Bob Hawkins nudged his empty pint glass across the beaten copper of the barroom table. Opposite him sat Jim “Kipper” Jones, whose weather-beaten face was an object lesson in why digging roads through West Wales winters was no career for an aspiring film star, especially not after thirty years. Bob was no picture himself, either. His lived-in face topped a scrawny frame wrapped in a Gannex mac two sizes too big, fished from the back rail of an Oxfam shop fifteen years earlier.
Bob, however, looked much younger than Jim. Though they’d been friends since school, he’d taken a different path, scraping together just enough GCSEs to land an office job at the local labour exchange thirty-five years earlier. It was Bob who got Jim his first and only job, patching potholes for the council. Once settled into the steady rhythm of Civil Service life, he never moved on either. After two early, unsuccessful applications for promotion, Bob chose the next best option: to dig in. In his own way, he was a digger, too.
“Your round, I believe, Kipper.” Bob’s right eye flickered, betraying his thinning patience at Jim’s wallet reticence.
“I’ll just finish my jar,” Jim responded. He tapped the side of his glass, still holding an inch of beer, but didn’t pick it up.
“That pint has greater longevity than my nan,” Bob observed. “And she passed on at the grand old age of ninety-six.”
“I like to savour my beer,” Jim replied.
“Is this savouring intermittent?” Bob placed an elbow on the table, cupping his chin with his hand. “Because I seem to recall that when I’m buying, your throat magically transforms into a drain with no sides.”
Jim rolled his eyes. “Thine sword doth pierce mine heart.”
“Well, hopefully it sliced through the hawser mooring your purse to your jacket, liberating it to perform its intrinsic duty of purchasing a couple of pints of Burton’s best.” Bob liked to display his command of English. It gratified his vanity to believe he was somehow superior to his friend.
Two pints later, Jim stretched his arms. “I’m beat. Better get home to the missus. She’ll be throwing a fit at me being out all hours.”
“It’s not nine o’clock yet, Kipper,” Bob protested. “Stay for another. I’m buying.”
“I can’t, Bob. It’s Friday night.” Jim shook his head. “Alice will be back from bingo in half an hour. We always have an early night on Fridays. If you know what I mean.”
Bob knew exactly what he meant, though not from personal experience: he had never married. He’d come close once, but said something clever at the wrong moment. Now he was used to sliding his key into a cold lock and being greeted by silence.
As Kipper disappeared through the door, Bob ordered another pint. The last thing he wanted was to return to his empty flat and sit watching the psychopaths on the nine o’clock news.
Still, at least he could turn an elegant phrase.
