Paul Daniels is unwilling to part with his cash. He hesitates.
“What’s your game?” the man asks the magician. “If you win you take the money and if you lose you take the money? That’s no way to run a business. Who’s going to play your cup game if it’s not properly competitive?”
Paul Daniels’s hands tremble as he searches for copper coins. His ribcage convulses with incoherent apologies.
The woman they call Debbie McGee remains calm. It’s a calmness derived from rehearsed apathy.
Nobody in the Aphra Behn can remember anything ever provoking emotion from Debbie McGee. There was once a time when she took pleasure in many things: a compelling film, a well-taken photograph of family and friends, late-night karaoke, an Indian takeaway. There was once a time when she was saddened by other things: a break-up, news of hurricanes, the sight of her baby sister leaving the house for the last time. There was also a period of her life when nothing but heroin made her happy or sad. She was happy when she had it; she was sad when she didn’t. That time also passed. For the woman they call Debbie McGee, there is nothing left to feel.
She remains silent throughout the exchange. Her eyes return to the man behind the bar. He has set aside his phone to follow the dispute.
Some of the pub’s regulars shift on their bar stools. One of them is quietly celebrating his sixty-fourth birthday. Although Robert Kerr has been drinking beer with his friend, Lorenzo, he hasn’t told him it’s a special day. He is content with his daily routine and doesn’t want to disrupt it, and besides, Lorenzo is much younger than him, young enough to be his son, and he probably wouldn’t be interested in the birthday celebrations of his long-time neighbor and drinking companion.
Robert turns to watch along with the rest of the pub. He had hoped it would be quickly resolved. With a deep sigh, Robert raises himself from the bar stool. The leather padding has settled to the shape of his buttocks after several hours of stasis. He takes the four or five steps to the scene of the altercation. “Do you know what you are, mate?” he asks. The tourist is nearly thirty years younger than him. He doesn’t reply. “You’re a cunt,” Robert tells him.
Fights are now rare in this part of London. When Robert first came to the area they were common. In those days, assailants carried knuckle-dusters and switchblade knives.
The tourist at the table stares up into the face of the older, burlier man. He notes the gold chain around the thick neck and the nose that’s been broken and clumsily repaired several times. He sees the scar on his forehead, which is large and perfectly square, the sort that cannot be caused by mishap.
Robert reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a fifty-pence piece. He drops it into the man’s gin and tonic. “With interest.” The greasy hexagon meets the acid of the lime and fizzes against the sides of the glass. The man makes no attempt to fish it out.
Robert’s friend Lorenzo has been sitting with him all afternoon. They’re regular drinking companions. As Robert made his intervention, Lorenzo subtly lifted himself from his own bar stool—likewise customized to the curve of his arse—and slipped out the front door of the pub to the street, where the bouncer stands.
The bouncer is a middle-aged woman called Sheila. She is around five feet tall. Her hair is bleached blonde over gray. Every morning she rubs wax onto the palms of her hands then runs her hands through her hair, creating little spikes and curls. Sheila’s employed to marshal patrons and gently reinforce the pub’s rules. She makes sure people leave the building to smoke and that they keep behind the white line that’s been drawn onto the pavement to demarcate the acceptable smoking-and-drinking area. She greets patrons who enter the pub and she calls taxis at the end of the night for customers who are too drunk to find their own way home. She also deals with disturbances, although these are a rarity these days or else the managers of the Behn would have employed a brawnier bouncer to do the work.
Lorenzo beckons Sheila inside and points to Robert. The other man has still said nothing.
Meanwhile, Paul Daniels looks about the premises, searching for a convenient escape.
Debbie McGee is at the bar, finishing a row of drinks that have been left by a group of middle-aged women, now unsure of their choice of venue and keen to hurry on to a nearby theater and its production of Julius Caesar.
Sheila faces a conundrum. She is fond of Lorenzo, and he has brought her inside to eject the tourist. She likes Robert too but he appears to be the aggressor. The man they call Paul Daniels is hopping around the pub despite the instructions she has given him to stay away. Sheila has no objection in principle to this desperate man and woman coming into the pub each day for a short amount of time to ply their trade, but she is also the sort of woman who takes her job seriously.
Robert spots Sheila’s entrance and goes out onto the street, pushing the door open with a strong left arm then allowing it to swing shut behind him. It used to be second nature for him to come outside like this and smoke. He quit a few years ago, but he still feels the compulsion to interrupt his drinking to stand on the pavement and breathe the fresh air. And he wants to give that dickhead a chance to leave by the other exit.
Paul Daniels also spares Sheila the awkwardness of an altercation. He scoops his
