Free Landed by Tim Pears

placed himself in the corner, with a view of the whole bar, but he give the impression he had no interest in anyone. See a young bloke like that once in a while, ignoring everyone. Like he’s being rude on purpose to a roomful of strangers, waiting until someone better turns up.
    Once or twice our eyes met, for one second our glances collided, but then he’d look past me, like I were in the way of something more interesting – the spirit bottles up behind the bar, or the lighting fixtures on the ceiling. The bloke hadn’t even registered my presence.
    I can’t remember how did I get to talk to him? Might have been we met when he come to the bar. A word about the weather, the way you do. Or the music on the jukebox. The landlord were ten year older than his clientele and the day he stopped listening to new music were the day he reckoned everyone else should: the pub were one of few still had a jukebox, only every song on it were fifteen year old.
    Yes, I remember now, short conversations while he were putting his money in, selecting a disc. Got as far as knowing each other’s name. ‘Mel.’ ‘Owen.’ Awkward. He made you feel like you was intruding, interrupting some important thought he were sharing with his self.
    I didn’t even know, while I did it, why I were persisting. He give me no encouragement. It were like this secret mission I demanded of myself, whenever our gang stopped by the Red Lion. I kept an eye open, made our paths meet. Words was exchanged.
    â€˜All right?’
    A nod from him, ‘Not bad,’ and that were that. Mission accomplished. I’d persuade the girls to drop in early of a Friday evening, whatever else we was doing later. Then one of them realises what I’m up to, they mocked me rotten.

    â€˜The weirdo in the corner?’ says Janice.
    â€˜Mr Lonely?’ says another. ‘You, Mel Broughton?’
    True, it weren’t like there were no shortage of men. I never had to work hard, never had to work at all, and most of the men was no good. I were nothing neither. Had no family but a brother in Dudley. I were twenty-two, worked in an egg-sorting factory. Half the gang were mothers, tiddlers back home with Grandma while we girls went on the razz. We’d all wagged it through school. If we wasn’t pretty, we was free. Let ourselves be blown about. Bints like me, and young mothers who hated the men what treated them like dirt.
    I knew I wanted different, only I never knew what.
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    It were hopeless. I’d say a word to him, he’d mumble some reply, I’d talk a lot of nonsense and tootle back to me teasing mates.
    I nearly give up, then I go there on me own. There he were, rolling his self a Golden Virginia fake at his table in the corner. What the heck’s I doing here, I thought, as I stood at the bar. To hell with him. I’ll have this half of cider, I’ll be off, I’ll not be here again. Without the girls I must have stood out, felt even more foolish than with them. Like everyone in that bar knows why I’m there, sniggering behind their drinks. Then I realised someone were standing beside me. I turned. It were him. He were only an inch or two taller than me.
    â€˜You weren’t here last week,’ he says, so blank you couldn’t tell whether he were saying how disappointed he was or telling me off or just letting me know how brilliant was his powers of observation.
    â€˜Gerrout,’ I says. ‘You must have missed me,’ I says, lightly, like how funny, what a joke that were.

    He looks at me, Owen does. I look at him, and for the first time he holds my gaze. ‘Yes, I did,’ he says.
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    His hands was rough, a gardener’s hands, I liked the feel of them. They had scars. One was a bite off a ferret, so he said. Another he says, ‘I cut myself shaving.’ Owen learned how to make me laugh. Soil in his fingers like fingerprints, not with ink but earth. And