Michael's Work

“So, Michael, why do you want to work here?”

Michael looked around the high-ceilinged pub; the line of fruit machines, the long bar with deep shelves of glistening spirits, the brasso’d hand pumps. Lights hung from the ceiling and would make the place closer after dark. Two dartboards were hung in the far corner – one with an electronic scoreboard and one with an ashtray of white chalk under a blackboard. Even in the daytime the corner’s light pulled like the end of a tunnel.

He saw traffic queuing outside through the tall windows (twice his height, and Michael was above six foot three). “The hustle and bustle, I suppose,” he smiled.

The pub manager knew who Michael was and pressed again. “Why do you want to work here, Michael?” He folded his arms and unfolded them.

Michael’s mouth opened as he smiled this time showing round white teeth. “Cash’d be nice,” he conceded playfully.

It was a fascinating scenario, thought the manager. Michael Jones – the Michael Jones – wanting the job. He was so many things to so many people; counsellor, pianist, allotmenteer, academic. People said of him that he could have done anything with his life and others would respond that, well, he actually was. His surname was superfluous in any conversation with another resident of Freetown. He was Michael.

Michael would get the job, there was no doubt. The interview was a formality, but the manager could not resist further questions – it was involuntary, he couldn’t not probe further. People had thought that Michael may leave town – finally – after his dear mother’s funeral. Forty years old is not old anymore, they reasoned. He could go anywhere and do anything, they said. He could start a family, get a high powered job, be a globetrotter or all three at the same time. But the burning conundrum, essentially, was that Michael could earn money in all sorts of ways. He could take on more counselling, he could play piano at a restaurant in the city. He could teach gardening – everybody had heard about his huge carrots and immaculate cabbages (he was known to regularly harvest undamaged cabbages in April, as big as footballs by December and then standing like sentries through the winter’s frosts and thaws). It was all easy money, people had concluded. Why work in a pub?

Michael waited easily in his chair. He took a sip of his water and watched with interest as a man and woman passed the afternoon throwing darts and drinking lager. He had tried the sport of darts a few times in his Lincoln College days and remembered the experience fondly. His times at the board resonated as the purist kind of recreation he’d ever known. His mental arithmetic, of course, was excellent – another thing he was known for.

“You don’t need to work in a pub to earn money, Michael,” the manager pushed. “You could take on more counselling.” The manager had heard what Michael charged for an hour.

Michael exhaled a sighing laugh. “Ah, you know about that,” he said, and the pub manager was not offended that Michael didn’t know him from Adam though he knew of Michael. This was normal; everybody knew Michael. And he explained something that the manager already knew three-quarters of from third parties, which was normal, too, “I only charge new clients,” he said. “I had to start charging, it’s become a full-time job. I still do mum’s clients on the house and that takes ten hours each week.”

£20 an hour just for talking, thought the manager.

Michael sensed the sentiment – people said he could read minds – and countered gently, “Would you work for free for ten hours a week?” He laughed and checked the progress of the darts game with a glance. He looked at the queuing traffic through the window. It was grey outside.

“Look,” Michael said, and the manager fell easily into the role of listener, a switch Michael was well practised in, “I like being behind the bar at a busy pub like this. All the characters you encounter,” his hand opened and closed without leaving his knee and a tiny tightening of his forehead nodded to the dart throwers, “I like the simplicity of it.” He looked at the manager and smiled and the manager returned the smile with the obedience of a pupil. “They tell me what they want and I serve them exactly that.”

£20 an hour, the manager was thinking. He said, “It’s £7.50 an hour,” like a confession.

Michael would get the job. This was not in doubt, and not just because he was Michael Jones. Looking at his (much abridged) CV the manager could see that Michael had worked part-time at The Hobgoblin on Cowley Road during his student days. Only three shifts a week and still he’d been made assistant manager.

“It was for a few months. They actually made me manager. A little more pay for a lot more hassle.” The manager blinked in empathy. “But I soon trained someone else as manager and went down to assistant. I was still doing most of his work but at least someone else was looking after the keys. It was brewery owned by then – you know what the deal is.”

The manager nodded and said to the barman, who was looking at his phone, “Table 12 needs clearing.”

“He’s been on his phone most of the time we’ve been sat here,” Michael commented. To put the manager back on his perch he added, “Mine’ll be switched off while I’m working here, you can be sure of that. I just want to start my shift bang on time, serve drinks, polish cutlery, take out pie and mash, bring back empty plates and go home at midnight.”

The manager sat up. “Is there anything you’d like to ask about the job?”

“When I came in the lad behind the bar –“

 “Yes, Thingy,” the manager cut in.

“Yes, Thingy was throwing darts.”

“Yes,” said the manager.

“Is that part of the job?” asked Michael.

“It is and it isn’t.”

“I’d like a clearly defined role,” Michael pressed.

The manager smiled experimentally. “It can be,” he said. “If nobody is waiting for a drink and someone asks you to play then you can play.”

“Can or should?” Michael sat forward.

“Should,” the manager decided, after a pause.

“And if there are several staff? Who gets to play?”

“That’s up to you,” the manager said. “Are you concerned?”

Michael exhaled, like a great machine finally halting. “I’ve come to thinking,” the manager leant in to catch the quiet words that Michael spoke, “that it is of the highest importance, for sanity, that we all do something for fun that we haven’t got a cat’s chance in hell of ever making any money from.”

The words sat in the air between them.

A car beeped its horn outside the window, sitting in a queue, and Michael’s eyes left a distant point and met the manager’s. He sensed an incoming question and answered it. “I don’t want to be paid for standing there playing darts with punters,” Michael said.

The manager swallowed dryly for he knew that this was a shame but he wasn’t sure why. And still, Michael would get the job.

Three months later the new manager and Michael sat in the same corner of the pub. Traffic was queuing outside the window and the two of them watched it before commencing the meeting that Michael had requested.

“Thanks, Karen, for taking five minutes out for this,” Michael began.

“It can be more than five minutes, Michael,” she replied transparently.

“It’ll only take five,” he said. “I wanted to tell you face to face that I’ll be moving on. I’ll get you my written notice sorted, but I wanted to give you a heads-up straight away.”

“You’re a considerate man, Michael.”

“I didn’t envisage staying just three months,” Michael said.

Three months is decades for bar staff, thought the new manager. She said, “You’ve outlasted the manager that hired you, Michael. That’s pretty good going.”

“Yes,” Michael smiled and looked at the traffic through the window. It was queuing. “Thingy…?”

“Thingy Thingy,” the manager said. Anyone that had recently left the job was called Thingy something.

“You’re taking this well, Karen,” Michael said as they both sniggered. He paused long enough to clear the laugh but not the warmth. “Don’t you want to know why I’m leaving?”

A single contraction of the manager’s upper lip was his answer, and then she stifled a smirk.

“Well I’ll tell you anyway!” Michael chuckled (he reflected that she had not taken him as seriously ever since he’d turned down the assistant manager role). He had been talked at so much during his three months behind the bar (and at the dartboard) that he felt it is was his right to speak his mind before leaving: “My experiment has finished.”

Karen nodded, unsurprised. Michael Jones – the Michael Jones – working behind a bar that she managed. It had always seemed too much of a dream. The surprising thing, she thought, was that he’d stayed as long as he had. Three months was a decent bar staff stint, as she well knew.

Michael continued. “I’ve found I can’t be just a barman. That’s what I wanted to find out. I should have known. The world won’t allow it. Even I won’t allow it. Now I know.”

“We’ll miss you, Michael,” the new manager said, sincerely.

“I’d like to return that, I really would” – he pushed an invisible wall away from him with a snap of his wrists – “but I’ll need a rest before I can miss anything here.” He leant forward and said quietly, “I’ve felt like an everyday rag a lot of the time here.”

“Serving people drinks is what it is, Michael,” Karen said in a mix of defence and defeat.

“I don’t mean serving drinks, They give me money, I give them fluid. Simple. Clean. Fair. Clear. It’s the extra duty – I knew there’d be some but I didn’t realize how much!”

“People are drawn to you, Michael,” the new manager said, and continued to behold him with childish, blinking eyes.

“It seems so!” A man in Michael’s peripheral vision beckoned him to the darts corner but was not acknowledged. Michael chose not to look that way and see if it is was real or another mirage. “But I’d said to the manager that hired me –“

“Thingy Thingy,” the new manager prompted.

“Thingy Thingy – I’d said to him I didn’t want to be playing darts during work time. I said to him, I didn’t want to do for pay what I’d – up until then – done voluntarily. I said I wanted to keep something I was bad at- that I loved but was awful at – that I could never earn money from or even feel like work.”

“You’re a talented man, Michael,” said the new manager.

“So it seems,” he whispered.

“People are drawn to you, Michael,” the new manager said again, blinking slowly.

“It seems so! I also used to enjoy listening to people’s problems and helping them.”

£20 an hour, a voice in the new manager’s head said softly without judgement.

“Now it’s work. It’s here. You’ve seen the narrative and you’ve not helped me. I arrive, I serve a couple of people and then at the first conceivable lull it’s me on the dartboard, throwing darts and listening to their problems.”

“You’re the pub’s best darts player.” The new manager didn’t even attempt to hide her admiration.

“I used to be awful,” he replied solemnly. “I used to enjoy it, too.”

A man walked to them. He held three darts in his hand and they moved with him like jewellery he was wearing. “Which way would you go from 139, Michael?”

“I prefer to start on 19s, Paul,” Michael said without looking. The man went back to the board. He leant in again and spoke quietly, secretly, “He’s been throwing darts for four decades and he’s asking me whether he should start on treble 19 or treble 20 from 139.”

“I’d go 20s,” said the new manager.

“Exactly!” Michael’s voice was a loud hiss of a whisper. “So would I if you’d asked me last week or next week!”

He laughed to himself as he watched the cars queue outside the window. Then he stood, slowly but definitely. “Anyway, that’s me,” he said, and in doing so made his final farewell the same adieu that all the regulars used.

“Thank You, Michael.” She followed him to the door.

“You can call me Thingy from now on.” He pointed playfully at the new manager.

“We’ll never call you Thingy, Michael,” she said seriously.

He waved to the bar and the young man there put his hand to his ear and extended the thumb and little finger. His eyes were pleading but he said nothing as he waved with his other hand.

Michael waved noncommittally and in a smooth movement transferred his wave to the darts area.

“You’ll be back to throw, won’t you, Michael?”

“Keep practising,” he simply said.

At the door the new manager said, “Michael, when do you start your carrots?”

He replied, without ever completely halting his motion out of the door. “Drill them in the first week of June and cover them with a fine mesh as soon as they’re up and established.”

“Thank You, Michael,” she said and waved at him as he crossed the road and walked purposefully through the cars that were hardly moving.