Mr Dibbs Fixes Bikes

27

While washing up, Alfie looked to his sparse living room, where he still had the same furniture he had had years before. The same sofa, only one seat flattened by constant use. The same television, though that was new at the time he had lost the Duchess. The same carpet, worn and threadbare, the pattern little more than a smudge and smear of years of booted feet passing over it in the same paths, the same lines. The Duchess never allowed footwear on that carpet, but Alfie had shown little care for it since. The same sideboard. Now bereft of the medal that once sat upon it.

Folding the tea towel, draping it over the handle of the oven door, Alfie made a decision. The silence between him and the lad had gone on too long. If needs be, he would never even mention the handkerchief and medal, allow the lad to build up the courage to mention it himself and explain. As he headed to the front door, about to reach for his cap, he saw Ms Matheson leading the lad out of their garden, into a waiting taxi, which put paid to that idea, leaving Alfie at something of a loose end.

In time's past, of a Saturday evening, he would have walked to the Working Men's club and sat with friends, enjoying the turn, playing bingo and having more than his fair share of pints of bitter. He hadn't done that so much in recent times. The steady loss after loss of his friends had forced those that remained to spend less and less time there, new patrons taking up where they left off, as Alfie and his friends had done as the older folk of his time had dwindled away.

If he couldn't make amends with the lad, he would have to find something to do. He couldn't face another night indoors, watching television programmes that he neither enjoyed nor understood. Gone were the days of gentle comedies and stirring dramas that Alfie could empathise with. Though, thinking back, many of those comedies couldn't pass muster in today's society. Far too much casual racism and sexism, words he had come to understand over the years and realise that, he too, had contributed to such things. Especially the sexism. Especially with the Duchess.

It always came back to that. Always. Those thoughts had softened, over recent days, for a little while, at least, but he never stopped thinking about how he mistreated her. How that mistreatment had pushed her to the edge and then to topple over. All his fault. He tried to live in the present, but the past never left him. It remained with him at all times. A devil upon his shoulder without a balancing angel, reciting his sins over and over in sibilant whispers. Recalling every cross word, every time he had turned away from her, every time he had ignored her.

Perhaps that was why he had clung to that handkerchief? To give him that constant reminder that he was alone through his own actions? That he was never there for a good woman who struggled with the very darkest of thoughts, but never complained? Never told him how she felt knowing he would not listen anyway. That was his marriage and the memories burdened him for good reason.

Before he even realised it, Alfie had found himself upstairs, washing and shaving, preparing clothing best served for a night out. He needed to drown out the constant barrage of thoughts that threatened to overwhelm him as the thoughts of the Duchess had overwhelmed her. A fresh shirt and trousers made him look almost presentable and yet he still wore his cap as he left the house.

Only a few streets away, the Working Men's club was once the hub of the entire community. Everyone worked in the same places. Everyone knew everyone else. People would congregate with the very same people they had spent their working days with. Sat at the same tables, in the same chairs, as they always sat. Alfie, at one time, could walk into this place and spend a good fifteen minutes moving from the doors to his table, greeting folks he knew, laughing, joking, making the usual bawdy remarks stolen from those televisions shows that would never find a place on today's schedules.

Not anymore. Tonight, he walked through those doors into a place he recognised but did not know. People from so many disparate walks of life now came to the club. No longer folks that worked together, living in the same streets as each other, but people who sat in their own huddled groups, talking to no-one but each other. And few even of those. For a Saturday night, the place didn't hold a quarter of the folks it once had. Less, even.

"What can I get you, mate?" The man behind the bar Alfie did not recognise, nor the woman, stood talking at the bar in the other room. "Not seen you in here. First time? Just moved in?"

"Nay. Lived here all my life. Pint of bitter, please." He looked around and his heart sank even more. "Used to come here every other night. Jerry moved on?"

"Died. Ooh, three years gone." The man placed the pint on the bar, holding out his hand without even a please or thank you. The bitter had no head. "Well, we're always happy to welcome back regulars."

"Aye? Is thy happy to put a head on that pint, or am I supposed to make it meself?" A note, handed over, came back with so little change, Alfie could only gawp at it in his palm. "Blind me! How much is a packet of crisps? Or do I need a ruddy mortgage for that?"

The man scowled as he returned Alfie's pint, now with a foamy head that didn't look as though it would last. As Alfie moved to sit at his old spot, where once raucous noise would combine with similar noises from surrounding tables, he knew he would never come again. It had all changed and Alfie had changed the least. The old world had gone and he was nothing but a relic waiting to follow.