PUBLISHED 'FAT KNITE' 1988
The man who had no mind, could not make it up either. He walked into the pub so as to get legless too. “How are you, Abbey?” queried the landlord, almost too politely and, not really waiting to hear the answer, he went off to sell one of his specially concocted cocktails to a sophisticated lady who sat on a bar-stool nearby. “Nobbut middling,” replied Abraham Bintiff to himself, looking down at himself and suddenly realising he had actually spoken and in sequence too! Pity the landlord was now busy chatting up a mare attractive customer. Abraham used to be a Captain in an army fighting in a war he did not understand. He may not even have realised which side he was on (and there had been three). He had been retired from the ranks early for surrendering to his own troops. He glanced along the bar and surveyed the lady in the tight red skirt, that accentuated the prime cut of her thighs, and the buttonless blouse that, despite its loose fit, did little to hide the weight of her bosom and its deep valley. Before her on the bar was the most strangely constructed cocktail that Abraham had ever seen. It looked as if fizzing liquids of various colours had been mixed but in such a carefully arranged column of specific gravities they all remained unblemished by each ocher. Thrust through these undulating stripes was a large colourful brolly that protected the drinker from the upward erupting bubbles. “I’ll have one of those,” Abraham suddenly decided, pointing at the drink in front of the striking lady. The landlord, leaving a knowing look for the lady to ponder on, sidled back to the bar in front of Abraham and, staring him straight in the eyes, said: “Have thee the readies, eh, Abbey? It’ll cost you an arm and a leg.” Many stories have been told of Abraham Bintiff. He was said to take young girls out to the marshes and rape them in the quicksand. He was once Pope? No, that one has since been discounted. He lived on a narrow boat on the canal, full of yapping pets, that nobody ever saw, but ware said to live in the boat’s weed hatch and septic tank. He once had a council house where, at night, creatures from outer space were said to alight on his roof to pick their teeth with the TV aerial - they knew that Abraham wouldn’t mind. And now he’s a mindless lounge lizard.... “Well, Abbey, have you a brass farthing?” “Put it on tick”. “Time’s long gone since I allowed you that, Abbey. Your credit-worrthiness is worse than the tales that you tell of your past!” The landlord chortled and returned to the red-skirted lady who was now inserting a hinged straw into the curdles of the cocktail. And the undertones of their imprecise conversation continued between the slurping noises. Abraham imagined the lady partaking in the adult education yoga course he had himself been attending for some weeks now. He pictured her doing some of the body positions in her tight red skirt – allowing anyone’s gaze to travel up to the smooth round arch of her silken crotch. He was as it were sucked into the darkness there; and his deep breathing exercises (ripping from chest to belly and back again) were now merely camouflage for a completely different activity that his am own thighs engendered upon himself. Ji “OK, Abbey, if you’re not going to buy a drink, I’ll have to ask you to leave. This aint a free house, you know... yes, I know you’re an old war hero... yes, yes, you saved the world from alien invasion too but I’ve got a living to make. . .and, furthermore, this lady here has told me she don’t like your smell.” Abraham turned a squint upon the aforesaid dame and saw she was now closing the umbrella upon the quenched cocktail. He turned to the landlord and, as a parting gesture, took a deep, yogic breath that seemed to fill his whole body, even his veins, with air bubbles - and proudly handed over to the landlord one arm and one leg in a moment of acu-rupture and concentrated extasy. He hopped on his one remaining leg and managed to escape into the next storyby the skin of his teeth. Good job he wasn’t completely legless.
He shrugged and made to leave, but then changed his mind and addressed the lady with these parting words: “I may have a smell you don’t like – it’s my mind, it’s gone off. But I’m a meantime more while-worth than the likes of you... Didn’t know this pub was a knocking shop anyway.”
