Man in the corner

27 AUGUST 2014 – 381 WORDS.

CHARACTERS:
Man in the corner – himself.
Molly – The wonderer.
Woman – Sits with the Man in the Corner.
Clive, Dan, Harry – Boys in the pub.

Man in the corner

He was always there, an open notebook and a pencil to his left. In the corner, supping his beer. Watching. 

The regulars nodded in his direction when they arrived and left, occasionally placing a pint on the small round table in front of him.

Molly had been watching him for over a year. Was the man there every night or just Saturdays like her? When she and her mates drifted into The Poacher she tried to be first or second, so she could have a seat facing in his direction.

Sixty going on seventy, he had a worn look about 

him. Sometimes a rather imposing woman, older, she recognised from Sunday confession, would join the man. His stoop would disappear and they would lean in towards one another, deep in conversation. After an hour she always left.

Molly looked at her companions. Which one would it be tonight? Clive, Dan, Harry? By the end of the evening she wouldn’t care. Her need met she could go back to being herself for another week. The boys always did their sums. The first thing they did. 

Were there enough to go round? Their broad smiles of expectation answered the question.

The man at the table was a writer. Dark tales of mayhem on city streets after dark. Reading his work she saw it was pitted with faces she knew from The Poacher. To be a writer she would need a table of her own, where she could sit and observe. ‘Stay in one place long enough and the world comes to you.' Someone said that.

He was always last to leave, then he would zigzag his way around the city centre, watching and listening, unnoticed by boisterous revellers queuing for taxis or waiting for a night bus to carry them away on tarmac tides to rooms in suburbia or campus halls. The Council House lions mute. Constables would acknowledge his presence by ignoring him. Fights followed in his wake. He would turn and watch. A ventriloquist too. 

Had Molly followed him, as she was tempted, she might have seen the woman open the door and the shadow of their embrace behind the frosted glass. The table in the corner was her future and she was the woman.

©Robert Howard