The Man At The End Of The Bar (god)
He’s of indeterminate age. He resides in every pub and bar in the land. An everyman with a pint glass. He doesn’t appear to have any friends… unless they’ve all used the excuse of going to the toilet. He’s a self-regarding oasis in an ocean of anomie. This man is an island… He’s most definitely not a peninsula. If he were the butterfly wings of chaos 
theory then heaven help what’s happening on the other side of the world. If there really is six degrees of separation to Kevin Bacon – then he’s number seven. If all famous rock bands have an unlucky early member who leaves prior to them making it big – then it wasn’t him. If he had a makeover no-one would notice – because no-one would remember what he originally looked like. His sole purpose in life is to make comment on conversations he isn’t involved in; to people he doesn’t know; while delivering his wisdom to an audience of none. He offers his opinions regardless. Without thought. Or fear. Or favour. Or reason. His only obvious social skill is setting a tumbleweed of indifference adrift among a desert of silent disbelieving looks. Who said that?!
The Man at the end of the bar…
“Do I think there’s something bigger than us? What sort of question is that?! Of course there is… You’re obviously not from round here… Oi! I say Dave – they’re obviously not from round here. Haven’t you seen Big Al? Once seen never forgotten. Why?! Because he’s big stupid! He lives down by the bypass – in that row of old back-to-backs the council want to pull down to build the new Tesco. He was made redundant a few years ago – then his wife left him for the foreman of a travelling insulation company. Apparently she really fell for his renewable energy. Big Al came home from work to find him filling more than just the household cavities.
“He’s a bouncer now at that club in town: Bar None. It’s got more flashing lights than a sales convention for the emergency services. Mind you – the drink prices are so steep you’d probably need to call 999 for oxygen. He used to be at Shotz on the high road but he said that was all rivers of vomit, hen nights and shameless young women showin’ their Cheryl Coles. Not that there’s anything wrong with shameless young women… just that at Bar None he gets a better class of punter to hit. Big Al’s old school: proper muscles – like granite. Not tattoos on a blancmange. I’ve seen him lift a kerbstone in each hand when he was workin’ on the roads. Me and him are carved from the same stone so to speak. Moulded in life’s furnace.
“Yeh… he’s like me. How? Well; quiet obviously and doesn’t see the need to flaunt his physique. As for the rest of these young lads with their protein-puff muscles – you can keep ‘em. Nuthin’ but trouble… I call ‘em the W(a)hey boys… one stiff breeze would blow them over – the milk sops. There’s a lot to be said for hard natural muscle…
“What?! You mean? Oh right – you were talkin’ about the Big Man upstairs. Huh; why didn’t you say? God eh? Him. The omnippertent one. Me? How do I see him? Oh… I guess I see him as a sort of universal landlord – The Big Spirit – only bottle-matured for thousands of years. He’s not on draft either – you’ve got to sort of seek him out like a good pub. And when your time comes and he calls last orders either you’ve been a good mixer or otherwise you might get barred.
“Am I a believer? Close to God? Nah… no…. maybe…. sometimes… once… When? Well… it’s hard to say really: no I don’t mean that I’m so pissed I can’t say it! It’s a difficult memory to recall that’s all. I put it in another place. Like I always drink beer here but I’ve been known to go for a whisky now and then at The Highwayman on Bridge Road. Now that I think about it… Sorry – something in my eye… No; that’s alright – I’m okay but you know how it is… Look if you shut up I’ll tell ya…
“Ten years ago now it was… But I can still remember the day… the day Mum passed – like it was yesterday. It was 2003: it had been a good summer for a change. I’d got sunburnt in the pub garden. Mum hadn’t been right for a while. When she coughed it shook her body like a rabbit in a dog’s mouth. There was blood in her… in her… in her – you know. The doctors were optimistic at first. Mum had her faith. And me. As the nights crept in during the autumn so did the disease. The doctors changed their minds. The days were dark and wet and short – and so was the time they gave her.
“She was in the back bedroom that day when He came to call – all wrapped up against the chill by the quilt she had made. You could see all the colours even though it was semi-dark and stormy out. Bright they were: so bright – like proper psychedelic; though Mum would have hated the drug reference. It was the fag end of a really dismal day. The weather girl on TV had promised a sunnier outlook – but then so had the doctor. He was there checking her over, talking – in that matter-of-fact way that comes to those who’ve seen it all – to a Macmillan nurse who gave me a sort of resigned but supportive smile.
“She hadn’t eaten properly since the weekend. Just picked at her food. I remember the rain… it plink-plonked on the windowsill from the broken gutter that I hadn’t got round too. I always did the odd jobs at Mum’s – she called me her rock. She was so small it was as if she wasn’t in the bed at all… it was like the quilt had just been tossed aside unmade that morning.
“There was a picture of my Gran on the dresser. It was taken on cousin Jim’s prize Pentax just before she died of cancer aged 94. My Uncle Peter’s third marriage it was. Mum said it was a triumph of hope over judgement but she had a good time dancing at the reception to one of her favourites – Dusty Springfield… ‘You don’t have to say you love me just be close at hand’ – kind of sums me and Mum up. I danced too… only because I was pissed. It wasn’t just the half light on the picture frame… Gran and Mum looked like twin sisters then. Mum was only 62. I knew it was the end. The doctor shook my hand but couldn’t look me in the face. His grip was really strong – like big Al – but he had soft hands like a girl. He went downstairs with the nurse – I knew he had reached the bottom as the last step always creaked from a loose board: that reminded me – it was another job I’d promised to do for Mum. I heard him leave – the nurse flushed something down the loo then I heard the kettle in the kitchen.
“In between fits of coughing and being on the edge of sleep – Mum twisted and mumbled names that were indistinct and talked of memories that I had long forgotten. Once she fixed me in the way she did when I was young and had a chore to do but hadn’t done it quick enough for her: she showed her displeasure and disappointment at the same time. She knew… I made her lips wet from the glass on the bedside table – it had been standing too long and had those little air bubbles that cluster like bad news. Her mouth left a greasy print on the rim. She struggled for breath but asked me to put on her favourite record. There hadn’t been music in the house for months… all she had was an old Dansette record player from her youth; disc stacker, record arm; stylus and all. She was just as thin in her heyday but it was a different thin – healthy… not pallid and sweaty; she was like a wax dummy in a heatwave…
“If only I’d known I could have brought my CD player and put on The Matt Monro Collection that I got in the pound shop that I had given her at Chritmas… but I found the Dansette easily in my old room. I dusted it quickly on the landing and I plugged it in behind the door once I had moved her dressing gown. Just then – when I put the gown back on the hook behind the door – Evening in Paris filled the air the way it had when I was a kid. I smiled and… but Mum nearly choked and I was yanked back into that stale air that reeked of decay and departure. The record was also in my old room – the sleeve was worn nearly beyond recognition. There was a crackle and a strange electronic squawk as I struggled to put it on the player.
“Then all of a sudden the atmosphere changed completely… Mum’s absolute favourite that I knew word for word – A Portrait Of My Love – infiltrated all the dark recesses accompanied by the gentle percussion of the rain and her old alarm clock which lurched on marking time toward the end. It was one of those travel pieces that fold up when it wants to but won’t open when you need it. It’s vinyl cover was as green as Mum was grey and blue. I hated Matt Monro but in that charmed; blessed; pre… sorry… sorry… pre… precious, wonderful moment as she smiled as fat a smile as she was gaunt and thin I could see her and Dad slow dancing in front of the fireplace in the living room of our old house.
“Dad was a bastard: he disappeared when I was ten… He took something from Mum the day he left that she never put back. He was a waster with everything but his love. Then it happened… The rain stopped – a thin shaft of light entered through the window. Hurray for the weather girl! She was my favourite; always had a very nice line in pencil skirts that helped even the worst forecast. She used to put on bright red lipstick and talk the Queen’s English with a buttoned-up manner – I often imagined her as a sort of wanton-woman after hours – like Lois Lane… Ahem…
“The very last point of autumn sun – before it sunk late-afternoon over the back of the park’s conifer trees – illuminated Mum’s poor face and stripped back the years… the rain plink-plonking and the driven clock were silenced and at that moment it was as if a choir of angels droning one celestial note had joined Matt Monro’s final tribute. I swear it seemed as if a celestial choir was singing Mum home… Her cold bony hand was in mine as I sat leaning across the bed. She told me she loved me as I stood up and kissed her for a final time. She told me that I was to take care… then… then a horrible groan come cough, come sigh gurgled from deep in her chest: her eyes were frightened momentarily but then shone brightly with relief and forgiveness and hope and happiness and love and it was like a child on Christmas morning with the biggest present under the tree.
“I struggled with what I saw – the light warmer now and brighter than any autumn sun had a right to be pointed like a ribbon to the ceiling; to the stars; infinity, oblivion… and beyond. She looked so happy – so young – so bright as if everything had lifted from her… Fucking hell I cried! Shaking and desperate as she had seen me many times when I was young over something unimportant – but her grip was now strong and reassuring as somehow out of that horrible gurgle she spoke for the final time: it sounded like ‘Is it really you? Please wait for me’ to someone; something above her head. Her eyes were fixed joyously to just beyond the tassels on the fraying shade that was hanging from the rose of the room’s main light.
“Then she was gone… lifeless; blank eyes… her back arched on her final breath and she stayed there supported by my arms until I let her slide back. Careful precious cargo. I got up and cried again like I had never cried before. The sobbing of the eternal. I brushed her eyelids shut; kissed her again and wrapped her in the quilt she had made as the stylus arm jerked – trying to escape from the never-ending final groove of the record on the turntable……………………………….
“Me?! Pray?! No… Angel choirs? Next door’s bloody cat more like – arguing with a stray ginger tom under the bedroom window! Heavenly light?! Do me a favour – it was the sun reflecting on the old gal’s picture. God calling her home? Perrlease – Matt Monro stuck on repeat… what a nightmare – bloody old Dansette… Oh… and the ceiling needed a coat of paint. And she’d nagged me for two years to get off my arse and do it. What is wrong with you people?! You’ll ‘ave me silent meditatin’ while stroking her hair and musin’ on the nature of my beliefs next!
the white words 
Leave a comment