Short Story Competition 2020

4th Prize – Colin Watts with:

Fentiman Four Eyes

The Locarno Ballroom. ‘Dancing & Dining’ flashing in neon on the fascia. Saturday night, early 60s. Pre-disco. Bands like Gene Haddock and the Foot-Stompers. Balding men in too-tight suits playing early Beatles and substandard jazz. Mirror balls swinging from the ceiling, sending kaleidoscopes of colour ricocheting across the dance floor. Formica topped tables and mock-leather seating in the bar. Watneys Red Barrel. Double Diamond. Babycham in customised glasses.

Holding up one wall of the dance floor is a line of young men, boys really, stocking up their Dutch courage with pints of warm beer. Smears along the off-white wall at shoulder level – dye sweated from the fabric of cheap Burtons suits. There are four of us: Ginger, Frank, Tommo and Fentiman Four-eyes. That’s me. I’m kind of flattered that my parents gave me a middle name in honour of Willie Fentiman, a long-lost uncle, who was ‘an unsung hero in World War 2’. On the other hand, I am stupid enough to have told people about it. Then again, I am the only one of our so-called gang who wears glasses and the only one who can see properly. Consequently, I get dragged along by the others as a kind of pet intellectual-cum-talent scout. ‘This is Fentiman Four-eyes; he reads books.’

Ginger, Frank and Tommo are wearing crisp, white, Bry-nylon drip-dry shirts, black jeans, thin ties and shiny black shoes. So shiny, Ginger claims, you can see up girls’ skirts with them – if you ever get close enough. My shirt is rather saggy cotton (nylon brings me out in a rash). My tie is wide and has a picture of Bob Dylan on it. My shoes are a sort of scabby grey. Anyway, there we are, tanking away, eyeing up the talent. We’ve set our sights on four girls sitting at a glass-topped table on the other side of the dance floor. Three of them wear almost identical flared skirts with layers of petticoats, pointy shoes and bee-hive hairstyles. One of them wears short hair, slacks and a mohair sweater.

Tommo nudges Frank and surveys them with a wave of his arm. He screws up his eyes and asks me to tell him which one is the prettiest. I point out that beauty is highly subjective and lies in the eye of the beholder. He jabs me in the ribs. ‘Just point,’ he says. I nod in the direction of the one I think he might fancy. He goes over, bows before one of the bee-hive girls and asks her for a dance (not the one I nodded at). They get up on the dance floor and do the twist (not very well). Frank, Ginger and I talk amongst ourselves. The other three girls talk amongst themselves. Dance over, Tommo escorts the girl back to her table, bows and glides back through the throng.

‘We’re on for later,’ he says, rubbing his hands and delivering an unsuitable arm gesture. He points out another of the bee-hive girls, saying she fancies me. He nods across; she beckons. I know he’s taking the piss, but what can I do? Somehow I make my way through the dancing couples without actually tripping anyone up.

Trying to look cool, but breathing heavily with anxiety, I ask the girl if she’d care to have a dance. She says she’s sorry, but she meant that other one – pointing at Frank – suggesting that maybe I could send him over. I stumble back and tell him. Not surprisingly, he’s not surprised. He edges his way over, then there they are out on the dance floor whirling away, doing the Mashed Potato like they’ve been together for ever.

I decide it’s time for me to go home, so I drain my pint. But then the girl with the short hair comes over. She’s a bit taller than I am, but then, I’m quite short.

‘I’m Betty,’ she says, ‘who are you?’

For a second I forget my name and blurt out: ‘I’m Fentiman Four-eyes.’

She looks me up and down and laughs. It feels like it’s in a good way, though. She grabs me by the arm, takes me on one side and says: ‘That wasn’t very kind of Sharon, was it? She could at least have had a dance with you. I bet you’re a good dancer.’

‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I’m rubbish – two left feet.’

She says she has two right ones, so that evens it up. She leads me out onto the dance-floor and it turns out we were both right – or left. Neither of us can really get the beat, but we jig around a bit and have a good laugh.

‘How about another drink?’ she says.

‘OK,’ I say and we go through to the bar. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my so-called mates nudging each other and smirking, but I don’t care. Betty and I sit down at one of the small tables. It feels good.

‘What do you fancy?’ she asks.

‘What are you having?’

‘Let’s go and see what they’ve got.’

We go up to the bar and she asks the girl if they have any draught.

‘This is draught,’ she says, pointing to a small, red, plastic barrel. ‘Red Barrel. Watneys’.

Betty whispers in my ear. ‘It’s not really draught.’

‘OK,’ she says to the girl, ‘we’ll have two pints of that.’

I try to pay, but Betty won’t let me. ‘I ordered, she says, so I pay.’ I’m not used to this. I thought only butch women drank pints and ordered the drinks, but she doesn’t look butch. Not how I imagine butch to look anyway. Actually she looks kind of ordinary. Then I realise it’s because she’s wearing hardly any makeup and doesn’t need to: she has really nice skin. Soft-looking. I find I like that.

As we drink our pints, she tells me that the big breweries have started to pasteurise their beer with chemicals, so it will last longer and be easier to look after. ‘It isn’t natural any more, but they still call it draught. It’s a bit gassy, but it won’t kill you. Not immediately, anyway. Just another example of Corporate Greed.’ She kind of screws her face up at the last bit.

We talk a bit about politics. Rather she does and I listen. Then she asks me if I’ve read On the Road.

‘Was that the one that Jack Kerouac wrote in one go on a single roll of paper?’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘that one. Though I think that was the second draft.’

‘Not like this beer, then: this isn’t any kind of draught.’

She thinks that’s funny. So do I. We talk about books a bit and then she says she ought to be getting back to her friends, because they’re not very good at looking after themselves. I must have looked disappointed.

‘Listen,’ she says, ‘I know a pub where they still sell proper draught. Do you fancy going one night?’

‘Love to.’ Then I have a bit of a brainwave, though I say it myself. ‘We could swap our favourite books.’

‘Good idea,’ she says. ‘Rose and Crown, tomorrow night, eight o’clock. It’s just by the bus station. The music is shit, but the beer’s great.’

‘Fine by me,’ I say. ‘My round, though.’

‘Fine by me,’ she says. ‘By the way, I’ll be wearing specs. I normally do.’

‘Fine by me,’ I say, though I’m not quite sure.

‘I’ll bring The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, she says; ‘you bring something you like. See you tomorrow, Fentiman Four-eyes.’ She makes a scowl and peers at me through pretend specs, then strides off.

I sit and finish my beer, thinking that this is not the way it’s supposed to be. The boy is supposed to take the girl by the arm in a firm but friendly manner. The boy is supposed to ask the girl for a dance. The boy is supposed to go to the bar and buy the drinks. The boy is supposed to ask the girl out. Somehow, it doesn’t matter. I shrug and go over to join Ginger, Frank and Tommo, who’ve just come back into the bar, boasting about their conquests and gloating over nights of passion still to come.

‘You got the lesbian, then,’ says Ginger, ‘or rather the lesbian got you’.

They all laugh. I’m about to say no, Betty isn’t a lesbian, when I realise that actually I don’t care one way or the other and am really looking forward to seeing her again. I’m going to swap my copy of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest with her copy of The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, while drinking proper draught beer in the Rose and Crown. Sod them, I think: four eyes are always better than two and, who knows, eight eyes will maybe turn out to be even better than four.

About the Author

Colin Watts is seventy-seven, married, with grown up children and has lived in Liverpool for many years.

His publications include two poetry collections and short stories and flash fiction on-line and in magazines and anthologies. He’s had plays performed in and around Liverpool.

He cycles nearly everywhere and cultivates a quarter of an allotment. He is a long-standing member of the Dead Good Poets Society.