The Concert Chairman

It was a bugger being old, Billy thought as his ragged breath struggled in the blustery wind. He was climbing the hill to visit Pithouse Club for the last time. Harry had told him he would be there. No doubt there would also be a few others to mark the club’s passing and enjoy the reduced beer prices paid for by the now disbanded club committee.

As he reached the peak of the hill, the club came into sight, a squat, largish redbrick building next to the old Co-op recently converted into council offices and behind it a row of terraced houses leading to the main street. 

He entered the lobby, momentarily resting his hand on the table by the door to catch his breath. They had even taken the sign-in book! It obviously no longer mattered who they let in. He was surprised the telly hadn’t gone yet. He could hear the racing was on in the main bar. The administrators had taken almost everything else, and tomorrow they would come for the rest.  

He hung up his coat on one of the metal pegs beside the frayed tweed jacket he recognised as belonging to Harry. He could see that some of the wallpaper above the coatrail was torn where they had carelessly ripped off the posters advertising acts and the old signs reminding members to refrain from using foul language. 

As he walked into the bar, he spotted Harry. He nodded and made a drinking gesture with his hand.

“Aye, gann on Billy!”

Billy glanced around the bar. John Nolan and Peter Dowdle were in their corner, and Stephen Briggs and Bobby Pierce were in theirs, the latter pair playing dominoes. There were three or four young lads supping lager in front of the television, and Tommy Hodges and Bill Shaw were drinking pints at the bar. Dick Corrigan was sitting alone reading his racing paper. They all looked over at Billy and greeted him, some with nods, others with the customary “Arreet Billy, lad!” 

Beth was behind the bar, a largish fifty-year-old that Billy thought always wore too much make-up. 

“I thought the old concert chairman wouldn’t let us down.” 

“These things have to be done.”

“Well, I am glad you came. You are a ray of sunshine next to these miserable buggers.” She smiled broadly.

“Hey, less of that!” Tom Hodges shouted with mock disapproval.

“Him, him sunshine?” Harry said, now striding towards the bar.

“Well, he is compared to some,” said Beth. 

“How are you, bonny lad?” Harry took Billy’s hand in his and gave it a firm shake.

“Not bad, Harry.”

“Two pints of Ex is it?” Beth was already pulling their pints.

“Aye love, and one for yourself!”

Billy scrutinised the barmaid as he searched for change in his trouser pocket. 

“So what are you going to do, Beth?”

“Live the life of leisure.” Beth laughed.

“Oh aye.”

“Aye, off on a world cruise next week.”

“Lovely!” said Billy, playing along with the joke.

“I don’t know, Billy. There is talk of The Lodge taking on extra staff.”

“I wouldn’t work for that shower.”

“Beggars and all that!”

“Aye,” Billy sounded respectfully wistful.

He handed Harry his pint then glanced around the room again, noticing this time how forsaken the place looked. They had swept the floor but hadn’t bothered to mop it. The curtains had already gone and a grey light seeped onto the bare linoleum through the grimy windows.

Billy and Harry took their pints and went to sit down in their usual place at the back of the bar.

“Where you going to do your drinking now, Billy?” Tommy Hodges shouted over to him.

“Not in the bloody Lodge that is for sure.”

“The Legion? Bit more of a hike but better than nowt.”

“Haven’t shown me face in there for donkeys.”

He’d known most of these lads since he was a boy. The young lads, though, he wasn’t so sure about apart from the tall slender one who was Jimmy Meoman’s son.

“End of an era, bonny lad!” Harry said. Unlike himself, Harry had worn well. There was something pleasingly robust and compact about him; his face hadn’t collapsed into sagging jowls and ruddy, plump cheeks as his had. However wrinkled, Harry's face was still lean, his black eyes still vividly bright, and the skin healthily tanned from a recent holiday.

“It’s a crying shame,” Billy shook his head.

“It is an all!”

“We all did our best.” 

“We did.”

“Wasn’t to be!”

“You know, they should have made this into one of them protected cultural heritage sites,” Harry suggested jokingly.

“Run by the National Trust?”

“We might have got coachloads of tourists coming in here watching us sup our pints?”

“Like old museum exhibits.”

“Well, we are, aren’t we!”

Harry asked Billy about his health. He had taken a fall a month ago and the doctor had read him the riot act about his unhealthy lifestyle.

“Canny, thanks!”

“No more dizzy spells?”

“No, no dizzy spells, thanks. Just need something to flush out me kidneys regularly,” Billy replied, fixing his eyes on his empty pint glass.

Harry smiled and as he got up to get his round, Billy decided to use the toilet. He had lied about the dizzy spells. He was buggered! Even going to the toilet was an effort now, and this time it was no good. However much he clenched, nothing would come, not even a drizzle. He gave up and washed his hands. 

On his way back, he saw that the door to the concert hall was ajar and decided to take a look. He barely recognised it. It seemed a lot bigger since it had been emptied. The red, velvet curtains had been removed and the chairs and tables stacked at the back of the room. A dull afternoon light seeped into the dusty room, only bright enough to illuminate the worn, stained red carpet with its gold patterned motif.

In its heyday, the place had bustled with life. He had been the concert chairmen, the master of ceremonies. He had introduced the acts, exchanged patter with the audience, done the bingo and brought the evening to a halt with his rendition of Jerusalem. Every Saturday night he had been there up on stage, the centre of it all. He had loved it.

All those distinct memories melded into an image of him gazing out at the faces staring back at him. The quaffing of pints, the responsive cackles of approval at some joke he made. A thick pall of smoke blue under the stage lights. “Howay man, Billy, get on w’it!” they would jokingly complain if they thought he was going on too long. It was all good fun, a good laugh! Looking at the stripped room, he could barely believe such nights had ever happened there.

Billy felt a light tap on his shoulder, and turned around to see Harry holding a pint for him.

“Cheers!” 

“We had some great nights in here over the years,” Harry said, passing Billy’s pint to him.

“We did. It’s a sorry sight now.” 

Both men’s eyes flitted around the room.

“Everything went to pieces when they got shot of you.”

“It was going to pieces before that.”

“You reckon?”

“I think so. It all started when they got rid of Dave and Audrey.”

“Aye. Dave was a good drummer, and Audrey could play owt you like on the organ.”

“Aye, they were canny.”

Both men took a sip of their beer.

“The new acts came in with all that machinery, them damn boom boxes with their backing tracks and all that shite, all bloody plugs and wires, man! It was more like Karaoke. They didn’t want Dave and Audrey any more.”

“Aye.”

“The earnings on the door went down after that. That was the beginning of it.”

They left the room and resumed their seats in the main bar.

Billy turned to Harry: “Ted really buggered up everything."

“The truth, Harry, was that he was a bloody idiot. When he became club chairman he thought he was running a club on The Strip in Vegas. All those bloody stupid ideas.”

“Getting shot of you was the worst one, that’s for sure! Peter Shaw’s lad was an embarrassment.”

“This was a special club, a decent club. A family club.” Billy became self-consciously aware of the thin wavering of his own voice. He knew he shouldn’t go on like this, but he couldn’t stop himself. “We never did the things that The Lodge did. We never allowed strippers. We didn’t allow bad language. We never had blue comics until Ted was chairman.” 

Harry had heard it all before, many times. “Poor Ted, though. He looked terrible that last time I saw him in the hospital. All grey and wasted away. His eyes were all over, couldn’t focus. He was at death’s door and he was still talking about how he had put that money aside to hide it from the accountant.” 

Billy began to shake his head from side to side. “It was a crying shame what he did to this place!”

“Whose round is it, anyway?” Harry asked.

“Mine I think.”

As Harry went to get the next round, Billy nursed the last of his beer. This last day was bringing it all back. Why was he getting all het up? The man was dead. The club was closing. Life was like this. At his age, you lost people. When his mind turned to Sally at the end, he’d shun thoughts of her away, especially the long nights he had spent in that same hospital where Ted had died, watching her dying slowly. Life could be bitter, but you got on with things, so why couldn’t he just let the rest go? 

Dick Corrigan was shouting his goodbyes. “Ta ra, lads. See you down the Legion next time.” 

“Aye mebbee! See you, Dick!” He didn’t walk straight out the bar, but instead made a detour to Billy’s table.

“Billy!”

Billy nodded.

“It’s the end of an era.”

“Aye, it is,”Billy said.

Dick Corrigan stood over him. He was a good ten years younger than Billy. 

“You know, Billy, when I think about this place, I think about all the Saturday nights, the banter, the craic, the laughs. We had so many laughs!”

“Don’t forget the bingo,” Billy said facetiously.

“Aye, the bingo. You were good, Billy. You were brilliant. Some of the acts were shocking, but you were always sound. It might sound daft!”

“What?”

“Well I just wanted to say thank you! Thank you for all those Saturday nights. It was never the same after you left.”

“Dick, you will make me cry,” Billy said as a joke, but it wasn’t really.

“I mean it.”

“Ta, Dick. It means a lot.”

“Anyway, all the best, bonny lad!” He reached over to shake Billy’s hand, nodded his head and then he was gone.

“He’s a good lad!” Harry said, returning with a couple of pints.

“He is,” Billy replied. 

“I am off for a tab!”

“You still haven’t given up. You told me last time…”

"I am cutting down.”

“Give it up, man.”

“I will, I will,” said Billy standing up.

Billy thought about that night a few months ago when he had what he called a bit of a turn coming from the club walking down the hill to his bungalow. He hadn’t been drunk but he had suddenly felt lightheaded. He had blacked out and found himself sprawled on the ground. He had lain there for a minute before Winnie Meoman had spotted him. He hadn’t wanted any fuss, but his head was bleeding and Winnie had insisted on calling an ambulance. He could still remember lying on the cold muddy ground before Winnie saw him, listening to his own slow wheezing breath, and feeling the hot blood matting what remained of his hair and dribbling down his temple. He remembered lying there, thinking that at that moment he really could and he wanted to, to just quietly slip away, a thought like a longing to let the remaining life within him flow away, He wouldn’t fight it. For a moment he had just wanted everything to be over.  

“I’ll come with you.”

Billy retrieved his cigarettes and lighter from his coat pocket and they went to stand outside the club round the corner near the empty car park. Only Ted’s car was still there. They hadn’t managed to sell it yet. There was a sign inside the windshield with a price tag and his wife’s phone number if anyone was interested.

Billy lit up. 

“You know, Billy, that was one good thing that Ted did, bring in the smoking ban.”

“I don’t think he had any choice. I think that was the law.”

“Aye, mebbee. But it was a good thing. The air used to get so thick in there. I used to wake up stinking of tabs”

They had all been brought up with smoke. Not only the cigarettes they started on when they were twelve or thirteen but the air itself was clogged by the coal fire smoke that emitted from nearly every house in the village. It was so normal for them that they hadn’t noticed until after the smoke was banned. Now everyone had smokeless fuels or central heating. 

It was still blustery, and the dark afternoon threatened rain. Billy looked at it, felt its heaviness. It reminded him of the painting of the crucifixion that they had on the wall of his old Catholic school.

“Me Uncle Pat, always said smoking outdoors on a day like this was a waste of a cigarette.”

Billy nodded, inhaling deeply and then enjoying the slow release of his breath.

They saw a few young lads at the far end of the car park larking around together, swearing at each other and laughing, aiming pantomimic kicks at each other.

“That language is a bit choice,” Billy said between puffs.

“Howay man, let’s gann in. It’s frozen here.”

They walked back inside the club. 

“You want a chaser lads?” Beth said pointing to a bottle of whisky she’d taken down from behind the bar. 

“At two o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon?” Harry asked.

“It’s on the house?”

“Really?”

“Who's going to notice?”

“Go on, then.”

Beth went to fetch three whisky glasses. All the other occupants of the bar had already been beneficiaries of Beth’s largesse. Beth poured the men their whiskies, then poured herself on. 

“Cheers, to the good old, sad old days,” Beth said. They clinked their glasses and took sips of their whisky.

“You are a good lass, Beth. I hope Jack appreciates you.”

Beth raised a quizzical eyebrow. “He has his moments.”

“To absent friends,” Harry toasted. 

The memory of Sally came to Billy’s mind, not the thin, weak woman in the hospital, but the healthy woman in the prime of her life, the woman he had shared fifty years of marriage with. His life had gone to pot when she had gone. Marriage, he had never thought about it much before. It just was. They had had their moments, her sulkiness, his cantankerousness, as she called it. They constantly ribbed each other, made jokes about life sentences and all that. They hadn’t been lovey-dovey, but they were solid. He had never thought if they were happy or not, but now in his empty bungalow, he knew they were. It made him feel guilty for all the time he had wasted in here when she was home and he hadn’t asked her to come, for all those Saturday nights when he had been on stage and she had been some extra tagged on to other couples. If he had only known. He shouldn’t be drinking whisky. It made him too sentimental.

“Come on Billy, it’s your turn,” Beth asked.

He couldn’t think of anything at first. 

“To the memories!” He could feel his eyes getting rheumy. He noticed a quick glance between Harry and Beth.

“Aye, to the memories.” Harry repeated.

They clinked their glasses, finished their whisky then Beth was ready to pour them another one. They drank another pint and more whiskies until both men felt tipsy. They talked about the club, some of the terrible acts, reminisced about moments of outrageous drunkenness, theirs and those of others. Some of the other lads came to the bar and joined in. It turned into a good session.

When Billy and Harry went to relieve themselves, Billy suddenly thought about Ted. He knew he had cancer. Harry had told him long before he died he was at stage four, but he had put Ted right out of his mind. Billy said, “You know, I should have gone to see him.”

“Who?”

“Ted… when he was dying. I should have gone.”

Harry looked at Billy, but didn’t say anything.

“Sally always used to say that I was too bloody pigheaded.”

“It doesn’t matter now, Billy, lad.”

‘Aye.”

“Howay, let’s knock the whiskies back and get some fish and chips on the way home.”

“What about Julie?”

“Julie’s having her tea with Carla.”

He was a good lad, Harry. He’d do a good turn for anybody. He understood the fish and chips. Harry could see him getting teary and must have imagined how painful it was for Billy to return to his empty bungalow alone.

They went back to the bar, supped up the rest of their pints and downed their whiskies, said their goodbyes then gathered their coats and headed for the door. Billy couldn’t help but take one last look at the club before leaving and shook his head in dismay.

“Howay Billy!” Harry said surprisingly gently, laying his hand on his shoulder.

Billy’s eyes were red with whisky and emotion. “It’s a crying shame. Such a crying shame!”

.