See How They Run (6 page)

Lou crept stealthily towards the bar, hoping to
surprise them, but he should have known better;
what those men had, more than anything else, was a supersensitive perception of their environment. One of them, he remembered, could chat to you
engagingly while simultaneously listening to many other conversations going on around him, as if he were a listening device. It was quite unbelievable what he could pick up. As a result he was a walking encylopaedia of local gossip, going back to the birth of the village; indeed, through hearsay and rumour
he could return, vicariously, to the dawn of local
history. At the same time as his ears swivelled to and fro his clever, knowing eyes were scanning the scene for any additional material which might reinforce his aural intake. He was a plasterer by trade, doing just enough work every morning to fund his drinking
for the rest of the day; and since he’d worked in
almost every house in the vicinity during his lifetime, he could localise all the information coming his way, room by room. Add to this a formidable memory, and what you had was a data bank matching the national archive at Kew.

They’d had sex lives to match the rich and famous; if the OS maps had carried symbols for their mating spots instead of castles and churches the landscape would be cluttered with their insignias. It wasn’t that they were crude bucolic casanovas; for a start, they’d lived for a long time and had known lots of women. It was more than that: they had charm, yes natural homegrown charm. A bit threadbare now, perhaps, but still discernible in the way they gave you their sincere and undivided attention when you were with them – a perfectly natural form of flattery. And here they were, like a coven of old spiders, huddled up in a corner trying to avoid the painter’s brush, hiding from the fresh paint of time and change. That wasn’t mist he could see through the window, thought Lou, it was a glistening band of silky strands stretching out towards every bedroom in the vicinity, because they’d all wandered away from their own webs many times; they were loopy oversexed spiders who didn’t know the confines of the average cobweb.

So they greeted him now, softly, bought him a drink and made a fuss of him in their old-fashioned
way, because they knew exactly who Llwyd
McNamara was since the moment they saw a BMW climbing the foggy hill to Hotel Corvo.

Maureen’s son, isn’t it?
said one of them in his sea-cave voice, but he wasn’t asking, he knew. Western shores bred such men all over the world. Shy, diffi
dent and subdued, but self-sufficient and resourceful.
Gifted in unexpected ways and full of small wonders, like the rockpools below. Quick-witted and droll, but
essentially sad. After all, the sea itself was basically
sad. Small sun-burnt faces framed in the windows of departing cars at the end of fine summer days had something to do with it, perhaps. Or maybe it was the sea’s parental moods – they made you wary after a while. Shorelines had a liminal sadness about them because you’d look at a group of kids playing on the sand and you’d be there yourself immediately, the beach was such a communal experience, but one of those kids was always you and you’d see how time passed, you’d see right into the mechanism of time,
it was like looking into a watch and seeing a tiny
version of yourself walking along the rim of a cog; you’d feel sad, and your own tristesse would be added to a communal melancholia which festered in the creeks and pools and lodged in barnacle clumps on the rocks all around you. You’d see yourself being eroded in step with the cliffs and the bays; here at the edge of the world you saw yourself slipping away. The shore was a playground for children but it was a graveyard for memories. Life always ended with your own Titanic going down near the shore – but instead of the orchestra playing you’d hear your own memories scratching away at the porthole windows.

Those shipwrecked men in the bar at Hotel Corvo, they all remembered Maureen the freckled
Irish girl for various reasons, but there was one
communal memory which they wouldn’t share with her son, on compassionate grounds. Once, Maureen had got drunk at the bar, after a shift, and something
had happened. An embarrassing episode, followed by a scene. These men had seen it all, witnessed
Maureen being exposed and compromised. The male involved – Leda to her swan – had been the manager of the bars, Big M himself, who knew they were being watched. It wasn’t that he was an exhibitionist, it was just that he didn’t care. Women couldn’t and didn’t try to resist him; sex was part of his daily diet, like food and drink. Everyone knew that, even his regular girl, Rhiannon.

Morality seemed to fall asleep whenever he opened his flies. He joked about it, and nobody seemed to mind. He’d pour himself a drink, raise his glass, pose ridiculously with his chest out, and say
I’m a Sex God you know
. He could say it in a way which
was cheesy and funny and a bit sad too, but never
really offensive, and in not trying to get away with it he got away with it. Big M was a sex god. In the misty, numinous world of Hotel Corvo, nobody cared. His libido came and went with the tide. After a while, they didn’t even notice it.

Lou leant against the bar, by now an eighth
silhouette in the mountain range. He felt at home
with these men, despite all the differences. He
suspected that they knew something he didn’t – he’d picked that up when he was a kid. It was partly the reason for being here. They shared rounds and he started to feel drunk, because he hadn’t had any food.
No one else came in – this bar at the end of the
universe was just for them, it seemed.

‘So what happened to Big M, the rugby hero who ran the bars?’ asked Lou while he was quizzing them about all the old faces.

‘He just disappeared,’ said the man by his side. None of them was particularly forthcoming, since they were all re-running their clips of Maureen, tearstained under her tousled red hair.

So Lou made his excuses and sidled off to the restaurant to get some food inside him before he got sloshed. He was the only one in there, and when the food arrived he realised why. Still, it filled a hole. He felt morose by now, sad that this place was on its last legs, like so many of Britain’s pubs and hotels. The
breathalyser had started the decline, and greedy
middle men had syphoned off more and more, so that drinking out had become an expensive hobby. Then television came to hypnotise the populace, and the computer screen, so that in no time at all the
British were a nation of post-modernist zombies
living a virtual life, most of it set in America. The roads were deserted, the land was empty. If you walked along a street at dusk before they closed their curtains you’d see them all sitting there, fettered to their bargain sofas, mesmerised by mediocrity. How supine they’d all become, thought Lou, they were just a bunch of pets with their paws in the air, waiting for their cable-powered masters to feed them a morsel or stroke their tums. How sad, how tragic that these places were empty – the robust universities of
the poor, closed down and boarded up. All that
humour and badinage gone, atomised into vapour inside a time capsule.

Knowing that he’d only delayed drunkenness,
Lou returned to the bar and rejoined the shadows leaning against it. Although they must have downed another couple of rounds they were none the worse for it. Maybe that’s why they’d survived for so long, thought Lou, they’d all paced themselves, and the pace had been fast all along. Life had been a marathon drinking session, interspersed with a few hours’ work here or there to finance it.

One of them, a carpenter who made a fortune by painting distressed repro seascapes and selling them to the gullible, sat down at a nearby table to take the weight off his legs. Lou joined him in the roseate gloom, and they sat together comfortably on a settle running along a wall, with their backs to the faded crimson upholstery – Lou recognised its distinctive smell, beery and dusty. Drunk by now and chasing a double whiskey, he quizzed the carpenter about the consumptive decline of Hotel Corvo. He wanted to know why his ma had come here, but he was sensible enough to scout around the issue. The carpenter was happy to tell him the background story as he knew it.

Going back a generation, the hotel had fallen on hard times when the entrepreneur who’d built it died. Then a local lad, Pryderi, had bought it. No one knew how he’d got the money together, but everyone assumed that the spondooliks had come from his burgeoning rugby career. He went on to play for Wales, said the carpenter, and he pointed to a row of photographs on the far wall, as if Lou didn’t know about them already. Pryderi became the main man in the region, a bit of a lad and a general wheeler-dealer.
Fancied himself. Girls, fast cars, friends on the council, dodgy deals. After he’d come back from Ireland with his team mate Big M, things really
took off at the hotel. They built it up and, helped
along by their good looks, charm, and legendary
reputations, they turned the place into a goldmine.

But enough wasn’t enough for Pryderi, said the
carpenter. His wife Ziggy had been an ambitious
little missy, cunning and devious. One of those clever little working-class girls who’d erased their accents and made the most of their abilities; they dressed well in an understated way, and found a guy who could make money. Pryderi was ideal: she’d pointed him in the right direction and urged him on. But somewhere along the line they’d over-extended, got into financial bother. And instead of going through the usual channels, Pryderi had gone underground for
money. There had been regular trips across the
border: first to Kent, then to Oxford. Every time he came back he was different; his moods became blacker, his silences longer. He’d sit at a table outside, looking at the sea, and he’d drink himself into a stupour.

Loan sharks? asked Lou.

Maybe, said the carpenter. But a carful of men had descended on Hotel Corvo one afternoon, quiet men in expensive suits, dark and sleek, and they’d had
Irish accents. Coincidence maybe, but from that
day onwards the silhouettes at the bar had never
discussed the issue again in public, because they’d all thought of the same outfit when they saw those men – the IRA.

You sure about that? asked Lou.

No, just a hunch said the carpenter. What else would they be? The way they stood close together at the end of the bar drinking tonic water, their leader a wall-eyed man who surveyed you with his one
good eye in a way which made you look away
immediately. They’d stayed all day, eating and talking sparsely at a table outside, all of them with their backs to the gable end. He remembered the glare of the linen tablecloth and their crisp white shirts, done up
to the top button but tieless; gold cufflinks, and
bespoke alligator shoes from Carreducker. Smart as hell, and each of them with a wad of fifty quid notes rolled up in the back trouser pocket, as if they were at a gypsy funeral. No one except them was allowed to pay for drinks; they fed the bar for a whole afternoon, until they left shortly after nightfall. Maureen
had brought out a lantern and they’d sat there
smoking and talking quietly to Pryderi and Big M.

So Big M was in on all this, said Lou.

No, said the carpenter, Big M wanted nothing to do with it. Big M was a steady, regular guy. He’d had enough trouble in his life. Big M wanted a nice easy
time running the bars, enjoying a few scoops with his friends at night, wandering around the county with his girl Rhiannon and generally living the good life.

What sort of man was he? asked Lou.

Really nice bloke, said the carpenter. Sound as a
pound, easy going and fun to be with. No nasty
bits at all, sunny side up all the time, great sense of humour. Incredibly quick on the uptake and good at everything he did. The carpenter recalled a wet Sunday afternoon when Big M had picked up a set
of darts, and within a few hours he was beating
all-comers. Same on the pool table, and the same when it came to drinking, he was good for a long enjoyable session. When he wanted to be alone he’d go off fishing, he’d take his big silver sea rod and he’d come back in a few hours with a bagful of bass, or the first mackerel of the season. Have a look for yourself, said the carpenter, pointing to the framed photographs on the wall.

And although he’d stared at them many times, Lou went over to look at them again.

There he was, Big M, at the centre of most of them; in the national rugby team, or behind the bar, or holding up a huge bass with a small crowd around him. Going up close, so that his nose almost touched
the glass, he took a good look at the man. He was big,
and still in good shape; broad-chested with a trace of a six pack underneath the t-shirt. Underneath the
thin cotton Lou could make out the outline of a
little blue mouse. The famous tattoo. Big M was clean shaven but dark chinned, an A-list magazine model
if ever you saw one. There was something about the eyes which reminded him of someone, but he
couldn’t think who it was. There was a stand-out
feature in all the pictures at Hotel Corvo: Big M always had a smart pair of shoes on his feet. Yes,
Big M was a real dandy when it came to footwear, ranging from huge cowboy boots to brothel creepers, Oxfords, Bluchers, Chelsea boots and brogues, right down to daps and espadrilles, the man was a maniac for footwear. Lou was known for being natty down under himself, but he wasn’t a fetishist. The carpenter made a joke of it.