I was tired.
Aching, sluggish and extremely hung-over. A succession of dive bars and dank hotels in piddling European towns had not quenched my thirst.
London was a bust. Our friends were all, in fact, hers.
My feet were treading cobbles. Cobbles meant picturesque. Picturesque meant tourists. I lurched down a small road, looking for somewhere which didn’t speak English. It’s important to stretch the budget when you’re low on funds and have forgotten which city you’re in.
The street turned to tarmac and the shop windows grew dirtier. I was clearly heading in the right direction and smiled at the thought of a drink. I was soon rewarded by the wrought-iron silhouette of a foaming beer mug swinging above an archway.
I crossed the road, faintly aware of some hooting and honking from irate motorists and stood under the arch. This was indeed not one for the tourists. In front of me was a tiny courtyard. A consumptive tree stretched towards an elusive shaft of natural light in one corner, while in another old and broken chairs were piled high. Beyond, there was a door panelled with small squares of sickly yellow glass. I couldn’t tell whether there were lights on inside.
The door opened to my shove with a judder and a bang. The whole room was a long rectangle, each side lined with wood panelling and mirrors. Trestle tables and benches ran along each wall, with another length of tables down the middle. The bar was open, insofar as the lights glowered dimly and a man stood behind the taps in one of the far corners. I was not quite his only customer, the dubious honour of getting the first drink of the day having fallen to a morose-looking black man halfway down the left hand row of tables. He nursed a large glass of beer and stared fixedly at himself in the mirror.
I sat down on the other side of the room from him, back to the wall. This was what I needed. Even the barman was perfect, wearing an apron and the sort of thick, curving moustaches that few people have the balls to carry off. He came to the table and waited. I gestured at the beer my solitary companion had before him; the message seemed clear enough, as our host walked back to the bar and began pulling me a drink.
It was warm and quiet, just a gentle drumming of rain to break the silence. When the beer arrived, bill slipped beneath the glass, I drank deep, mixing last night’s excesses with today’s new beginnings. It didn’t seem like the sort of place where people were easily offended, so when the first wave of sleep hit me, quieting the angry voices behind my eyes, I stopped resisting and let the undertow drag me down.
*
I was awoken by a jab in the ribs and a grunt. As my eyes focused I saw that someone had shoved onto the bench next to me. Looking beyond his shoulder, I could see why. The room was heaving with a great tide of men.
A roiling, deep-bass hum filled the room, along with a smell like drying mud. Occasional shouts of recognition came as newcomers entered through the left of two doors by the bar. I must have come in the back way. Each arrival seemed to have several old friends among the assembled drinkers.
The men were filthy, their clothes rapidly composting into rags. Dark red-brown stains and dirty bandages made me feel that perhaps I should drink elsewhere. I took a handful of coins out of my pocket and looked at the bill.
All that was marked on it was a stamped line of black numbers:
1 2 8 4 7 9 3 3 1
The man sitting across from me noticed my confusion.
“English?”
Typical; try as I might, my country of origin seems painfully obvious the world around. I nodded to my new friend with a grimace. His smile was reassuring, at odds with the army greatcoat that dwarfed him.
“First time?”
I assented and waved my bill with a gesture of helplessness that he seemed to understand. He looked at the paper avidly.
“Black means no charge for first drink.”
This was odd, but the whole bar had a strange atmosphere, the crowd of men smoking and drinking with single-minded ferocity.
“You want something more for drink?”
I shrugged, not sure if I should stay, but unwilling to be rude, especially in the face of an offer of drink.
He smiled broadly, waved a paper with a short number in red ink stamped upon it and rose from his seat. He hefted a collection of belts and pouches up onto the chair he had just vacated. Among his belongings were an aluminium canteen, a bayonet in a rusting scabbard and a pair of stick-grenades. The more I looked around, the more I sensed that I was at odds with the rest of the company.
Increasingly uncomfortable, I realised that this had not gone unnoticed and struggled to avoid the gaze of several newly-interested patrons. One particularly imposing drinker with a shock of blonde hair and a livid scar across his throat ambled towards my table.
“English?”
I nodded, eyeing the broad slashes in his grenadier’s uniform.
“Crecy, Spion Kop, El Alamein, Suez, Goose Green. Goooood.”
I nodded again, at a loss. He did not strike me as a man to argue with.
“First t…”
His next question was interrupted by a hand on his chest; my drinking companion was quietly gazing up at the interloper, a friendly smile on his lupine features. Looking down from a head taller, the blonde juggernaut pursed his lips and trudged away,
“Sorry for this”
“That’s quite alright. Thank you for the beer.”
“Just need the red numbers and it’s always free.”
A sudden hush fell upon the room as the landlord walked over to the two back doors and wiped down a dusty blackboard. Soon every man in the room was clutching a little scrap of paper like my companion’s, each with a line of red digits stamped upon it.
As the chalk squeaked out 10 lines of numbers, the room filled with perverse cries of jubilation as men realised they were not amongst the winners. Once the landlord replaced the white stick, ten men hefted packs, belts and canvas bags and moved towards the back of the room.
As each passed beside the bar, the landlord handed out fresh uniforms in blues, greens, browns and reds, his words to each man drowned by a rising tattoo of glasses upon table. As the shouting and thrumming from each corner reached its climax, the men walked one by one through the right hand door of the pair.
I looked across the table to where my new acquaintance seemed unaffected by the cacophony; he hacked at a dry sausage with his bayonet.
“The door?”
“You need red for that”. He twirled his yellowed paper between his fingers.
“Where does it go?”
“Everywhere. Wherever men fight, or have fought, or will one day. As I said, everywhere”
Our eyes met, his smile less forced than mine.
There was a draught of air as the left-hand door swung open, and through it limped a short youth dressed all in black, a tricolour band on his arm. He walked to the bar where a drink was waiting for him and gingerly removed his glasses. They hung at an angle, both lenses broken in a spider pattern. He took a long draught and rubbed his face. Taking his beret in both hands, he wrung it out like a cloth, unconcerned as a slow trickle of red liquid spattered the floor at his feet.
“Whatever you think you have lost outside, there is always better in here.”
His smile was still warm and open.
“I should be getting on…” My hand went to the black stamped bill, only to find it enclosed by his gloved fist.
“Many homes. Many lives. So many, you’ll forget this one”
I glanced around, watching the fug of shared sweat rise.
When I looked back to the table, a red-stamped scrap sat beside my own. Looking from hand to arm and up to face, I saw his smile was gone.
“Change? With me. Give me your pass. Take mine.”
I hesitated, hearing the voices of every army in history.
“Try something new. I need to rest. You can have a new life. Lives.”
I breathed in, smelling the sickly aroma of decay. Slowly, carefully, I shook my head, hand closing on my black printed piece of paper.
With a cry my new companion jumped to his feet, snatching up his chair as glasses, weapons and neighbours skittered away from him. The chair swung up and down towards me.
*
A watery light woke me. A quick check of my pockets told me that none of my possessions had wandered in the night. I opened my right hand, and there, framed by the red welts of dug-in nails, nestled the piece of paper bearing nine black digits. Around me the bar sat empty, so I pulled myself up and shuffled towards the yellow-paned door.
As I emerged into the half-light of dawn I came face to face with the barman. I raised my bill towards him, as if to ask how I should pay. His answer was a curt nod before he returned to tossing the fragments of a broken chair onto the pile.
After a moment’s indecision, I walked through the archway and quickened my pace as I set off in search of the train station.
(c) David Mildon, 2007
If you would like to read more stories like this one, please check out Weird Lies, the recent Arachne Press anthology in which it, and many other fantastical stories from the League archives, appears.
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