During a visit earlier in the week he’d read the small sign above the door and noted the licensee was a single woman. Jan Griffiths. He’d watched her from a shadowy corner, noticing the lack of wedding ring as she pulled the pints while keeping up an easy flow of conversation with her regulars. He’d liked her dyed blond hair, throaty laugh, and sparkling blue eyes.
Now he walked into the pub with an easy roll in his step, one hand in his pocket. Confident and at ease with his place in the world. He slid his thin frame onto a barstool, nodded at her with a wolfish half-smile, then watched as she registered the expression. He knew it never failed to pique the interest of her type.
“You look like the cat who’s got the cream,” she stated, a wary curiosity in her voice.
“Do I?” he said, taking the twenties from his pocket. “Just got some good news on a business deal I’m in town for. A bottle of your best champagne, please.” Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
She smiled, pleased to be filling the till so early in the evening. “I’ll need to get it from upstairs. How many glasses would you like?” she replied, eyes moving to the empty seats behind him.
“Well, I’m hoping you won’t make me drink it alone. So, two, please.”
She smiled again, turning on her heel and looking back at him over her shoulder. “Never can say no to a bit of bubbly,” she said archly, hips swinging slightly as she headed for the stairs.
Peeling the cellophane from his cigarettes, he looked around the cosy pub at the scattering of drinkers quietly sipping their pints. A warm glow spread across his chest. “Nice place,” he said to himself, thinking he could get used to it.
She reappeared a minute later, bottle of Moet standing upright in the ice bucket in her hands. “One bottle of bubbly.”
He watched as she took the foil off and then expertly prised the cork loose with a soft pop. A small gush of foam emerged and his eyes wandered to her generous cleavage.
“So what’s the business deal?”
He glanced up, realising she’d seen where his eyes had strayed. She didn’t seem bothered. “Oh, a new retail development in the town centre,” he replied. During his first recce round town he’d spotted a large commercial property for sale. “The one next to that big Barclays.”
“On Prince’s Street?” She sounded impressed. “That’s massive. Have you bought it?”
“I wish,” he said with a smile. “I’m just the middleman between the vendor and the buyers. Venture capitalists from the Middle East. Still, I get my commission as a result.”
She placed two glasses on the bar and he nodded at them. “Will you be mum?”
She poured them both a drink and handed a glass to him. “Well, here’s to your deal.”
“Thanks.”
They clinked glasses and he took a large sip, briefly savouring the sensation of bubbles popping against the roof of his mouth before swallowing it down. “Delicious,” he sighed, offering her a cigarette out of the new pack.
“So where are you from?” she asked, taking one and leaning against the bar.
He reached for the cheap disposable lighter in his pocket, but changed his mind. “Have you any matches?”
She flicked him a book and he lit their cigarettes. “Wherever business takes me,” he replied. “I’ll be in town for a while yet, tying up loose ends of this deal, sorting out planning permission for the shops.”
“It’s going to be a shopping centre, then?”
“That’s the intention. My clients want retail units put in, then they’ll offer out the space to the usual suspects. Boots, Topshop, WH Smith, and the like.”
He took another sip, aware of her eyes assessing him, and he realised she’d have heard countless tales of bullshit across the bar.
“So how long have you been in the pub game?” he asked casually.
“Donkey’s years.” She laughed. “It’s all I know.”
“You run a nice place here,” he said, glancing round.
She gave a small smile. “It’s not bad. Business-wise, I mean. The big pubs they’ve opened in the centre have taken away a few customers, but mainly the younger ones. I prefer a quieter crowd.”
He refilled their glasses. “Absolutely. Not enough places like this left.”
She moved away to serve another customer and he almost drained his glass, wondering how quickly she’d come back to him. To his satisfaction, it was almost straightaway.
The allure of strangers. Deciding not to push things too early, he finished his drink and patted the tops of his thighs. “Well, I’d better be off. My clients are taking me to dinner at seven o’clock.”
Her eyes went to the unfinished bottle. “What about your champagne?”
“If it would keep, I’d say put it behind the bar for tomorrow,” he replied, hinting at his return. “You have it. My treat.”
“Well… thanks,” she answered uncertainly, wrong-footed by his sudden departure.
“See you again,” he smiled, heading for the door.
He returned to the cemetery exactly a week after he first saw her. Earlier in the morning he’d picked up a drab suit in a charity shop, pairing it with his oldest shirt and tie. Finally he’d put on a pair of battered leather shoes, pleased with the look of someone down on his luck but determined to keep up appearances nonetheless.
She appeared at eleven o’clock, making her way straight to the grave, another large bouquet in her arms. He made a rip in the paper that wrapped his bunch of cheap chrysanthemums, watching as she plucked a couple of weeds from the bed of marble chippings in front of the headstone before exchanging fresh flowers for the wilted. After standing in sad contemplation for a good five minutes, she started to turn around.
He stood up, walking over a couple of graves to make the path that would intersect their routes. Two lost souls, drifting alone in the world. As he walked with head bowed, he tried to drag up any memories that might bring tears to his eyes. God knew he’d been witness to enough pain. But the anguished weeping of so many women had all been his doing, and the images of their distraught faces did nothing to stir his heart.
Now she was less than twenty feet from his side. He caught his foot in a nonexistent crack and stumbled forward, flowers cascading to the ground as the wrapping tore completely. Regaining his balance, he stooped forward as if to start picking them up. But then he placed his hands on his knees and let out an anguished sob. He heard her footsteps stop beside him and, knowing that it would clinch his act, the tears he’d been failing to summon suddenly appeared.
A hand was placed on his shoulder and he looked up at her face as it wavered and shifted through the liquid filling his eyes.
“There, there,” she murmured, pressing his head to her bosom.
Within four days he had packed his few possessions, moved out of the hostel, and was sleeping in her spare room. She’d lapped up his story of a childhood spent in care homes, adult years wasted in a directionless drift, not anchored by family to any area. Then his long search for his real mother-a search that had finally ended in the town’s cemetery, at a grave that had only been dug the year before.
She brought her blubbering under control by clucking and fussing around him. Bustling around in the kitchen, carrying through dinner on a tray as he sat dejected on her sofa, his eyes furtively searching the room while she’d cooked his food.
Every night she’d conclude her nursing routine by bringing him a mug of Ovaltine. Creamy, smooth, and comforting, it was a taste he quickly came to look forward to. “That’s because I make it with milk, the proper way,” she’d say and smile, her look of pleasure increasing with his every sip.