As Neville stood in the door of the Flying Swan musing upon the day’s peculiarity, a beggar of dreadful aspect and sorry footwear shuffled towards him from the direction of Sprite Street and the Dock. He noted quite without thinking that an air of darkness and foreboding accompanied this lone wanderer.
“Ugh,” said Neville. He felt twin shudders originate within his monogrammed carpet slippers, wriggle up the hairs of his legs and meet in the small of his back, where as one united shudder they continued upwards, finally (although all this took but a second or two) travelling out of the top of his head leaving several strands of Brylcreem defying gravity. Neville felt a sudden need to cross himself, and performed that function with somewhat startled embarrassment.
He returned to the bar to await the arrival of the solitary traveller. Time passed however, and no such shadow darkened the Swan’s doorway. Neville sloped over to the door and gazed cautiously up the street. Of ill-omened tramps the street was empty.
Neville scratched his magnificent nostrils with a nicotined finger and shrugged grandiloquently. “Now there’s a thing,” he said to himself.
“Could I have a glass of water please?” said a voice at his elbow.
Neville controlled his bladder only by the merest of lucky chances. “Lord save me,” he gasped, turning in shock to the quizzical face of the materialized tramp.
“Sorry, did I startle you?” asked the creature with what seemed to be genuine concern. “It’s a bad habit of mine, I really must control it.”
By this time Neville was back behind the bar, the top bolted shut and his shaking hands about glass and whisky optic. “What do you want?”
“A glass of water, if I may.”
“This isn’t a municipal bloody drinking fountain,” said Neville gruffly. “This is an alehouse.”
“My apologies,” said the tramp. “We have I think got off to a rather poor start. Perhaps I might have a pint of something.”
Neville downed his large whisky with a practised flick of the wrist and indicated the row of enamel silver-tipped beer pumps. “State your preference,” he said and here a note of pride entered his voice. “We have a selection of eight ales on pump. A selection which exceeds Jack Lane’s by four and the New Inn by three. I think you will find it a hard business to out-rival the Swan in this respect.”
The tramp seemed fascinated by this intelligence. “Eight, eh?” He walked slowly the length of the bar past the eight gleaming enamel sentinels. His right forefinger ran along the brass rim of the bar top and to Neville’s horror deftly removed the polish, leaving in its place a trail like that of a slug. Halting at the end he became suddenly aware of Neville’s eyes and that the barman was involuntarily clenching and unclenching his fists.
“Sorry,” he said, raising his finger and examining it with distaste, “again I have blotted my copybook.”
Neville was about to reach for his knobkerry when the friendly and reassuringly familiar figure of Jim Pooley appeared through the bar door whistling a tuneless lament and tapping his right knee with his racing paper. Jim mounted his very favourite bar stool with time-worn ease and addressed Neville with a cheery “Mine will be a pint of Large please, Neville, and good morning.”
The part-time barman dragged his gaze from the unsightly tramp and drew Jim Pooley a fine glass of the true water.
