Cloudy at the bar.

I was stuck on my usual perch, the high-stool in the Club Bar with my back to the Gent’s. Got for free the usual waft of warm humanity as the toilet door opened and shut. The Ladies’ beside it was rarely used. If I was a betting man I’d have put my fake Ted Baker watch on Ladies’ having toilet roll to wipe their fannies. All men got was water running down the wall above the cistern and wet feet if you stood too close to the urinals. I’d a panoramic view of the long bar glittering with unwashed pints glasses and near the other door,  the pool table and dart board. 

The party went on long after eleven bells, without the usual fight, but we’d come close: raised voices and argy-bargy, but no actual punches thrown.

Grace the barmaid sidled up beside me, to take a break from the younger crowd and have a fag.  She lifted one from my packet, and with practiced ease stuck it in her gob. Her greying hair unfurled into shaggy tendrils around her face and the makeup around her eyes smudged into greyness. She stank of nicotine and spilled lager and looked how I felt—deadbeat.

She stood with the hatch up behind her, sucked in smoke and briefly closed her eyes. Nina Simone was playing on the Jukebox, which made conversation superfluous.

I sipped at my pint of heavy and made the usual stabs at it, more for form’s sake, ‘Whit time you finishing?’

She shrugged. ‘My feet are killing me. I’ve been on them all day. And that cow Debbie, didn’t turn up again.’

A teenager in a purple Nike top and denims was clutching one of those fancy bottled beers. He held it up and out from his arm, as a signal. Shouting in a slurred voice for change for the pool table from the other end of the bar. Grace left her Regal cigarette smoking in the ashtray beside me and that was her up and running.

It still had a touch of her cherry-red lipstick from her pursed-up mouth. I picked it up and took a drag of it. No point in wasting it.  I’d gone to school with Debbie and had much the same relationship I had with Grace. But Debbie was nicknamed ‘The Clincher’, her long steel-grey hair furled around her head, like a helmet, as she grabbed at you. Tried to work you into tight corners, but she was heavy-weight. I was still stick-thin and lighter on my feet.  

I glugged the dregs of my pint. Pulled my tan leather jacket over my shoulder and tapped the right-hand pocket feeling for the outline of  house keys, listening for the clink. Lifted my fags and disposable lighter from the bar. Glanced at the gantry and in the reflection behind me—a grown-up ghost—startled me and my head jerked as I turned around.

Her santa hat was slanted at a rakish angle on her long blonde hair, which lapped down against her bum. Cotton-wool ruff of pointed white beard inside a white collar, three painted black buttons and a fake black belt etched into the red wool of the long jumper. Her feet undecided, turned inwards like Annie’s. She glanced around from under her fringe. The drunkest guy in the corner dozing into his Burton’s jacket got a nudge in the ribs by his pal, who was in the darts team with me, and an invitation to check out our Christmas gift. 

Santa’s little-helper breezed past her and tottered to the bar in break-neck heels. Holding a hand and one finger pointed upward to the high ceiling. She was taller than her friend. Her dark hair was piled up and left the nape of her neck naked and vulnerable. A blue satin dress was wrapped around her like a toga. She looked as if she stepped out of daft women’s magazine

I drifted closer and drank in their expensive perfume and their newness.

‘You lost, hen?’ I asked the girl with the toga.

She ignored me, turned and offered me her shoulder and a hairdresser’s make-over to stare at. Over a soundtrack of twangy guitars and Bono’s wailing, she bawled in an unlady-like way to Grace behind the bar, ‘Two vodkas and diet Coke, with ice’. 

She corrected Grace when she used the skooshy cheap Coke on tap. ‘No, a can of Coke,’ adding in a ‘Please,’ and a cheesy smile when the barmaid didn’t complain.

Santa came and stood beside me and I breathed her in. I wanted to stroke the bare skin of her back and below the hem of her short dress. But I knew she’d be shy, the way Annie was.

Grace placed the drinks on the bar. Santa’s little helper searched short-sightedly in her bag for her purse.  

Grace stared at her face, waiting for her to look up. ‘I hope you’re searching for ID.’

I waved a tenner at Grace, ‘I’ll get this.’ And in the pause where her gaze shifted to me, I added, ‘And my usual, and, er, keep the change’.

‘Thanks,’ Santa’s little-helper offered me a smile for my largesse.

‘I’ll need to see a birth certificate.’ Grace’s face hardened and she leaned sideways to get a better look at Santa.

The girl’s head dropped and she seemed on the verge of tears.

‘Grace, it’s alright.’ I made a point of holding the note over the width of the bar, almost under her nose. And flinging in a funny. ‘I’ve no’ brought my birth certificate, but I’m over twenty-one, honest. We can check later. ’ 

She shook her head. ‘I cannae,’ she whispered, taking a step back.

Another customer with curly hair had barrelled into the bar and was shouting to be served.  Grace held a hand up, showing she had heard him, which bought a little time. 

I turned to Santa’s little helper and flung my arm around her neck and pulled her closer. My other arm was draped casually over Santa’s shoulder.

‘These are my nieces.’ I nodded towards Santa’s little helper. ‘She’s twenty-two and her pal’s twenty-one’.

Grace screwed up her face. ‘Whit’s their names, then?’

‘Lisa,’ piped up, Santa’s little helper. 

‘Jane,’ chimed her pal.

When I held out the note this time, Grace grabbed it out of my fingers, but with a warning.

‘Fuck-right off.’  

She turned her back and stalked to the till.