A Bar in Bewcastle

By: Emma Jacklin

No one should be in Scotland for the month of February. The rolling swathes of farmland have long since been drained of the young flush of summertime. Nothing remains but rain beaten rushes and half drowned flocks of sheep.

Yet there I was in Bewcastle on the Border. It was a small parish an hour north of the English city of Carlisle and half an hour south of the Scottish burgh of Langholm. I lived in the old town mill tucked along the stream which ran through the small valley. The mill had been converted into a bar and lodgings by my hosts back in the sixties and had not been touched since then. It was the winter before I enrolled into university, and I was looking to travel on my waitress’ bank account by trading work for food and housing.

My hosts, Pam and Ian, had been a couple for 50 years, but being from different sides of the Border they never could decide if their home was in Scotland or England. Ian would leave at sunrise to go to the sheep barn. Pam would leave for days to call on friends or pick up the shopping. I could spend dawn till dusk without seeing a single soul. Then Friday night would come along turning our little bar into the hub of the town.

That evening Kenny Rogers’ softly breaking voice came over the radio station as I cleared the corner barroom table. Tonight, we served the inn guests a heaping plate of mince’n’tatties so every dish was licked clean. Few things are better for a soul surviving the Scottish February than the spiced meat and piping hot mash of mince’n’tatties. Kerry, the bartender, quietly began singing along with Kenny in her rasping tone of a forty-year-old smoker. At a mighty 6’4”, she had to be bent into a deep L to keep from cracking her head on the overhanging glasses. It was a quarter to nine; any minute the locals would be shuffling in shaking off the icy rain. Vic and Freddie were the first to arrive with a curt nod to me, they beelined to the barstools where Kerry stood ready with two pints of lager.

I was unsticking dried potato from the table top when an icy paw fell over the back of my neck. Startled, I shrieked and whipped around. Ian was standing there with a wild grin on his round face. Like a feral tom he had crept in from the cold with straw flecking his wooly coat. Ian was a short and compact man with flitting beady eyes that leveled right at my breast. At the sound of a female shriek, Vic and Freddie swiveled around to see what all the excitement was about. They burst into laughter at the sight of my blood-drained face. Making light of my fright, I told Ian he was lucky I wasn’t carrying any dishes or he’d be standing in a wreck of broken glass.

Ian plopped down on the red velvet cushions of the piano bench and beckoned me over. A week ago, he had vowed to make me a singer by teaching me songs from the venerated poetry of Robert Burns. I perched on the opposite end of the bench. Ian shifted till we sat hip by hip. I was pressed up to the bench arm unable to wiggle away. He pushed the book toward me and selected a few versus for me to repeat after him. Slowly his hand crept up my back and then back down. I sat, willing every black and white syllable to brand into my mind and imagination.

As we sang the forlorn tune of “A Man’s A Man for A’ That” the doors burst open, and Sam and Thomas tumbled across the threshold. Both lads already had a few drinks beneath their belt and were looking to down a few more. With the excuse to serve, I leapt off the bench asking what I could get for the boys. I ducked behind the bar interrupting Kerry’s tenth telling of her ex in Jedburgh to pour their pints. Vic noticed me pouring the perfect head and winked a wrinkled green eye at me, “You’re not just a pretty face, are ya?”

“Easy there fella,” Ian warned nodding to Vic as he came up behind me resting a callused hand on my pants waist a single fingertip wandering up under my sweater.

“Like he’d know a pretty face if he saw one,” I quipped, sidestepping Ian to hand Sam and Thomas their glasses.

The two lads started up a game of darts. Thomas, a gangly boy of not quite twenty, could never land the dart anywhere near the bullseye. He would square up on the masking tape line and stare down the target till his two buck-teeth popped out behind his lips. Then finally he would throw the dart for it to inevitably miss his elusive mark. Sam would hoot and slap a grubby hand on table scooping up his darts. I have never played darts before and, knowing my lack in hand and eye coordination, took pity on Thomas and offered to take turns with Sam as to even out the odds a little. I never could place Sam’s age; he was in the undefined years of being young yet having lived hard. While showing me how to aim the tiny projectile he bent down close to my ear till I could hear his nicotine stained teeth click together. He asked in a Tennent’s permeated whispered if I would sleep with him tonight. Thomas over-hearing his friend looked at me with big eyes and blurted out “Will you sleep with me?” All the words I could have or should have said caught dry and grainy in my throat.

Shifting away toward the bar I concentrated on tidying the sticky coasters into a neat pile. Freddie got a glint in his eyes, “Do you fiddle with everything like that?” he asked with a raised brow. Kerry and Vic burst into laughter at the rising red in my flushed face. It was late and I had finished my hours for the day. With no want to stay, I waved good night when Vic called out, “If you need a cuddle come give us shout!”

My room was down a hallway attached to the barroom. I shut the door behind me and fastened the bolt into place. Before curling into bed my eyes darted to the door. It was a quarter past eleven when I heard his footsteps shuffling across the carpet toward my door. I froze upright. A sliver of yellow light spilled through the crack between floor and door. In a slurred voice he called out my name. A step and a fumble, he neared. The little yellow light flickered under his approaching feet. Again, he called. Not a breath came from my room in reply. A floor board creaked beneath his staggering weight. The yellow beam across my floor blackened, leaving me unmoving in the dark.

The hours of amber sunlight grew with the arrival of March. Warm winds from the south drove a damp spring to the Borders. Sprigs of green began to spot the dull horizon as I boarded the stagecoach north. The bus doors closed behind me fending away the downpouring rain.