In a land of reclaimed rivers, pulverized minerals and wheeler-dealers, were three men who formed a psycho-anarchic syndicate. They all desired the same woman.
 
The three of them made a vast inverted triangle over southern England, with Sydney Gristmill occupying the apex in Bridport, Dorset, not far from Portland Castle. Sydney Gristmill had a severe madarosis, which left neither hair on his brow nor lash on his lid. This condition unnerved the objects of his steady gaze and tended to squelch friendships before they had the chance to ignite. He was lonely.
 
Polder was further out west in Taunton. It was a far cry from the child he had been, to the man he had become. Something had happened along the way, too serious to talk about. It had caused an unusually high level of dampness, resulting in melancholia. Not an attractive prospect for females.
 
George Chapman moved around a lot, but Inland Revenue had an address for him in Guildford. He was a friendly man with lips poised to smile, and whose smiles always verged on laughter. His good humour was accompanied by a fondness for food and drink which left him abdominous in physique. George Chapman was also pathologically dishonest. He was simply unable to tell the truth. He didn't even know what it was.
 
One night, under a decrescent moon, these three points converged in a public house in West London. It was just after nine and The Crumb and Horse was doing a brisk trade. Lancer had his head on the table next to his unfinished pint of ESB. He was an old soldier, and a regular since before anyone else present had been born. It was only at closing time, when he didn't get up, that he was discovered to be dead. Until that moment they respectfully let him sleep, besides, he always nursed his pint.
 
Michael Polder stood at the bar, eyeing the woman behind it. He was searching for something to say but she never gave him the opportunity. Whenever she was nearby, her attention was engaged by something else - anything but him. Then she would move away again quickly. He watched silently as Chapman, who was at the other end, made her laugh every time she passed. Gristmill sat alone at a table by the door, glaring at anybody who noticed him. These three men had never met. Their syndicate was an unconscious one, more to do with the linkage of events than any individual cognition.*
 
The clock on the wall marked the inexorable approach of closing time. It was a cycle, this opening and closing, akin to the waxing and waning of a moon or the beating of a heart. Coupled with the ancient history of the hop, the mystery was complete. With handshakes and micturition the clientele thinned, and the men made their way home to their lonely wives. One of them accidentally shat himself upon a cough.
 
Polder and Chapman had moved closer together at the bar. Now that she was markedly less busy, the barmaid knew that some kind of conversation was going to become inevitable. The one with the face like a skull had been trying to talk to her all night. He was persistent. She had taken some pleasure in pretending not to notice him. Unsolicited attention was part of the job. Most of it was from drunken men, and ran the gamut between muddled sincerity and outright leering. She had strategies to deal with most situations, so well-worn they didn't require thought. The last, and most tangible, was the cricket bat beneath the bar, which she had never needed to use. One of her roles at The Crumb and Horse was matriarchal, dispensing sympathy and medicine in equal measures, and chiding where necessary. She also played the elusive maiden, fleeting through the imaginations of her customers. Behind it all was her own life, her own man and child. None of the patrons could conceive of that, except the women perhaps, and they were few. Thirty five minutes to go and she would be free. It was the man by the door who disturbed her most, ogling her with his strange eyes. He looked the type to follow her home.
 
"Last orders gentlemen."
 
She would address them both. It was simpler that way. They wanted refills.
 
"I haven't seen you here before. Where are you from?"
 
The skull opened his mouth but the fat one cut him off.
 
"You don't remember me? I live around the corner. I'm in here all the time."
 
She doubted herself briefly.
 
"Surely you recognize my friend?"
 
After a fractional delay, he rubbed his belly with a big hand, eyes a'twinkle. She wasn't sure what to make of it.
 
Chance, tempered by fate had brought Chapman, Polder and Gristmill to The Crumb and Horse that evening. A visit, scheduled the next morning, to a specialist at Hammersmith Hospital regarding his hair loss, was causing Gristmill anxiety and was dragging down his mood, which was never above average anyway. He had reserved a room on Rylett Road. Chapman was in the area to broker a deal with a local felon, on a large number of cigarettes he had come by. Michael Polder was in West London to attend an afternoon of poetry readings. All of their plans hinged on the following day. They could have gone to any pub but they all ended up at 'The Horse'. Perhaps it was the unusual sign that had attracted them, prehistoric and schematic, like the horse on the Berkshire Downs. Once inside, they came to desire the barmaid.
 
Now, including Lancer who was still asleep, there were only five of them left in the place. It was becoming too intimate. She was thinking she would lock up, let them finish their pints and send them on their way.
 
Chapman had his forearms on the bar. He was trying to peer over it surreptitiously, without her noticing. She had an interesting way of moving – nothing was wasted, each hand on a separate task. Her straight black hair was tied up behind, and her eyes, done up like Nefertiti, would slip through his gaze as he tried to catch them.
 
"What's your name then?"
 
Before she had time to answer, two men burst through the door. They might have been brothers, both large, ruddy and middle aged, still living the life of the fist. Everything about them was hasty, which seemed incongruous for such big men. The door had not even swung shut when one of them yelled.
 
"Stand back from the bar lads."
 
Within seconds chairs and tables were flying and glass was breaking. She ducked down low next to the cricket bat. Chapman had taken off to the back room, where the dartboard was. Gristmill and Lancer remained at their tables. Polder stayed at the bar, bemused by the rapidity of events, and unable to register danger. They paid him no attention. Then the men were gone, as suddenly as they had arrived.
 
The barmaid stood up and took in the damage. Every single bottle and glass on the back bar was smashed.
 
"Looks like Mathers missed a payment. Everyone alright?"
 
She saw that Polder was racked with emotion and seemed as if he was about to cry.
 
"Come on. You can all have another for your troubles. Draught only I'm afraid."
 
Chapman was back. She glanced over at Gristmill.
 
"You want one, love?"
 
"I'll take a London Pride."
 
She poured the drinks, and walked over to Lancer, gently tapping him on the shoulder.
 
"Time to go home, dear."
 
When he didn't stir, she tapped him again, a little harder. Then she felt his neck and lifted his head with both hands.
 
"My God he's dead. The old bugger."
 
She put his head back on the table, paced a circle momentarily, then opened the door and stepped out. When she came back in, Chapman, Polder and Gristmill glimpsed a woman they hadn't noticed before. Decisive, cool under stress, authoritative.
 
"You're going to have to help me out boys. There's a telephone box a few yards up the street. Take old Lancer here, and put him in the phone box."
 
She felt their hesitation.
 
"He died of natural causes. He was an old man. It doesn't make any difference if he died here or in a phone box a few yards away. We just don't want the law coming round asking questions, do we? We're not doing anything wrong."
 
They could see her point. She kept lookout as they struggled to get Lancer out of his chair. The meaning of deadweight became apparent. Gristmill was taking most of the burden. As they left the building, Chapman was grinning.
 
"What a way to go. Fuck me. It couldn't get much better than that. Well, unless..." He looked over his shoulder at her as they stumbled past. The street outside was quiet. Anyway, there was nothing unusual about a man being helped home by his mates when he was a little the worse for wear. She watched as they propped Lancer up in the telephone box and then she locked the door.
 
Though she found each one of them unattractive, their individual qualities of humour, sensitivity and strength, when taken together, would make a tolerable human being.
 
*The idea that events are prisoners of time but their connections, existing only in perception, are not completely temporal, is elegantly explored in 'The Power of Zero', R.F. Glover, Stampede Press, 1957. Author's note.

©Tom Newton 2016