‘You had three bottles a week ago. Your boss should start trying having tea for her breakfast, Jones,’ and he gave a slight laugh, and added, ‘Makes a change.’
‘You’re quite determined.’
‘I am. And I’m sorry about it, Jones.’
Quite involuntarily Jones cried out, ‘What the hell am I going to do?’
Again the call came from an outer room, and Jones knew she was calling again. ‘It’s her,’ he thought, ‘been breathing down Tegid’s neck, getting her teeth into it,’ and it was all so real to Jones that he could even hear her whispering in her husband’s ear, ‘It can’t go on, Tegid.’
‘All right, Sarah, said I’m coming, didn’t I?’
For the second time a door slammed loudly, echoed in the bar.
‘What are you going to do, Jones? Tell you. Beat it.’
Parrot-like, Jones said, ‘You really mean you won’t?’ and Tegid’s gravely nodding head was the only answer he ever got.
‘I do,’ Tegid said, and put an arm under the Jones shoulder, walked him slowly to the door, and opened it wide. He looked up at the stars, heard the distant murmur of the sea.
‘I don’t understand,’ and Jones continued to stare bewilderedly at this most obliging of licensees.
‘Try not to then,’ Tegid replied. ‘I’ll tell you two things before you depart, Jones,’ and he put his mouth close to the Jones ear.
‘That Glyn Prothero told me, in confidence, that Mrs Gandell’s place won’t last another three months .…’
‘The bastard!’
And, stressing it, Tegid continued, ‘And that Melvyn Pritchard that’s just left this pub, you saw him sitting opposite you, well, he said something to me, and funny really, but somehow I can still hear the words in my ear,’ and he took a tighter clutch on Jones. ‘“When I look at that fellow, Jones,” he said, “I look on a small, tight man to whom one says cringe, and he cringes, bend, and he bends, crawl, and he will crawl, hunch your shoulders, Jones, and he will hunch them. Jones smiles, Jones grins, but he never laughs, never. Jones is his own ten fingers and his mouth”.’
Jones broke free.
‘I never knew till now,’ he said, ‘that good people could be so disgusting.’
‘Good night,’ Tegid said, placed a knee under the Jones backside, and gave him a gentle push. ‘And remember what I said, and remember what is owed to me.’
He closed the door and locked it, switched off the light, leaving Jones floundering in the darkness.
‘The mean swine,’ he thought, ‘the mean …’, and stood there, bent, his eyes closed. ‘The things I used to do for him one time.’ Rooted where he stood, staggered by sheer surprise: ‘I’m not crawling to that bloody bank again, I won’t,’ resting on one foot, and then the other, and the words rocking in his ears, ‘won’t last three months.’ Jones finally came erect, stiffened. ‘Perhaps the bitch was lying to me this morning, perhaps she is planning to go. God, what’ll I do if she does. Oh no, no. Who’s lying,’ and suddenly, and loud into the deserted road, ‘Who’s lying to me?’
He walked slowly, uncertainly on, into a darkness that appeared to deepen even as he strode, hands dug deep into his pockets, and at the corner of the next street, he stopped again, leaned against some railings, swaying a little, angry and bewildered. And he thought of the liar waiting, flat on her back, and he thought of the time, even heard that bosun’s cry. ‘That you, Jones?’ As if it wouldn’t be, tomorrow and the day after that, and Jones there, always ready. ‘The lying bitch. She’s pulling out.’ The Jones world rocked under torrenting thoughts, and he turned a corner, walked on, heard the clear sharp bite of his own footsteps, stopping again, walking on, turning to look back, turning to go on, stopping again, staring up at the night sky, ‘the bloody stars’, and wondering, and wondering again, and wishing, and hoping. ‘I never wanted anything else, nothing.’
From road to road, through street and street, and once, round and round again, and Jones lost, and empty, and floundering, and floundering again, and not a single answer for him in all that darkness and silence. And at last he stopped, looked up, and there was the Decent Hotel, and one single light still showing in an upper room. He gripped the railings, swayed a little, looking up again, at the squat building, and thought of the room, and the woman in it, waiting, waiting.
‘The damned bitch. I can’t believe it, I can’t. Only this morning she said she wasn’t even thinking of going, swore to it,’ and the Jones effort induced a Jones belch. ‘Ah, everything’ll be all right soon as the bloody spring comes.’
He fumbled in pocket after pocket, searching for the key.
‘“Late again, Jones,” she’ll say, “late again.” And I won’t give a bugger about it,’ and he let go the railings and staggered up the path. He groped for the keyhole, found it, opened the door awkwardly and noisily and almost fell into the hall, and hung on to the still open door.
‘That you, Jones?’
With some difficulty he managed to close the door, suddenly found himself on his knees at the foot of the stairs.
‘Jones!’ It sounded like a tocsin, reverberating through room after room.
‘Yes’ he cried, and it was more scream than shout. ‘Jones is here.’
‘You’re late.’
He climbed half the stairs, then sat down, gave another belch, felt a draught on the stairs.
‘Sorr - - - ry.’
‘Are you coming up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then come.’
She heard him, slow, and clumsy on the remaining stairs. She heard a bump, a creak of the floorboards, a surprising thud. ‘Jones! You’re drunk.’
‘And so I bloody am,’ he stuttered, and he rattled the doorknob, finally got a purchase and turned it violently, and the door fell in and he with it.
‘You little swine, you said you wouldn’t,’ and Mrs Gandell leaned up on one elbow, glared at him, the words already forming acid on her tongue. ‘You promised.’
Jones, swaying on the threshold stammered back, ‘And so did you, you lying bitch,’ and hurled himself into the room, leaving the door wide, reached bed, bent over it, over her, and she turned her face away.
He gripped both ends of her pillow.
