—Gentlemen, said George when he put the pints down in front of us.
—Thanking you, George, said Joe.
It was his turn to call a grown man George.
—They look the business, he said.
George chuckled and accepted the money. He brought back the change – ‘Now, sir’ – and left it beside my pint.
—Thanks, George.
We were pissed, of course. Rat-arsed. I knew that when I stood up and went downstairs to the Gents. I was counting the steps down. I heard myself and stopped. But even that, the trip to the jacks, was different. My feet on the wood gave back the self-assured taps of a man who knew where he was going. I even looked back to see who was coming down behind me. There was no one; it was me who owned the self-assurance.
I came back up from the toilet and the place was emptying. The shoppers were heading home, and so was the man with the Private Eye and ponytail. For a minute – a minute – it was just us and George. It was thrilling.
—It’s quiet now, said Joe.
—Yes, said George.
He was gathering the empty and half empty glasses and bottles from the three tables behind us. He put them on the counter.
—The calm before the storm, he said.
He was still smiling. He loved the storm, he loved the calm.
I looked around. It was a black and white world. White walls, black window frames, black counter, the white shirt on George.
—The jacks, I said quietly.
—Wha’? said Joe.
—You should see it.
—I will.
—It’s clean, I said.
—Fuck off.
—It’s well lit, I said. —There’s a fuckin’ bulb.
—My God.
—I’m tellin’ yeh now, I said. —You’d eat your fuckin’ dinner off the floor.
The room was warm and the cold that rushed in when the door opened was dramatic and welcome. But the intruder wasn’t. We’d had George to ourselves and now we didn’t. It was a small young man who’d come in – he wasn’t a man at all; he was just a boy, a Dickensian kind of kid – and he took off his anorak while the door was still swinging shut. He was wearing a white shirt. He was staff, the apprentice.
—William, said George.
—George, said William.
—Did you have your dinner? George asked him.
—Liver, said William.
George clapped his hands and rubbed them.
—Lovely, he said. —With onions.
—I don’t like onions, said William.
He’d disappeared behind a door and he came back out without the anorak. He looked at us and nodded. I didn’t like it. He was seventeen, maybe eighteen, and he was nodding at his peers, two lads from across the river. He didn’t see what he should have been seeing. George would look at us now and see kids.
—Did your mother put the onions on your plate? George asked William.
—She did, yeah, said William.
—Then I hope you ate them, said George, and he winked at us.
And that was it. We were still adults. William absorbed the lesson and George put the last of the glasses and bottles onto the counter. Then he went back behind the bar and started to wash them. George washed, William dried. He dropped the bottles that George rinsed into a crate and carried the crate away, downstairs. I expected George to look at us again, and smile. But he didn’t. I was yearning – dying – to say something softly cruel about the kid. But I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been welcome; I knew that. It would have been childish.
—Good man, George, said Joe. —The lad should know his onions.
George laughed. He dried the last glass and put it on a shelf below him. His laughter wasn’t loud or conspiratorial, or diplomatic or forced. He’d heard something amusing and he’d laughed. Joe wasn’t asking him to betray his apprentice, or to give us permission to tear into him when he came back upstairs. He’d said something funny – onions were always good for a laugh – and, while he was at it, he’d asserted our right to a vote in the land of the grown-ups. And George’s response had affirmed that right.
—Two more, please, George.
The door swung open, and open, and open, and a new population slid in and took over the room, younger than the shoppers from earlier but two or three significant years older than us. We were at the back, near the coat hooks and the two flights of stairs, down to the Gents and up to the Ladies. People flowed in so quickly, it was as if one big gang of friends was arriving at once. They occupied the area near the door, then seemed to send out scouts to the remaining corners. Passages opened and two or three stepped in and took the remaining stools at the bar and the tables and benches along the walls. They were all at home, all of them linked, somehow. Although I could see now, it wasn’t just one polite mob. There were men in twos and threes, there were two men alone, there were couples, and couples with couples, and two bigger, looser groups of friends. But there was something about them. Confidence, perhaps. Physical ease – they stood and leaned and sat, crossed their legs like they’d been trained to do it properly. It wasn’t Christmas or coming up to Christmas but they all seemed like returned emigrants who’d picked up ways, notions, a body language that they could never have learnt in Ireland.
They were gorgeous.
William topped up our pints and placed them in front of us.
—Did you get the results? I asked him.
I needed a blast of familiarity and William was the nearest thing to us in the shop.
—Which do you want? he asked.
—Leeds.
He smiled.
—Lost.
—Liverpool, said Joe.
—Won.
He gave Joe his change.
—Now, sir.
That was enough; it steadied us. I’d felt the urge to leave or get plastered. I’d been panicking a bit and Joe, I knew, had too. But we said nothing. We sat and watched, and listened. It wasn’t the fact that most of these people had a few years on us. I wasn’t sure about that now, either. I was looking at young faces around me, and in the long mirror behind the bar. I reminded myself: I’d be twenty-two before the end of the year. I was educated; I had a degree. Joe had been working for more than three years. These people were at home; that was it. At home here, with George. At home everywhere, I suspected. We’d just arrived. We were only in the door. We’d none of their blood.
Joe was better at it than I was. I was good in my head; I was debonair, polished, ready to talk. But – I see it now; I see myself – I sat there. I looked at them all in the mirror. I didn’t feel excluded. That was the big advance. But I was shy.