The Extremes

They took it along to the hospital and there was a presentation while a photographer from the Courier took some pictures. Nick had been stricken by the sight of Shelly; she was just a kid, swathed in dressings, kept alive by drips and tubes, monitored constantly by electronics. He could hardly even see her face, and none of them knew If she was conscious or understood who they were and what they were doing. They left the CD player in its box, put down their cards and flowers, and they went away.

'What's your interest in all this?' he said to Teresa.

'Intense. How about yours?'

The swiftness of her response, and its fierceness, took him by surprise again. She was staring at him steadily, her eyes

just a couple of feet away from his, an unsettling gaze. In the mix of different lights in the bar he could not tell the colour of her eyes, except that they were pale. He had never thought about them before. Now they momentarily eclipsed everything else in the room.

She picked up her glass and drank from it. He heard the cubes clinking as they shifted position in the long tube of the glass. The sound made him remember a bar in St Louis he'd been in while he was on holiday in the US a few years before. lt was hot weather, deep summer. All around him, in the airconditioned chill, Americans were clinking ice cubes in tall glasses. So much ice, every day and everywhere in that vast country, all that fossil energy being used up to freeze water to make drinks seem more cooling and refreshing. In the three days Teresa had been staying at the White Dragon they had got through twice as much ice as normal. Every day they put two extra icemoulds in the freezer in case the American guest wanted ice. And here she was, clinking it around in her highball.

'Well?' she said, putting down the glass. After just a couple of drinks she had acquired that directness, almost aggression, that some people take on when drinking. 'What's your own interest in it?'

'Intense too, 1 suppose. 1 haven't really thought about it like that.'

'Getting over it?'

'Starting to, I think.'

'Look, if people ask what I'm doing here, tell them I'm a kind of historian.'

'Is that what you really are?'

'Kind of,' she said, but she looked introspective for a moment, turning away from him to glance at the men from Bexhill as they laughed loudly at some joke. 'I keep forgetting what you people went through. Did you ever

hear of a place called Kingwood City, Texas?'

'No, 1 didn't, haven't.'

'I hadn't heard of Bulverton. 1 guess that's a kind of connection between us, if nothing else.'

'What happened in Kingwood, was that similar to this?'

'Kingwood City. The same.'

'A shooting? And you lost someone?'

'My husband. Andy. His name was Andy Simons, and he worked for the federal government, and he was shot in Kingwood City, Texas. That's why I'm here, in Bulverton, East Sussex, because some goddamned bastard killed the man 1 loved.'

She lowered her face, but her arm was stretched across the bar towards him, holding the glass. lt was empty, apart from the barely melted ice cubes. She said nothing, but the drinker's body-language said it all; he poured her another double whiskey.

'Thanks,' she said.

She looked up at him again, but now her gaze was not so steady. Her eyes had the glazed look familiar to everyone who has ever worked behind a bar and waited for the release of closing time. She was getting drunk more quickly than Nick had expected. While she used the soda syphon with concentrated accuracy, he quietly added the price of the new drink to her slate beneath the counter.

'Do you want to talk about what happened?' he said. He was the sympathetic barman, member of the caring profession for the drunk and the disconsolate.

'No more than you did.'

The ofage kids rose from their table with much scraping of chairs, and headed in an unruly bunch for the door. They left their table littered with empty glasses and snack bags. An insistent column of smoke was rising from the ashtray. Nick went round, cleared up the table, then doused the

smouldering paper and cigarette ends in the ashtray and started to wash everything in the sink underneath the bar. As he did so the door behind him opened and Amy appeared.

'Want me to take over for a while?' she said, with what he took to be a suspicious glance in the direction of Teresa Simons.

'No, lt's OK. I'll be closing soon.' He straightened, and turned to face her. She beckoned him down to the far end of the bar.

'Is Mrs Simons all night?' Amy said, over the music that was still coming from the jukebox, something else the kids had left behind.

'She's drinking a lot of bourbon, but she doesn't have a long way to go home.'

'Are you going to carry her upstairs after she's passed out?'

'Come off it, Amy!' He gestured in irritation. 'I thought you had gone to bed.'

'I wasn't tired. 1 could hear you talking down here.'

'Look, I'm just the barkeep people tell their troubles to.'

'She has troubles, has she?'

'Don't we all?'

'She never seems to use the bar when I'm working in it.'

'Maybe she feels she can open up to men.'

'So what's she been opening up to you about?'

'Let's do this later, Amy. OK?'

'She can't hear us.'

'Even so. You're being a bit bloody obvious.'

'I don't get any choice.'

Her voice was rising, so Nick pushed past her and went out from behind the bar. He flicked the hidden switch at the back of the jukebox, ensuring the music would fall silent after the current record.

'If you're closing, the barrel for the draught Guinness needs changing,' Amy said.

'I'll do the cellar work in the morning.'

'I thought you always said Guinness was best left to sit overnight.'

'I'll do it in the morning, Amy.'

She shrugged, pushed past him and went through the door into the main part of the hotel.

He dreaded what would be said, what might happen, when he eventually went upstairs to bed. He was still learning Amy, after all these years.

Teresa Simons had finished her drink again, but now she was sitting erect on her stool, her hands resting lightly on the counter.

'Did I hear you say you're about to close?' she said.

'Not to you. You're a resident. You can drink all night if you want.'

, No thanks, Mr Surtees. That's not my style.'

'Nick,' he said.

'Yeah, we agreed on that. Not my style, Nick. Hell, 1 don't even like bourbon much. That was Andy's drink, you know? 1 only started to drink it because of him, never had the guts to say I didn't much care for it. Before that 1 used to drink beer. You know all about American beer, right? Doesn't taste good, so you chill it right down so you can't taste anything at all. That's why people like Andy drink bourbon. Even he didn't drink too much of it. Said he had to keep a clear head, or he'd lose his badge.'

'His badge? Was he a cop?' Nick said.

'Sort of.'

'Sort of a cop like you're sort of a historian?'

She was standing now, and looked remarkably steady on her feet for someone who had drunk so much bourbon in so short a time

'Hell, 1 guess it doesn't matter any more. Andy was a special agent, with the Bureau.'

'The FBI?'

'You got it.'

'And he was killed on duty?'

'You got it again. In Kingwood City, Texas. Little place no one ever heard of, even people in the USA. Even people in Texas, maybe. just like Bulverton. In fact exactly like Bulverton, except it couldn't have been more ditTerent. You ever hear the name Aronwitz, john Luther Aronwitz?'