3. Mad Mack's...

Sunday 4th December 2005 ' 9:37 pm

...and so, Sunday night at the local, to swamp my miseries. Or so I thought¦

Mad Mack's (The Mad Mackeral to give it it's full name) is the only decent pub in town. It's opposite the clock tower on the seafront, at the apex of a triangle formed by Prospect Hill, Wrack Alley and Eastern Esplanade. The bar is correspondingly v-shaped, looking like the prow of a ship cleaving through an ocean of maroon carpet: Public Bar to port, Saloon to starboard. There's no dividing wall between the two, though. It's just a matter of furnishing and decor. The Saloon is cosier, with its sagged-out armchairs and nicotine-sepia'd pictures. The Public, on the other hand, has red leather stools and a juke box (a genuine Rock-ola 'Bubbler', complete with arching neon tubes and original 50s song list). There's also a TV set in the corner, a fruit machine, a pool table and a dartboard. These last two, given the snug size of the bar, overlap each other's floor space to some extent. If both are being used at once, the players of one have to give way to the players of the other in turn if dart-punctured buttocks or cue-shafted arseholes are to be avoided.

The landlady, Denise, used to be the landlord, Dennis. Everyone chipped in for the op. Everyone remembers her as him. Some people even speak about Dennis as the previous owner, though their physical appearances ' aside from Denise's fluffy meringue blonde perm against Dennis's grey pelt ' is very similar. Dennis was always on the large size and always gave the appearance of, if not actually wearing a bra, at least needing one. Apart from that, the differences are more obvious to those in the know: Denise's fag-fuelled cackle against Dennis's more reserved chuckle; Denise's overall up-beat tone against the morose mumblings of her 'predecessor'. I don't know if anyone's done a study into how the physical changes involved in gender reorientation can also give rise to radical shifts in personality ' but with Denise, at least, the transformation took place. This might, as my mate Sherlock says, be to do with the sense of relief gained by the final achievement of the correct conjunction of body and psychology. Whatever¦ the name change was easy. Those who called Dennis 'Den' just carried on.

It's the usual Sunday night crowd. Oakie Woods the fencer and his boys, Dudley and Craig, are lunking over the fruit machine. They run their outfit from a six-acre site out on the Provender Road, where each of them has a shack - dry-lined and winter-packed, cosy as quilted caravans. Each shack has a wood-burning stove, complete with chimneys made from old five-gallon vegetable oil cans from the Pink Pagoda Chinese take-away in the High Street. Each of them keeps a dog. Oakie and Dudley have a German Shepherd and a Rottweiler respectively (Adolf and Heinrich), while Craig ' the largest and handsomest of the three ' has gone in for a Pomeranian named Shirley. Craig also happens to keep the cleanest of the shacks, washes his pick-up more often, and has fitted both out with decent shag pile carpet. He is also the only one of the three to wear slippers indoors and leave his boots out on the porch overnight. Nobody comments on these peculiarities of temperament, mainly because he's built like a tower block. When he approaches you, it goes dark very quickly.

Sitting down the far end of the bar on the Public side ' hands looking like he's dipped them in tar, hair looking the same, lungs full of it, blackheads like pop rivets, coughing like one of his engines ' is Mole. Mole the Motor, of Mole's Motors. He likes to sit in dark corners, since they remind him of the work pit he spends most of his day in. He thinks of his drink like he thinks of his grades of oil and fuel. Guinness is a good multi-purpose. Rum and black is best for cold starts. A rum and Guinness together guarantees first-off-the-mark acceleration, but tends to make the engine sluggish after the first ten minutes. Mole chain-smokes, even when draining petrol tanks. Sometimes it's the only way of telling that he's down in his pit or sitting in his corner of the bar: the orange glow of his cigarette, which briefly becomes two orange glows every five minutes or so.

In the Saloon, at the big table, are the old guys from Beasley House, the residential home along the Front. The place has a dubious reputation, run by a chimp called Ted Hogbin: big shoes, big suits, black Beamer, white socks, friends you wouldn't want as enemies. Rumour has it he got into the Masons by force alone. He runs the home for money, not much of which gets spent on the clients ' as you can tell by looking at them: gappy teeth, food-stained shirts and trousers, mismatched socks and odd shoes, supermarket glasses. They seem happy enough, though. Denise has worked out that their combined age is nearly 400. There they sit, a pint of Simpkin's Best each, engaged in a game of their own devising involving a pack of cards, a cribbage board, a set of Scrabble letters, an egg timer and a dice. Only they know the rules and only they play it, sipping their pints and puffing at matchstick-thin roll-ups ' made from their collection of discarded dog-ends from the ashtrays of the cafés they visit during the day. One of them smokes tea-bags in his pipe. They always pay for their beer with the small change they collect from busking down along Mariner Plains and The Narrows. Quite an ensemble, they are: a recorder, a kazoo, a jew's harp, a tambourine, a guitar with 5 strings. The Beasley Boys. They don't have much of a repertoire. They're usually paid to pack up and go away. I like their sound, though. Ruck 'n' roll.

Further back in the snuggest corner of the Saloon, on their favourite bench, are Suzie and Trina ' two lesbians who come in because it's the only place in town where they feel they can be themselves. Suzie, the butch, is built like a slab-layer, whilst Trina's twiggy frame is bunched up like a doll in the corner. They both drink red wine ' topped up, when Denise is distracted, from a bottle Trina keeps in the carrier bag she always totes around. Denise knows they do it, of course ' no one could get as pissed as they do on the amount they buy over the bar. But she doesn't mind. She knows they don't have much money and she knows they like the company in the pub. She likes them being there, too. She knows what it's like for people like Suzie and Trina in small towns like this.

In the TV corner ' watching, as always, with the volume down ' is Lemon Top, hulked up and shivery in his old raincoat. Lemon Top the hospital porter, fifties, so named because of the pint he favours and the yellow sweater he wears from one year's end to the next. Lives in the room above the Pink Pagoda, smells like fried king prawn balls, likes a dabble on the gee-gees, never a penny to scratch his arse with. Happy in his own sweet way, in his Lemon Top world.

As for me, I'm surveying this redoubtable crew from my usual perch at the front end of the bar, matching pints with my old mate Sherlock. His real name's Clarence Holmes, but you don't call him Clarence if you like chewing your food. For some reason, though, he's alright with Sherlock. He plays up to it by wearing one of those fruity old tweed hats with the ear flaps. Even his bong's got a curve. It's the closest he'll get to being a detective, though. Some nights, when he's drinking alone, he has trouble finding his way home. He used to forget where he'd left his bike, until I suggested he take a photograph each time with his new mobile phone. It worked for a bit. Then he lost the mobile, too. I'd love to have seen the face of whoever found it: the memory full of images of the same knackered Raleigh Shopper, chained up to a variety of railings, lamp-posts and wheelie-bin handles. They'd probably have handed it straight in at the art college. They wouldn't have found any numbers stored because he never used the phone to make any calls. I only ever heard it ring once in the whole six weeks he had it. Some old guy asking for Sandra with the piercings. It was a wrong number. As for the bike, we keep looking. It's out there somewhere¦

"The thing is I was thinking, Sherlock said suddenly, apropos of absolutely nothing, "is how can I have an identity card when I don't even have an identity?

I took a mouthful of beer and glanced at the clock. Twenty to ten. That time in the evening, between the pints and the shorts, when he starts to open up like a sardine can - but full of pears. His head was nodding, as it does when he's getting going. With the front peak of his hat down low over his eyes, he looked like a giant bird pecking at the bar. I didn't say anything. You learn not to.

"I mean, you can give me a name. You can recognise me as a sep¦ separate individual person. But you can't give me a proper... identity¦ because all I'm doing is playing a social-ially-ly-defined role. I'm not being¦ myself, you understand. He rolled his tongue in his cheek, like his words had got stuck in his teeth. Then he tapped the bar with the end of his finger, like a judge tapping a gavel. "And I can't be myself unless I'm by myself. He lifted his glass and stared unsteadily into it, as if looking for an answer in there. "And then, when I'm by myself, I can't have an identity be¦ because there's no one else to identify myself from. Qwed. Bottom-up went the glass as he drained his pint. Then he put it back down on the bar, screwing his eyes up at me like he was trying to see me in the dark. "You see what I'm saying, Al?

I shrugged. "Of course, mate.

I fished in my pocket and took out what was left in there. About three quid more than I thought, which was good for that end of the week. I laid it down on the bar top. It's the best way I know of dragging Sherlock back towards the earth's gravitational pull.

"What is it, Sherl? As if I didn't know.

"Gravy, he said. "Two spoonfuls. Lumpy.

Denise got us our double scotches and ice. She didn't need to ask. She knew where we'd reached on the menu. She took the money from the coins I'd laid out, then ambled back down the bar again.

Sherlock took a long sip of his drink. "I ain't got an identity, he mumbled. "I'm no one at all, Mr Tony-fuckin'-Blair. So who the fuck are you?

"Arrivederci! I said, tipping my own glass back, feeling that gorgeous flare of the spirit as it trickled down and soaked into the cracks. I was about 2 drinks past Cartesian metaphysics, so I went back to surveying the others. Denise was chatting to Suzie and Trina, which involved an examination of Suzie's latest tattoo ' a lizard that ran across her left shoulder and part-way down her upper arm. The old guys were still deep in their game and shallow in their drinks. Mole was chugging away in a cloud of Marlboro smoke. Oakie and the boys were still pushing in coins at roughly double the rate they were being paid out again. Lemon Top was reading lips on the screen.

Sunday night¦