Angela

The Swiss Cottage is a two hundred year old Hansel and Gretel-style pub that sits uncomfortably in the middle of a busy inner-London interchange, surrounded by all the ugliness the area could muster; an Odeon cinema, multiple lanes of traffic and subways and a spattering of sad-looking kebab shops.

It was sleeting when I walked there. The ice was soft and thick and slid down my neck and under my scarf, making my throat and chest damp. On the bus stop by the traffic lights I waited at it said: ‘FUCK AMY SKANKY BITCH.’

Inside the pub was orange-lit and warm, full of the kind of afternoon drinkers who make you feel sad and tender at the same time: old men in knitted hats sipping dark ales in ones and, occasionally, twos. I got a beer and sat on one of the seats that ran along the back wall, glad to have a quiet place to spend an hour. I rested my drink on the paper and watched the headline turn golden and distort through the glass: ‘16 YEAR OOOLD GIRL GROOMS TEAAACHER.’

‘What a load of nonsense.’

I looked over to see a woman in her late seventies slowly un-wrapping an impossibly long scarf from around her neck and setting down a Guinness at the table next to me.

‘Bloody non-sense,’ she cut the word up in her thick north London accent and raised her eyebrows, first at me and then at the paper on the table. ‘Excuse my French but you shouldn’t read that rubbish my love; it’ll rot your brain. They all lie, you know.’

She shook her head and held up a crossword from the table in front of her. ‘This is much better for you’ she grinned.

I smiled politely and got out my phone, inwardly wishing her away.

She persisted: ‘they save this for me every day and keep it on my table – this is my table – so I can have a drink and a bit of a think,’ she tapped her head.

I nodded, still keeping my eyes on my phone.

‘Well you need that, don’t you?’ she continued, ‘we use so little of our brains you’d think we were adverse to it. That’s how them politicians get away with what they do. We want to keep our ears closed and just get on with our lives and have no trouble. We want to keep ourselves safe, but the stupid thing is we’re making everything more unsafe by not thinking about them.’

I began to write a pretend text message. She leant over and touched my arm. ‘Have you heard of an old man called James Lovelock?’

The contact made it impossible to disengage. I looked at her properly for the first time. Her eyes were a pale grey but they sparkled ferociously. Her waxy skin was almost luminous in the dim light and a halo of matted, white hair framed her face. A cigarette poked out from behind one ear.

‘I think so.’

She took a sip of her drink. ‘You need to look him up my love. We all need to think about what we’re doing to this planet. It’s hard to have hope at my age – probably at your age too these days,’ she motioned back at the paper. ‘It’s hard to have faith in the kind of people who manage to get into power, and believe that they would act in anyone’s bloody interest except their own. But you have to. I’ve always said you have to keep trying, and you have to keep working together. You have to look to the people who have heart. What about Tony Benn?’

I nodded and put down my phone, conceding defeat.

‘Oh he was one of the good ones. He had heart. Well that all went to hell with Tony Blair, didn’t it? War criminals, he and Margaret Thatcher both.’ She shook her head and went quiet for a moment before looking at me carefully. ‘Do you believe in God?’

I shook my head, ‘not anymore.’

‘Me neither. Lapsed Catholic!’ she laughed ‘I’ve always said it’s not about believing in someone up in the sky it’s about believing in all of us down here,’ she tapped her finger on the table, ‘it’s about us talking to each other and helping each other, together. That’s love, that’s what God is.’

She looked at me straight in the eye with such feeling that I smiled and looked away, embarrassed.

She whistled through her teeth. ‘Anyway… Silly old woman! I’ve taken up enough of your time my love, and you looked very busy on your phone. It must be time for me to have a smoke.’ She began winding her scarf around her neck and then paused and leant shakily over and took one of my hands in both of hers. They were soft and papery and warm. ‘My name’s Angela, love. If you ever want to come and talk to a mad old lady, you know where my table is now.’ She smiled gently, pulled the cigarette out from behind her ear and headed out into the orange light.