning was requested.

‘Taking the sun?’ enquired the landlord.

‘Taking the ale.’

‘After me own heart,’ he said. ‘’Course ’round here, it’s lagers they’re after mostly. Bloody Welsh.’

‘Can’t beat sense into them,’ said John Mosely.

‘If I could, I would,’ said the landlord, and he danced as a young featherweight might, he raised his clammy dukes. Then he skipped and turned.

‘I’ll pop along on my errands, boys,’ he said. ‘There are rows to hoe and socks for the wash. You’d go through pair after pair this weather.’

He pinched his nostrils closed: what-a-pong.

‘Soon as you’re ready for more, ring that bell and my good wife will oblige. So adieu, adieu …’

He skipped away. We raised eyes. The shade of the lounge was pleasant, the Cornish Lightning in decent nick.

‘Call it a six?’ said Tom N.

Nervelessly we agreed. Talk was limited. We swallowed hungrily, quickly, and peered again towards the pumps.

‘The Lancaster Bomber?’

‘The Whitstable Mule?’

‘How’s about that Mangan’s Organic?’

‘I’d say the Lancaster, all told.’

‘Ring the bell, Everett.’

He did so, and a lively blonde, familiar with her forties but nicely preserved, bounced through from reception. Our eyes went shyly down. She took a glass to shine as she waited our call. Type of lass who needs her hands occupied.

‘Do you for, gents?’

Irish, her accent.

‘Round of the Lancaster, wasn’t it?’ said Everett.

She squinted towards our table, counted the heads.

‘Times six,’ confirmed Everett.

The landlady squinted harder. She dropped the glass. It smashed to pieces on the floor.

‘Maurice?’ she said.

It was Mo that froze, stared, softened.

‘B-B-Barbara?’ he said.

We watched as he rose and crossed to the bar. A man in a dream was Mo. We held our breaths as Mo and Barbara took each other’s hands over the counter. They were wordless for some moments, and then felt ten eyes on them, for they giggled, and Barbara set blushing to the Lancasters. She must have spilled half again down the slops gully as she poured. I joined Everett to carry the ales to our table. Mo and Barbara went into a huddle down the far end of the counter. They were rapt.

Real Ale Club would not have marked Mo for a romancer.

‘The quiet ones you watch,’ said Tom N. ‘Maur ice ?’

‘Mo? With a piece?’ whispered Everett Bell.

‘Could be they’re old family friends,’ tried innocent Billy. ‘Or relations?’

Barbara was now slowly stroking Mo’s wrist.

‘Four buggerin’ fishwives I’m sat with,’ said John Mosely. ‘What are we to make of these Lancasters?’

We talked ale but were distracted. Our glances cut down the length of the bar. Mo and Barbara talked lowly, quickly, excitedly down there. She was moved by Mo, we could see that plain enough. Again and again she ran her fingers through her hair. Mo was gazing at her, all dreamy, and suddenly he’d got a thumb hooked in the belt-loop of his denims — Mr Suave. He didn’t so much as touch his ale.

Next, of course, the jaunty landlord arrived back on the scene.

‘Oh, Alvie!’ she cried. ‘You’ll never guess!’

‘Oh?’ said the landlord, all the jauntiness instantly gone from him.

‘This is Maurice !’

‘Maurice?’ he said. ‘You’re joking …’

It was polite handshakes then, and feigned interest in Mo on the landlord’s part, and a wee fat hand he slipped around the small of his wife’s back.

‘We’ll be suppin’ up,’ said John Mosely, sternly.

Mo had a last, whispered word with Barbara but her smile was fixed now and the landlord remained in close attendance. As we left, Mo looked back and raised his voice a note too loud. Desperate, he was.

‘Barbara?’

We dragged him along. We’d had word of notable pork scratchings up the Mangy Otter.

‘Do tell, Maur ice ,’ said Tom N.

‘Leave him be,’ said John Mosely.

‘An ex, that’s all,’ said Mo.

And Llandudno was infernal. Families raged in the heat. All of the kids wept. The Otter was busyish when we sludged in. We settled on a round of St Austell Tributes from a meagre selection. Word had not been wrong on the quality of the scratchings. And the St Austell turned out to be in top form.

‘I’d be thinking in terms of a seven,’ said Everett Bell.