Final Demand (10 page)

On the wall hung a framed collage of photographs: herself as a baby; herself aged eight, dressed as an angel in the St Cuthbert's Nativity play; herself aged eleven, holding up a rope of seaweed on the beath at Morecambe. Her dad had taken the photos; there were more of them, a drawerful somewhere. None of them were recent.

Chloe's eyes filled with tears. She tore off some toilet paper and bunched it in her hand.

Downstairs, David was opening up. As he unlocked the door he heard the clunk as Sheila put ashtrays on the tables. As usual it was she, his wife, who had cleaned up and mopped the floor. David thought irritably: Where's my lump of a daughter? Does she expect her mother to do all the work? Chloe was twenty-one; was the girl going to snooze her life away?

The bar smelt of stale cigarette smoke, the odour of his working life. He stood outside, on the pavement, breathing in the air. A Texas Homecare lorry thundered past. Every morning David stood here for a few moments before his first customer arrived (Archie Bacon, inevitably).

Opposite, Mr Hassan stood outside his shop, Europa Food and Wine. Next to it was an electrical repair shop belonging to Mr Hassan's cousin, and next to that a computer shop belonging to the cousin's brother; the family had taken over the street. David thought: If only Pakistanis drank, if only there were a verse in the Koran extolling the virtures of alcoholic
beverages, then he would be a rich man. There was a rush of office workers at lunchtime and, briefly, at six, but his customers were mainly of pensionable age, men who had lived in these few streets of Manchester all their lives. He was fond of them. As Sheila said: ‘They might be old lags, but they're our old lags.'

David stood in the cavernous street; it was part of a one-way system and the traffic funnelled through as if blown by a giant bellows. Dwarfed by commercial premises, the Queen's Head was the standard Victorian public house: etched glass, fancy plasterwork, a building whose charm was thrown into relief by the sixties office blocks that loomed up on either side of it. Sheila had planted daffodils in the window-boxes. She was a born home-maker; wherever they lived, she would settle in and make do. She was a placid woman, easily contented. ‘Well, one of us has to be,' she said.

For David was a turbulent man, a prey to his emotions. Today he was seized with irritation. He looked up; his daughter's curtains were still closed. What was the matter with the girl? At her age he was working at two jobs, moonlighting from one to play in a band, drinking all night, getting stoned, getting laid, composing songs to girls whose faces he had long ago forgotten and burning up the motorways in his old MG. Was Chloe going to do nothing with her life?

Right on cue (eleven o'clock) Archie Bacon appeared, hobbling down the street accompanied by his bull terrier. David folded up his paper and went inside. Sheila was on the phone. She stood behind the bar, polishing glasses as she spoke, the receiver wedged between her shoulder and her ear. There was something girlish about the way she did this; suddenly the years fell away and he saw her as she had been then, the first time they met. She was dancing with her baby sister, holding both her hands and pumping them up and down as her sister jumped about. The floor was filled with families – parents, teenagers. It was the last night of the holiday, Saturday, and the atmosphere had briefly revved up a notch, as it did on the final
evening. Just for a couple of numbers, everyone took to the dance floor, but it was Sheila's gaze that David held as he belted ‘Wild Thing' into the mike.
You make my heart sing.
She wore a green dress and a necklace made of white plastic shells that bounced up and down as she danced.

David didn't tell her he remembered this. They spent their lives together, working side by side, they were in each other's company day and night. They had all the time in the world to speak of such things, yet somehow the moment never came up, did it? Not when you had been married for twenty-eight years.

As he pulled Archie's pint Sheila's gaze met his, but without registering; she was talking to her mother. ‘Give it a good jiggle around in cold water,' she said. Every day they talked on the phone; how could they find so much to say? Sometimes David was amused, sometimes awestruck. Today he was irritated. How female they sounded! Everyone they knew seemed to be suffering from some life-threatening ailment. Then there was the saga of her mother's neighbours and the ongoing debate about the definitive fish pie – cheese on top or not? David knew that this was one of Sheila's few pleasures. The pub was their workplace, their home, their tyrant. Unless they came in for a drink, phone conversations were the only way Sheila could stay in touch with her family. Still, it irritated him.

‘Crying shame, eh?' said Archie.

‘What?'

Archie pointed to the newspaper. A woman's body had been found dumped in a wood next to the M6 motorway, near Congleton. She had been raped and strangled. Archie looked obscurely gratified. ‘Now who would do a thing like that, eh?'

Sheila, who had finished her conversation, came over.

‘Oh no,' she said. She sat down next to Archie and looked at the paper. ‘The poor girl.'

Sheila was good with the customers – friendly, confiding, always ready to commiserate. Whatever happened to them she could pluck, from her large family, something of a similar nature.
I know just what you mean. My Uncle Patrick, he had it
too and it moved to his kidneys
 . . . and they were off. There was an ease about her which David admired, for he was incapable of it himself. He was a good publican – honest, fair, firm with drunks – but he was not a chatty man and people gravitated naturally towards his wife. He had few intimate friends. In fact, none. All he had in this world was his small family – his wife and daughter.

Chloe ambled in. David gazed at her. She was wearing a shapeless print dress. Her big, pallid arms were bare except for a wayward bra strap that had slipped down her shoulder. His daughter always wore slightly unsuitable clothes, never quite right for the occasion. Today, too flimsy and middle-aged.
Frumpy.

‘Shouldn't you be starting on the lunches?' he demanded.

Chloe looked like a startled rabbit; Sheila, too, jumped up. ‘Come on, pet,' she said. ‘I've made a start on the veg.'

‘Seen the news?' said Archie, with grim satisfaction.

‘Don't show her,' said Sheila, ‘it's upsetting.'

Chloe moved closer and picked up the paper. David was standing behind her. He gazed at her vast hips. Her upper arms, from the back, were ruddily mottled; her elbows dimpled, and sunk in flesh. A spasm of pain passed through him.

Chloe let out her breath. ‘How awful . . .'

‘Listen, Chloe—'

She swung round, jumping to attention. Why did he have that effect on her?

‘Wherever you are,' he said, ‘whatever the time, it doesn't matter how late . . .' David wanted to put his arm around her but he hadn't done that for years. ‘Day or night, if you need picking up, just phone. Understood? Just stay there and I'll come and fetch you in the car. Is that a promise?'

Surprised by the passion in his voice, she looked at him. ‘OK.'

‘Phone me. That's what your mobile's for,' he said. ‘And make sure it's charged. You know how forgetful you are.'

Sheila gave him a sharp look. He shouldn't have added that; it made the whole thing accusatory. His irritation rose.

‘And run across and get some tomatoes for your mother.' He thrust a note into her hand. ‘They weren't in the delivery.'

Chloe made for the door.

‘Put on your coat!' called Sheila.

But their daughter had gone. Traffic rumbled, as the door opened. David felt a familiar sense of failure.

‘You'll catch your death!' Sheila called.

The pub filled up, first with the regulars, then with the lunchtime crowds from the nearby offices – gaggles of girls (Chardonnay by the glass) and young blokes (Stella Artois, Czech imported Pilsner in the bottle) who shouted and blew smoke into David's face as he served them behind the bar. They took the place over, pulling chairs away from the tables (
You using this, mate?
) and leaving the old boys marooned with their pints, looking like a nearly extinct species, which indeed they were. These kids spent money – where did it all come from? If the brewery had its way, which it was threatening to do, this last genuine local would be revamped into some themed Slug and Lettuce bollocks, transforming it from a pub that served food into an eatery that served drinks, because that was there the profits lay. And the few old lags who stuck it out would find themselves shunted into the corner, gazing glumly at a bottle of balsamic vinegar. Finally they would feel so out of place that they would just melt away. It was happening all over. Where did they go? Into some corner where they quietly died of natural causes?

David felt equivocal about this. He couldn't make a livelihood out of his pensioners, eking out their pints, but on the other hand he had run this pub for nine years; he knew their wives and their grandchildren, he had presided over their family celebrations in the function room upstairs. Besides, he too was feeling his age.

Only fifty
, he told himself, and then he would catch sight of
his face in the mirror on the way to the gents'. A large expanse of his forehead was visible now; this left his eyebrows looking thicker and somehow comic. A person's first reaction wouldn't necessarily be: Look, a bald man. But he had to admit that a certain amount of his hair had disappeared, leaving alien, shiny skin that burnt in the sun. It seemed only yesterday that David had had a full head of it – thick brown stuff that just existed, taken for granted. He had even pulled it back in a rubber band when he went on stage. His moment of glory now seemed pitiful. What had he been? A Green Jacket at Warner's Holiday Camp who had fancied himself as a singer. That young man had long since disappeared, to be replaced by this familiar stranger, his inappropriately clownish face lined with disappointment.

Lennox, his barman, had arrived. Lennox was a virile young Australian who sported a full head of hair. He treated the customers with relaxed, almost insolent familiarity. ‘No worries,' he said, with irritating regularity. He
had
no worries. Soon he would be off elsewhere – Montreal, Cape Town. The world was his for the asking; no doors had been closed to him, one by one. Lennox's tanned arms flexed as he pulled the pumps; their blond hairs shone in the light.

It was one thirty, and the decibel level was rising. David could set his watch by the volume of noise – it peaked at one thirty, and at ten thirty in the evening, just before closing time. Having consumed his usual pint and packet of pork scratchings, Archie rose to leave. The dot com whizzkids shouted over his head, moving aside to let him pass. David gazed at Archie's dog. Its back legs were bowed, to accommodate its enormous balls. Their size was unseemly.
Look at me and all I'm capable of.
They rubbed against each other as it walked, stiffly, to the door. David lifted the mixers nozzle. Squirting some tonic into a glass he tried to remember the last time that he and Sheila had made love. Two weeks ago? Three?

He gazed at his wife as she rubbed
Lasagne
off the blackboard. From the back she had spread, but in a shapely,
feminine way. She was still an attractive woman. The knot of her apron had come undone; one tape hung down. This touched David. When had he last caught her in his arms and kissed her properly – a deep, passionate kiss, just like that – on the landing or in the bathroom?

He was resolving to do it later when he heard a shout. ‘Chloe!'

A girl was worming her way through the drinkers. She wore an air stewardess's uniform and dragged a small black suitcase on wheels. Chloe was standing behind the cold food display, slowly assembling a tuna baguette.

The girl pirouetted round in front of the sliced meats. ‘Guess where I was this morning?'

Chloe gaped at her old schoolfriend, Rowena. ‘Where?'

‘Lisbon,' replied Rowena. ‘Lisbon, Portugal.' She had just completed her training, she said. ‘The crew was divine! There's this guy called Tim – last night, my dear, we were staying at the Marriott, and guess what—'

‘Pull a finger out with that sandwich, pet,' said a customer.

Rowena moved away to the bar. When the rush had eased, Chloe went over and sat down with her. Lennox had treated Rowena to a vodka and tonic and was chatting her up, a situation with which Chloe, who fruitlessly loved him, was only too familiar.

‘I'm fast-track, they say,' breathed Rowena, shooting a glance at Lennox. ‘Next year I'll be on long-hauls – just think, Chloe Miami! LA! Four-star hotels, you can work on your tan. Go on, I'll give you the number, you'd be great at it – like, knowing about serving and everything.'

‘I couldn't,' replied Chloe. ‘I'm scared of flying.'

Rowena caught Lennox's eye. ‘Don't be a wuss.'

Chloe shook her head. ‘Anyway, I get airsick.'

Behind the bar, David gazed at his daughter.

That night, when he had closed up, David paused outside the bathroom door. Chloe was in there, singing. She sang when she thought nobody was around.

‘
Once I had a sweetheart and now I have none
 . . .'

When she was fourteen he had bought her a guitar, and for a few months she had learnt folk songs.

‘
Last night in sweet slumber I dreamed I did see, my own precious true love sat smiling by me . . .
'

She had a beautiful voice, pure and true.

‘
But when I awakened I found it not so . . . my eyes like some fountains with tears overflowed . . .
'

The lavatory flushed and Chloe came out.

‘Oh,' she said, her face reddening.

‘You should take it up professionally,' he said. ‘Why did you stop the guitar?'