Long after his time, he thought. He’d have been away.
‘So, what then?’ he said. ‘They find out anything?’
Pete shrugged. ‘Oy! Sam!’ he called.
His son with the spiky hair came over with his girlfriend.
‘What did they say about that body?’ asked Pete. ‘In the paper?’
‘Oh, not much,’ said Sam.
‘Too long ago,’ the girl, a thin little thing in a leather jacket, added. Her eyes had spikes at the corners.
‘Don’t suppose they’d tell us anyway,’ said Mary, who was reaching under the counter for crisps. ‘Who knows what goes on?’
‘Shouldn’t think they’ll bother.’ The boy’s yellow hair glittered under the light like tinsel. ‘Not unless they come up with a missing person.’
Pete worked for the water board. ‘Really messed the drains up over Copcollar,’ he said, his red face sweaty, downing about half of his pint in one go and swaying gently sideways against his son.
‘The world’s full of mysteries,’ the boy said portentously.
‘What do they do with them?’ asked Dan.
‘Sorry, Dan?’
‘With bodies? If they’re not claimed.’
‘Like in Lost Property,’ said the girl. ‘If not claimed in X number of days…’
Pete must have actually been very drunk because he suddenly threw an arm round Dan’s neck and cried, ‘See this guy! Wouldn’t credit it, but this geezer’s been round the world twice over.’
‘Have you?’ asked the girl, interested, turning to him.
‘Merchant Navy,’ said Dan.
‘Really?’ she said. ‘My uncle was in the Merchant Navy.’
‘In the engine room,’ said Dan.
‘Really?’ She actually seemed interested.
‘Not twice over,’ he said. ‘Not even once. Been to Iceland.’
‘Good man,’ said Pete, shaking his shoulder, ‘what you having?’
More of the same.
‘How’s the motor?’ he asked Sam.
‘Great,’ the boy replied, scrolling something on his phone.
Then they all forgot him. Fat Marlon appeared behind the bar and Mary nipped out for a smoke. Dan fancied a smoke too. All these kids, he thought. He’d have liked kids. Well, maybe not. People who had them moaned about them all the time. Marlon knew his stuff and brought him a Scotch, which he refilled twice more, and Dan sat there till he found himself moving. He’d noticed that. You just did things. You didn’t have to think. You were just the man who props up the end of the bar. Your stomach shoves out over your belt. Then you’re outside under the Dragon and Hope sign so you must have got up, your body just did it. You’re in the lane going home. It’s full moon. You’re at the end of the village so you start to sing, just quietly. Funny, you get into this state still. I want a dog, he thought, another dog. Wonder what the cats’d think? Couldn’t really get one that bothered them. Best go to a dog rescue, get an older, sober one. And he sang: ‘Oo-oo-ooh, baby baby – oo-ooh-ooh baby baby, oo-oo-ooh, baby baby…’ like a dog howling at the moon. By the time he got home he was feeling great. Awooooh! ‘Werewolves of London’ – He checked on the bees, even tinkered on an engine for a while, then somehow lost the wrench, couldn’t find it anywhere, so gave up and went in with his head spinning, put on music, got the bottle of Irish from the shelf and banged out some ice.
He came and stood at his back door, looking out on the still night. My back steps, he thought. Here they are. Mine. My back steps. Always. They don’t belong to anyone else. My back steps. They were wide and round, concentric circles, very old red brick eroding at the edges, dustified. On the bottom one was a wedge-shaped gouge about an inch and a half deep that filled with dirty water when it rained. His mum had made it with a pickaxe one day when she was arguing with his grandma about money.
They screeched.
His mum: ‘So? So? So? You can afford it.’
‘That’s not the point!’
And he’d screamed his head off because he was only about two and he and his mum had only just come to live with his gran, and he wasn’t used to it. Later of course it was normal. She was always too high on emotion, his mum, probably mostly her fault. Everything was drama, slobber slobber emotion or bitter anger or Greek tragedy, anything but an even keel. He remembered the first time he realised the shame of her, once when a man outside the shop, when he was waiting while she bought her cigarettes, leaned down in front of him, his big red-nosed face with all the deep pores and the friendly smile, said to him, ‘Listen, son, what’s your age?’
He thought it was a funny way to say it: what’s your age? He didn’t even know who the man was.
‘I’m nine,’ he said.
‘You’re a big boy now. You shouldn’t be letting your mother show her affections like she does with you. Know what I mean? Not like when a mother kisses a baby, if you see what I mean. You’re too big for that sort of thing.’
Then the man had moved away, strolled off across the village green, and he couldn’t remember ever seeing him again. He had a feeling he might have been the man who delivered the minerals to Ollerenshaw’s. Horror. His soul had curled in mortification. His cheeks blazed. It was wrong. Everyone was laughing at him. Looking at him funny. And after that she’d been too big, and so was he, big son of a big mother, lumbering about, graceless. It was the time after his gran had died and it was just him and her, and she’d still seemed like a big girl, still with her long hair. It had been a good time. But no longer. All ruined. There’d been snuggles and cuddles, and she’d hugged him so tight she’d made him cough, but after that he wouldn’t let her. He’d go off into the woods and she’d sulk for days when he got back,
