Half-pint

I was pouring one when they slammed the wooden doors inward. Old Jacques had been intently watching me but pretending not to, because in his core, past the churning topsoil of self-aggrandisement, he didn’t want to seem rude. His perfectly circular eyes with pink rims slinked now towards my face, down to the glass where the drink rose, then sprang back to the floor when he felt they’d lingered too long. This pattern never paused as he talked, and his talk never did for that matter, always somehow both pulled to a taught staccato and left dangling: ‘Hey, attaboy, Dave, ‘s’goin’ down a treat tonight!’

Jacques’ accent was American but his tales, with the advice he mined from them and divvied conspiratorially among those he considered friends - bouncing yet sloppy voice hushed, and tongue whetted - spanned the whole planet and all of time. He remembered the swinging sixties, sure, and could tell you about London parties walled by stiff red curtains that stood up on their own, but you know he worked ‘with Jong-il’s guys in ninety-three, too, huh? Man, I got gold invested in more joints than I got gold teeth.’ Then he’d half-grin, half-exposing them to you.

Alas, his attempted breezy nonchalance and nightly routine were unbalanced as the entering crowd launched themselves towards the bar, most of them shouting. I finished up Old Jacques’ bev and gave myself a mental nod of satisfaction with the creamy head on it - as one often does without thinking - while peering warily at the commotion for signs of its cause. Jacques knew one of them and lurched at him: ‘What’s happenin’ man, what’s happenin’?’

His associate had a grey moustache as smooth as an eel. I’d seen him before once or twice but couldn’t name him yet. ‘Look, mate. Look at this! Jonah and me are walking here, yeah, and this lump’s lying there. On a bin.’

‘Aw, jeez, tha’s crazy gravy, brother. Where’s Jonah?’

‘Vaping outside, mate. And tellin’ Nigel. Isn’t it beautiful, though?’

‘We’re gonna spike it!’ interjected a regular I did know, Sal, who was typically a conscientious customer until her third glugging of two-hundred-and-fifty millilitres. The thin fringes of her eyes, nostrils and mouth were stretched back wide from place with bewildered excitement. ‘It’s destiny.’

I hadn’t seen one in a good few years, so it took a moment to recognise the slight form of it. Wrapped in a chunky blanket and cradled gently by Jacques’ moustachioed acquaintance, its long, yellow ears curled back towards its downy scalp, its black nails and bent facial features like those of a pale, hairless squirrel mixed with a man - a goblin.

‘You found a goblin sitting on a bin?’ I asked sceptically, noting the (I’m sure you’ll agree) natural disgust for their kind unfurling in my belly. A potent memory flashed through my mind concerning my fat grandfather’s loathing of their propensity to steal pickles from his larder.

‘Not sitting, son, lying. It’s got a broken arm, innit.’

‘Yeah, yeah, it does, it does,’ Jacques said, pulling back the blanket and examining the animal’s right arm by pinching it between his forefinger and thumb. The goblin’s mouth twitched and it hissed. ‘Well, can we put it on the spike, Dave?’ He looked made up. As far as Old Jacques was concerned, this had become the ideal evening to reinforce the sticky, seeping glue that held his leadership of the gang together.

‘Yeah, alright,’ I sighed.

For hours that night, locked within the friendly glow of the pub, we watched, stunned and attracted, as a huge barn owl silently slid to and from the spike and the black sky.