‘Good evening, Jan!’ She is wearing a scarf and a woolly hat. Her cheeks are glowing red. ‘I had to dig out my winter hat! It gets really cold once the sun has gone down.’
She has a small rucksack with her, and in the staffroom she takes out her knitting and a book entitled Develop Your Creativity. She smiles at Jan. ‘OK, I’ll take over now. You can go home and get some sleep.’
When she pulls a black-velvet eye mask out of the rucksack, Jan asks, ‘Are you going to sleep here?’
‘Oh yes,’ Marie-Louise says quickly. ‘Of course you can sleep when you’re on the night shift; that’s fine... but you’re not allowed to wear earplugs. You have to be able to wake up if anything happens.’
Jan is silent, wondering what could possibly happen, but she goes on: ‘Sometimes the children wake up and need a bit of reassurance, if they’ve had a bad dream, for example. Never anything more serious — and even that doesn’t happen very often.’
‘OK... So how long do they usually sleep?’
‘Some of them can be real sleepy-heads, but I usually get up at half past six when I’m on the night shift, and I wake them half an hour later. They have their breakfast, and the shift is over.’
Jan leaves Marie-Louise and the sleeping children. He goes out into the street and glances to the right. St Patricia’s is just over there, like a big dark aircraft hangar behind the wall.
All of a sudden he stops; someone is standing waiting ahead of him in the street, a tall, dark figure — a man in a black coat, motionless under one of the oak trees lining the pavement. The light from the street lamps barely reaches him, and Jan can see only an indistinct, pale face.
They stare at one another. Then the man moves at last, waving some kind of thin rope he is holding in his hand.
Jan realizes it is a dog lead, and almost immediately the dog itself comes trotting out from behind the oak tree. A white poodle. The man bends down, takes out a little plastic bag and carefully scoops up whatever the poodle has left on the ground. Then they continue with their walk.
Jan slowly breathes out. Get a grip, he thinks as he sets off. There are no lunatics out here on the streets, just dog owners.
The buses into the town centre don’t run at this late hour, but the night air is fresh and he enjoys the walk. It’s only fifteen minutes to his apartment block; when he gets there, most of the windows are in darkness.
My home, he thinks, but of course it doesn’t really feel like home. That will take a long time.
Then he notices someone smoking a pipe on the balcony two floors below his own. It’s the white-haired man from the laundry room, the one who was (possibly) carrying a scruffy laundry bag from St Psycho’s. The man sucks on his pipe and blows big white clouds into the darkness; he seems lost in thought.
Jan stops and raises his hand. ‘Evening.’
The man nods and coughs out another cloud of smoke. ‘Evening.’
Jan heads inside; he pauses on the second floor and sees that the sign on the right-hand door says V. LEGÉN.
Aha. So at least he knows the name of the pipe-smoker now, and which apartment he lives in.
He carries on up the stairs to the darkness of his own apartment, but he doesn’t stay in. He quickly drops off his rucksack containing the picture books, changes his jacket and goes out again.
He’s just going down to Bill’s Bar for a little while. Perhaps he’ll try to become a regular there — that’s something Jan has never been before, not anywhere.
14
‘Cheers!’ Shouts Lilian, raising her glass.
‘Cheers,’ Jan says quietly.
‘Cheers,’ says Hanna, even more quietly.
Lilian drinks the most, knocking back half the contents of her glass. ‘Do you like Bill’s Bar, Jan?’ she asks.
‘I do, yes.’
‘What do you like about it?’
‘Er... the music.’
They are talking loudly, almost the way they do to the children at the pre-school, in order to be heard above the house band. The Bohemos are made up of four youngish men in scruffy leather jackets, standing on a small raised stage. The singer’s hair is pulled back in a blond ponytail, and he delivers rock songs in a hoarse baritone. The stage is cramped, but the band manage a few simple dance steps with their guitars from time to time without bumping into one another. Even though the people in the bar chat away through most of the music, they are still generous enough to give the Bohemos a brief round of applause when each number comes to an end.
Jan prefers Rami’s whispering songs about loneliness and longing, but he still claps politely.
He raises his glass. The beer he is drinking tonight is stronger, and the alcohol has gone straight to his head like a rocket. His mind is floating free.
Right now it would be brilliant to be a regular here, but Jan doesn’t have much of a talent for finding friends in pubs. He realized this earlier in the evening when he pushed his way to the bar without making eye contact with a single person. He finds it difficult to relax in the company of adults; it’s much easier with children.
At least he got a friendly nod from the bartender when he went up for his second beer, and now his colleagues from work have joined him at his table. They just turned up and sat down: Hanna with her blue eyes, Lilian with her red hair.
Lilian empties her third glass and leans across the table. ‘Did you come here on your own, Jan?’
He thinks about quoting Rami — I am a lost soul in a desert of ice — but instead he merely smiles. Mysteriously, he hopes.
‘Oops, empty again.’ Lilian gestures in the direction of the bar. ‘Keep my seat, I’m just going for another.’
Jan and Hanna’s glasses are still half full, but when Lilian comes back she has bought them another drink too. ‘The next round’s on you!’
Jan doesn’t want to drink another drop, but he accepts the glass anyway. They carry on chatting, first of all about the Bohemos; according to Lilian they are definitely the best band in town, even if hardly anyone outside Bill’s Bar has heard of them.
‘They only play at Bill’s as a hobby,’ she says. ‘They’ve got other jobs.’
‘They work up at St Patricia’s,’ says Hanna. ‘Well, a couple of them do.’
Lilian glances at her sharply, as if she has said too much.
‘Do they?’ Jan looks over at the band with renewed interest. ‘At St Patricia’s?’
‘We don’t know them,’ Lilian says.
Jan is feeling good now; he buys the next round. And then Hanna buys three more bottles. The beer is flowing! That’s OK by Jan. After all, he can have a lie-in tomorrow, before his night shift at the Dell.
But Lilian is drinking more than Jan and Hanna put together, and her head is sagging lower and lower. Suddenly she straightens up. ‘Jan... lovely Jan,’ she says, blinking tiredly. ‘Ask me if I believe in love.’
‘Sorry?’
Lilian shakes her head slowly. ‘I don’t believe in love.’ She holds up three fingers. ‘These are the three men I’ve had in my life... The first one took two years from me, the second took four, and I married the third one. And that ended last year. So now I’ve only got my brother. Just one brother. I used to have two, but now I’ve only got one...’
Hanna leans over. ‘Shall we go home, Lilian?’
Lilian doesn’t answer; she empties her glass, puts it down and sighs. ‘OK... Let’s go home,’ she says.
Jan sees that Bill’s Bar is closing up. The music has stopped, the Bohemos have left the stage, tables are emptying around them.
‘Fine,’ he says, nodding. ‘Let’s go.’
He keeps on nodding; he realizes he’s actually drunk for the very first time, and his feet seem to have a mind of their own when he stands up. ‘I am a lost soul in a desert of ice,’ he says, but neither Hanna nor Lilian seems to hear.