It’s not so easy to approach people these days. I’m not saying folk are unfriendly; by and large the world turns around because most of us are law-abiding, decent and civil to those others turning in it. But with the increase of crime comes the rise of wariness and suspicion, so when you make a beeline for a complete stranger in a pub you’re forgiven for expecting the cold shoulder, a mouthful of abuse or even a smack on the nose. So you’d think I might exercise some caution when on my travels. But I do not.
Because you can’t find stories sitting on your arse. You have to market yourself, and I find the pub has the best footfall in terms of setting out my stall. And there I will feed carrots to the horses and get the stories from their mouths.
So I’m in a lively pub in Leeds, where I order a pint and surreptitiously scan the throng. There’s a ladies’ darts match on and I note the tattoos, the hairdos or attempts thereof, the cleavage, the banter and frankly the admirable ability to find the treble twenty. It’s a weekly event they practise for, dress up for, then look forward to post-match drinks, fags and trays of fish-paste sandwiches and limp cos lettuce. In a corner there’s a couple of fellas playing ukelele and banjo, singing folk songs. In another there’s an elderly couple mouthing the words to each other, comically inaccurate, between sips. At the bar there’s a passionate debate happening for three tough-looking guys, the crux of which sounds like would Leeds go up this season? I feel like adding my views but resist temptation because I’ve seen someone else to pick on – the biggest and roughest-looking man of the not inconsiderable jumble of clientele.
He’s on his own right now but I sense he’s waiting for someone or something to happen. He’s a big guy looking 50 but probably younger, covered in body art. A serpent coils around his neck and into his bald head, finishing venomously at the fontanelle. In his nose he wears a ring and in his ears are those big holey things I don’t know the name of but remind me of the Maasai I saw in Kenya and Tanzania. His leviathan-esque torso is covered with a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped off, showing his impressively-painted guns. I ask if this seat is spare and he just nods.
After a few slurps of my Timothy Taylor I finally manage to get a word. Riskily I tell him I’m not a local and he tells me he knows, he has me down as a traveller because he’s clocked my bag. He also clocked me scraping together shrapnel at the bar so figures I’m on my uppers. I confirm this and tell him I’m living in a van. He seems to relax now, and even commends my story, saying he’s done most of the UK and Europe on his motorbike, a Harley. I know nothing about bikes but explain my brother had one, and he’s impressed until I add that it was a Suzuki 250. Sensing there’s not much mileage in my brother’s bike I push it maybe and ask if he’s a Hell’s Angel. He shakes his head, insisting he was but not now, because he fought to near-death with some guy from a rival chapter, now he just likes bikes and he also likes free-living and having sex, and with a tap of his nose he adds that he doesn’t work. His name is Craig but people call him Bex. I want to push further and ask why Bex, and how he gets the money for his beer, but he begins his story so I hang fire…
He’s waiting for his wife. Well, she isn’t his wife, not any more, she’s his first wife and now his mistress, his current wife is playing darts. She knows he’s having an affair with his ex, and his ex knows he’s got a second wife, and knows that she knows. It’s all hunky dory for Bex. “Best of both worlds me,” he says with an existential gravelly chuckle. At this point he asks if I want another pint and I decline, saying I’m driving, but he insists that if I refuse he will finish up falling out with me. It’s the first hint of aggression and I realise this could go either way. When he returns with three pints (one for his mistress who he says has just texted to say she’s on her way) he tells me more about both his worlds: the bikes, the bike crashes, the metal pin in his left leg thanks to some twat in a BMW on Snake Pass, the brawls, the women, the sex. There’s still an edge to his pitch and I kind of hope his mistress would turn up and change the dynamic. Then he asks if I’m married, so I tell him separated, peculiarly keen to use that information to establish I’m straight and therefore no risk, and he asks how I go on for sex?
Sometimes in unpredictable situations I find self-deprecation can help – it can throw the other person, surprise them into submission, make them see you’re no threat, or even make them laugh. So I go for telling him I don’t get lucky, and even if I did I’m not sure I’d be any good at it any more – I’d have to pretend that I were someone else in order to get wood. The gag is not mine it belongs to the Bob Monkhouse estate, and Bex laughs so I’m cool with robbing a dead man if it achieves the change of gear I’m after. But lurking beneath the laughter and testosterone and clouding beer I sense another story, if I dare ask. Because there’s a sadness in his worlds and a depression in his eyes that I can see; it takes one to know one…
… Bex was born Craig B (name withheld) in Scarborough, where his father was a fisherman his mother a seamstress. It wasn’t a happy marriage. His father was a chronic drunk; when he wasn’t at sea he was in the pub and when he wasn’t supping he was beating his wife. One night the beatings got out of hand and his mother lashed out in self-defence, but this only provoked his fury and he clouted her over the head with the coal shovel, killing her… and into that beautiful world was born Craig. As his father did time and subsequently died inside, Craig was brought up by his Auntie and abused for years by his Uncle. Then at the age of fifteen he beat his uncle to a pulp and ran away and never went back. To this day he won’t go near Scarborough. He’ll travel the world, but not there – too many haunting memories…
I’ve summarised the story but you get the picture – this gargantuan man, looking for all the world the toughest you could encounter, and actually reduced to tears as he unburdens to me, a complete stranger he’s only met one pint ago. And I don’t really know how I’ve done it, how I’ve managed to get him to offload. Or maybe it isn’t me at all, maybe I’ve just picked on someone who really needs to tell, to unburden? Anyway, not abruptly, after a bit more chat (you can’t just jump up and leave when someone’s borne his soul) I say it’s nice to talk to him but I really must get off and find somewhere to stealth-camp. And thankfully he’s fine with that, so I wonder if he’s had his fill of emptying his closet of skeletons.
As I empty my bladder before heading out, I ponder his story and its ratio of fact to fiction. Did his father really kill his mother while she was carrying him? Did he ever meet his father in prison, look into the eyes of his mother’s slaughterer? Was it really a coal shovel? Does he really own a Harley? Is his left leg really made of metal thanks to the twat in a BMW on Snake Pass? Is his wife really throwing arrows in the bar? Does the first-wife-cum-mistress exist and is she really on her way, to drink her pint with him and to be cool with the fact that his current wife is at the oche before tucking in to fish-paste sandwiches and limp cos lettuce?
Then as I head for the exit I look back to our corner. And there is Bex grinning over and giving me the thumbs-up, and at his side is a very attractive if drifted blonde of 50, sipping her pint, smiling and also giving a wave. Whether she’s his wife or ex-wife-cum-mistress I’ll never know. But I leave it to my imagination and unanswered questions as I head for the car park. But then, approaching my van and my home, I pass a beautiful gleaming Harley Davidson, the custom-painted tank bearing the name “Bex”.
Adapted from Adventures from the Ottermobile.
Mark Bickerton 