She asked him what he’d brought down. She always asked that. He said ‘Lady’ briefly, using the jargon of the hauliers. Wondering again if she ever watched the Burrell, if she knew she was the Lady Margaret; and whether it would matter to her if she did. Then she brought him another drink and said it was on the house, told him she must go back to the bar now and that she’d see him again.
He watched her through the smoke, laughing with the men. She had an odd laugh, a kind of flat chortle that drew back the top lip and showed the teeth while the eyes watched and mocked. She was a good barmaid, was Margaret; her father was an old haulier, he’d run the house this twenty years. His wife had died a couple of seasons back, the other daughters had married and moved out but Margaret had stayed. She knew a soft touch when she saw one; leastways that was the talk among the hauliers. But that was crazy, running a pub wasn’t an easy life. The long hours seven days a week, the polishing and scrubbing, mending and sewing and cooking… though they did have a woman in the mornings for the rough work. Jesse knew that like he knew most other things about his Margaret. He knew her shoe size, and that her birthday was in May; he knew she was twenty-four inches round the waist and that she liked Chanel and had a dog called Joe. And he knew she’d sworn never to marry; she’d said running the Mermaid had taught her as much about men as she wanted to learn, five thousand down on the counter would buy her services but nothing else. She’d never met anybody that could raise the half of that, the ban was impossible. But maybe she hadn’t said it at all; the village air swam with gossip, and amongst themselves the hauliers yacked like washerwomen.
Jesse pushed his plate away. Abruptly he felt the rising of a black self-contempt. Margaret was the reason for nearly everything; she was why he’d detoured miles out of his way, pulled his train to Swanage for a couple of boxes of iced fish that wouldn’t repay the hauling back. Well, he’d wanted to see her and he’d seen her. She’d talked to him, sat by him; she wouldn’t come to him again. Now he could go. He remembered again the raw sides of a grave, the spattering of earth on Eli’s coffin. That was what waited for him, for all God’s so-called children; only he’d wait for his death alone. He wanted to drink now, wash out the image in a warm brown haze of alcohol. But not here, not here… He headed for the door.
He collided with the stranger, growled an apology, walked on. He felt his arm caught; he turned back, stared into liquid brown eyes set in a straight-nosed, rakishly handsome face. ‘No,’ said the newcomer. ‘No, I don’t believe it. By all tha’s unholy, Jesse Strange…’
For a moment the other’s jaunty fringe of a beard baffled him; then Jesse started to grin in spite of himself. ‘Colin,’ he said slowly. ‘Col de la Haye…’
Col brought his other arm round to grip Jesse’s biceps. ‘Well, hell,’ he said. ‘Jesse, you’re lookin’ well. This calls f’r a drink, ol’ boy. What you bin doin’ with yourself? Hell, you’re lookin’ well…’
They leaned in a corner of the bar, full pints in front of them. ‘God damn, Jesse, tha’s lousy luck. Los’ your ol’ man, eh? Tha’s rotten…’ He lifted his tankard. ‘To you, ol’ Jesse. Happier days…’
At college in Sherborne Jesse and Col had been fast friends. It had been the attraction of opposites; Jesse slow-talking, studious, and quiet, de la Haye the rake, the man-about-town. Col was the son of a West Country businessman, a feminist and rogue at large; his tutors had always sworn that like the Fielding character he’d been born to be hanged. After college Jesse had lost touch with him. He’d heard vaguely Col had given up the family business; importing and warehousing just hadn’t been fast enough for him. He’d apparently spent a time as a strolling jongleur, working on a book of ballads that had never got written, had six months on the boards in Londinium before being invalided home, the victim of a brawl in a brothel. A’d show you the scar,’ said Col, grinning hideously, ‘but it’s a bit bloody awkward in mixed comp’ny, ol’ boy…’ He’d later become, of all things, a haulier for a firm in Isca. That hadn’t lasted long; halfway through his first week he’d howled into Bristol with an eight horse Clayton and Shuttleworth, unreeled his hose and drained the corporation horse trough in town centre before the peelers ran him in. The Clayton hadn’t quite exploded but it had been a near go. He’d tried again, up in Aquae Sulis where he wasn’t so well known; that time he lasted six months before a broken gauge glass stripped most of the skin from his ankles. De la Haye had moved on, seeking as he put it ‘less lethal employment’. Jesse chuckled and shook his head. ‘So what be ’ee doin’ now?’
The insolent eyes laughed back at him. ‘A’ trade,’ said Col breezily. ‘A’ take what comes; a li’l there…. Times are hard, we must all live how we can. Drink up, ol’Jesse, the next one’s mine…’
They chewed over old times while Margaret served up pints and took the money, raising her eyebrows at Col. The night de la Haye, pot-valiant, had sworn to strip his professor’s cherished walnut tree… ‘A’ remember that like it was yes’day,’ said Col happily. ‘Lovely ol’ moon there was, bright as day…’ Jesse had held the ladder while Col climbed; but before he reached the branches the tree was shaken as if by a hurricane. ‘Nuts comin’ down like bloody hailstones,’ chortled Col. ‘Y’remember, Jesse, y’must remember… An’ there was that… that bloody ol’ rogue of a peeler Toby Warrilow sittin’ up there with his big ol’ boots stuck out, shakin’ the hell out of that bloody tree…’ For weeks after that, even de la Haye had been able to do nothing wrong in the eyes of the law; and a whole dormitory had gorged themselves on walnuts for nearly a month.
There’d been the business of the two nuns stolen from Sherborne Convent; they’d tried to pin that on de la Haye and hadn’t quite managed it, but it had been an open secret who was responsible. Girls in Holy Orders had been removed odd times before, but only Col would have taken two at once. And the affair of the Poet and Peasant. The landlord of that inn, thanks to some personal quirk, kept a large ape chained in the stables; Col, evicted after a singularly rowdy night, had managed to slit the creature’s collar. The Godforsaken animal caused troubles and panics for a month; men went armed, women stayed indoors. The thing had finally been shot by a militiaman who caught it in his room drinking a bowl of soup.
‘So what you goin’ to do now?’ asked de la Haye, swigging back his sixth or seventh beer. ‘Is your firm now, no?’
‘Aye.’ Jesse brooded, hands clasped, chin touching his knuckles. ‘Goin’ to run it, I guess…’
Col draped an arm round his shoulders. ‘You be OK,’ he said. ‘You be O K pal, why so sad? Hey, tell you what. You get a li’l girl now, you be all right then. Tha’s what you need, ol’ Jesse; a’ know the signs.’ He punched his friend in the ribs and roared with laughter. ‘Keep you warm nights better’n a stack of extra blankets. An’ stop you getting fat, no?’ Jesse looked faintly startled. ‘Dunno ‘bout that…’
‘Ah, hell,’ said de la Haye. ‘Tha’s the thing though. Ah, there’s nothin’ like it.