Lee Rourke - Vulgar Things

I find the Irish pub by Southend Central Station that the man in the Dr Feelgood T-shirt was talking about to the woman the other night in the Lobster Smack. I’m happy to be away from it all. It’s a popular chain bar, Irish-themed in the way Irish bars are everywhere except in Ireland: where the only Irish people you meet are working behind the bar. It’s a busy, friendly place. I order a pint of Guinness. The Irish barmaid smiles. She has striking red hair, dyed that way: bright, burning, metallic red. I like her, I guess. The pub doesn’t feel like the usual type of place you’d get next to a railway station in a small town: those watering holes for the lost, the innocent types simply bored, waiting for a train, and, of course, for the criminally insane. I look around the bar as I wait for my Guinness to settle; everyone looks relatively normal. I begin to relax.

I spend most of the afternoon drinking Guinness and whiskey and watching the barmaid with the red hair. She doesn’t seem to mind. Barmaids have a sixth sense for this sort of boorish behaviour; they know when they’re being watched. So I make no real effort to hide what I’m doing. The bar is beginning to fill up around me, and it takes me a while to notice the man and the woman sitting beside me at the bar. They are talking loudly. I turn to my right slightly, so that I can hear them. The woman is younger, much younger, and she looks Thai. They’re eating food and drinking beer, talking talking talking, much of it nonsense. They’re the sort of couple who are together but not really there, their minds elsewhere. Every so often the man points at something on her plate. She’s eating scampi and chips; something beige, in any case. She looks back at him in disbelief each time.

‘What!’

‘What!’

‘What!’

‘What!’

‘What!’

‘What!’

It’s clear to me and everyone else hanging around the bar that she hates this man with an intense passion. This strange display continues for about ten or fifteen minutes. The only time she addresses him at all politely is when he becomes too tired to finish his own meal: a well-done burger. She takes his plate with a smile and scrapes his leftovers onto hers. As she does this he swivels around on his stool to watch a group of teenage girls through the window as they congregate on the steps up to the station, his Thai wife chomping away on his food, oblivious. I turn away and leave them to it.

When I look back up the red-headed barmaid is standing in front of me behind the bar, smiling awkwardly.

‘Would you like another?’

‘Do you have champagne?’

‘Er … Yes … I think we do, let me just check …’

She bends down to look in the fridges behind the bar.

‘What do you have?’

‘We’ve got Moët … That’s it.’

‘…’

‘Do you want a glass?’

‘No, the bottle.’

‘Right …’

‘Do you want to share it with me?’

‘I’m at work.’

‘Well, after work?’

‘I don’t think so …’

‘It’s okay … I can afford it, I’m rich, you see …’

‘That’s very nice for you, but I’ll be going straight home from here.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘I’m here to serve drinks, not to give strangers my address …’

‘Okay … A bottle of Moët, please … One glass.’

She brings the bottle over to me in a cheap plastic cooler with so much ice in it that the bottle is sitting on rather than in it.

‘There’s too much ice in here; could you take half of it out and replace it with some water, then just drop the bottle in it … I’ll do the rest.’

‘Sure.’

She takes it away to do so and returns promptly with the correct ratio of water and ice. I smile and thank her. I pop open my bottle and pour myself a glass, slowly, rather ceremoniously. I begin to attract attention and some rather peculiar glances from the regulars in the bar. It becomes apparent rather quickly that this isn’t the sort of establishment where champagne is consumed so flagrantly, and that those who do are promptly looked down upon with complete and utter contempt. Random men begin to shout things at me.

‘What you drinking, you fucking ponce?!’

I try to ignore them.

‘Coming in here flashing your wad!’

I down glass after glass.

‘You can’t come in here drinking that shit!’

The champagne goes straight to my head and before I can do anything about it I find myself helplessly drunk. I’m a mess. I’m nervous, too. I fear someone might follow me out of the bar if I try to leave. It’s obvious that I shouldn’t have bought the champagne. Then something overtakes me, forcing me: I ask the red-headed barmaid to pour drinks for everyone around the bar. It’s a big mistake. The whole bar explodes into a threatening cacophony aimed in my general direction.

‘Flash fucking Harry!’

‘Fucking ponce!’

‘Big time fucking Charlie!’

‘Who does he think he is?!’

‘I’ve never seen the cunt before.’

‘He’s never in here.’

‘Billy fucking no mates, innit!’

I pour another glass and down the last of the champagne in one. I ignore them. I focus on a man talking to his woman, speaking in that aggressive way drunken men seem to speak to women they’re with, without them even noticing: close, leaning in, gesticulating wildly, grabbing on to her arms and waist, pulling her close to him, trying to kiss her ear in mid-sentence, roughly, not really knowing his own strength around her. She seems to be enjoying it, though. Or at least she’s used to it now and it doesn’t really faze her: laughing along, straightening her face when she feels she should, giggling with him, matching him drink for drink. They’re perfectly content with each other. As if nothing else exists for them, just their lives, their everyday lives.

I begin to think about my own loneliness. It’s a cliché and I know it’s the booze sending my brain the signals to do it, but I can’t help it. How I failed to love my own wife, to find happiness with her, start the family, do all the things we’re supposed to do. Surely it’s not hard? I mean, this man and woman have found each other. They’ve found happiness … or at least something that resembles it, something to share with each other. At least they have that much.

toledo road

She’s sitting across the room from me, almost directly behind me, alone at a small table trying to read a book, or something like a magazine. I wonder how long she’s been there; she could have been sitting there for hours, all afternoon for all I know, or she could have just breezed in as I was drinking my pint of water. All I know is it’s definitely her, I’m sure it’s her. It looks just like her: the same hair and eyes, even the same clothes. I squint, trying desperately to focus, to get a better look. She doesn’t seem to be waiting for anyone, she looks perfectly content, sitting there as if no one else exists. It all looks very peaceful over there: the noise of the pub seems to have filtered away, like she’s too far away for it to reach her. She’s drinking a glass of wine, red. She seems settled, comfortable, at home, as if she’s one of the regulars. My heart begins to beat irregularly, like something is happening inside me, something strange. She’s beautiful, I can see that through the haze; so beautiful. No one else is looking at her, not even the other drunks at the bar; it’s like I’m the only person who can see her, as if I’m meant to, as if she’s just for me, as if a sign has been thrust in front of me, addressed to me only. I begin to shake. I step off my stool to steady my legs; it’s like I could reach up and touch her, she’s so close, elevated, up in front of me, sitting there, something to be worshipped, so tantalisingly close yet untouchable, completely separate from me, some kind of beautiful icon. Should I just casually walk over to her? Offer her another drink? Maybe that’s what I should do? Maybe that’s what anyone else would do, but I don’t. I sit back on my stool and continue to gaze across at her, hoping she might notice me, remember me too, and wave me over. But she doesn’t, of course she doesn’t. It doesn’t happen like that. It never does. It’s never head-on in real life. She just continues to read whatever it is she’s reading and I continue to stare at her like a lecherous drunk, for hours, as if we’re both stuck in that moment.