Mourning suite

Healing thoughts in the pub

There is another way in which the pub can be celebratory and this other way is not so cheerful or laughable or everyone shaking hands and clapping shoulders and smiling like a glow-stick. The pub can also be a place for remembrance, a quiet hollowing out of memory, a place where silence and the gentle inebriation of beer can bring you to terms with loss, and this is a personal experience. As a journalist whose skill-set also involves editing I found myself reluctant to include the next few paragraphs without changing them, but they were written in a pub on the day I had been told my mother had died so, apart from a few edits for clarity, I will leave it as I wrote it, a raw first edition if you have of a pub’s ability to help me celebrate mum.

These words were written a few hours after I had heard that my mother had died. It was not a surprise as my brother had told me the night before that she was unresponsive. She died on the day of Imbolc, the start of spring according to pagans, a day I would celebrate with a few quiet thoughts. It had been expected but despite all my protestations that I would work once I had heard the news I couldn’t so I took myself off on my bicycle and took refuge in a pub, in the Poachers in Ide just outside Exeter. I wanted some countryside without having to cycle too far. Inside the main bar with the sofas and armchairs, I sat, one of which contained the slumbering form of the pub’s boxer, whose Churchillian face reminded me of our long-dead Monty, uncannily like him but slightly smaller. The comforting crackle of logs burning in the fire place, a local on his phone, ‘I am in the pub drinking wine…how long are you going to be, do you want me to get you anything or are you just going to pick me up’. There are two pugs, both of whom get on my lap and start trying to lick my face, the boxer continues to sleep — the older one sits on my lap while the younger one sits on the sofa next to a young woman who is presumably part of the pub — there is a palpable sense of joy and cheerfulness in the mood of the pub which pleases me, which shows how much a pub can soothe the soul in the wake of a major bereavement. The boxer gets out of the chair and patrols the bar, while the older of the pugs sits on the armchair at the back, his rear to the fire, as if to put himself in charge, in dominion. There is the murmur of conversation at the bar counter, a man looks at his phone, the rustle of a crisp bag, total silence it seems apart from the fire and the occasional word spoken at the bar. I recall how mum once said to me that she couldn’t go into pubs on her own as she was a woman. I wonder then if she was ever lonely? Her time in the last three years has passed in the slow swamp of immobility and now it is done. The dogs’ names are Delphi (the older pug), Pumpkin (the younger one) and Boots. I recalled the time when I took her and my nana to a pub outside Llangollen which I had read about in a CAMRA guide at the time. It was very basic and both of them were distinctly unimpressed, that was one of the memories of her and me and pubs. ‘Thank you for your hostility,’ said the wine drinker as he went outside to meet his wife.

I would describe the Poachers’ atmosphere as serene, calm, tranquil, cosy, warm, relaxing, reposing, creative, remembrance; my mother died during the winter but on the day of Imbolc when light was being celebrated. She had mixed feelings towards me and pubs — she was concerned I spent too long in them but did like a genuine one, and she was even relaxed in Woods at Christmas lunchtime, the first time she had ever gone to a pub on Christmas Day. She also enjoyed the Boxing Day hunt meets at Woods. She was concerned about my drinking but was proud of my books and newspaper articles on beer and pubs. 

The dogs in the pub are drowsy with the heat and the relative warmth of the day. Outside the road is quiet, the kids are long home doing homework or watching TV or on their computer games and all of a sudden I get a memory of baked beans and chips, which was one of my favourite meals as a kid. Mum would bring in plaice from the boats on Conwy quay on her way home, and sometimes liver, which I would kick up a fuss about. The lights on the wall are pale yellow, orange flames in the fireplace, red earth coloured ceiling, Devon red. This afternoon in here has been a haven, a tollbooth of memory, a homestead, a sink hole of memory, more regulars come in and sit at the bar, murmur of conversation, almost feels like a still life, five people at the bar, three sitting down, one man (landlord?) looking at his phone, another next to fire on a laptop, half full glass of Guinness. I find it amazing that this pub stays open all day as when I came in there was one guy at the bar, the one who went away on his phone.

In Spoons a fresh-faced, trimmed beard young guy asks how my day was and I laugh and say that my mother died today, he was the second person who asked me that question that day, the first one was the Hungarian woman who normally cuts my hair, I didn’t tell her. He says that he visited the grave of his girlfriend today and I was horrified. She was 19 and sliced open her veins on Christmas Day, his father killed himself when he was 9 and he found the body. Such is the toxicity of modern life that I found myself disbelieving him, but then I ask myself why would you make up such stuff.

The pub as a healer?