Читать книгу Vulgar Things - Lee Rourke - Страница 12

Rather predictably I find myself in another bar, the Montagu Pike, a horrible, cavernous wreck of a place stuffed with chrome furniture and blatherskites. I sit upstairs on the balcony, looking down at the swathes of daytime drinkers. It feels good up here, drinking beer after beer, looking down on them. It feels like I belong on some separate level, something higher: a plateau designed only for people like me – whatever I am. Sometimes I catch people looking up at me between sips and conversation, flashes of face and eye, vacant features pointing upwards, like you see in old religious paintings. I feel like the icon, the subject of their gaze. It’s a good feeling, no matter how fleeting and inconsequential. So I stay here all afternoon, until the streets of Soho darken – drinking, watching, being watched.

As I am about to leave I strike up a conversation with a member of the bar staff as she wipes down the tables around me. She is young and looks bored. I feel a bit sorry for her, stuck in such an awful pub at this hour.

‘Not long to go, eh?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Not long until closing …’

‘Oh, yeah, closing …’

‘You must hate it here?’

‘It’s okay …’

‘People like me bothering you all the time; it must bore you to tears?’

‘Not really.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘I like being around people … What about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Why are you here? I’ve been watching you all day sitting up here, looking down on everyone, drinking cheap beer; surely it’s you that’s bored?’

‘I was sacked from my job today …’

‘Really? What do … did you do?’

‘I was a production editor, at a small academic publisher. They sacked me because I wasn’t … productive enough.’

‘Silly billy.’

‘Yeah. I guess I am.’

‘Maybe this is the start of something new? … a new adventure for you.’

‘Another petty drama? … I doubt it.’

She continues to wipe down the tables, long after our conversation has run its rudimentary course. I like her. She seems to bounce from table to table, the same bored look on her face. I want to be just like her, I want to look and feel just like her. But I know this isn’t the case – should a mirror be at hand, I’d see a look of abject terror on my face. A deep fixed terror. I stumble up from my chair and walk somewhat clumsily back down the stairs towards the front door. I feel the cold night air as I step onto Charing Cross Road. I have two options: a) go home to my poky flat, or b) carry on drinking. It doesn’t take much thought to go with the latter.