Illustration © Helen Nicholson
He carries a hard-backed reporters’ notebook in the front pocket of his shirt, with a stubby soft-leaded pencil slipped into the spiral binding. He wears shirts with breast pockets for this exact reason. He used to keep his notebooks in the back pocket of his trousers, but found the stiff corners wore small holes into the corduroy. It drew unnecessary attention to his little habit.
So this is what he does. He stops at a cash point, or he pays for small goods with a note, and an exchange of paper currency occurs. He takes the note or notes, be they freshly pressed or well-palmed, and finds a quiet moment to withdraw the notebook and the stubby soft-leaded pencil. He jots down the serial number of the newly acquired note(s).
He has done this for twelve years, give or take. In this time, he has filled a staggering number of notebooks. If he kept them, he imagines they would fill a small bathtub. He doesn’t keep them once they’re full, so he can’t be sure of the exact number. He doesn’t need to keep them anymore. His eldest son made him an electronic database on the family computer. Now, at the end of each day, he types up the collected digits and draws a straight line under the last logged number in the book. That is his favourite part of the process; scoring that line, pressing extra hard with the pencil to ensure it is thick, solid, present.
This is why he does it. If, for example, he pays for a bottle of milk with a five pound note on Friday, and then buys a tin of cat food with a ten pound note on Saturday, he may well be given the same five pound note he used on Friday as change. He just finds it comforting to know.
This is what she does. She goes to Mega City Comics in Camden Town each Monday and spends a fistful of notes on comic books. She buys volumes, collections, individual issues, all wrapped in plastic and neatly priced. In bookshops, she usually likes to browse, but here the pages are locked in their cellophane wallets. She has to trust her instincts, study the type-face, the cover image, the blurb and quotes printed on the back.
She usually buys two or three volumes from a couple of the many series she follows, and a few new comics. She tries to keep the genres as varied as possible – political, science fiction, fantasy, horror, indie, memoir. The only sections she ignores are the children’s comics, the erotica and the manga. She always makes sure she buys a book from at least one new author, or one new series. That way, she’ll never run out. She’s frightened of running out.
She takes her stack to the Oxford Arms, clutching the plastic bag against her chest. She likes the Oxford Arms because it’s spacious and empty on Monday afternoons. There are no children, no dogs, no teenagers, no football fans, no charity fundraisers, no piped music, no fruit machines, no quizzes or gigs or karaoke. There are no interruptions.
She orders pints of crisp cider and sits in the beer garden. She wears sunglasses, chain smokes Marlboros and works her way through the books. Around her, people come and go. Some order food, linger over sour coffees, chat over cigarettes and glasses of wine. Every so often, a light breeze passes through the pub and fills the garden with an acrid waft of ammonia.
She likes comic books because they don’t give her time to think. She reads quickly, skimming the panels, admiring the artwork, adding each character to her mental library of inked faces. She finds she can’t concentrate on novels any more. Her brain wonders, her eyes switch to autopilot, she can’t absorb the sentiments on the page.
Comics aren’t like that. You don’t have time to think. She finds this comforting.
He orders a pint of bitter. They only have John Smiths, no interesting ales in an establishment like this, but he likes the fact it isn’t a chain pub. There are no glossy menus, no lurid cocktail lists, no juke box blasting pop ballads, or wide screen televisions broadcasting football matches to frothed up fans. The toilets are clean, the staff are friendly and the chairs don’t wobble.
In the garden, he notices her right away. She is young, leonine, with thin arms and a main of jaw-length blonde hair. She’s wearing sunglasses and smoking white-filtered cigarettes. A glass of lager or cider, something yellow and bubbly, rests in front of her. She is reading a book, some kind of art book full of pictures. As he gets closer, he realises it’s a book of comic strips.
He sits opposite her, on the other side of the garden. She doesn’t look up from her page, just alternates between her cigarette and her drink.
A plane crosses the sky above him; he watches the soft vapour trails blend into the smear of alto-stratus clouds.
‘Hey, have you got two tens for a twenty?’
He’s startled and a little bitter slops over the side of this glass and darkens the wood in the shape of a halo. ‘Sure, of course.’
He dips into his wallet and extracts two notes.
‘Thanks, man. The cigarette machine only takes tens.’
Whilst she’s gone, he jots the identification number of the new note into his notebook. She returns with a fresh pack of cigarettes. He has nearly finished his drink, so he offers her a polite smile.
‘Would you keep an eye on my belongings whilst I visit the bar?’
‘No problem,’ she says.
‘So kind.’
He buys another pint of bitter, and a packet of honey roasted cashews. He pays with the twenty. The barmaid is young, a curly blonde with inch-long mahogany roots. Her natural hair colour looks rich, chocolaty, divine. He thinks it’s a shame she chooses to peroxide it, but scolds himself: it’s none of his business. She rings up his purchases, and just as she places the twenty into the cash draw, a greasy youth in chefs’ checks and a white apron appears by her elbow. They indulge in a spot of flirtatious banter. She barely looks away from the youth as she drops a fistful of change into his outstretched hand.
He looks into his palm and counts the coins. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I think you’ve short-changed me.’
‘Oh really?’
‘I paid with a twenty, you see.’
Her slack jaw drops into an ‘O’ of understanding. ‘Oh, Christ, you did? I’m so sorry sir ... but I’m afraid we’ll have to wait for the manager to count up the till at the end of the night.’
‘Is he not available now?’
‘Nope. He went out.’
‘And when will he return?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, that puts us in a rather awkward situation, doesn’t it?’
‘You don’t have to wait. I could take your number and –’
‘No, my dear, you misunderstand. The problem is that once I’ve finished this drink, I might like to purchase another. How am I to do so without the ten pound note you’ve deposited into your till?’
‘Well, if you have a credit card, you could open a tab and –’
‘I don’t own a credit card.’
‘A debit will do.’
‘I only have cash with me today,’ he says.
‘I don’t know what to suggest then, sir.’
‘I can prove to you that the twenty in the till was once mine.’
‘Sir, I’m not even allowed to open the till unless I’m putting through a transaction.’
He is disappointed. It’s a fine day, and the beer garden was unusually quiet. He was looking forward to squandering the afternoon, sipping bitter and lingering on afternoon thoughts.
He sighs and writes his telephone number down onto a napkin. ‘Do make sure to tell the manager, won’t you?’
The thin girl with the comic books waits at the bar. She coughs politely, and the barmaid smiles.
‘Another Aspall?’
‘Thanks.’
She notices him. ‘I’m sorry, you weren’t waiting, were you?’
He shakes his head.
The girl pulls an apologetic expression, and he notices a ten pound note pinched between her fingers. This mistake, he thinks almost bitterly, wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been so kind as to swap his tens for her twenty.
He returns to his seat outside, and enjoys his drink. He savours each mouthful, alternating between the sour ale and the sweet crunch of cashews. When the glass is nearly finished, the sides marbled with dried froth, the girl seems to finish her book. She rummages through the plastic bag by her feet and extracts another. A cornucopia of literature! He reads the logo on the plastic bag while he checks he has his belongings – a handful of shrapnel, his notebook, his pencil. She seems like a good kid. He feels glad that she’s here.
His phone rings the following day. It is the manager of the Oxford Arms, with news of his ten pound note. He walks to the pub, but on his way he sees a familiar name: Mega City Comics, the shop the leonine girl had purchased her books. He goes in, for a browse. It’s garish, filled with toys and comic books and brightness and light. He walks up and down, marvelling at the A4 books wrapped in plastic, the smell of freshly printed paper in the air.
He finds a little section of vintage comics, flips through the old Buntys and Tammys until he finds a selection of Beanos. He picks one from 1964. He would have been ten years old when this little comic was written, inked, printed, purchased and read. Perhaps it was purchased by a man like him, a father buying a gift for his son, a boy like himself, perhaps this exact issue was purchased by his father, as a gift for him, as a boy, and all these little pieces of paper that pass between us, connect us through time, unknowingly linking us by the briefest moment of connection, perhaps these things contain the tiniest fragments of ourselves, an imprint like a fingerprint left on a glass. Perhaps by holding this comic he is holding the hand of the boy he once was, who in turn holds the hand of his father who is gone.
He purchases the old Beano with a ten pound note, and the man behind the till gives him a five pound note and asks if he is okay, and he says that yes, he is, yes, thank you.
At the Oxford Arms, he finds an apologetic man in his early thirties, grey at the temples, eyes the colour of the bright summer sky.
‘The till was ten pounds over, sir. I’m so sorry for the mistake. ’
‘It’s not a problem,’ he says, accepting a soft ten pound note. ‘I’ll pick up where I left off yesterday, if you don’t mind. I’ll have a pint of bitter.’
He pays with a twenty, carefully slipping the soft ten pound note into his breast pocket. The manager gives him a second ten pound note as change and says ‘Mind how you go now.’
She isn’t in the garden. He half-expected her to be there. It doesn’t matter. The echo of her, and the echo of him, and the echo of the plane that went overhead, and the echo of everyone who has ever been in this garden, and will ever be in this garden, surround him instead, and he feels comforted by a blanket of echoes, light as the soft summer breeze.
He opens his notebook and checks the serial number of the ten pound note against the two notes he gave her yesterday.
He smiles.
He just finds it comforting to know.
Alice Slater
Alice Slater is a writer from London. She reviews short story collections for Mslexia, co-hosts literary podcast What Page Are You On? and edited the short story anthology Outsiders (3 of Cups Press). Her words have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and appeared in On Anxiety (3 of Cups Press), Dear Damsels, Pank and Smoke: A London Peculiar, amongst others.
This is a response to Serendipity & Synchronicity, our first Spiritus Mundi theme.