“Do you think I drink too much?”fficeffice" />

Tommy looked up from the cash register. “Hm? Do I what?”

“Do you think I drink too much?”

“I’m a bar man, Phil” said Tommy, flapping his towel in the direction of the fruit

machine to illustrate. “Why you asking me?”

Who else is there to ask? thought Phil, but he said nothing. He watched Tommy ease his considerable bulk out from behind the bar, and wander about emptying ash trays. It was force of habit, really. Most of them were as empty as the pub. Under the juke box the puppy whimpered and stretched out. Phil yawned. The fruitie was winking at him, enticing. He turned his back on it and hunched over the bar.

“Is it Monica?” asked Tommy, squeezing himself back in again. Tommy had learned in the past eighteen months that mostly with Phil it was Monica.

“Maybe,” muttered Phil, “yes...no. I don’t know. Perhaps. If I hadn’t spent so long sitting up here, talking about her… I could have been at home, you know, talking to her, trying to sort things out.”

Tommy said nothing. As the eyes and ears of the pub he knew very well Monica had never been sat at home lonely. He shifted uncomfortabl and glanced at Phil. Maybe he should suggest he looked for a proper job instead of skanking the social, but there were profits to consider. These were lean times. He took Phil’s glass and poured him another Guiness. Phil stared at it mournfully. He missed Kristiana, the little polish barmaid. She would draw hearts in the foam of his pints. Sometimes flowers. She’d gone now though, disillusioned. Shocked to find English man were just Polish men, beneath it all. Tommy was not really a substitute. He didn’t smell as nice, for one.

They were all leaving him, he thought, taking a welcome mouthful. First the builders, their work on the new shopping centre complete. Welsh Steve emigrated, and Derek got posted abroad with work. The Geordie lads fell out with each other and neither had been seen since. Then Kristiana fled, and shortly afterwards Dave was barred for calling Tommy ‘a stinking paddy fuckwit.’ ffice:smarttags" />Nev stopped drinking in there on principle, and took Debbie and their four screaming kids with him. They drank down the street now, in a place that was rumoured to have a pool table. Phil had never ventured in. This was his local. His refuge, his rock. His Anchor, he thought, and smiled to himself. Without Debbie the darts team had fallen apart, which was a shame. There were some nice birds on The Anchor darts team. Many a cosy Thursday evening he’d spent watching them slowly sinking Bacardi Breezers to steady their aim. Monica would roll her eyes at them, and make fun, but he knew she was jealous really. Excluded. Monica, with her silver jewellery and subtle beauty, would never be on the team.

Now he was thinking of Monica again. He felt unsteady. There was a white pain between his eyes. He’d known, when she stayed out all night, that the game was finally up. He’d lost. But still, he hadn’t been prepared. She’d come home sobbing and then he was sobbing and then she was running out into the night, one sleeve of her coat flapping. In too much of a hurry even to dress properly. He’d run down the street after her, shoes in hand, barefoot, unheeding. She managed to flag a taxi and escape. He hurled his trainers after her, as cars swerved angrily around him. Then he’d come up to The Anchor and played the fruit machine blind til Tommy made a bed up for him upstairs. He’d spent his entire Jobseekers in one evening. He could hear the fruit machine behind him now, whirring and bleeping, taunting. He looked at Tommy, who was absentmindedly polishing glasses. He asked him again.

“Do I drink too much?”

“Of course not, mate. When you have to drink down The Dog cos we won’t have you. Then you’ll know you drink too much.”

It was eighteen months before Phil found himself in The Dog and Partridge.  There’d been a small misunderstanding over the track listing to Rubber Soul, Monica’s reputation, and the internet. A pint glass was thrown. A window was broken. A lip was split. And he was barred from his sanctuary. (‘Sure I feel terrible,’ said Tommy, ‘but you’ve got to understand…It’s since Monica left Phil…get yourself sorted out, eh mate?’) He felt uneasy walking into The Dog. Enemy territory. The only contact he’d had with these heathen people was the rough and tumble of a Sunday League morning. It was bright and white and noisy, full of outcasts from The Anchor and teenagers Tommy wouldn’t risk serving. He noticed, without much satisfaction, that there was a pool table after all. He cleared his throat. There was a woman behind the bar, equal to Tommy in stature, but fiercer looking.

“Guinness.”

“You that lad who’s missus ran off?”

“Um...” Phil felt the colour rising in his cheeks and giving him away.

“No funny business in here, alright?” said the woman, placing his drink down with unexpected tenderness. There was a silence as they watched it settle.

“I’m Mel,” she said, as he raised the glass to his lips, “that’s right honey, you get that down ya. It’ll help you forget.”

And it did.

Soon he was on the pool team, then darts. Tommy used to change the fruitie every two weeks in The Anchor, so Phil rarely got the measure of them, but in The Dog the machine was old and dusty and he soon fell in love with it. Learned it’s little tricks. In time he even managed to get a job, driving a van and delivering car parts. Not much, but enough to keep him in Guinness and whiskey chasers. He found himself pulling into the The Dog’s car park every night, and driving the unsteady mile home in the early hours. He got on with Mel, although she never drew him flowers. She served him way past twelve, which he felt was the more important quality. Years passed, until his days of living with Monica and joking with Tommy were all but forgotten.

Then one day he reversed out of The Dog’s car park and straight over The Anchor’s dog.

The police were unsympathetic. Tommy was inconsolable, howling and raving until they threatened to arrest him for breach of the peace. He retreated, gasping, back to The Anchor. He closed up, and stayed closed for a fortnight.  Everyone understood. A pub had to have a dog. It was never the same in there again. 

Phil was hunched over the body, dry heaving and giggling like a maniac. The alsation had grown up big – Tommy had been right about the paws. He tried to explain it to the police, but they were more interested in forcing him into the back of the van without getting any more vomit than was absolutely necessary on their uniforms. He passed out in the cell as soon as they’d manhandled him into it. It was light when he came round and a WPC gently explained to him what he’d done. Phil sank back down on the bench and put his head in his hands. He cried real tears for the first time since Monica vanished.

They took his license for eighteen months, which lost him his job. They fined him five hundred pounds, which lost him his flat and sent him back to the bedsit he’d vowed to get Monica out of. He was given fifty hours community service and, owing to his previous warnings for being drunk and disorderly, asked him to attend twelve meetings. A life for a life, he thought, ruefully. He was angry, at Tommy and at Mel and everyone else he’d ever asked. They should have forced him to stop. Not served him. Barred him from every pub in England. Anything. He’d asked them time and time again if he drank too much. No-one had had the bollocks to say yes.

He glanced at the leaflet in his hand, turning it upside down to orient himself on the map. Luckily, he’d been able to walk there, although it had taken a good hour or so. He hadn’t been able to face getting on another bus. He’d taken one to the job centre that morning, found himself crammed in with the pushchairs and the old folk. Outside the community centre a small group got on with a guardian. People started shifting uncomfortably in their seats, closing their eyes and feigning sleep. Wondering if it was the Thursday night group from The Anchor, Phil glanced over them. They didn't look familiar. Downs, Downs, a man staring at the floor and gripping his rucksack in both hands - Autistic? An older man, mumbling [blah blah blah descriptive stuff I'm not happy with] He'd made himself like that. Drugs? But Phil knew. Drink. Alcohol alcohol alcohol [poss take that out it's a bit dumb] He lurched forward unsteady as the movement of the bus caught him off guard. He grasped the bar tighter and, still swaying a little, managed to press the bell. He’d had to get off three stops early, shuddering and retching. He hadn’t had a drink for three days.

He squinted at the map again and looked around. This must be the right street, with the church in the middle. There was a pub at the top and at the bottom. He’d have to walk past at least one of them to get home. He wondered if they’d chosen the church specifically for that reason. He crossed the street and stared up at it. The pigeons stared back down at him. A door opened somewhere and he heard laughter. Students. These houses were near the university. They must watch everyone trooping in here every Wednesday, he thought. They must know. He screwed the paper up and jammed it into his pocket, pushed open the double doors and took a deep breath. He was not looking forward to this.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n23/suth01_.html