Denis outside the bar

Outside, the day is tipping over into evening; the sky between the buildings, overcast all day, is flattened into a uniform grey. The building frontages have lost all possibility of detailed contrast now that the invisible sun has dipped below the taller [city financial district] buildings to the West. Already there’s a faint damp, smoky smell in the air as the temperature starts to dip.

Up the street, the huddles of men with their cigarettes have gone, but there are boys there now, boys my age and older, kicking a heavy, half-inflated leather football across the street and back again. Now and again the ball hits the kerb and leaps high into the air, and while it’s up there in the air I am suspended/stilled with anticipation, waiting to see if the ball will hit a door or a window: at home, boys who play with footballs in the street are inevitably chased off by an irate adult as soon as the ball bashes against someone’s wall or wooden door; broken glass elicits an even higher degree of anger, with slaps and bunches administered if the culprit is apprehended by the red-faced householder. The bruised, snivelling miscreant then has their name and address bullied out of them and is escorted home, where their parents will administer a second round of corporal punishment, never even trying to elicit the child’s side of the story.

Here, though, the boys don’t seem concerned about the possibility of property damage or resultant adult intervention. They laughed loudly and swore at each other, and once in a while the biggest boy would grip one of the others in a headlock and rub his knuckles in the smaller boy’s eyes or ears. I hung back as far as I could against the outside wall of the bar, in the lee of one of the window frames, because I knew that I didn’t want the big boys to see me and see that I was a stranger here. I would have stood in the recessed doorway, but there seemed to be an increasing traffic of overalled or donkey-jacketed [?] men coming into the bar as the afternoon faded and the lamplighter started his work on the main street at the end of the side road.

Soon, it would be getting fully dark, and the lit lamps already had their dusty haloes of smoke and light. It starts to drizzle, and the pavements and building frontages take on the same oily grey aspect. There’s a glow of yellow light from above the bar’s curtained windows, but I’m standing in a shadowed pool of gloom. I button up my jacket and wish that I had a cap, but have to make do with turning up my collar and wrapping my arms around myself. The next time someone enters the bar, a great rush of laughter surfs out on the splash of light that glitters for a moment on the paving stones, and then the warmth and light of inside the bar is cut off as the door swings shut. The hollow thud of the football on the roadway is more intermittent now, and the boys’ voices echo between the buildings; some of the boys have left, leaving bigger spaces between the shouts and the talk.

Eventually the lamplighter passes by the front of the bar his [technical name of the lighting pole thingy] slanted on his shoulder like a rifle [check how this worked]. He sees me huddled against the wall in the dark and stops.

“Hello, son,” he says, holding the [lighting thing] up so that it lights up my face, “all on your own? ’Spose your daddy’s inside, is he?”

I nod, biting the inside of my bottom lip.

“Shall I light up the lamp for you?”

I shake my head, trying to push my back further into the brick wall, and think about the big boys down the street and how the lamplighter will be attracting their attention.

“No, thank you,” I say, “it’s all right, thank you.”

“Suit yourself, son,” he says, annoyed, and heads off the street towards the footballers. He lights the lamp closest to the boys, and the four remaining boys move into the pallid arc of its flickering light, where the white drizzle drifts. The lamplighter walks on, then stops and turns back towards the boys: I can see his lips moving, but I’m too far away to hear what he says. When he’s finished, he laughs, and the four boys all turn around and look back towards the bar, and towards me.

As they start walking towards me, I feel my heart sinking, and I want pappi and I want to go home and I want be in the warmth and familiarity of our home, with mama at the sink and pappi at the table with his evening paper and his sausages and onions on his dinner plate. I want to be able to look at their absent faces as they talk to each other, not looking at me, and I want to be able to lay my head down on my arm stretched out across the table and look at mama sideways as I sink into an end-of-the-day drowsiness.

[…?]

The door to the bar feels heavier than earlier, and I can only get it open a few inches before it jams; I strain and pull and push, but it won’t open far enough for me to get through and into the bar, where pappi will look after me (if I can find him). The four boys are twenty yards away. With the chill [??] and the fear and frustration and the effort of trying to get the door open and knowing that it’s unfair and that I can’t escape, I know that I will start to wet myself in a minute.