The trouble with a really successful pub crawl – in other words, if you manage to hit all the hostelries on the proposed route – is that the team inevitably falls apart before you reach the end.
Oh, it’ll start off in the usual high spirits, with much yahooing and backslapping as you excitedly barge your way in through the first few sets of doors. But as the evening wears on, and the decibels rise, and the golden nectar flows down gulping throats, heads become progressively muzzier and one by one, as the team weaves ever on to the next establishment, members will drop by the wayside. Usually they end up lingering behind because they haven’t quite finished their pint, or because they’ve met a girl they know, or because they’ve lost track of where they’re supposed to be going next. Or quite simply, in that mysterious way of pub crawls the world over, they’ve simply vanished from the face of the earth – at least for the remainder of that night, no doubt to show up the following morning in a garden or on a park bench or maybe slumped in a shop doorway, rain-sodden and with head banging.
Either way, by the end of the night, only the hardy quaffers tend to remain; that small band of iron-core loyalists who will always see things through.
Tonight, oddly, even though the rest of his mates were well-known on campus as big-time boozers, Keith Redmond had somehow found himself at the last port of call alone.
It was called The Brasshouse and it was located on Broad Street, where its reputation as a popular watering hole was very well deserved. On this occasion though, Keith arrived there in a fog of confusion, at least twelve pints of lager sloshing around inside him, and none of the four or five faces currently in there – when he could focus on them sufficiently – even vaguely reminiscent of his fellow rugby club members. In the way of these things, he wasn’t quite able to work it all out. But as he ambled to the bar, filching his last tenner from his jeans pocket, he had some vague notion that the rest of the crew would catch him up in due course; either that, or they’d done what they’d said they were going to do some way back – namely not bother going the whole distance and, as it was only Wednesday, heading home early.
Keith wasn’t sure which it had been.
As he stood there alone, the last few of the other midweek drinkers nodding their farewells to the landlord and his staff and drifting out, it irked him that he’d been marooned here. Though, as he downed his last pint of the evening in desultory fashion, he supposed he hadn’t been marooned as such. If it had slipped his notice that they’d reached a communal decision to terminate the crawl early, then it was as much his fault as anyone else’s. So, he couldn’t really be angry with them. Not that this would stop him taking the mickey in the morning, or more likely in the afternoon, when he was finally fit to re-emerge, calling them plastics and phonies.
These things happened, he reflected, as he threaded his unsteady way back across a central Birmingham awash with glistening October rain, and at this hour on a weekday almost bare of life. He wasn’t sure what time it was. Probably around one. Which wasn’t too bad. He had no lectures of note in the morning, so he could sleep until noon.
But he was only a hundred yards down the road, heading due southwest towards Edgbaston, when he remembered something important. It was quite fortuitous. A ‘Poundstretcher’ sign caught his eye, reminding him that he was supposed to draw some extra money out tonight. He was going home to Brighton this weekend, for his older brother, Jason’s, stag do. Keith sniggered. There’d be no phonies tolerated on that seafront tour; any who thought they were going to try it would get dragged to the last few venues by their underpants’ elastic.
Of course, Keith wouldn’t be involved in any of that if he didn’t have enough money. In his quest to find a cashpoint, he backtracked a little along Broad Street, and then crossed the canal, heading roughly in the direction of the city centre.
It was vaguely unsettling, even in his drunken state: there was literally no one else around.
That was partly because of the lateness of the hour, but primarily because rain was still falling in torrents: rivers gushed out of pipes and gurgled down drains; lagoons had formed at road junctions, the occasional passing vehicle kicking them up in spectacular waves. Keith was in his usual attire – jeans, trainers, and zip-up lightweight anorak over his T-shirt, though in truth that ‘anorak’ certainly wasn’t protecting him tonight, his T-shirt already soaked through; at least that went with his jeans which were also sopping, not to mention his trainers.
On reflection, it might have been a better plan to have organised a taxi back this evening. This would usually be a last resort for Keith, who, as a student, preferred to spend what little cash he had on booze, but these conditions were pretty extreme by any standards. He could still try to flag one down, of course, but only after he’d drawn the money out for the weekend.
At least, one positive result of the downpour was the sluggish but steady return of sobriety. Keith’s head was getting the full, unrestricted brunt of it, his short straw-blond hair dripping wet even as it lay plastered to his skull. It was amazing what a reviving effect that could actually have on beer-laden thought processes. By the time he’d crossed Centenary Square, those familiar post-party urges to chuckle pointlessly at nothing, or sing out loud or kick at the occasional can had long departed. He now found himself walking steadily and in a reasonably straight line.
And at the same time, as he came back to his senses, he wondered if perhaps this wasn’t the best idea. His original intention had been to call at a cashpoint before they started hitting the pubs, or at least halfway through, when it wasn’t too late and when there were other people around. Keith wasn’t the sort of person who would normally expect to be robbed, but there was a particular story circulating at present that even he found unnerving.
He considered chucking it in and heading back to Edgbaston. But then another voice advised that there was a cashpoint not too far ahead, near the Town Hall, and if he turned around now when he was so close, he’d be an absolute idiot – not to mention a total wuss.
Keith puffed his chest and thrust out his jaw as he walked defiantly on. He didn’t play wing-forward for the university seconds for nothing. He was six feet tall, and though, at the tender age of twenty, not exactly solid muscle, he was on the way to getting there. He’d make a formidable opponent even for some loser like … What was it they were calling this bloke?
Oh yeah … ‘the Creep’.
Keith snorted with derision as he strutted determinedly past a row of silent shops, water pouring in cataracts from the
