In the Harbour

Joe came back into the bar and slammed his mobile on the table.
"Bloody kids! Every time I go away for a couple of days they see
monsters under the bed and Ann's mum puts them on the phone to me!
Sorry lads, what will you be having?"
We all put our orders in. "I'll give you a hand," I said, and stood
up. The pub danced round my eyes a couple of times. Too much beer on
top of fresh air.
"What were you all talking about?" asked Joe as I leaned on the
counter next to him.
"Ah, Ian was going on about the man who followed him down here after
he parked the van. Says he was some kind of weirdo."
"Can't have been that weird. We've been sat here an hour at least, and
he's forgotten all about it up to now."
"Ian says he just saw the guy again in the gents, and he was staring
at him."
Joe started laughing, and was about to reply, but the bar lady wanted
to know what he was buying. "Hi boys," she said to me and our table.
From where I stood, the lads were surrounded by flashing lights from
the fruit machine and their reflections in the brass pots nailed up the
wall on either side. These things always feel important when you're
drunk. We all waved back. The bar lady was about fifty, with tightly
curled hair, so it was a bit like being served beer by your aunt. I
think maybe Ian and Dan got a kick out of that.
When she came back with the full glasses, Joe leant over the bar,
half-joking, to warn her that there was a strange old man about. "Oh,
that's old Jack," she said, laughing as the beer spilled from the tops
of the glasses. "He's lived in a cottage right on the coast for years
now, on his own. He doesn't come out much, but he'll do you no harm. If
you buy him a drink, he might even tell you a tale or two about the old
fishing days."
Joe looked at me. I shrugged I wasn't bothered about the "tale or
two", but it'd only be kind to give the old guy a drink.
"What does he usually have?"
"He normally sits round the other side of the bar," the bar lady said,
holding the dark, dripping glass with the ends of her fingers.
"You take this round to him. I'll be all right with these."
"Yes, O Mighty One," I sneered in my mind as Jose ducked the more
difficult task once again. Mind you, if he didn't duck out of his
father's responsibilities so often, we wouldn't be here on holiday. I
picked up the drink and squeezed my way past the tables of middle-aged
yachters into the other half of the bar.
There was a big screen round there where they showed sports events,
especially sailing, and a wide open space for the punters to stand in.
The screen was off, and so were most of the lights. The old man was
sitting alone in the gloom at one of the tables. An empty glass stood
on the table in front of him, next to an ashtray full of dead rollups.
I don't know why, but he looked very weighty, like a chunk of coal with
head and hands attached. His eyes glittered the light from the bar's
busy side back at me. I swallowed. He didn't look dangerous, but maybe
Ian had been right to be worried by him.
He said nothing as I approached. "This is for you. We, er&;#8230;
we thought you might like a top-up."
"That's very kind," he said, and swung his head up to look me in the
eyes. It was like being stared at by a needle. I recoiled from his
pupils' stabbing and looked elsewhere. I could see now that he wasn't
wearing black. It was a kind of very dark tweed, under which he had a
thick cardigan and flannecloth shirt. Old fisherman gear. All that was
lacking was a bit of seaweed from where he'd fallen in. It seemed a lot
to be wearing in the warm pub, but it looked like he needed it, because
he started shivering and gasping. I tried to meet his gaze again, to
ask what was wrong, but he wouldn't look up.
Then his hand grabbed my sleeve. His fingers wanted to rip through the
cloth as they pulled him upright. The other hand, stained yellow across
the back, trembling reached for his pint. "If you don't mind, I'll come
and sit with you, if I may."
"Well," I said, very confused now.
"Do you have a table round there? My old legs won't stand for
long&;#8230;"
The hand released my arm and he went forward, each step swinging one
side of his body upward. I followed, hesitating, not wanting to go too
fast, not wanting to go with him, but afraid of making the drink we
bought him into an unkindness.
It's funny how social rules, the fear of being rude, hold you back
even when you're scared. But I suppose nothing I could have done would
have stopped him. People moved out of his way before they even saw him.
He reached the table, and I saw all the lads' heads turn to look. By
now I was sweating with anxiety and could only respond to Ian's
startled glare with a stupid grin and spread hands.
The old man stood and fumbled in his pockets. I thought he was
reaching for his tobacco, but his hands came out empty. I watched the
thin wisps of beard on his cheek tense and relax while he stared at the
lads and they stared back. Perhaps the pause wasn't all that long,
though, because when Dan spoke he sounded relaxed.
"Take his seat. You'll be able to get your own, won't you?" he said,
looking at me.
I could. I grabbed a stool from a half-empty table and sat down,
panting as though I'd just stepped off Joe's yacht again. The lads were
introducing themselves while Jack took a long swig at his beer. I
didn't say anything. He never asked me what my name was. His eyes went
from one to the other of them, but came back to where I sat opposite. I
remembered the stab of needles and kept my gaze on the deep wrinkles
across his forehead and the thin hairs that hung over them. The noise
from the rest of the pub was going on as before, but from very far
away. I glanced down at the rings of beer on the polished table and
waited for the conversation to go on. A swig from my pint would do no
harm, and I gulped at it.
As I put the glass down, I realised that the old man had been talking.
His voice was so low that I shouldn't have been able to hear it, but
though my ears caught only one syllable in three, I understood
everything he said perfectly. I could do the same thing on the yacht in
the wind, but I knew all the lads, I knew what they would be saying. I
didn't know Jack from Adam.
"You must have walked here along the water's edge, down across the
fields. They have the yachts there now. When I was younger, I used to
go that way myself. We worked the fishing boats -"
I was there, on the boat, the spray smacking against my face and
oilskins. I didn't feel the cold. My feet were set to the roll of the
deck and I payed the rope out with my hands, carefully carefully so it
didn't whip out from the winch. I looked over the boat's flaking blue
side into the sea not three feet under me. A wave slapped up at my
face.
I looked around. Ian, Dan and Joe were all sat listening to the old
man. Their faces showed polite interest, but how could they fail to
notice the different expression on mine? I had felt huge anger that was
only now draining out of me. It took me a few seconds to find my pint,
and I missed what Jack said. He was shaking his head sadly. Must've
been talking about someone getting washed overboard, or something. I
must be more drunk than I realised. I put my hands flat on the edge of
the table and gazed unblinkingly into the shiny basin of the unused
ashtray.
"I stopped doing the boats after that, and because I messed my back
up, and I started work behind a desk up in town. But all my mates were
still fishermen, and I'd walk down to see them when they were setting
off. Most times it'd be at night so's they could be ready to start the
netting when it got light."
I reached for my drink, didn't look up. I could see Dan's fingers
drumming out a slow rhythm on the tabletop. "One night I left them,
must have been about this time of year," when the long sunsets drag
hundreds of colours out from behind the clouds and a single bird
settling on the flat water can set off a million different-shaded
ripples from under its wings. Either side of the water, flat empty
fields stretched out, to the woods, or to the starpoint lights of the
town more than a mile away. There was no one else on the path.
I shook my head free of the landscape, and I was back in the pub. My
mates were either side of me and I was drunk and tired. The noise from
the other tables flared up for a minute, then died back as the old man
went on. "I'd had one or two to drink, and I wasn't so steady on my
feet as I ought to have been. It was going to take me a long while to
get back home. You'll have seen the path I took - you must have gone
along it yourselves to get here. Well, it's always been a bit dodgy.
After dark, one foot wrong and you can be in the water. It's deep right
up to the shore and there's no one thereabouts to pull you out."
The green water rose up in my nose. It felt like it was going to pour
out of me there, all over the table. I reached up a hand. Every moment
I expected to feel the coarse grass along the side of the path, but all
I reached was water. There was only one way I wasn't going to
drown.
"So I was glad when I saw someone ahead of me. He must've been down
with the fishers as well, and he was about a hundred and fifty yards
ahead. Being a bit tiddly, I reckoned I should just catch him up. It
was silly because going faster was just the sort of thing that'd end up
with me head first in the channel. Anyway, I quickened my pace and
thought I'd soon be with him.
The town lights lowered and reared, and I bent my back to get under
the trees' low branches. Cows were eating grass in the field next to me
and the sound of their chewing was alarmingly loud. The path went up
and down every few steps, but I didn't fall. The air roared in my nose
and I realised again what I was feeling. I was angry, dangerously
angry.
"I couldn't catch him. He was still a hundred and fifty yards ahead.
Well, by this time I was fair out of breath, so I stopped. He stopped
too, though he never turned his head. It was a fair bet he didn't even
know I was there. 'Hey there!' I shouted. He didn't move. Well, I say
that, but it's not quite true. When he didn't turn, I stared more
closely at him. He was flickering, like a candle shadow, I first
thought, but it was really more like something you see under the water
when there's waves on the surface."
I squinted in the darkness. The sun was going completely and it was
hard to tell anything apart from the trees and fence posts on the
inland side of the path.
"I shouted again, but after that all the beer I'd drunk froze inside
me. I couldn't do anything but shake. Then he turned round."
The path was a trap. The sounds of the sea and the fields penned it in
on either side. I tried to calm my breathing, but couldn't focus my
eyes on the dark patch that marked the figure out from the other
shadows.
"He came closer and closer." The old man's voice was cracking now.
"All I could do was stare - but I couldn't see him clearly. He was just
a mass like a body, but he had no features. Thing is, I knew that I'd
be able to see him clearly when he wanted me to. I was imagining all
sorts of faces on him, but I knew none of them were right. I was scared
I'd go mad at the sight of him, because really I knew what face he'd be
wearing, and it wasn't one I'd dreamed to see again. There was nothing
I could do to run away. He was coming closer, but it took forever, like
he was waiting until the time was right. I could hear his feet on the
path, and then I could hear his breathing. I wish I'd never been there.
Then he was standing right in front of me, like a cloud of fog."
I looked up and met Jack's gaze across the table. He was as pale as
milk.
"I only remember his eyes," he gasped.
I had escaped the water at last. I seized him by the throat.