I smile, the kind of professional smile that might convey anything at all, and turn back towards the bar.Īround me the concession stores are closing up for the night, steel shutters clattering down over the overpriced handbags and emergency-gift Toblerones. ‘To just walk down there, at the end of a shift. ‘You never tempted, then?’ The smaller woman has turned back for her scarf. I place their glasses on the bar, scan the room for anything else that needs washing. Come on, Dor.’ Alerted by a screen, they gather up their belongings, and perhaps it’s only me who notices a slight stagger as they brace themselves for the walk towards security. ‘Join us in a toast? Go on, take a load off for five minutes. ‘We’re wetting the baby’s head.’ They burst out laughing again. But I have to go and see my first grandchild, don’t I?’ Five days old,’ says the blonde woman, as I reach over the table for her glass.
They laugh the easy laugh of the well lubricated. III, I walk over and collect the glasses from the two women, who are peering intently at some video footage on a phone. Humming softly to Celtic Pipes of the Emerald Isle, Vol. I’ve been on since midday, as Carly has a stomach-ache and went home. The bar closes ten minutes after the last plane takes off, and right now it’s just me, an intense young man with a laptop, the cackling women at table two and the man nursing a double Jameson’s waiting for either the SC107 to Stockholm or the DB224 to Munich – the latter has been delayed for forty minutes. It’s a quarter to eleven on a Tuesday night and the Shamrock and Clover, East City Airport’s Irish-themed pub, which is as Irish as Mahatma Gandhi, is winding down for the night. ‘That’ll be seven pounds twenty, please.’ ‘Double,’ he says, and slides a fat hand down his damp face. But he’s a big guy and it’s fifteen minutes till closing time and, according to company guidelines, I have no reason to tell him no, so I walk over, take his glass and hold it up to the optic. I want to tell him it’s really not a good idea, it won’t help, it might even put him over the limit. He lets out a long, shaky breath, disguised as a sigh, and turns back to his drink. A fine sheen of perspiration glistens under the strip-lights.
He holds his head low over his double Scotch, but every few minutes he glances up and out, behind him, towards the door. The big man at the end of the bar is sweating.
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