The landlord was washing glasses and half-listening to the church bells across the street, summoning the faithful from their beds, when his attention was distracted by a thud from the corner, and the unmistakeable sound of a glass rolling on the floor.
He set the dish towel down and went to investigate. In the darkest corner of the snug, furthest away from the fire, the cat was pawing something that lay beside an empty pint glass, in a dark puddle of beer on the floor. At first, he thought it was a rat. The cat was good at rats. Sometimes on winter mornings there would be a whole row of limp trophies waiting for him on the bar.
He bent to retrieve the glass, and realised that this one was not a rat. In the dark under the table, it looked like a string of conjuror’s handkerchiefs, or perhaps an oddly-shaped doll, and might very probably have been dropped by a customer.
He chased the cat away, although it did not in the least wish to surrender its prize. This cost the landlord some blood from the back of his hand, and made him swear.
The thing was neither a doll nor a string of handkerchiefs. It was about a foot long, and when the landlord tried to turn it over, the beer had dried so firmly that it had become stuck to the floor.
It was a little manikin, with scarlet breeches and a purple jacket, and a yellow hat. A pair of fine silvery wings protruded from its shoulders, and it was these that had been drenched in the spilled beer and become glued.
Very gently, the landlord peeled them free, and lifted the sticky little manikin in his coarse fingers.
It lay insensible, grimy from the dusty floor, as limp as a defeated rat. The landlord regarded it with curiosity for a moment, and had just turned it over to inspect its features, when it let out a miserable, squeaky groan.
The landlord had run his pub for many years, and knew a dead drunk when he saw one. He took the creature back to the bar and poured warm water into the sink. He tested the water with his fingers before gently lowering the manikin into it. He supported it with one hand, as one might a kitten or a baby, and gently trailed water over its head, rinsing away the sticky, stiffened beer.
Its hat came off, and the creature groaned again. The landlord took hold of its breeches between his finger and thumb, and tugged them away. Then he did the same with its jacket, carefully disengaging the little man’s arms, and easing it over his wings. He scraped the ball of his thumb over the bar of strong-smelling soap, and rubbed the little man all over, although he had to snatch his thumb away when it came to the little creature’s face, because it spluttered and sneezed, revealing very white pointed teeth, and for a moment the landlord feared that he would be bitten.
He rinsed the soap away, and wrapped the manikin in a clean beer towel. Then he set it down gently on a cushion, which he laid beside the fire, and kindled the smouldering ashes into a bright blaze. He returned to the sink and washed and rinsed the little clothes, squeezed them as well as he could, and spread them on the hearth to dry.
He returned to the kitchen, where he captured the cat, and shut it outside in the yard. It leapt on to the windowsill, and glared at him with a baleful resentment.
He had almost finished polishing and sweeping, and was almost ready to open the doors, when next he heard any sound from the creature by the fire.
It coughed, and groaned.
The landlord filled a sherry glass with fresh water, and took it over to the fire.
The manikin was sitting up on its cushion, naked apart from the beer towel about its shoulders, rubbing its eyes. The landlord knelt down next to it and proffered the sherry glass. It was too big for the manikin to manage, and the landlord had to hold it whilst the little man steadied it with both hands and drank deeply.
After a moment the little man glared up at the landlord.
“Where’s me clothes?” it croaked.
The landlord picked up the clothes, now dried and smelling of woodsmoke, and handed them to the little man. He dressed himself, folding his wings deftly through the neat slits in the back of his jacket, and setting his hat at a rather jaunty angle on his head.
Once dressed, he examined his reflection in the copper coal scuttle, preened himself a little, and turned to regard the landlord.
“You got something to eat?” he asked.
The landlord went to the kitchen, where he cut a slice of bread into small cubes and dipped them in salty bacon fat. He set them on a saucer and took them back to the little man, who was warming his hands at the fireside. He ate hungrily, until not a crumb remained, and drank deeply of the last of the water. Then he rose to his feet and adjusted his hat.
He and the landlord looked at one another, and the little man scowled.
“Now, you helped me, and I’ve not a penny to pay you,” he said, in a grumbling tone. “What’ll we do?”
The landlord shook his head and laughed.
“What could a little fairy man like you do for a person the size of me?” he said. “You’ll just have to be on your way.”
The little man glowered and set his hands on his hips.
“I can’t leave an unpaid debt behind me,” he said. “Why, you’d have a hold over me for all of time. That’d be you, and your horrible clumsy children after you. It wouldn’t do. Now then, what’ll you have in repayment?
The landlord leaned back on his heels and thought.
“Can you give me three wishes?” he asked.
The manikin’s eyebrows shot so far upwards that they disappeared under his hat.
“Three wishes? he squeaked, indignantly. “Perhaps if you’d had a dragon to fight and your life’s blood shed all over the place. Three wishes is a mighty great price for a bath and a drink.”
The landlord showed the red gouges across the back of his hand
“I fought a cat for you,” he said mildly.
The fairy tipped his hat backwards and stamped across the hearth, admiring his reflection in the coal scuttle as he returned.
He looked up at the landlord and held up a sharp index finger.
“One wish,” he said. “One wish’ll be fair exchange. I’ll give one wish to you. What’ll it be? Choose quickly.”
The landlord’s mouth fell open.
“I don’t know,” he said, after a moment. “I don’t know what I wish for. Give me a minute. Let me think.”
The manikin threw himself down on the cushion again and pointed to the glass.
“I’ll be having some more water,” he said. “I already know what you wish, even if you don’t. Hurry up now, and think of it.”
The landlord went slowly to the bar, where he refilled the sherry glass. He tipped it carefully for the little man to drink.
“How do you know what I want?” he asked, curiously.
The little creature shrugged.
“There’s only one true wish that all people want,” he said. “although you’re all too slow and stupid to know it. Think of it quickly. Think what you want.”
The landlord thought. He imagined himself wealthy, in a great echoing house with a long curving drive through the silent woods. He saw himself stuffed with a surfeit of good food, walking through beautiful rooms and resting on soft beds, alone.
One wish only.
Then he imagined himself handsome and cherished by a pretty girl. He imagined her delicate hands stroking his chest, and wondered how he might afford to buy a ring for her white finger. Then he saw her sitting opposite him in their chairs by the fire, her hands coarsened from scrubbing, and children clustered at their knees, clamouring for food and for shoes and for school books.
One wish only.
He thought hard. He stood up and walked to the bar, and thought again.
He listened to the crackling of the fire, and to the church bells ringing the faithful out into the morning. Then he walked back to the manikin and knelt down beside him.
“Very well,” he said. “This is my wish. I wish that when I come to my end, I might lie on my deathbed without pain or regret.”
The manikin scowled.
“I think that’s two wishes,” he said, accusingly.
The landlord shook his head.
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “I want to meet my end without pain. There is no pain greater than regret. Sorrow is a pain as sharp and savage as any knife can inflict. This is my one wish, and I beg you, grant it.”
The manikin glared at him. Then he settled his hat tidily on his head, and looked the landlord squarely in the eyes.
“Very well,” he said. “You’ve known your true wish and made a wise choice. The wish is yours, and the debt settled. You’ll die without pain and regrets in your heart, that’ll be my payment to you, and the rest of your life is your own to live as you will.”
The landlord looked anxious.
“How can I be sure you will keep your word?” he said. “Can I trust you?”
The little man looked angry for a moment, and then sighed.
“I’ve given my word to you,” he said. “I’ll leave you a token of my promise. Close your eyes.”
The landlord closed his eyes. When he re-opened them, the little creature was gone. A smooth, golden disc lay on the cushion where he had slept, shimmering and gleaming with a peculiar glow in the dancing firelight.
Blinking, and thoughtful, he went to open the doors.
That evening the landlord clutched the golden disc tightly in his hand. He leaned across the bar and asked Jimmy O’Neill the painter if he might have a word with him.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began, cautiously. “You know the sign outside. It’s very faded. I wondered if you might have some time, you know, to brighten it up a bit.”
Jimmy listened in surprise.
“Had a win on the horses, have we?” he asked, and he grinned, because the landlord was not known for his extravagant habits.
The landlord shook his head.
“No,” he admitted, “I just thought, well, it might be time to liven things up a bit. Make it look a bit more cheerful in here. What do you think?”
Jimmy nodded and took a mouthful of beer.
“I’ll make it the finest in the town,” he suggested. “What about scarlet with gold letters? It’ll look grand.”
The landlord hesitated.
“Do you think so?” he asked.
“I’m sure so,” promised Jimmy. “Best idea you’ve ever had. You won’t regret it.”
“No,” agreed the landlord. “No, I’m quite sure I won’t.”
Jimmy painted the sign that same week, and when the landlord stood in the road and gazed at it, he felt a small sense of pride. It did look fine. Jimmy had been quite right.
Indeed, that very afternoon a man and a woman took seats by the fireside. They asked for beer and wondered if the landlord might serve soup and a sandwich, or maybe a hot beef pie.
“We were going to walk on into town,” confided the woman, “but your sign looked so bright and cheerful that we thought we might stop by and see if you did food in here.”
The landlord nodded and smiled, and that night, with clumsy but determined fingers, he sewed a little bag for the golden disc. He hung it about his neck, where it stayed for the rest of his life.
Two weeks later Jimmy O’Neill came back and painted the whole downstairs of the pub. They chose soft colours of cream and sage-green, so that everywhere looked fresh and clean, and people coming to warm themselves by the hearth felt their troubles soothed for a little while.
The landlord felt proud of the trim new rooms, and asked Jimmy if his daughter might drop by and help him arrange some curtains and a rug for the floor.
Rose wrinkled her pretty nose at the smell of the ancient damask, and showed the landlord where moths had eaten patches away here and there.
“We’ll make them in velvet,” she said, “and line them with twill to keep the night outside.”
The landlord nodded and that night when he went to bed he did not dream of curtains and cream paint, but of Rose O’Neill’s dimples and mass of dark curls.
She came twice more that week, to measure, and to show the landlord the heavy velvet she had chosen, and each time he nodded and smiled, and touched the little bag that hung underneath his collar.
When she brought the heavy curtains to be hung, the landlord had a mass of spring flowers hidden in the kitchen, and her face blushed pink with the surprise.
They were married in July, and in September, Rose told him that she thought they should buy the lease of their public house from the brewery.
“It isn’t right that it should be theirs,” she said. “It’s a huge, empty old place, and we could clean it up and rent some rooms to pay for it. You have your savings, the bit left from your mother, and my grandmother left me a little. Let’s talk to the brewery and see if they will let us have it for our own.”
The landlord listened with his heart pounding. In all his life he had never thought that he might own something as big and magnificent as a public house, but then he had never thought that he might have a beautiful wife with black curls that fell to her waist, and tiny feet that he could cradle in one of his big hands.
“It’s a great thing,” he said slowly, reaching for the little bag with his roughened fingers. “I don’t know. It’d take us our whole lives to pay for it,”
“It would,” agreed Rose, and her eyes sparkled, “but then it would be ours, something for our children after us. I know we wouldn’t regret it. Let’s try.”
The landlord also knew that they would not regret it. The brewery grumbled and scowled, and asked very much more money than the landlord believed he could afford, but they agreed, and from that day onwards he became his own man, beholden to none but the bank.
The bank cared nothing about the colour of the painted walls, nor the richness of the gravy in the pies. The bank was not interested in the whiteness of the steps, nor in the weight of coals poured into the cellar every week. The bank cared only that there was money returned to them, with interest, and left it to the landlord and his wife to determine how they might produce it.
They produced it by selling good beer with a warm welcome and a smile. Rose baked pies with savoury beef under golden crusts. They repaired the plaster in the empty bedrooms upstairs. Jimmy O’Neill painted them in pale blue, and Rose made the beds with lavender-scented sheets and forget-me-not eiderdowns, and put a little dish of flowers beside each one. Commercial travellers came and stayed, glad to have Rose soothe away the cares of their busy days with steaming plates of fragrant beef and friendly interest, and they remembered and came again, and again.
The landlord watched Rose’s dimple flickering as she listened to suited men telling her about their small triumphs of the day, and he bent over the sink, trying not to be angry. Of course, he could not regret the path they had chosen. Everything, he knew, was going to be for the very best. And yet there she was, his pretty wife, smiling back at the polished man with the smart leather shoes, and the landlord knew that his breathing had become shallow and his chest felt tight.
He knew that this was something that in time would turn into a pain more terrible than he could imagine, and he thought that somehow, he must mend this dreadful feeling before it crept up and devoured him.
That evening, as they undressed, he touched his fingers to the little bag where the golden disc lay next to his chest, and spoke to her.
“Rose,” he began, “you are the dearest thing in the world to me. Being married to you is the best and happiest thing in my life, and I have never regretted it for a moment. Together we have managed to do things that I could never have done by myself, and I will always be glad that you are my wife, but there is something I must say to you.”
He paused, and Rose looked at him curiously. He knew that he had got to say something to make everything better, so that he would not have any regrets to live and die with, but he did not know what he was going to say.
He thought that the only thing he could say to her was the truth, and in the end the words came in a rush, tumbling over one another in his fear of losing her.
“I wanted to tell you that it makes me feel sad and frightened when I see you talking to other men,” he said. “You smile at the customers and they fall in a little bit love with you. It makes me feel scared that you might start to love them back a little, instead of loving our life together.”
Rose sat down on the bed beside him, with one earring still in her ear. She put her little hand gently into his big one.
“Oh, my poor husband,” she said kindly. “I don’t want to make you unhappy. Would it be better if I left them to their evenings alone?”
The landlord thought about it. Then he shook his head.
“No,” he said, truthfully. “You like talking to them, and they make you laugh. They come in here and spend their money because of you. They are our living, and if they go away then we will be poor.”
Rose nodded.
“I don’t laugh because they make me laugh,” she said. “You are the only person who I can really laugh with. You are my best friend and when we are together then I can be my own self. I laugh with them because it makes them feel good and important, and then they come here again and spend their money. They are not important to me. Only you are that”
The landlord felt the pain in his chest start to melt away. Rose leaned against him and sighed.
“I did not expect that you were going to say that,” she confessed. “It makes me feel afraid when you are not happy. I feel so sad because I haven’t given you a child. We have done all of this for the children we might have, and there might never be any now. I am so sorry. I wanted us to have babies to love together.”
The landlord touched the little bag at his neck. Then he wrapped his arms around his wife and breathed in the smell of her hair.
“I wanted to have babies as well,” he said. “I don’t know why it hasn’t happened. But, my dearest wife, my love, I do not think that we should be sad. Listen to me, because I believe this with all of my heart. If our path gives us no children, then we must not turn away from it because it is not the path we had expected. We have to trust that there will be happiness there, waiting for the two of us to find it. Children bring joy, but they bring sorrow as well. We have not been given the joy, and so we have been spared the sorrow. Instead, we will love one another with all the love we might have given to children, and we will not regret the things that can never be.”
Rose wiped away tears and nodded.
Their son was born a year later, and they both loved him with a passionate joy.
Daniel grew sturdy, and dark-haired, and serious. He struggled beneath his heavy bag of books on the long walk to school every morning. He spent his evenings poring over his homework in the kitchen behind the bar, whilst in the background to his thoughts, his parents sold beer and smiled at customers and wiped tables.
Nobody ever thought to discuss the boy’s education, which they all understood to be something of an interruption to his life. It filled in the time between the days when he had stood solemnly on a stool helping his mother to wash the glasses, and the days when he would stand smilingly beside his father helping him to fill them up.
If they had, they would have learned that the teacher had a high opinion of Daniel’s thoughtful manner and quick understanding, and that he was horrified when he discovered that Daniel would be leaving school at the first possible moment.
“My parents need me in the bar,” Daniel explained. “I have to run it when they get too old. My father’s back hurts him, and they’re always tired. I have to go and work.”
“Is it what you want?” the teacher asked gently, and when he saw the sadness in the boy’s eyes, he stopped by the bar for a beer the very next night.
Rose tugged her earrings free that night and stared at her husband’s reflection in the mirror as he undressed slowly behind her.
“A doctor,” she said in wonder. “Our boy a doctor. Who’d have thought it.”
The landlord shook his grey head slowly.
“It’s a lot of learning and expense, Rosie,” he said, wearily, “and we’ll have him to keep all those years. University and books and study, and he might not do it even then. It’s such a lot to think of.”
“It’s what he wants,” said Rose, with longing in her voice. “Imagine it. Our boy at a university. Imagine him with a white coat. We have to let him. We have to give him the chance to try.”
“I know we do,” her husband agreed gently, and his hand reached automatically to touch the little bag that hung around his neck. “Of course, we will.”
Rose turned and put her arms around his bent shoulders.
“You won’t regret it,” she said.
“You won’t regret it, Dad,” Daniel had said, as he watched the porter loading his trunk on to the train. “I promise with my whole soul that I’ll make you proud. You’ll be glad you did it. You’ll see.”
“I know that, son,” the landlord had replied, and he had shaken his tall son’s hand gravely. “I’m proud already.”
They asked Jerry to come and help them in the bar in Daniel’s place, and deft-handed, cheerful Jerry was glad of the chance. He laughed with the customers and tactfully relieved Rose of the heavy coal-scuttle. He told jokes, and courteously but firmly refused more beer to those who were starting to sway. It was Jerry who insisted that they should add a few more pence to the price of each pint, and put some new mirrors in the ladies’ bathroom, and it was Jerry who said to Rose one late night that he was worried about the landlord becoming forgetful.
“I don’t want to worry you, you know,” he said gently, “but sometimes, you know, he just stops. Stands at the bar like he doesn’t know what he’s come there for.”
“We all do that,” said Rose, but she knew.
Two days later she telephoned Daniel at his practice in the town.
“It’s probably nothing to worry anybody, ” she said, “but when you come next you might have a look at your father, see what you think.”
Daniel knew what he thought already, and when he spoke to his mother a little while after the hospital had done the tests, he explained what was happening.
“It’s called Alzheimer’s Disease, after the first doctor who wrote about it,” he told her, gently. “What’s happening to Dad is a terrible slow thing. It’s like his brain’s starting to die on him. Fading a little bit at a time. He’s going to lose parts of himself, more and more. He’ll stop remembering. Then he’ll stop walking. He’ll stop speaking. The last thing left is his breathing and his beating heart. Then in the end even that slips away.”
Rose set her shoulders straight.
“We’ll give him all the love we can while he still knows it,” she said.
“It’s not such a bad end,” said Daniel. “There’s no pain. He’ll have no memories, so no regrets. Harder for you than for him.”
“Jerry can run the bar,” said Rose. “I’ll look after your dad, here upstairs.”
In the end they all looked after him, in between customers and patients, and Rose was at his side when he died. She was holding his hand when the vacant, rheumy eyes flickered open and closed for the last time, and she thought that the ghost of a smile crossed his lips.
Daniel came straight away, and checked the wrinkled arm for the vanished pulse.
He stroked his father’s head gently, and put an arm around his mother.
“He had a good life,” he said. “He gave me a good life. I’ll always be grateful for everything he did.”
“He never got upset about anything,” Rose said. “Always believed it would turn out for the best, and it always did.”
Daniel folded his father’s hands on his stomach.
“What’s the little bag round his neck?” he asked. “He’s always worn that, all my life. I meant to ask him about it, but I never did. What did he keep in it?”
Rose shrugged.
“I never knew,” she said. “I always wondered, but he never mentioned it, so I never asked. Take it off and have a look.”
The bag would not come loose, and Daniel reached into his bag for his sharp doctor’s scissors to cut the ancient string.
When they held it in their hands the bag was so frayed, it disintegrated under their fingers.
“Leaves,” Daniel said, in surprise. “It’s just a couple of dead leaves.”
He held them out to his mother on the palm of his hand, and she touched them with a wondering finger.
The leaves crumbled into dust, and Daniel brushed them on to the floor.
He kissed his father’s head, and led his mother downstairs.