The man was old, perhaps in his seventies – maybe even pushing eighty. His bushy and matted grey beard hung limply on his chest, which was thin and scrawny under a stained blue t-shirt. He sat alone at a table under the bay window that looked out onto the busy street. Cars whizzed by and pedestrians hurried passed, occasionally glancing in, and double taking; staring at the man as he munched noisily on his dinner.
He seemed oblivious to the world around him, never taking his gaze away from the plate of fish and chips that sat on the rustic-looking table in front of him. He would pick up a napkin and dab clumsily at his mouth from time-to-time, only really succeeding in pushing any spilled food into his wiry beard.
There was something eerily strange about him; I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was there, nonetheless. He was oddly familiar in a faraway, lost memory type of thing – as though I had seen him somewhere before long ago.
The waitress came over to me and handed out a tattered-looking menu and placed out cutlery and napkins. “Can I get you something to drink,” she asked, in a bored I wish this shift was over kind of voice. I ordered a beer and asked for five minutes to check out the food choices.
The options were the usual pub-type stuff – pie and mash, gammon steak, fish pie, a few vegetarian dishes that looked about as appealing as a full ashtray – and of course, fish and chips.
As I mused over these culinary delights, the old man stood and pushed back his chair. I looked up and watched as he rummaged around in the pocket of a black jacket on the back of the chair, before giving up and walking towards the gents. As he passed by me, he glanced over and smiled. His mouth was toothless, other than two crooked ones at the front. They were yellow with age and made him look comical. He floated by in a mist of nostalgia that made me think of candyfloss and fairground rides, for no apparent reason.
Once he disappeared through the green wooden door to the toilets, the feeling faded, and I wondered just where it had come from – if it had been there at all in fact.
I decided on a simple chicken salad to go with my beer, which, by now, sat in front of me, the condensation running down the outside of the glass like streams from a mountain, pooling at the bottom and creating a wet patch around the beer mat. The waitress came back over and asked for my food order, scribbling it down on a small white pad and scurrying off into the kitchen without so much as a thank you or a smile.
The conversation of a couple sitting next to the bar drifted over to me. They were discussing a day at the races and the woman seemed very excited to be going to Lady’s Day, which was to be tomorrow. She was telling her partner all about the outfit she wanted to wear, and the hat she had chosen to go with it; a matching one with feathers in the brim. The man nodded and smiled but he was miles away.
The door opened and out came the old man, rubbing his hands together and wafting them up and down as if the dryers were broken and he was trying to shake off the water. This time, he didn’t look at me but stared straight ahead and returned to his place by the window, picking up the over-large knife and fork and resuming his dinner.
Why was he so familiar to me? It was just an old man out for some food in a pub, nothing odd in that but something nagged at me.
I sipped on my beer and began to daydream about nothing more exciting than work the next day. Random stuff.
Just then, a cat wandered through the bar, a black and white one with quite long fur. It ambled through as if it owned the place. It stopped short of the bar and turned towards where the old man sat, and jumped up onto the windowsill, curling up into a ball and regarding the man with mild curiosity.
The fish was by now mostly gone, only a few scraps remained, along with half of the chips and the untouched mushy peas. The old man didn’t seem to realise the cat was there, instead he continued to shovel food into his mouth; some of it finding the target but most accumulating in his beard.
The cat remained watchful. The bright red collar stark against the fur, with a small brass-coloured bell hanging from underneath.
My dinner arrived. The salad looked pretty good, plenty of colour and big lumps of chicken that had been torn and scattered across the top of everything. I was hungry, more so than I had realised. The first mouthful was delicious, and I set about making the rest vanish, the old man and the cat forgotten for now.
When I was younger, maybe around eight or nine, the fair came to town as it did each year. That year was different though; the people who ran it changed, replaced by younger men and women. No one seemed overly bothered by this but me. I had gotten used to the ride tenders and the old guy in the small amusements shed, with its selection of fruit machines, their gaudy colours flashing and enticing, and the Space Invaders and Pac Man that were against the far wall.
It felt different and I didn’t get the same giddy anticipation as before. Was it the fact that the people had changed? Maybe, but whatever it was, the fair ceased to be fun for me after that. The simple fact of change.
Those early years were happy ones, and I can look back on them fondly and with a yearning. Things were never the same as I got older and the memories faded, as did the laughter along with it. It seems to me that the older I became, the more I resented the past and dreaded the future.
When I looked at the old man, his bedraggled beard and skin as loose as a shirt three times too big for him, I thought of the fair, of the rides at 20p a go and the smells of onions frying for the hotdogs, the sounds of laughter and screams as the children hopped from one attraction to the other, the change in their pockets jangling as they ran. I was transported back forty years to the heady days of my early youth, with all its hopes and dreams of a future that stretched away as far as the eye could see, and beyond.
The waitress coughed politely and began taking away my plate and cutlery, startling me. “Have you finished sir,” she said and smiled warmly this time, showing a set of teeth that were perfectly white and straight. “Oh, yes, thanks,” I muttered, a little embarrassed at being caught daydreaming. She gathered everything up into one precariously looking pile and walked away and through the swinging door behind the bar into the kitchen.
The old man was gone. I blinked a few times, and even rubbed my eyes but he wasn’t there. The table was clear and clean, as if no one had been sitting there at all. The cat remained on the windowsill, its eyes half-lidded and wary, as it dozed. A soft purring sound drifted across the ten feet or so.
I rubbed absently at the crescent-shaped scar just below my right temple, which I gained through a fall from my bike when I was eleven. Every so often it would itch maddeningly just below the surface of the skin, and I just couldn’t get rid of it.
It itched now. It felt warm to the touch, almost as if a small fire was smoldering somewhere inside – perhaps in my brain.
I stood to leave, barely aware of the other people sat at the tables. Something nagged and tugged and sat just beyond the reach of my understanding. It was a surreal feeling.
The sun had hidden itself behind a large rain-heavy cloud, making it feel as though the temperature had dropped by a few degrees, especially after sitting inside for a while. The car park was relatively empty, aside from three cars – one of which was mine. The other two, an old Ford with a battered passenger door, and a silver Mercedes, stood close together near the smoking area. A few people wandered past, but it was quiet for the time of day.
I fumbled for the car keys in my jacket pocket and couldn’t find them. I tried my jeans pocket but nothing there either. Thinking I must have left them inside the pub, I turned and wandered back in. I rounded the corner where my table was and scanned it for the keys; nothing on top and nothing underneath either.
Over by the window, the old man with the scraggly grey beard turned and smiled his gummy grin, holding up a set of keys in a gnarled, arthritic hand. “Are you looking for these"?
I was certain he had left before me – almost positive – and yet here he was, sat at the table with the leftovers of his meal strewn out in front of him, the jacket still slung over the back of the chair, hanging limply as if about to slide off. The cat lifted its head a few inches and looked around, then lowered it again and resumed its snooze.
I walked across and reached out to take them. The old man dropped them in and grabbed hold of my hand in his, the grip was one of a man many years younger, and stronger. His gaze bore deep into mine, laying my secrets out in a neat little line for him to read it seemed.
He spoke slowly but very concisely and confidently, his eyes never leaving mine.
The words, only four of them, hit home like a hammer. “Learn to love yourself,” he said, letting go of my hand and lifting his jacket from the chair, slinging it over his scrawny shoulders and turning to leave.
I smelled something as he left, it seemed to me that it was home. A homely smell that stirred my senses and lifted my spirits. He reached the exit door and half-turned and smiled, before disappearing for good this time out onto the busy street. He was rubbing a scar just below his right temple. It was sat amidst a mound of wrinkles but visible still even after all this time. The scar was vivid and red, and shaped like a crescent moon.
