The Importance of Being Drunk

A novel published by Pen Press - sample 1

By Richard Gray

Font cover & spine / Pen Press Ltd

Design: J Abromeit / Photo: R Gray

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING DRUNK

'Change your hearts or you will lose your Inns and you will deserve to have lost them. But when you have lost them, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.'
- Hilaire Belloc, 1870-1953.

CHAPTER ONE

Brighton slept. The Royal Pavilion slumbered in the unearthly glow of tax-payers' electric floodlights, aged exotic trees static and grey in the grounds. About town, the bus-stops lay empty, all the bars shuttered, the countless restaurant tables cleared and relaid, foodless and immaculate, as if in preparation for the arrival of some great convention for obsessive-compulsive anorexia sufferers. The starlings lay dormant, cluttering the starlit rooftops of the town's twin piers. Not a night club stirred. Even the cab drivers had gone home to their cold beds. To the east, in Kemp Town, every home, hotel, hostel and hostelry basked briefly in orchestral silence, that majestic moment between the conclusion of the last movement and the outbreak of applause. The curtained windows of the Fingers public house reduced sodium lighting above the streets to the dullest of yellow glows in its diminutive interior, where the handful of tables were festooned with upturned seats, ready for the morning cleaner. The glasses long since cleared away, the ash trays rinsed and stacked upturned at the end of the bar, the beer pumps invisible under an army of well-worn bar towels, hung to mark the past night's close of hospitality. And then first light broke, from way out beyond the marina, and on every nineteenth-century eave and chimney pot, in every street and mews, hungry gulls were roused, each one seemingly convinced it had the voice of a diva and had merely to out-sing its neighbour for a free breakfast.
"Bastards!" came the response from the man in the dark brown suit on the floor of the pub, closely followed by regrets and much coughing, each devastating hack lifting the man's head clear of the thinly-carpeted pub floor only for it to fall back to earth with a sound like an aged pumpkin being beaten up for its pension money. Eddie was back in the world.
The pub's sole security system, a movement detector high in the corner above the quiz machine, activated a twenty-four watt light bulb in a tobacco-stained glass box above the door. Eddie's eyes, veinous and dust-dry, absorbed the impact of this with little detriment, since he had taken the precaution of tying an old rugby sock about his head before laying it down for the night. He had been here before.
He grasped the neck of a small plastic water bottle protruding from the right-hand pocket of his jacket, and held the bottle fully inverted over his face. Taking care to close his mouth and eyes, he pulled away the sock with his free hand, then steadily unscrewed the top of the bottle. The tepid water doused the most of his face and razor-cropped dark hair. Eddie threw the bottle aside and used both hands to rub the water briskly into his face, then dried them on the old sock. He produced a hip flask from the left pocket of the jacket, unscrewed the cap with practised ease, and took a few gulps of the Scottish nectar within.
"Breakfast, Martin?" he called, his vocal equipment now suitably lubricated. He held the flask upright, and waved it in most of the available directions.
"Where?" came the reply.
"Where what?"
"Anything. I mean I'm not fussed."
"No breakfast?"
"Breakfast, yes. But where the fuck am I?"
Eddie manipulated another draught of whisky into his mouth, gulped, and grinned. "Can you give us a clue?"
"Well, mate, it's dark. Most of me seems to be stuck to the floor. And I think there's a cockroach in my ear."
Eddie knew the answer better than he knew his own bed. "You're behind the bar!"
"Thank God for that. I was beginning to think I was trapped in some giant fly-paper. Can you give us a hand?"
"Hang on a tick," said Eddie. "In fact, hang on quite a bit." Eddie secured the cap of the flask and stowed it back in his jacket. He rolled over onto all fours, aware that water was dripping from his hair, but resisted the temptation to shake his head. Too risky at this hour, he reminded himself. Pushing himself up onto his knees, he found he was close enough to the nearest bar stool to grab the seat with both hands and pull himself up into something approximating to vertical. 'Take courage', he thought, and manoeuvred himself up onto the stool, slumping forward to peer into the murk behind the bar. "I see you. Open your mouth." Something shifted below. Eddie carefully selected one of the pumps, a small tap behind an unlit panel that usually displayed the relevant name, and pushed the tap forward, waiting to hear the flow of liquid. There was a tiny splash, then nothing.
"Mate, why are you pouring cider on my forehead? And why have you stopped?"
"Sorry," said Eddie, "off-target. And all the ciders and lagers go off when Les shuts the power off. Just a tick..." Eddie reached inside his jacket and pulled out a plain, black-framed pair of spectacles, and shoved these onto his face. He took another glance behind the bar, then grabbed the next pump in line, one of the house ales, and pushed it smoothly and steadily forward until it hit the stop, then returned it to the vertical. With all the drip trays removed, a dark column of ale extended rapidly toward the perpetually sticky vinyl-covered floor behind the bar, miraculously vanishing without trace just a few inches short. A moment later, Martin called out.
"Dead Sheep! My favourite brekkie. Got most of that, cheers."
"Anytime," said Eddie, thoughtful. "What time is it, anyway? Can't see the clock..."
Martin pressed a button on the side of his favourite watch, producing a green glow. "Early," he said.
"Fucking early?," enquired Eddie.
"No, just early. Thank God it's not midsummer yet."
Eddie nodded, carefully. "The best thing about the winter months, the one thing that really makes up for all the cold bits, is that the bastard seagulls don't wake you up until you've had a good few hours of kip." [...continues.]

~ Excerpt (C) Richard Gray 2007 ~ Published exclusively by Pen Press Publishers Ltd, Brighton ~ See http://www.penpress.co.uk/ for information and link to Amazon UK sales.