It had started to rain again when I went into The Ship on Saturday lunchtime. A regular with a lino-cut face stood with his dog at the bar, while a retired couple drinking from old tins of Skol lager watched me from their stools impassively, like those ancient chessmen found buried in the sand at Lewis.
In the sepia filtered back-room newspapers were spread neatly on a table with an abandoned pint and two American girls sat sifting through a small mound of jigsaw pieces as if it were something quaint and neat you or I did at weekends.
I had seen them on the train coming down but it was only after Ashford, when the carriage emptied out, that I had noticed their accents over the dull station announcements and pinging of phones.
The pair were from Boston I heard them tell another passenger in front of me. On a gap-year through Europe, 'Just taking in the sights, you know.'
From Folkestone to Martin Mill I learnt they were best pals since college, that the hot brunette with the cool shades was called Evie and her companion with her back against me liked Cheddar Cheese sandwiches and Charles Dickens.
They had been to Oxford to look around the university, seen Shakespeare at The Globe, visited The British Museum and watched bands at the Brixton Academy and at a pub in Camden Town. Next on their list was Paris, then perhaps Rome.
Approaching Deal, a lady with a cat basket offered suggestions for local sights, while a confident schoolboy and his young mate recommended a cheap bar by the taxi-rank that sold shots for a pound. I gazed out the window as they talked, thinking where I'd take Evie and her friend if I was twenty years and my wife wasn't waiting in the carpark for my train.
Seeing them again, I now felt a terrible sense of guilt as I noticed a white-stick propped against Evie's chair and my shifty fat face caught within the frames of her dark black shades. Her friend was blonde, just as I'd imagined and dressed like the American flag.
'I saw you on the train yesterday.' I said as a meek introduction. 'You're American aren't you? One of you likes Dickens.'
'I do.' Evie's friend laughed.
They drank white wine with coke. It seemed a preposterous thing to ask for but I ordered them neat with the bottles on the side.
I joined them at their invitation, expecting to find the lid of the jigsaw on a seat or down on the floor at my feet but there wasn't one it seemed.
I watched as the pair pieced their puzzle together, snapping the tiny odd shapes into their correct positions with their fingers, then drawing another handful from the pile.
'I'm sorry about the weather, you two down for the weekend and all that.'
'We don't mind.' Evie said, blindly attaching another piece to her section, as if she were pressing a staple-gun. 'We like this pub, don't we Laura. It's got a real old fashioned charm to it.'
'We love it.' Laura agreed. 'They don't sell coffee, they don't do food and they don't let push-chairs or prams in.' She said, as if she was reading it from the outside sign.
Laura had described The Ship to Evie in exacting detail, the round copper-top tables in the snug where they'd first settled, the dripping candle-waxed bottles, the creased plastered walls decorated with naval plaques and old posters warning of cholera, smugglers and shipwrecks.
I said that the décor had changed little since I'd first come to the pub as a young boy. My father used to bring me in the summer holidays and sit with me in the beer-garden. Sometimes he'd buy a live crab or a lobster at the fish-stall on the seafront and get me to pretend I'd caught them in my little bamboo net but mostly we returned to my aunt's house empty handed and headed.
I told them what I could remember of my mother's drowning accident when I was four and finding my father on my eighteenth birthday slumped dead by the kitchen stove.
'Oh God Peter, that must have been terrible for you.' Evie gently consoled me, as she found my heart in the dark. 'They're still with you Peter, I can see that, both your Mum and Dad.'
A little embarrassed, I thanked her for her kind words and tried to shift the conversation back to them, their travels, their lives and what futures hold.
As they spoke, I looked across at the vacant pint glass and the broadsheet paper that still laid untouched on the old round pine table that overlooked the wet beer-garden at the rear.
'How do you know what the picture is?' I asked them both quizzically, as I picked up a couple of pieces from their dwindling pile.
'We don't,' Laura answered, as she poured some more coke into Evie's wine.
'It's a puzzle Peter.'
In the sepia filtered back-room newspapers were spread neatly on a table with an abandoned pint and two American girls sat sifting through a small mound of jigsaw pieces as if it were something quaint and neat you or I did at weekends.
I had seen them on the train coming down but it was only after Ashford, when the carriage emptied out, that I had noticed their accents over the dull station announcements and pinging of phones.
The pair were from Boston I heard them tell another passenger in front of me. On a gap-year through Europe, 'Just taking in the sights, you know.'
From Folkestone to Martin Mill I learnt they were best pals since college, that the hot brunette with the cool shades was called Evie and her companion with her back against me liked Cheddar Cheese sandwiches and Charles Dickens.
They had been to Oxford to look around the university, seen Shakespeare at The Globe, visited The British Museum and watched bands at the Brixton Academy and at a pub in Camden Town. Next on their list was Paris, then perhaps Rome.
Approaching Deal, a lady with a cat basket offered suggestions for local sights, while a confident schoolboy and his young mate recommended a cheap bar by the taxi-rank that sold shots for a pound. I gazed out the window as they talked, thinking where I'd take Evie and her friend if I was twenty years and my wife wasn't waiting in the carpark for my train.
Seeing them again, I now felt a terrible sense of guilt as I noticed a white-stick propped against Evie's chair and my shifty fat face caught within the frames of her dark black shades. Her friend was blonde, just as I'd imagined and dressed like the American flag.
'I saw you on the train yesterday.' I said as a meek introduction. 'You're American aren't you? One of you likes Dickens.'
'I do.' Evie's friend laughed.
They drank white wine with coke. It seemed a preposterous thing to ask for but I ordered them neat with the bottles on the side.
I joined them at their invitation, expecting to find the lid of the jigsaw on a seat or down on the floor at my feet but there wasn't one it seemed.
I watched as the pair pieced their puzzle together, snapping the tiny odd shapes into their correct positions with their fingers, then drawing another handful from the pile.
'We don't mind.' Evie said, blindly attaching another piece to her section, as if she were pressing a staple-gun. 'We like this pub, don't we Laura. It's got a real old fashioned charm to it.'
'We love it.' Laura agreed. 'They don't sell coffee, they don't do food and they don't let push-chairs or prams in.' She said, as if she was reading it from the outside sign.
Laura had described The Ship to Evie in exacting detail, the round copper-top tables in the snug where they'd first settled, the dripping candle-waxed bottles, the creased plastered walls decorated with naval plaques and old posters warning of cholera, smugglers and shipwrecks.
I said that the décor had changed little since I'd first come to the pub as a young boy. My father used to bring me in the summer holidays and sit with me in the beer-garden. Sometimes he'd buy a live crab or a lobster at the fish-stall on the seafront and get me to pretend I'd caught them in my little bamboo net but mostly we returned to my aunt's house empty handed and headed.
I told them what I could remember of my mother's drowning accident when I was four and finding my father on my eighteenth birthday slumped dead by the kitchen stove.
'Oh God Peter, that must have been terrible for you.' Evie gently consoled me, as she found my heart in the dark. 'They're still with you Peter, I can see that, both your Mum and Dad.'
A little embarrassed, I thanked her for her kind words and tried to shift the conversation back to them, their travels, their lives and what futures hold.
As they spoke, I looked across at the vacant pint glass and the broadsheet paper that still laid untouched on the old round pine table that overlooked the wet beer-garden at the rear.
'How do you know what the picture is?' I asked them both quizzically, as I picked up a couple of pieces from their dwindling pile.
'We don't,' Laura answered, as she poured some more coke into Evie's wine.
'It's a puzzle Peter.'
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