VACANT AND ENGAGED

This is not going to be a nice story. You can guess that from the title, which does mean what you think it means - and a little bit more. We are dealing here with natural functions, and we all know what they are, though there might be a little disagreement as to what else belongs on the list, further down. For instance, the older I get and the more I see, the more I think it's a natural function of human beings to mess up lives, their own as well as other people's. That's part of my story, too, though the major part of it really is concerned with that voluntary control over certain sphincter muscles in our body, the acquisition of which is generally assumed to mark the emergence of our rational faculties, the loss of which, by the same token, is taken as a shameful and disgusting failure of our human spirit and is normally seen by sufferer and observer as signifying the beginning of the end. Which is, of course, nonsense - but the fact that something is nonsense has never prevented human beings from believing it, and probably never will.

My father and I - God rest his soul, dead these twenty years - used to rank the smelly lavatories we had to use in public places in order of stench. PPHs we called them - pestilential piss-holes. I had quite a bit of chest-trouble as a lad, and I've often wondered whether it was due to the London smogs, or the habit I had of not breathing properly for considerable periods of time. I used to try and hold my breath all the while I was in a PPH, and inspiration (in the literal sense of letting air into your lungs) was almost completely absent from music lessons at school as far as I was concerned. I couldn't read music for toffee and I had no idea how to finger the recorder. If I'd taken the instrument out of my mouth, the teacher would have seen and there would have been hell to pay. So I just gave up breathing for three quarters of an hour. If it didn't go in, then it didn't have to come out and make some fearful caterwauling. The experience gave me good practice for some of the worse PPHs I encountered.

The one at the Sotheby Arms, however, posed an additional problem. Of course that's not its name and of course I won't tell you where it is. But it wasn't long ago I was there. And my visit was not voluntary. I'm as fond of a curry as the next man. But after I've had a curry the next man isn't fond of me. I was driving in the country the following day when nature called - and not on my mobile phone. Hedgerows are handy for some things, but not for all. And there was this village. And there was this pub. It looked run-down. Closed Deserted. But the door was open, so I chanced it.

There was no one behind the bar, and just one local, eating a doorstep sandwich out of a lunchbox and doing a crossword.

"Do you think anyone would mind if I - ?" I said, discreet as ever.

"You go on," he said, barely looking up, but waving his hand in the right direction, though the smell would have led me. But when I got there, the only cubicle seemed to be occupied. I say seemed, because I couldn't see anybody actually in there - you know the way the doors are half-length sometimes, and you can see the pulled-down trousers and... Let's not go into details. This time, there was nothing to be seen. The little sign that should have said engaged or vacant was too worn to read. But there was singing coming from behind the closed door. Isn't that what you were always told to do if you didn't trust the bolt - sing? I'm not going to tell you what the song was, because I've put a lot of effort into forgetting it - one of those catchy, mindless things from the eighties, that you couldn't get out of your head if once you let it in there.

I was in a bit of a flap when I rushed back into the bar.

"There's somebody in there, and I'm..."

"Don't worry," said the local, "there's another one just behind the bar, on the right."

"What about the...," I said.

"Don't worry," said the local, "he's in the cellar, or still fast asleep in bed more likely. Go on."

So I did. And it was with a much greater sense of civilised bonhomie and sophisticated goodfellowship that I emerged to have a conversation with my saviour.

"Would you like another one?" I said.

"Ah. Shouldn't really, but five down's giving me trouble - bottled, though - barrel needs changing - " and he showed me the end of his pint, cloudy, with yeast-fragments floating. "Keeps you regular," he said, "but there are limits. Don't disturb him - he probably wouldn't come anyway - just serve yourself and put the money in the till."

I put down the little tinkly bell I'd picked up and did as I was told. The bottles were dusty, and there was no bar-cloth to wipe my hands.

"Someone in the gents, was there?" said the local, after he'd taken his first sip.

"Yes," I said. "Singing."

"Ah," he said, and he named the very song.

"That's right," I said. "Do you know the fellow?"

He took a long swallow in silence, then unfolded his newspaper, looked at the date on it and tapped it with his finger. "Of course," he said, "the day his mum died."

"Gets drunk, does he?" I said, trying to sound sympathetic.

"Not exactly," said the local. "He can't any more, see, 'cos he's dead."

There was a long period of silence, while we both just drank. I also remembered to breathe. Then the local said, "If you've heard him, I'd better tell you. But we'll need another bottle each."

"He was just vacant, was Ned. Like a big kid. If it hadn't've been for his mother, well - but she protected him, all his life, till she died. Tough old woman. Nobody dared bully him. Nobody dared play the fool with him. He'd've believed whatever you told him, and acted on it - but afterwards, you'd have his mother to reckon with. So folk left him alone. Not a bad life, really, in some ways, never needing to grow up. Then she died. Left him the house, and that was worth a packet. They said there were bankbooks, too. Shares, maybe. Who knows? Sid, the landlord, maybe, and Bert, his brother, and Sue, that he married."

"Who?" I said. "Who married her?"

"Ah," said the local, "that was just it. It was Ned as married her, and Bert as went to bed with her. Well, not just Bert. She was known as - easy, shall we say. She was out to enjoy life, and there's not much else you can do in a village. She used to boast it was always a different man took her home from the one that brought her in here."

"And Ned - "

"Well, he needed a woman, didn't he, round the house, after his mother died? Even he could see that. Dishes didn't wash 'emselves. Food didn't cook itself. And they told him it wouldn't be right for a woman to live in that big house and look after him if she wasn't married to him as well."

"Did nobody try and stop them?" I asked.

"Not many ideas ever went into Ned's head, but once they were in there it was terrible hard to get them out again. Besides, nobody wanted to go against Bert and Sid. Farmer Thorn objected to Sid's planning application for the holiday cottages, and look what happened to his cows. And that nice four-by-four he had, too, and the barn. Oh no. People come to live in the country for a quiet life. They got them married somewhere where he wasn't known, and that was that.

"It was Sid's idea about the cassette player, though. A joke, I think it was, to start with. Always one for jokes, was Sid - you need to be like that if you're a landlord. It was Sid that first called Ned 'vacant but engaged'. Some people found that funny. But the cassette player - well, Bert had told his brother that he and Sue didn't always find it easy having Ned around - he'd just walk in on them, see, not knock or anything, after all, it was his house, wasn't it? And Bert wanted Sid to keep him down the pub, get him drunk and that, but Sid didn't want him around - turned off the customers, Sid said, laughing too loud and talking nonsense, and looking - vacant.

"So he told Bert he'd got an idea. He got Ned a cassette player - a kiddy's one, I think, 'cos it only seemed to play the one tune, but Ned liked it, and he sang along. All the time. That way, said Sid, Bert and Sue would have warning. They'd hear him coming. Oh, he was a joker, was Sid. But it seems it didn't work. One day, anniversary of his mother's death - he was good on dates, was Ned, taught him the calendar, his mother had - one day, he - found them - at it. Now, whether he understood what was going on, or some 'kind friend' in the village explained it all to him, I don't know. But he came up here and just started drinking. Anything. Everything. Then he went out to the lavatory, like you have to when you drink. But he didn't come back. People heard him singing, so they thought he must be all right. When it came to closing time, Sid felt enough was enough, so he kicked the door open. Ned had hanged himself, and what people had heard had been the cassette player.

"Well, a year went by. I can't say they were happy, any of them. Sue was the one with the legal rights, so she cleared out, sold the house, emptied the accounts, got away from the village. Lucky her. Sid and Bert blamed one another. Not that they actually cared about Ned. But his death had upset things. For a start, people avoided the pub. They all had different reasons, but they avoided it. And there was none of Ned's money to help. Nothing went right for Bert, either. And when things don't go right, you drink, especially if your brother runs the pub.

"How do I know what happened next? Well, I come in here every day to have my pint and eat my lunch and do my crossword. Creature of habit. And that morning I was sitting here when Sid listened to the messages on his answerphone. There was quite a number of them. All from Bert. There'd been a bit of drinking going on the previous night, of course. And Bert had gone out to relieve himself. And he'd heard the singing. And because of that, he couldn't - you know - start. So he'd come back in, and carried on drinking. He couldn't say what he'd heard - not in public. Imagine how Sid would have made fun of him. And he couldn't discuss his - problem - either. I mean, you don't talk about that kind of thing, do you?

"So, at the end of the evening, he drove home. But he couldn't do it there, either. In agony, he was, and ashamed. He turned on all the taps, you know, just to encourage himself. You could hear the water running, behind his voice, on the answerphone tape. And there was something else you could hear, too. That song. The one on the cassette recorder. The one Ned sang. Bert didn't mention it. Nor did Sid. But you could hear it. It was there. I heard it.

"Eventually, somebody got Bert to hospital. But it was too late by then. His bladder had burst. Nasty way to go, I imagine. I hope I never find out."

I hoped I didn't find out, either.

"Well, there we are. And that's five down. I knew I only had to sit and think quietly. Safe journey." And the local got up and went out.

Well, two pints, even of bottled beer, are enough to stimulate the juices to flow. And if all I needed was the urinal, there was no reason not to show my courage. Everything was silent - fortunately. I did my - business - and turned to go. But I still had a terrible curiosity in me. And I also thought how grossly inappropriate a place this was to die. Though Luther says, in the decent obscurity of a learned language, nascimur inter faeces et urinam - we enter this world between urine and faeces - why shouldn't we leave it in the same way?

I gently pushed the door that wouldn't say whether it was engaged or vacant. It swung back. I saw a shadow dangling, and for one moment thought - but it was only the chain from the high-level cistern. No modern low-level close-coupled suite for the Sotheby Arms. And then I spotted a small plastic box wedged behind the pipe that ran from the cistern to the bowl. The cassette-player! Here was the explanation. I, the townie, had fallen for it. The local, all on his own in the frowsty bar, had painted a picture of rural customs that made badger-baiting seem humane and had gone off laughing at my credulity.

The cassette-recorder was stuck very fast. I tugged and tugged and all at once it came away and fell to the floor and broke open. But the battery didn't fly out. It was corroded firmly in place. Great warts and boils of chemical overreaction disfigured and distorted it. There was no way it could have given power to anything.

Just at that moment, the previous evening's curry made its presence felt - or rather its desire for absence. I certainly wasn't staying where I was, and holding my breath wouldn't do any good.

Well, did I or didn't I? I'm not going to say, because basic human self-respect has to draw the line somewhere. But even if I did, it wasn't - entirely - out of fear.

13.i.2001 6.00pm to 10.20pm