The Black Caiman

The cloud had come up in the evening and with it the rain and for over six weeks now, it had continued falling without showing signs of respite. It had become surreal, a storm crossing over the land like a never-ending shadow that pervaded even the most optimistic minds. In the town and surrounding villages, many people were suffering. Every day was cold and grey. The dawn skies summoned in black thunderous clouds and the night skies flashed across the heavens in lightening storms that shook the land.

Nobby was bored. Bored stiff with the comments about the weather. It seemed to him that every dullard in Gormley had now found a voice with which to spread his or her tedious comments around the neighbourhood. The much sadder cases would watch avidly the rising levels of the river, reporting every hour its state, almost like a town crier. “Oh yea! Oh yea! Rivers are flooding in Eggburth, Tadcaster, Lewes, Bognor, Cleckheaton and Huntingdon.”

People came before the television cameras crying and sobbing about their losses and the inconvenience of it all and outside, the night thundered and flashed, and tornadoes ripped through Featherstone. The parade of comments overwhelmed the newspapers for at least the first two weeks, and then apathy set in, and like the rain falling, they pulled a shroud over events. Only the simpletons continued to express views.

Nobby sat alone in the Knockers Arms contemplating his future. Today was his sixty-fourth birthday and nobody gave a dam whether he was dead or alive. He could not help thinking what a sorrowful state of affairs. Rain clouds, flashing storms, the empty High Street, the old cathedral bell ringing out its ominous tones across the almost deserted town. What few people there were about huddled in shop doorways away from the sheeting rain, occasionally running out in one’s or two’s to wave down an approaching bus.

Nobby was half way through his second pint when the door of the pub opened and a tall dark figure entered. “Bloody hell!” the stranger said, shaking his furled up umbrella, “Bloody weather. When will it stop?”

The barman yawned, making no attempt at trying to stifle his boredom. He was thinking, “If I’ve heard that bleeding comment once I must have heard it a thousand times.”

The barman looked out of the window rather forlornly at the torrential downpour whipping across the town and continued thinking of sunnier climes. The Costa Brava was now slowly disappearing into a sunlit, distant, retreat has he turned to the stranger.

“What would you like sir?”

“A boat” said the stranger grinning. It brought no response from the barman, who just simply raised his eyebrows and looked at the heavens. “And a pint of bitter please.”

The barman slowly pulled the pint and then passed it over to the tall, dark, man.

“That will be £2.10p please.” This was 40p above the price paid by the locals. The man handed him the money with no comment, even though he may have known that he was paying above the odds. Such behaviour he had seen on many other occasions and quite frankly, he could not be bothered to concern himself with such pettiness.

“Thank you” said the barman in as pleasant a fashion as the situation called for. He was not noted for his generosity of manners or good naturedness, particularly to outsiders.

The Pub stood silently in the pouring rain; it pattered against the windows and gushed onto the pavement from broken pipes, and it seemed that every gutter in the town was a raging torrent rushing towards the swollen river.

Nobby sat in a stupor unable to come to terms with his own feelings of desolation that flowed over him like an impenetrable mist. He felt alone, terribly alone. It seemed the years had passed so quickly. He was on the cusp of an older age, where there would be little time for enjoyment and days would be spent lamenting bygone era’s that were now fading into distant dreams, of which he no longer felt a part of. Today he could see the wisdom of his Mother’s words. How many times had she told him to invest for his old age? She had been so wise under the hardships of their enforced poverty, always managing to make ends meet.

When his Dad had been killed, quite early in the war trying to defuse an unexploded bomb, the paltry sum received from the Government of the day was worth very little in real terms. Their lives together had been one continuous struggle, of which Nobby played an increasingly prominent part as his Mother got older.

Oh, yes! His dad was a hero for at least a day. His name was splashed across the local paper in a gladiatorial fashion worthy of the splendour of ancient Rome, but when the Luftwaffe strafed the nearby railway station and killed three innocent people on there way to work, they were soon forgotten in the turmoil that ensued.

He had married once, many years ago, and as he sat there, he was reminded of how his best friend had run away with his wife. It had seemed all rather strange to him at the time. How Derek his best friend, a life-long supporter of Gormley United, an acknowledged fanatic, had virtually overnight ceased to go to even home games. It just did not make sense to Nobby and often on Monday mornings when he eventually caught up with Derek at work, he would remark how he had missed a blinding game.

Derek would just say that his interests lay elsewhere, never really explaining where and eventually Nobby stopped mentioning the games, and Monday mornings became like any other morning at work. And as the weekend matches approached and the team sheet was printed in the local paper, even this ceased to be of any real interest to Derek, who would vaguely mention a visit to some distant relative and was unable to attend, because of this, that, or the other.

Now he was thinking how he missed his best friend. He wondered how they were getting on, Derek and his wife. He didn’t miss her anymore. When he had come home from the match that Saturday night and found the note on the kitchen table he had felt strange. A strange feeling had come over him. He couldn’t work it out in his head. He sat there for twenty minutes at least trying to understand what she meant. "Me and Derek have ran off. We have packed our bags and we are not coming back. Your tea is in the oven. Edna.” Sure enough when he went to the oven, there on a low light was his favourite, tripe and onions.

The man quickly downed his drink and turned to Nobby.

“Would you care for a drink,” his voice seemed to echo around the pub, even the cats ears pricked up, “I do believe it’s your birthday?”

Nobby was a little perplexed, not least because he had not mentioned this to anybody other than his next-door neighbour Reg. Still here was the chance of a free drink on a miserable day and who cares, he thought. He remembered his mother’s words “If there’s owt for nowt, make sure your there with a barrow.”

“I’d like a short please, if that’s all right with you?”

“Certainly, what kind?”

“Dark rum would be fine. I think on a day like this a drop of Lamb’s Navy would be grand.”

The man ordered a drink for himself also and turning to Nobby asked him if he could sit nearby.
Nobby motioned to the seat opposite him.
With a surreptitious glance at the stranger, Nobby continued, “How did you know it was my birthday?”

The man smiled. “It seems to me I’ve seen that look you have upon your face a thousand times before.”

“What look?” said Nobby defensibly, concerned that it may be possible to read him like a book.

“Maybe the one of hurt pride. Of having to sit alone on rain swept mornings drinking to forget.”

“Forget what?” he said rather irritably.

“That it’s your birthday and you’re alone.”

“Well I never, this conversation seems to be going round in circles. Do I look the lonely sort? Do I look as if I have no friends?”

The man smiled slowly. “I’m sorry if you are taking offence. I don’t mean to pry into your personal life. It’s just that I’ve lived for a very long time, possible at least a thousand lives and after a while the demeanours of people, the way they sit, lean, or conduct themselves seem to tell me so many things. Sometimes I can even tell things by the cadence or intonation of their words. What mood they are in, whether they are cheerful, happy, sad, and miserable. They of course are the more obvious and easier ones to note. ”

With those words, Nobby calmed himself.

“Oh I see.” He said in a quieter voice, “you’re some kind of educated person maybe?”

“Sort of but I wouldn’t go as far as saying in the sense of academic pursuits. Universities for me have always held a kind of, well,” he paused slightly as if searching for chosen words, “a threshold of boredom that I find easy to cross.”

“Oh I see. You’re more the self-educated class. The kind that searches the rivers of life that flow through our world and take from it what you wish.”

“Very well spoken I could not have put it better myself. Here let me buy you another.”

He came back with two large malt whiskies this time.

“Let us drink to better times,” said the stranger, and with that, they touched glasses and both took a large sip. Nobby was starting to warm to this man a little, although he was slightly put off by his appearance. It seemed his face was out of proportion. His bottom jaw was very large, his nose was stubby, and the teeth towards the corners of his mouth hung down more than was usual, almost like something resembling… Nobby shuddered.

“They say there is no end in sight to this weather. I suppose in biblical times people would be building an ark by now. It seems that spring is slumbering still under the overcoat of winter.”

Nobby rubbed his hands together. “Yes it’s very strange indeed. Very strange, I’ve seen nothing like this in my life before. By the way I could not help thinking that when you said earlier that you were very old, that you look well on it, what ever age you are.”

The man continued to hold a benign smile, “Thank you kind sir. It is difficult knowing what to do with eternity.”

“Sometimes I wish I had a thousand lifetimes,” said Nobby, “but then again I watch the grass growing and it watches me shrinking and if I lived so long, I would probably die of terminal boredom anyway living in a place like this. I have difficulty fitting in as it is, let alone after so much time.”

“May I now buy you another birthday drink?” said the stranger.

Nobby looked at his watch and noted it was a little after mid-day. Outside the rain was still falling heavily. He had arranged to meet Reg at the Mucky Duck at 1pm and he didn’t want to be late. In addition, he had not eaten that morning and already the room was starting to spin ever so slightly. He heard himself acknowledging the man and very quickly, there were two more large ones before him.

There was something slightly disturbing about the man’s eyes. Nobby could not help noticing that he never seemed to blink. The lids were larger than usual, they moved very slowly in the socket, and the eyes would ever so slowly rotate around the room sometimes in opposite directions, as if they did not wish to miss anything.

They focused very quickly upon the slightest movement, a moth flickering by the light, the pub cat prowling in the corner.

“Have you travelled far?” asked Nobby.

“Many miles I never seem to stop. Yes, I was born many years ago in the southern states of America, down Louisiana way in the swampy marshlands.”

“Oh! I see, long way from home then?”

“I have not been back there for a long, long time.”

Conversation droned on for a good half-hour and more drink followed. They talked of many things. Nobby was just finishing a sentence.

“…And did you know there are many people on this planet who believe more in past lives than this one.”

“Yes it is good to talk of life in such a manner. One is not enough. You need many to give understanding and even then thousands more are not sufficient.”

The man leaned closer, in almost a conspiratorial fashion.

“You must know the story of Peter Pan. The boy who would not grow up or could not grow up, I’m not sure which, and of course there was Wendy and that other pesky child and of course Captain Hook. And if you stretch your memory a little further there was a very large crocodile, who when attempting to eat Hook on one occasion, accidentally swallowed a ticking clock that fell into his open jaws.”

Nobby nodded and once again smiled in rather a drunken way.

“Well if you put your ear a little closer to my chest, tell me what it is you can hear?”

“Your not saying in all seriousness that you’re the crocodile, are you? Are you what I thought earlier when I noticed your black nail varnish and black mascara, one of those?”

“No!” he exclaimed, laughing out loud at the same time. “One of those,” and with that he put his hand on one hip, and made the posture of a short, stout, teapot spout with his other. “Tip me up and pour me out!”

“Goodness me, how funny if I was “one of those” I would have used a better chat up line than that.”

With that, Nobby burst out laughing. It was the first time in a long while that he had felt such release. Looking at this tall, dark man, with the funny black clothes and strange face, suddenly adopting the most camp gesture imaginable had completely thrown him.

Thereby, Nobby, with all the goodwill possible lent forward and listened. He was astonished to hear what seemed to be a loud ticking noise emanating from the man’s chest. He sat back opened mouthed.

“Well I never! It does sound like what you said. Have you had it examined? Surely, it cannot be right? I mean it’s not natural to have such a thing.” Nobby was bewildered. “Has it ever gone off in public, the alarm I mean?”

The man sat back and smiled broadly, “Only if I set it.”

With that remark, they both started screaming with laughter.

The barman looked up and shook his head. ‘Ruddy two pot screamers,’ he thought.

After the laughter had subsided, Nobby looked up at the clock on the wall. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, “But I will have to be going now. I’m meeting a pal of mine down at the Mucky Duck down by the river and I cannot be late. It has been very nice meeting you. You have cheered me up no end. You have rescued me from the doldrums.”

“What is your name?” asked Nobby.

“Roman Strauss.”

They shook hands. “Nobby End, please to meet you.”
The man seemed happy as well that they had met on such a miserable day.

“Look I’m pushing off down to Muggersby, about a mile down stream if I’m not mistaken, there are one or two tasty morsels I have to meet. Do you mind if I walk with you down as far as the river?”

“Please do, most certainly.”

They both stood and adjusted their overcoats, before stepping out into the street and heading off towards the bottom half of town. By the time, they reached the point where Nobby had to turn off the water was already ankle deep.

“If this carries on much longer it will fill the pub. Well goodbye dear friend.”

Nobby held out his arm and they shook hands once more.

“If I don’t see you again, take all the care in the world and get that ticking noise sorted out.”

“Thank you my friend, have a pleasant birthday and remember there are some things about you that are very interesting. A gentleness that is so delicate that I too can find the loneliness in you. Goodbye.”

The man walked towards the swollen river.

Standing there in the pouring rain, Nobby watched him suddenly launch himself into the muddy waters.

He started to float down towards the next village. For a moment, Nobby was worried until he saw him turn over on his side and give the thumbs up.