The Ghost Factory. Jenny McCartney
him point-blank in the back of the head as he politely asked them for directions. And so their discussions on morality continued.
This year, however, had been better for doormen and taxi drivers specifically, and worse generally for young Catholics who annoyed the IRA and young Prods who irritated the Loyalists. Nonetheless, Joe and Jimmy were mindful of the pitfalls in their chosen occupation.
Joe could be funny when he had time, and he had a lot of that on the door. He told me one night, stroking his lapels, ‘If they start shooting doormen again, at least I’m going to go dressed in a tuxedo. When I get up there they’ll stick me straight on the pearly gate with Saint Peter, to keep the troublemakers like you out.’
I told him: ‘You’ve been watching too many Mafia films. Knowing your luck, they’d get you when you were dandering back from the gym, in your big floppy shorts. The best you’d get then is a part-time job as a personal trainer to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.’
He wouldn’t hear of it.
‘I’m going on the gate,’ he said, puffing out his chest. ‘And when I see you coming, I’ll tell you: “I’m sorry, you’re underage. You’ll have to go to hell.”’
‘Nobody’s underage for heaven,’ I said.
‘No, but you’ll still need ID before they’ll serve you a drink,’ he said. His shoulders shook with pleasure at getting the last word, and then he wheeled round and grimaced at three girls who were teetering in high heels and an atomic cloud of perfumed body spray at the door, all of them plastered in make-up and none a day over fifteen.
‘Date of Birth,’ Joe demanded flatly, with his stern official’s face on. He stared with meaning at the smallest one, a sharp-faced wee blonde who looked all of fourteen. She glared back, pursing her glossily enamelled lips as though deeply, personally affronted by the question, and then reeled off a fake date of birth that would have made her eighteen exactly two months before. Joe mimed exaggerated disbelief. They carried on this little war of nerves every couple of weeks. It was splendid to watch.
He turned towards each of the others, as though by now deeply bored and suspicious, repeating the mantra: ‘Date of birth’. They were all pretty good at it, really, apart from a plump gormless brunette who had obviously had a bit to drink already. She stumbled over the year, and then stood blinking under her heavy purple eyeshadow, trying to work out which date she needed in order to get in.
‘Sorry, you’re not getting in,’ Joe told her.
At this, the others began to squawk and flap in protest.
‘Mister, she is eighteen,’ chirruped the blonde, ‘but she’s just had her birthday. You just confused her there, the way you asked her that.’
The brunette had worked it out by now, and even caught up with the necessary, offended tone of voice. She repeated the entire date of birth again, slowly and deliberately, as though Joe had failed to understand her the first time because of his own bestial stupidity. The others fell silent in anticipation, knowing not to push things too far.
‘Happy Birthday. And congratulations. You’re the only eighteen-year-old I’ve ever met that still gets a bedtime story from her mammy,’ said Joe sarcastically.
The three of them started to snicker and preen, sensing that he was softening.
‘Get in … and next time bring your ID,’ he called after them, in pretend irritation. He turned and winked broadly at me as they stampeded towards the bar, tittering in glee and triumph, waving their crumpled fivers and asking for vodka and orange.
It’s strange at first, working behind a bar. You feel like you’ve been pushed on to a stage without knowing your lines, with the lights shining on you and a host of querulous faces looking on. And then after a while you get used to it, and the bar becomes your little square arena, your illuminated patch.
The important thing, Murdie told me, is that you’re never seen to be standing idle. If you’re not serving customers, then you should be polishing glasses, or stacking beer mats, or wiping up real and imaginary spillages with a damp cloth. But you are never performing these tasks to the exclusion of the customer’s most vital interests. All the while, you are watching out for the thirsty, expectant face in the crowd, the frantic signalling that someone is dying for a drink.
When things get busy, said Murdie, you must learn to keep in your head the chronological order in which these thirsty faces appear, and serve them accordingly. If you mix them up you must quickly apologise. You must not disregard the short man (for Murdie was short himself) or the plain woman in favour of those individuals who naturally catch the eye and thus seem to be blessed with Bar Presence. The tall, burly man and the beautiful woman have already queue-jumped in life, said Murdie, but they should not be permitted to do so at the bar. To the truly professional barman, Bar Presence should be irrelevant. Order of appearance is everything.
I was hardly ever bored behind the bar, apart from very early in the evening or late at night when you got stuck with the tedious pub raconteur in the Aran sweater who had bolted his corduroyed arse to the bar stool. I liked it best at the height of the evening, when the place was packed with people and noise, and everyone was laughing and shouting for more drink, and you started to work with a feverish rhythm that drove everything else out of your head. I liked having a bit of money, too. Murdie paid me a decent chunk of cash in hand at the end of every week.
It was Phyllis’s birthday halfway through the month and I asked Murdie for the night off. I’d been feeling guilty lately about how grumpy I’d been with her since she moved in. She had been dropping wee hints about her birthday, and how Mary and Sam would be away on holiday together and sorry to miss it but she had thought this time she would just stay in Belfast for it. ‘Is that so,’ I had said, distantly, as though my radio wasn’t even picking up on her faltering signal.
I knew she thought I’d forgotten all about it. On the morning of her birthday, I got up half an hour early – well before her throat-clearing operation – and put a bunch of pink roses outside her bedroom door. I’d bought them the day before, and kept them in a jug of water in my wardrobe so she wouldn’t see.
I got back into bed. Half an hour later, I heard the floorboards creak. Then a crash, a stumble, and a yelp of surprise. Phyllis had kicked over the roses by accident and they were all strewn about the floor, but I could see she was pleased. She kept saying ‘Oh my goodness’ as she collected them up in her nightie.
I took her out for dinner later on, to a French restaurant in town. She put on her best blouse, with a fussy wee frill at the neck, and her pearl earrings, and a daub of blue eyeshadow to set off the rose-tinted lipstick. When I saw her appear like that at the bottom of the stairs, all done up to go out, I felt an awkward pang of love for her.
In the restaurant, she had a couple of glasses of white wine with her dinner, and got a bit tipsy. The conversation got on to Mary and Sam’s holiday: they had gone to Tenerife.
‘It’s good for them to go somewhere on their own without me,’ she said. ‘I sometimes felt as though I was a bit of a spare part.’
I said nothing, sawing away at my steak. I could sense the faint electricity of something meaningful approaching.
‘I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted Mary along all the time when I was going out with my boyfriend,’ she said. There was a second’s hesitation before the word ‘boyfriend’, as though she had doubts about whether to mention it, but had ploughed ahead anyway.
I had never heard Phyllis talk about a boyfriend before. I couldn’t imagine Phyllis with a boyfriend. Mary had always said that Phyllis was too delicate to get married. I carried on cutting my steak without showing surprise, so as not to scare the revelation away.
‘When were you going out with him, Phyllis?’ I asked.
‘When I was nineteen,’ she said, ‘He was a medical student. We used to go out to dances together. Mary didn’t like him. She said he was sly but he wasn’t, he was just shy of her because she tried to bully him with too many questions.’