I had never actually tried to seek him out before, he had always found me, and if I’m honest, I had no real idea of where to start.  I wandered the streets for days, sat on buses, drank in pubs.  I retrieved his petrol can from the back of the shed, but it held no clues: it was rusty and the last few drops of the petrol it had once housed had long-since absorbed into the softly rotting floor.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had even seen a metal petrol can.  ‘Only him,’ I thought.  There would be a reason for it of course, some kind of message about strength and fragility.  I would ask him – if ever I found him.

More than a year had passed since the last time we spoke and much had changed – and yet it was the same.  I had made contact with my soon-to-be ex-wife and we had spoken, almost exclusively without rancour.  Well, she at least, had spoken without rancour: I had been my usual petulant self, but against all odds we had managed to remain in one another’s company for more than an hour without once resorting to violence and name-calling.  It had not physically changed anything: she was still well on the way towards becoming my very ‘ex’, but the absence of desire to kill after our encounter was exactly the kind of progress I thought that I should report. 

Also, I now had friends – even if I wouldn’t want to be seen out with them in daylight.  We went out together, or more precisely, we met up at the same place every Friday night in the bar of The Harrows for a few pints, a volcanically microwaved prehistoric meat pie and a quiz.  We never won, but we always got through the evening without major ructions and, as loathe as I was to admit it, I looked forward to the occasion, even if the quiz master did insist on calling us ‘the sad bleeders in the corner’, when our actual name “Archimedes’ Crew”, was quite clearly written at the top of our answer sheet.  More progress to report.  My life had become, if not exactly good, then at least bearable at times.  Never-the-less I knew that there were still pieces of the jigsaw missing and, instinctively, I felt that he had them.

So it became my habit whenever I had the opportunity to sit for a while, empty my brain (a frighteningly simple exercise) and then just see where my legs might take me.  I did things.  I did theatres, museums, football matches, bus trips, weekends away – all alone, all in the hope of being found, and as each day, week and month ticked away I became increasingly convinced that my final meeting with Lorelei was already in the past.  The little diversions became a way of life – just something I did – but as they became more and more habitual, the feeling of emptiness and disaffection began, once more, to chip away at my soul…

…The rain, although not heavy, was as persistent as a text-message reminder from the dentist and more than a match for my cheap, Ebay kagoule.  I couldn’t tell you why I had chosen Newark to visit: it was easy to get to on the train and it had a castle and a river, but as the icy cold precipitation soaked through every one of my manifold, yet inadequate, layers of clothing forming a puddle in my crotch that, despite its location, still succeeded in being a good ten degrees colder than the surrounding temperature, I couldn’t think of anywhere else that I less wanted to be.  I picked my way across the market place, along the glistening cobbles, sensing the slick, unsteady surface through the wafer-thin soles of my saturated Converse, towards the dim yellow light that beckoned me from the windows of the pub in the corner, when I became aware of a small crowd gathered around a figure on the floor.  Instinctively I pushed my way in, feeling the burning imperative of the recently acquired St John’s First Aid badge in my pocket and found myself looking down on a familiar, bearded face.  He looked up and beamed a greeting smile.  “I knew it would be you,” he said.  “Thank you everybody.  I know this man.  He has training.  He’ll help me across to a seat in the café there.  I’m sure I’ll be fine after a few minutes in a chair.  I’m so very grateful for your help.  Thank you.”  And all I could do was wonder why on earth he wanted to recover in the café instead of the pub. I helped him to his feet.  “How?” I asked.
“I just slipped on the cobbles.”
“I mean,” I said, “how did you know it would be me?”
“Well I don’t know anybody else here,” he said.
“But how did you know that I’d be here?”
“I didn’t…  Did I?”  He looked confused.  Painfully aware that the pub was just next door, I led him into the café and sat him at a vacant table.  The waitress was with us almost at once.  She was all concern and fret.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.  My companion assured her that he was.  “Okay,” she said, finally content, “As long as you’re sure.  I’ll get your tea.  What would you like love?”
“Coffee please.”  The waitress bustled away.  “Do you come in here often?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.”
“So how did she know you wanted tea?”
“I always have tea.  Now,” he said, “why did you want me?”
“I didn’t!  Well, I did, but…”
He was looking around the room, breathing in his surroundings, reading the walls like he was in a museum.  “It’s so important to be open to the new, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I cast my own narrowed eyes around the twee yellow chintz palace, “but ‘the new’ can be pretty boring as well, can’t it?”
“I suppose so.  I always think about see-saws.  You want excitement on one end, then you’ve got to put excited on the other.  If you want to sit at the bottom end just staring up at nothing happening, then it’s best just to stare.  If you’ve got nothing to contribute then you can bounce as hard as you like, you’re always going to end up on the ground with the business end wedged under your chin.”
“So you’re telling me that I can only get out of life what I can put into it, right?”
“Am I?  Oh…”
The drinks arrived at the table and, having poured Lorelei’s tea – milk first, one sugar – the waitress fussed away to her romantic novel behind the till.
I sipped at my coffee, which smelled great but tasted like it was a virtual stranger to the coffee bean.  “I don’t think I always try very hard.”
“I don’t think you have to try too hard,” he said.  “Just try.”
We drank in silence.  Somewhere unseen a cuckoo clock marked the hour and, instinctively, the waitress, Lorelei and I all looked at our watches.
“Well, I suppose I’d better get going,” said my companion, rising slowly to his feet.  I noticed, for the first time the bruise on his head.
“Are you sure you’re ok?”
“I think so,” he said.  “But it wouldn’t hurt to check on me now and again, would it?”
“How?”
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s easy enough.  You can let me have my petrol can back some time.”
“It’s rusted.”
“I know…”

First published 08.04.22 under the title “A Little Fiction – Conversations with the Bearded Man (part 6)

Yet another day when my spirits had descended to previously unplumbed depths: I was a compromised bathysphere, slowly sinking into the abyss whilst building up the kind of internal pressure that could foretell of nothing other than impeding disaster and a date with the fishes.  My mood was black – I would say blacker than black, because ordinary black had become my normal default mood, but my mum always told me that there were no shades of either black or white, so whilst no saintly youth club leader could ever be whiter than white, I could not be blacker than black, just black, very black indeed – and my spirits were lower than the Trustpilot rating of the average Italian politician.  I could not have been more down without being out.  Except Christmas Day lay just around the corner: the knockout blow; the nightmare scenario for a man whose very best efforts at false bonhomie fell somewhat short of the minimum expected, a man abandoned by the Grinch because of his over-zealous views, a man whose ho-ho-ho had somehow become a strident no-no-no.  I am tempted to say that I have always felt the same way about Christmas, but it would involve me in the kind of lying that would redden my cheeks and make my nose itch.  This seasonal melancholy was relatively new to me, although I had been engendering it in others for years apparently.

Christmas is no time to be alone.  I have no family, whilst the few friends I have, do have family, with whom they chose – treacherous scum – to spend the festive period, so, as usual, Christmas Eve found me alone in the pub observing life through the bottom of a beer glass.  I had almost reached the decision to go home early – a plan that was only forestalled by the fact that the kebab shop hadn’t opened yet – when a hand reached out to take my glass.  I was about to protest that I hadn’t finished, despite the fact that I patently had, when I noticed the cufflinks and the crisp white cuffs.  The landlord was a grand chap, don’t get me wrong, salt of the earth and all that, but not really a cufflink wearer.  The kind of people he employed as bar staff were much more likely to have them through ears, nose or nipples than shirt cuffs.  Given the state of the table tops, nobody in their right mind would wear a white shirt in there.  To be honest, a full forensic overall would be less out of place and definitely more suitable.

“Same again?” said the voice that I knew I was going to recognise even before its owner had spoken.
“How do you do that?” I asked, simultaneously nodding an affirmative.  The man that I now knew as Lorelei simply smiled and walked to the bar.  The landlord left his conversation and served him without a hint of rancour.  If I had wanted serving in mid-Brexit rant, I would have been told to hold my horses in no uncertain terms.  For Lorelei he was all genial host.  But for the fact that he was as bald as a coot, his forelock would have been on the receiving end of a severe tugging.  I could not hear the conversation, but whatever my bearded friend had to say, the coot found it exceedingly amusing.  He made no attempt to short change him.

I thanked him for my drink and took a long draught from the glass.  “I’m surprised that you drink beer,” I said.
“I don’t,” he answered, “but the landlord was so happy to serve me, I didn’t have the heart to ask for a dry sherry.”  He took a long drink without flinching.  “A bit more hoppy than I was expecting,” he said, after pause for reflection, “but quite adequate, all in all, I expect.”
“So,” I ventured, trying to sound as cool as I could.  “What brings you here on Christmas Eve?  Not exactly your local, is it?”
“Isn’t it?”  He looked shocked and I realised – with a flicker of the surprise I had grown used to in his presence – that I had no idea at all of where he lived.
“Well I’ve never seen you in here before.”
“No,” he said.  “Is this your local?”
I was painfully aware that he already knew the answer, but I gave it all the same: “It used to be” a mite more sulkily than I intended.  “When I was… you know…”
He nodded.  “More local?”
“We used to come in here a lot, when we were… you know…  Before she left me for that…” I wanted to swear, but I felt quite certain that I would feel as though I had let myself down by doing so.  Odd, I can normally barely stitch two sentences together without writing out an IOU for the swear box.  “…Estate Agent,” I concluded, feeling it a more than adequate signal of my distaste.
“Ah,” he said.  “Should I have bought peanuts?”
“What?”
“I was just wondering, I’m quite new to this, Christmas Eve and everything: should I have got snacks with the drinks?”
“No,” I said.  “No.  This is fine.  I’ll get some when I go to the bar.  You will have another?”
“As long as it doesn’t have to be the same,” he said.

We sat for some time in companionable silence.  I studied his face as closely as I was able to without seeming… weird.  He seemed genuinely happy to be there, smiling, out of place in my mind, but not in his.  He did not touch his beer.  After what seemed to me to be a suitable pause, I asked him if he would like another drink.  He asked for a whisky.  “He keeps a nice malt under the counter,” he said.  “His little weakness, I think.  I’m sure he’d be pleased to share.”
I approached the landlord with caution, it always seemed wise, and explained what my friend had suggested.  “A gent,” he said pouring an unmeasured tot into a tumbler.  “Tell him it’s on the house.  Here…” he said, handing me a freshly filled water jug.  “He’ll want this.”  Unsurprisingly, my pint was not on the house.

Lorelei seemed much more at home cradling his whisky than he had appeared to be with beer, although he did not appear to be convinced by the pork scratchings.  “Well,” he said at length, “it’s so nice to be in company, isn’t it?”  I had to admit that, even though the conversation between us was sparse at best, I was happy and comfortable in his company.
“Sometimes,” he said, “you’ve got to let old things go before you can find new things.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “it’s easier said than done.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “but it’s a whole lot easier to not even make the effort.  Why don’t you like Christmas?”
“Well I… I… Why do you say I don’t like Christmas?”
“Do you?”
“No.”
He smiled.
“But,” I continued.  “I used to.”
He swirled his whisky in his glass, peering down into it as though he was looking into a crystal ball.
I felt obliged to fill the conversational void.  “It’s not the same, is it,” I whined, “when you’re on your own.”
“The same?” he sipped his drink with exaggerated pleasure.  “The same?  No, I suppose not.  Nothing is ever the same, but you can find pleasure if you choose to look for it.  Perhaps you ought to start looking.”
“Where?”
“Where?  Everywhere.  Maybe not through the bottom of that glass – it’s not been cleaned properly in years and the beer… oh dear, the beer – but if you look for joy, you’ll find it.  If you’re content with what you find, then friendship will find you.”  He drained his glass and began to rise from his chair.  I looked at the clock on the bar; 11:30.  Where had that time gone?  What is it they say about time?
Lorelei had waved his goodbyes to the landlord, who looked like a dog who had just been given a Bonio, and had moved towards the door.  “Do something tomorrow,” he said.  “Don’t wallow.  Paddle.”  He opened the door and a cold rush of late evening air spilled in.  I tried to stand, drain my glass and put my coat on, all at the same time.  Two things too many as it turned out.
“Do you fancy a kebab?” I asked as he disappeared into the night.
“No,” he answered…

First published 12.12.20 under the title “A Little Fiction – Conversations with a Bearded Man (part 5) – A Pre-Christmas Exchange”.