056: Old Joe.

Frank padded across the landing, the cord from his dressing gown trailing behind. Charlie the cat chased after it. At the bottom of the stairs Frank had to turn sideways and hold the banister as he stepped over several bottles of cheap spirits that he’d left there after driving out to the cash and carry the day before. Later on, he’d top up the Stolichnaya, the Grey Goose and the Courvoisier behind the bar with Cossak, Greylag and Nelson’s.

A shabby pine dresser stood in the hall, stacked with mugs, a tea urn and a big glass jar of Nescafé that had been refilled several times from a jar of supermarket brand. Frank flipped the switch on the side of the urn, pulled out a cracked mug and dropped a tea bag into it. As soon as the old silver box began to rattle and hiss, he poured not-quite boiling water onto the tea bag and went to the low fridge behind the bar to get milk. The milk sloshed onto the bar top, leaving white spots on the dark wood, but Frank mopped them with the sleeve of his dressing gown and poured more milk into a whiskey tumbler. This, he placed on the floor for Charlie.

“There you go, you little fucker,” he grunted. The cat mewed and lapped at the milk.

The pub was crowded, although not with people. Rarely ever with people nowadays. It was an old building, a framework of rotting timber held together with thick coats of varnish, horse-hair plaster and nicotine-stained wallpaper. The yellowing wood-chip could barely be seen behind the publican’s gallery; fly-specked Hogarth prints, a sepia photograph of the local bat and trap team and a faded photograph of Kriss Akabusi dedicated to ‘Frank and Joan and everyone at The Duke’.

The ceilings were low and criss-crossed with gnarled oak beams, meaning that Frank was forced to stoop and duck as he whistled his way to the door. His passage was further impeded by hanging ropes of fairy lights, horse brasses and pewter tankards, but he knew them all and dodged his way through the maze of obstacles without spilling any more of his tea.

Frank paused and, with his free hand, hauled a large blackboard attached to a rotting A-frame out from behind the fruit machine. Across the top, in neatly painted script, it read ‘Sunday Roasts’. Underneath, in scraggly chalk, the words ‘Beef’, ‘Chicken’ and ‘Pork’. Frank dipped his finger in his tea and rubbed at the word ‘Beef’ until it was a smudgy white cloud.

He stepped into the porch. A newspaper and a bundle of brown envelopes hung in the rusty letterbox like a fox in a trap. Frank had to wrestle and fight to get them free, and by the time he made it back to the bar, most of the tea was on the carpet and the outer pages of the newspaper were shredded to ribbons.

He threw it to one side and ripped open the envelopes one by one. An bill from the brewery. Electricity, second warning. Gas, final warning. An invoice from the butcher.

“Fuck,” he said to the empty pub.

He belched, and after a second’s thought, went back to the blackboard and scrubbed out ‘Pork’ as well. “Just the chicken this week, Joan!” he shouted, but there was no response.

Being a publican used to be a career. Well, maybe not what you’d call a career, but a job for life. Something a man could earn a living at. It wasn’t complicated stuff; you got hold of a pub, and you were a publican. But the good times were over. He’d just about seen the end of them in the 90s, and things had been alright until the crisis in 2008, but things were fucked, even before the pandemic.

You just couldn’t make it work anymore. People wouldn’t walk past three corner shops selling four beers for a fiver to get to the pub and pay six quid for a pint.

From somewhere in the corner, Charlie mewed. Frank jumped, startled, to find Joe, one of the few remaining regulars, sitting in the corner booth.

“Bloody hell, Joe, you nearly killed me then. What are you doing, lurking about like that?”

Frank scraped the unpaid bills from the bar and scrunched them into the pocket of his dressing gown.

“Here Joe, have you been in here all night?” he tutted. “You can’t just kip here, you know. If anyone found out they’d have my license off me in a flash. Like shit off a shiny wotsit.”

Old Joe slumped sideways onto the booth seat. He lay in an unnatural position, his arm frozen stiffly against his face.

“Joe?” said Frank. “Stop pissing about Joe, come on.”

But Joe didn’t move. For a moment, Frank didn’t move either.

“Joan! Joan get down here!” Frank banged his fist against the low ceiling. “Joan! Joan!”

There was cursing and rumbling on the floorboards above. A few seconds later, Joan came thumping down the stairs.

“What is it Frank? What’s going on?”

“It’s old Joe.” He half raised his arm towards the jagged black shape. “He’s in the corner booth.”

Joan walked around the bar, then jumped backwards. “Oh God, Frank! He’s dead!”

“Damn right he is. Didn't you see him last night?”

“Well, I saw he was here. I didn't see he was dead. He was right as rain when he came in,” said Joan. “Right as rain he was. Saturday night, he was in for his five pints of Guinness,”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been the Guinness. Stands to reason. It’s good for you,” said Frank.

Joan nodded. “Poor Joe,” she said.

“Poor Joe, my foot,” said Frank. “There’s no worrying him now. Poor us! They’ll shut us down, you know.”

“We’ll have to call an ambulance,” said Joan.

“An ambulance?” said Frank. “It’s a bit late for that. He’s been stone dead since eleven o’ clock last night.”

Joan put her hand to her chest. “Oh, it gives me the chills, Frank. You don't think his ghost will hang around, do you? You know Ruth, what does Mum's hair? She's being haunted. Their landing light flickers like anything when there's a storm. They’re thinking of getting one of them... you know. What’s the word? Exorcists.”

“She doesn’t need an exorcist,” said Frank. “She needs a bloody electrician. Now don’t be daft. We’ve got to think of what to do.” He stared at Joe, lying on the bench, crooked and thin. “I wish it hadn't happened here in the pub.”

Frank swallowed hard. It wouldn’t do to have a body in the pub. They’d have to close, at least for today. Maybe tomorrow too. Once you got the police involved, you’d have the coroner and all sorts. Forensics. It could be a week. Frank felt the bills in his pocket like a lead weight. A week’s takings. It’d be the end.

Old Joe wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t want the Duke to close. In fact, thought Frank, he’d be furious. If he came down for his Guinness to find the place closed? Why, it’d kill him.

If he wasn’t already dead.

Frank scratched the back of his head; galaxies of dandruff formed and spiralled away in the still air. Then all at once, as if he’d been stung, Frank darted across the pub, ducking and weaving among the hanging pots and jugs. He reached up on top of the fruit machine and pulled down a gin glass with an inch of chalk in it. Then he went over to the blackboard, and in the cloudy space that had read ‘Beef’, he wrote ‘Wagyu’.

“What are you doing Frank? We haven’t got any… Wag-yoo?” She pulled a strand of hair from her forehead, out of her eye. “Frank, what is Wagyu?”

Frank looked down at the dark shape of Joe’s body, slumped in the corner booth. He smiled. “That’s the beauty of it, Joan. No fucker knows. And no fucker knows what it tastes like, neither.”

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Tom Cornfoot is a writer, designer, and illustrator. He’s spent over 30 years carefully developing a style of handwriting that’s almost illegible, doodling, and never getting around to learning to play the guitar.

These stories are plucked from the air, like everything else. There’s no consistent link or thread, unless of course you find one, in which case, it was entirely planned that way.

Words and pictures © 2025 Tom Cornfoot

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