Part 4

“I’m not sure I like the idea of you being in a pub full of men drinking themselves into a stupor.”

“But it’s just around the corner, Mum,” he countered. “All I ever see in there are old boys in cloth caps playing dominoes or cards.”

After a little further cajoling, she finally relented and let him go and see the pub owner, Pete Swindle, a Cockney type, all gold bracelets and rings, who rarely had a large gin and tonic out of his hand.

“And you’re eighteen now, are you, son? And you can start right away?”

Pinky nodded eagerly. As soon as he’d walked through the door, he’d taken a liking to the place, especially the old beer posters, tin plates, and mirrors on the walls – Guinness for Strength, Senior Service Cigarettes, Make Mine a Cinzano – and the Toby tankards dangling from the ceiling. Everything made him feel as if he’d travelled back fifty or more years in time.

“There you go, then.” Swindle, for reasons Pinky never understood, tossed him an apron he never once used during his two-year tenure as pot boy. “Make a start now. Call it a trial session. If you impress, the job’s yours.”

And impress he did.

With his truly astonishing reach and eagle eye, he plucked an empty glass from a table a split second after the customer had taken the last sip of their pint or short drink. Whether in the main bar, the restaurant out back, or the garden area that was well-populated this time of year, it being the height of summer, an empty glass never remained on a table for too long.

“Bloody wars, son!” Swindle gasped in genuine admiration. “You’re the best damn pot boy I ever did see. How about three-fifty an hour and as many shifts as you want?”

Thus began Pinky Goose’s second spell of gainful employ.

Within a few sessions, he became a popular figure in a pub populated by regular patrons. During particularly busy sessions, the locals would marvel at Pinky’s speed and agility, the way he would dart from side to side, those long arms of his sneaking through gaps that didn’t even look to be there to snare an empty glass, almost like it was a spectator sport. On odd occasions, the ever-opportunistic Swindle ran a card on how quickly he cleared the busy bar of empty glasses.

“Stop the clock.” He checked his fake Rolex Oyster Perpetual. “Jesus H. Christ. That’s gotta be a new world record.”

Soon Pinky spent the vast majority of his time at the pub. Fully recognising his value, Swindle upped his wages to four pounds an hour and tossed in a scotch egg, packet of cheese and onion crisps, and a bottle of coke on top.

“I’d never have believed it,” he confided to a group of regulars. “When he first walked through the door, I thought he wasn’t right in the head. I only gave him a trial shift to get rid of him. Now I don’t know what I’d do without the boy.”

Whether or not Pinky was drawn to older people because he’d never met anyone from his own family, he couldn’t have said. His mother was always tight-lipped about their roots. From what he could gather over the years, she’d got herself into trouble with a man her family didn’t approve of, and they effectively disowned her. Whatever the reason, Pinky loved to talk to the old-timers during quiet periods, the stories about wars he’d never heard of, football players or boxers that only stirred vague recollections in his mind, great goals and spectacular knockouts.

But as soon as some glasses needed collecting, Pinky couldn’t have been more conscientious.

“Be back in a minute.” He’d already dashed from counter or table. “Work calls.”

In what many felt was a golden period for the pub, Pinky became as familiar as the furniture and just as synonymous with The Kingston Arms as likeable rogue Swindle himself. Little did anyone associated with the place know what was just around the corner.

One morning, around half-past ten, Pinky turned up for work to find the pub all boarded-up and a winding-up notice stapled to the door: Mr. Peter Swindle owes the Inland Revenue X number of thousands of pounds…

He was devastated all over again. It took his mother two days and news of another job vacancy at the local supermarket to get him to leave his bedroom.

“Get down there right quick, Pinky, and put in an application.”