Second-hand

The Three Thimbles Public House

1993

If it was supposed to put me off, it was an absolute masterstroke.

My opponent flicked open the lid of his metal Zippo lighter – click.

He rubbed the flint wheel with his thumb – scritch.

A golden flame.

He snapped the lid shut – clack . . .

Click . . . Scritch . . . Clack . . .

He probably didn’t even realise he was doing it, never mind knowing he was triggering me. Probably just a nervous twitch. Outward evidence that his mental cogs were working hard to figure out how many points were left on the table.

He was sitting cross-legged in a leather armchair. I didn’t know him personally, but like me, he looked absolutely ridiculous. In accordance with the landlord’s rules, players had to wear one of the landlord’s snooker-themed waistcoats if they played in the monthly snooker competition. My opponent must have also lacked a suit, so, like me, he had paired the obligatory waistcoat with a t-shirt, baggy jeans, Converse trainers and Brillcreamed hair.

His presence was superfluous of course; the landlord and most of the punters watching the match were there for me, not him. They had confidence in my snooker skills in spades. The bets were proof of that. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my popularity was at least, in part, due to hailing from a snooker-obsessed family; ancestry does generally help to heighten people’s faith in one’s abilities.

I glanced at the rectangular wooden scoreboard nailed to a nearby wall. The sliding brass pegs said it all. I was on 52 points; he was on 32. With a maximum of 35 points up for grabs on the snooker table, I only needed to pot one red, then a black and the match would be out of his reach.

But the open fire was spitting out an obscene amount of smoke and waves of tobacco-fog from the audience was clouding my vision of the table. The lamps attached to the wall may as well have been ornamental; they offered little in the way of illumination.

I shuffled across the pub’s creaking wooden floor to get a better look at the landscape of the table. I held my freshly chalked snooker cue upright – the tip almost touched the dark oak timber ceiling. I hoped that my cue would somehow grant me the needed space.

The audience was as diverse as the varying cloud formations of smoke. Twenty-somethings in leather jackets and bleached hair were smoking roll-ups – blowing a haze of bitter, choking nicotine and nauseating marijuana; squaddies from the nearby army barracks sucked on cigars – expelling smothering and lingering fumes; and old regulars wearing flat caps smoked pipes – puffing out a fog, sour and earthy.

My father, the landlord, gently pushed the crowds of onlookers aside. The punters had put money on me not only winning this match, but on all the other matches during the weekend-long tournament ahead. The crowd nearly knocked a handful of watercolours of The Ten Thimbles off the stone wall: various depictions of the elevated pub proudly sitting on the rolling hills of the Yorkshire Dales – host of this tournament. The only establishment in a sixty mile radius to own a twelve foot by six foot snooker table.

Quiet returned as I crouched by the table. The balls, now at eye-level.

The black could, in fact, pass the blue.

Click . . . Scritch . . . Clack . . .

Ignore the Zippo, Dylan. Just pot the red and get the cue ball in place for the black.

I positioned my hand on the soft green felt and placed the cue between my knuckles. I struck the white cue ball low, just below centre. It met the red ball head on, and rolled back as the red obediently dropped into the centre pocket – just as planned. Just as he taught me.

United, the crowd uttered a loud sigh of relief and pint glasses clinked; a young boy shifted my brass peg on the scoreboard to 53.

My chest tightened – not for the first time that night. It wasn't because of the ball I had just potted.

My throat, burning. Breathing was becoming shallow.

I approached the dull snooker balls and a hush fell again. This could have been the final shot of the match – the final nail in my opponent’s coffin.

Then, the Zippo again.

Click . . . Scritch . . . Clack . . .

Like me, had my opponent’s grandfather ever made him swear never to smoke – before even starting to drink illegally or having not gone to art college yet? Like me, had my opponent also been enrolled in this tournament without consultation?

My left hand settled again on the table and I steadied the polished cue with my right hand. I ran my thumb over the etching on it. No need to look at it. I had studied it hundreds of times. I knew that it contained my grandfather’s name. 

My second-hand cue. Second-hand. Like the smoke I was breathing in.

Second-hand smoke.

My lungs evidently agreed with my inner monologue; they forced me to cough again. The cough was turning into a harsh, hacking cough.

I had become a fully-fledged passive smoker. 

A passive smoker.

Passive. That was the way. That was the tradition. Ask no questions about the contradictions. I had always passively accepted. The done thing. From one generation down to the next generation. That was how it had always been done.

Appropriately, someone in the crowd coughed while spluttering, ‘Come on, lad, finish him!’

Finish him.

If I finished my opponent, I would soon finish myself – not that the greedy crowd would care about that. This was the point of no return. The nail in my own coughing coffin. If I pot the ball, I would sign on to many more hours of pain in this pub – at best. At worst, I’d meet the same fate as Grandad.

But if I would finish my progress in this tournament, I would finish their self-serving faith in my talents and I would finish this tradition . . . but I would also finish my scorched, constricted breathing. I could start to breathe again. Rain-washed air. Clean, crisp life outside would fill my lungs.

Click . . . Scritch . . . Clack . . .

I smiled at my opponent; little did he know, but he had finally become my ally.

The time had come to really come good on my promise.

I wouldn’t be passive any longer.

Second-hand smoke would not finish me like it finished him . . .