NOTE - this short story appeared originally in my collection, A Cure for Love (Typewriter Press, 2020) and one day it'll be in print again. Maybe I'll shove it on Kindle.
The last train of the day was the first train of the next.
The station’s signal bell would clang out across the inevitable dankness a few minutes before midnight. Stood on the platform would be the guard looking out down the long straight track waiting for the small light of the 23:56 to make itself known. And then it would come at you, a ghost train from Swansea.
The driver and the conductor alight because that’s what you do with trains. Before doing so they check the train for signs of life and bombs in the carriages. Finding none, they switch the lights off and creep away like tired parents from a shattered baby.
For once, there’s a passenger on board. A stocky, mid-height fella built like a straight-to-video Rambo. He’s wearing a black jacket like bouncers wear with a logo emblazoned across the back. Despite the hour, he’s wearing shades which, combined with his full beard and handsome head of hair, give the impression of him being half-bear.
He carries two gym bags and, if there was anyone about, you’d see them gawping at him. It’s a week before Christmas, gone midnight and colder than a loan shark’s eyes. But the shades stay on, offering some protection for his eyes from the icy wind that always visits come Christmas. The jacket will help too, but not much. It’s the shorts he’s wearing that would cause most concern though, skimpy little numbers, silky affairs revealing darkly tanned and muscular legs.
Striding upward through the sleepy Welsh town he looks like the Terminator played by Dave Lee Travis. Or some sort of avenging cowboy from a spaghetti western designed by the Kids from Fame. No-one exists to challenge him as he moves slowly over the bridge and into the town seemingly impervious to the bitter night.
Me, Skinny
and the Bish are in the Fatted Calf. Oh, and Beppo the cabbie. Beppo is
sat a couple of stools down from us, talking to One-Eyed Barry the barman. The curtains are drawn, the lights are dimmed. We can hear the wind.
The jukebox dies dramatically halfway through Otis Redding’s whistle at the
end of Dock of the Bay so for a second it feels like Otis is in the room really
giving his whistle some welly.
We’ve already had a few drinks and are resigning ourselves to a wet walk home but Barry indicates through some subtle nodding that not all of his patrons need leave at twenty past. He’s a good lad, Barry. Bit of a past mind. Was in a stolen car when he was fifteen, which flipped doing sixty on the roundabout by Burger King. The flip killed his best mate who was driving and Barry was lucky to survive himself by all accounts. Died twice on the operating table. Came round a month later. Broken back, a fucked leg and one eye down. Didn’t get probation or youth custody - magistrate reckoned he’d been punished enough.
Unlike us three, beyond help. Old one eyes has laid on some after show chemicals and me and Skinny are polishing our young gums with speed whilst the Bish walks behind the bar and helps himself to a large Bells.
“Lift home in
a bit Bep?” says Skinny, oblivious to the large scotch Beppo is drinking.
“I don’t like
driving at night.”
“It’s pissing
down.”
“I don’t like driving in the rain either.”
Before we can address Beppo’s lack of professionalism there’s a knock at the door. An insistent and assertive banging.
Police?
Silence.
“Fuck,” says Barry.
Another set of knocks.
“Fuck,” we all say.
Then a rap at the window.
Barry picks the keys off the little hook above the till and moves towards the door. Limping still, fifteen years after the accident. Not that that’s ever going to go away.
We hear the door being unbolted, then opened, the rain rushing down Lammas Street like a small ocean walking past.
“Any rooms?”
This is a new voice. Not local.
“Erm yeah. It’ll take me a few minutes but yeah. Come in.”
The Fatted Calf is a hotel but no-one’s stayed here for a while. Wrong end of town, the guy’s clearly taken a wrong turn for hotels from the station. There’s a couple of rooms upstairs and Barry’s up there sorting things out when the stranger walks in to the bar, places his bags down in a corner, takes the stool next to Beppo and sits down.
Skinny and I look at the Bish. The Bish looks at us.
“Why is he
wearing shades?” says Skinny.
“It’s
thingy,” I whisper.
“Who?” says
the Bish?
“You know,
out of erm, the cop films.”
“No, no it’s
not him. That’s erm Bob someone. This is that bloke from that thing with erm
Clint Eastwood, the Western guy.”
“Bollocks. You’re both wrong. It’s wotsit who played for Everton when we were kids.”
And so on. Beppo moves over to our end of the bar, seemingly
to conduct some business with the cigarette machine, but obviously to throw his
theory into the ring. Four voices whispering animatedly whilst pretending to
contemplate the varying merits of cancer sticks.
“Bollocks.
It’s whatsisface out of Batman.”
“Bennies?
You’re mad. They’re fucking horrible.”
“No, no it’s
definitely the big bearded fella who played for England.”
“Keith is
it?”
“Only wankers
smoke B and H.”
“Nigel?”
“What was
that thing with Michael Douglas? Streets of San Francisco. It’s him. With a
beard.”
“Not fucking
Nigel Carradine is it? Dickhead.”
“Used to go
out with Christ, what’s her name, the Swedish weathergirl.”
“Silk
Cut. Christ, Beppo. You can do better than that. Get some full fat
Marlboro.”
“That’s it.
That’s who he is.”
“He’s so
famous that we’ve forgotten who he is.”
“Yeah,
Marlboro Lights. A safe smoke.”
“Perhaps he’s Jesus.”
The thought that the Messiah might be seeking shelter in the Fatted Calf hangs heavily in the air until sanity arrives in the form of the limping Cyclops that is Barry.
“I’ll show you to your room.”
The World’s Most Famous Man picks his bags up and moves through the little serving hatch and out of sight up the little staircase to the side of the optics. There’s a mumbled conversation we can’t hear followed by the strangely offbeat rhythm of Barry coming back down.
Skinny and Beppo are negotiating a dry drive home in Beppo’s taxi.
“Beppo, come
on. Give us a lift. It’s fucking pouring man.”
“I’ve had too
many.”
“No you
haven’t. What’s your mum’s name?”
“Mum.”
“That’s good enough for me. No mental impairment there.”
Barry pours himself a large gin.
“Who the fuck
is he then?” I ask him.
“Mr. Smith
apparently,”
“I told you Bish,
he’s a celebrity. That’s what they do. Smith my arse.”
“I’m not sniffing your arse you bender.”
Barry is giggling. Beppo has his hands in the air in mock surrender.
“Alright, alright. I give in.”
The argument continues all the way to me tipping Beppo an extra couple of quid. At various points in the journey The World’s Most Famous Man has played up front for England, fucked Carrie Fisher, been in films with Sylvester Stallone and David Niven and been one of the presenters on Good Morning Britain.
“If he’s done
all that, then good luck to him. He must be the World’s Most Famous Man,” says
the Monk.
“He’s not even
Italian,” says Skinny.
“Who now,” I
ask.
“Fucking
Beppo”
“That’s it.
It’s him. The opera fella,” screams the Bish as we finally open the front door.
“It isn’t fucking Pavarotti.”
The World’s
Most Famous Man never left the Calf. He stayed there forever, ended up working
the bar. I never asked his name. No one did. Not even Barry who just called him
Smithy whenever he asked him to change a barrel.
All weathers you’d see him out in his wife beater vest and sunnies; his tan never fading despite the best efforts of the Carmarthen micro-climate. People would say hello if they drank at the Calf and Smithy would nod and flash those amazing Hollywood teeth. Other people would gawp at him and make their own observations as to who he was. He was thingy out of Star Trek. He was JPR Williams. He was Italian. He was German. He made porn. He dealt drugs. He was Mary’s cousin, you know Mary from the bakery on Pond Road. He was Gandhi, Superman and Elvis.
He was the World’s Most Famous Man.
