Everything in Its Place

You sat on Penhale’s stool. It was an odd, intimate thing to do, like sitting in a stranger’s church pew, and it must have shown on your face, because the snug noticed at once. You asked for a gin instead of the usual half of mild. Then, in a clear voice, you asked the room what time the chapel clock had struck on Thrift Day night.

The Anchor did what rooms do when a scene is spoiled. First it went still. A man put down his pint. A card game at the corner table ceased in mid-deal. Then it went hostile: somebody laughed in the wrong place, a stool scraped, and the air changed from warm to watchful, as though somebody had opened a door onto a colder room.

It was Old Barnaby who broke. He was eighty, deaf in one ear and sentimental about everything, and he blurted it out as if it were being pulled from him. “Penhale never misses prayers. Ten o’clock, every night of his life. You could set the tide by him.” He blinked. “Last night he did.”

Then he looked appalled, as if he’d spoken aloud in church.

“Garfinkel would be proud,” Jonah murmured. “Nobody realises the routine is a decision until you take it away.”

Vera, polishing a glass she’d polished twice, said nothing at all, and said it very loudly.