Chapter Two

We pulled up bang outside the Far Star Bar. It had been tarted up since last I'd seen it. The facade, I mean. Freshly painted, top to pavement, midnight blue with a sprinkling, all over, of gold stars of varying sizes. That’ll be Charles Walker Jnr. putting his mark on the place. What would Charlie Senior, now six feet deep in his plot over at Kensal Green cemetery, think. The window showed the usual bills advertising upcoming gigs Upstairs at the FSB: Jimmy Bullet,The Switches, Rum Bustious, Open Mike Comedy Night.

With clenched face I managed to get vertical onto my crutches, bullocked through the swinging doors and paused just inside. Reassuringly all was as it had been on my last visit. The well-worn wooden floorboards, unchanged. The bar counter, the tables, the chairs, all unchanged. The ceiling (inspiration for the paint job outside - darkest blue with sprinkled gold stars) also unchanged. I was glad to see the myriad wall adornments were still there: the Starry Starry Night print, the large framed picture of old Charlie with Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo pennants and various other NASA memorabilia including the Pale Blue Dot photograph (minuscule mother Earth taken by Voyager One from a distance of 6 billion kilometres). Still there also – you couldn’t miss it – was the Buick picture in its polished oak frame (more about that later).  The back-bar shelving, that goes all the way to the high ceiling, was, as always, stocked full of every type of hooch from every corner of the globe. I vaulted towards it, my eyes locked on the top shelf.

The FSB isn't one of your Soho gastropubs but there is a panini press and that's where the white-shirted, black-trousered barman was closing down the lid on two generously-filled specimens.

Two men in paint-spattered white overalls stood at the end of the bar drinking pints of ale and staring at the weather girl on the tv warning of “heavy- thundery downpours” and “possible flash flooding” for the afternoon. Other than them there was just two other patrons: a man and woman in business attire with gin and tonics, intimately snugged into a dark far corner booth . 

“What Can I do you for?” said the barman wiping his hands on a tea towel. He was a gangly, stoop-shouldered, young lad with a hank of oily dark hair, that, with a flick of his head, he kept throwing back off his eyes.

I pointed with my crutch to the top shelf. “Up there. Next door to the Aberfeldy – the Gunne’s Number Four. Please.”
He stood, fists on hips, top teeth down over his lower lip squinting up at the bottle as if it was a jumper on a ledge.
“I’ll get the ladder,” he said with a heavy sigh and disappeared through a door at the back.

One of the painters aimed the t.v. remote and muted the little L.G. where now, being interviewed in front of the Albert Hall, was James Waterman wearing his trademark yellow suit and Kaiser moustache. Is there no end to the man?

The barkeep returned with the old custom-built wooden ladder, hooked it onto the special brass rail up top, climbed and reached for the dusty bottle (untouched, probably, since the last time I’d been in a year before).

Before descending he read from the label. “Tennessee Bourbon Whiskey. 85 proof. That’ll put hair on your chest.”

“You’re Irish,” I said, noting the brogue.

“That’s right.”

“I’m on my way there now.”

“No shit?” he said, climbing down. 

“I’ll be there by cocktail hour.”

“Dublin?” he said.

“No,” I said. “The West. The wild Atlantic coast. ”

He whipped back the stubborn hair and poured the bourbon, without the use of a measure.

“West is best,” he said.

“Make it a large,” I said, and he did, a generous large, spilling some on the countertop.

Wasting no time I took a good slug and instantly felt the way I was hoping to feel – better.

He stood, bottle in hand, watching me.

“I have a place there, I said.“In Goorlie,” “You know Goorlie?”

“Goorlie. I’ve never actually been there but, would you believe, I’ve seen it.”

“How’s that?”

“School tour when I was fifteen. To The Table. To see the caves, the dolmens, flora and fauna and shit. Had to write an essay about it after. Can remember the view from the edge of the limestone looking down on Goorlie, the beach, the bay. Nice round bay. Yeah, lovely and round.” With his finger he described an incomplete circle in the air between us..”There's a song isn't there? My gran used always sing it. “My Heart Is Back In Goorlie””.

“That’s right. One of Bing Crosby’s.”

“Who?”

“The old crooner himself, Bing Crosby? Ever hear of him?”

He shook his head. No, he’d never heard of Bing Crosby.

I drained the glass and gestured for a repeat dose.

With the Gunne’s percolating nicely through my system I sang a line from the song in the style of old Bing: “My heart is back in Goorlie and ’tis there 'twill always stay.” The painters glanced over in my direction.

“That's the one,” the barkeep said, and poured again.

I put aside the crutches and leaned both elbows on the countertop, cradling the refilled glass in both hands.

“I had to book three seats,” I said.

“Huh?”

“On the plane. Three seats.”

“How come?” 

“Not allowed to sit down, you see. Doctor's orders. My man Mr. Pindi”. I mimicked Pindi’s speech and wagging head. “You can stand up or you can lie down, but on no account must you sit.”

“Accident?” he asked, brow furrowed.

“‘copter crash.”

“Helicopter. Holy Jesus.”

With crinkled brow he pondered that for a moment then nodded toward the "Brownies Helicopter Solutions" logo on the breast of my chocolate windcheater.

“You a pilot?” he asked.

I gave a long look down at the jacket front.
“No,” I said, and took a noisy inhalation up through my nostrils. “This jacket was a gift from the pilot. In a bar the night before the crash. Too big for him, he said. Young Dutch guy. Jaap.”

“How'd he fair out?”

I took a good belt of the bourbon. ”He didn’t”

The panini press started to beep. Loud. Six, seven times before he took his eyes off me and slowly turned. The woman at the corner booth let off a loud cackling laugh.

The barman took a pair of steaming cheese-oozing paninis to the painters at far end of the bar and returned wiping his hands on the tea towel, all the time his concerned-filled eyes firmly fixed on me.

“Were there others? You know, in the helicopter?” he asked.

“No. Just the two of us. Jaap and me. An old Huey. I was at the open cargo door, taking pictures. I managed to jump clear.”

Neither of us said anything for a long moment. He kept on looking at me while I drank my liquor.

“You do this full time?” I asked. “This barwork?”

“No, no. I’m a student. Over at the L.S.E.”

“Mick Jagger went to the L.S.E. Heard of Mick Jagger?”

“One of The Beatles, right?” he said, and gave off a dry little laugh.

He took a pint glass from the drip tray and began polishing it, all the time studying me.

“So. You’re a photographer? he said.

“Lighthouses,” I said. “Stormy lighthouses. The stormier the better. I'm what you might call a stormy lighthouse photographer,” I said, and sipped. “Those stormy lighthouse pictures you see on the wall of your dentist's waiting room, in train station ticket offices in Italy, behind the desk when you're checking in at small provincial family-run hotels in France. Chances are, I took ‘em.” This being my usual spiel whenever someone asks, What is it you actually do?
(All thanks, and it galls me to admit it, to my agent Leo Pold.)

“I suppose you’ve got a nice beachhouse on the bay over there in Goorlie?”

I swirled the liquor in the glass. “Remember, on that school trip of yours, the lighthouse on the far side of the bay. Fagan's Head lighthouse? Black and white stripes?”

“Black and white stripes. It’s a long time ago.” He screwed up his face to think hard. “But, yeah, I think I can remember a lighthouse.” 

 “Well you’re looking at the proud owner of the Fagan's Head lighthouse-keeper's cottage.”

“Cool.”

“It’s a funny one. You can only get to it at low tide. Nobody wanted it. It was going cheap.”

He held the glass up to the light. Twisting it. Inspecting. Looking for smirches.

“Matter of fact I've got three.” I said. “On three different oceans around the globe. Atlantic. Pacific. Indian.”

He turned to look at me, the glass still held high. “Three,” he said, squinting and paused. “Three lightousemeeper’s cottages.” He paused again. “Three oceans.” And yet again, he paused . “No shit?” he said finally

“No shit.”

“Now that really is cool. Very, very cool.” 

I put two twenties on the counter, got back on my crutches and started towards the door. “Have one on me,” I said, over my shoulder.

”Wow, thanks,” he said.

On my way I stopped to look at the Buick picture.

The Irishman came out from behind his counter and sidled up beside me, the two of us staring at the photograph. 

“I love that car,” he said. “I love that blood-red colour. The chrome.”

“Yeah,” I said, “It’s nice. A ’66 Buick Wildcat Convertible. Big Block 401 V8 under the hood. Putting out about 340 horses. A proper muscle car if ever there was one.” 

The man in the driver’s seat had well-oiled, slicked-back hair and a nicely-trimmed “painter’s brush” moustache brooding on his upper lip. Elbow on the sill, fingertips resting lightly on the steering-wheel, he had the look of a grifter who has just pulled in off Interstate 10 (“The Dime”) after a successful long-con over in Tucson – taking a breather, collecting his thoughts – before heading out again, up the 25, for a tequila-fuelled sexual encounter with platinum-haired Marlene in The Blue Cactus motel just south of Albuquerque.
In fact, the man behind the wheel can’t drive. Has never, to this day, learned to drive. He is my agent, Leo Pold. And the photograph was taken right outside the door (in the exact same spot where my taxi now stood expensively waiting). The six others in the car were his band from way back when: The Far Star Stompers. The guy riding shotgun was Leo’s indispensable right hand man, the famous stand-up bass player, Slapper Harris.
Leo stares at the camera with his usual Jack Benny expression as if the others are hitchhikers he has picked up and are now refusing to get out of the car.

The barman read from the little engraved brass plate screwed to the chunky oak frame, “Leo Pold and his Far Star Stompers.”

“That picture was taken way back in 1974. the day their tune "Shove Up" went to number five in the charts. They would have turned on you if you suggested it back then but it was to be their one and only hit.”

“Number five,” said the young barkeep. “Not bad.”

“Number one in France,” I said.

I pointed to young Leo in the picture. “These days Leo Pold is a hotshot literary agent. His office is around the corner. It’s where I’m headed now.”

And with that I said my goodbyes.

“Good luck,” he shouted after me as I clattered out the swinging doors.

.