Cricket by Anna Martin Page B

serve drinks. It’s just the money I’m not quite there with yet.”
    Stella’s sharp nod was his cue to duck behind the bar. He felt Ryan do the same after him.
    “Can we do a stock clearance tonight, do you think?” Ryan asked.
    A man yelled down the bar: “Oi! Stell!”
    “Wait a fucking moment!” she yelled back, then turned to Ryan. “Yeah. I can put in an extra order if we clear it right down, and they’ll get it here by three tomorrow. Let’s do it.”
    “Set everything at two fifty?”
    “And soft drinks at a quid,” she said, confirming.
    Stella reached to the back wall of the bar, took hold of the rope attached to a shiny brass bell, and rang it sharply until the assembled patrons quieted.
    “Right, boys and girls,” Stella called, “Call your mothers, call your wives. Tell them you’re going to be home late, Stella’s doing a stock clearance. Two fifty for anything on the bar or in the fridge, double up on your spirits for an extra quid. Call your brother, call your dad, and tell them to get their fat arses down here ’cos I won’t be doing it again anytime soon.
    “Who’s next?”
    It was, at once, exactly like and having nothing at all in common with Henry’s last experience of working in a bar. The shiny gay bar in the Village served more Cosmos than pints, and the beer came from bottles, not a tap. Here, people were happy to wait for their Guinness to settle and teased him good-naturedly when he had no clue what a “pint of Doom” was.
    As the band started up, he learned the names of all the local ales and how to use a pump to serve them (under Ryan’s watchful guidance), and by the time the first song was over, he’d rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows and had figured out the difference between a five- and a ten-pound note.
    The phrase “and one for you, love” seemed to be uttered with every other drink he served, and even while refusing more than he accepted, a line of empty glasses started to be assembled behind him.
    Stella didn’t mind him drinking on the job. In fact, she almost encouraged it. Ryan certainly was, and it was to him that Henry most often turned when he needed help with the till or figuring out what the hell someone was asking for.
    The space behind the bar was small, only really big enough for a couple of people at a time, and he guessed that when the pub was built no one had taken into account having to squeeze three adults back there. It meant that passing someone became a rather intimate affair, and Henry couldn’t help but wonder if Ryan pressed his hand to his sister’s lower back as he tried to get to the till, or slapped her ass when she bent over to get a Corona out of the fridge.
    He hoped not.
    When the band finished their first set with a rather raucous number that Henry didn’t recognize, a path to the bar was cleared for them. Not that Stella made them pay for their drinks.
    “You must be Henry,” the short redheaded girl said as she hopped right up to sit on the bar.
    “Yeah,” he said, looking up at her.
    “You’re pretty. Two pints of Stag, two JD and Coke, and a ’Bow and black.”
    She said it like a challenge, like she wasn’t expecting Henry to nod sharply and turn away to start pouring the drinks. Someone put a song on the jukebox, and suddenly the pub was filled with music again as Henry lined up the first two pints for the redheaded fiddler.
    “Twelve fifty,” he said, echoing the local tone, and earned himself a smile. He took her money, gave her change, and nodded to the next patron to take his order.
     
     
    B Y THE time Andy arrived, things were starting to settle down, and Henry was beginning to feel the effects of the four (or was it five?) glasses of gin and tonic he’d drunk through the course of the evening.
    “I’m just going to the loo,” Stella said as she ducked back under the bar. “And to get a breath of fresh air.”
    “No problem,” Henry said.
    He swapped the gin for a large glass of ice and water