Sonia walked from the brilliant mid-afternoon sunshine into the gloom of the East Sussex Arms pub in the pretty village of Welse, taking a seat at a table near the bar and picking up a menu.
Terry, a heavy set regular in his early sixties in shorts and crocs, retook his place at the bar, where his mobile, car keys and vape marked his territory.
“Afternoon,” he said to the newcomer.
“Good afternoon,” Sonia said, smiling. She went to the bar and ordered a cheese sandwich and Coke from a sullen sociology student on summer break.
Terry took a few gulps from his second pint of the day and scrolled through his messages.
As Sonia took in the horse brasses, fire tongs and plush velvet upholstery the barman brought Sonia’s cheese sandwich.
“What brings you here then, if you don’t mind me asking?” Terry turned to ask.
Her car had broken down a mile down the road, she said. She’d called the breakdown service, but was told it would be a while. She said it was probably something to do with the electrics.
“It’s all bloody digital these days. Where’s the heart and soul in that?” Terry complained.
“I’ve only ever known digital,” Sonia said.
“I dunno, I feel sorry for you.”
Time rolled by and they chatted, the weather, Brighton’s form this season, Sonia’s job in admin, Terry’s construction business. Sonia joined Terry at the bar to save them both craning their necks. The summer’s day turned into evening and they fell silent as the smalltalk ran dry.
“I tell you what,” said Terry. “Here’s something. The missus, she got these chickens right, because she likes to pretend she’s on a farm. Well they don’t half produce some eggs. We couldn’t eat them all. So I started putting them outside beside one them honesty boxes. And people would stop and leave a fiver for half-a-dozen eggs. A fiver? Some people round here have more money than sense.”
“Anyway, I got this idea. I got some eggs from the supermarket, rubbed off the dates and put them out instead. People would still stop and pick them up, and still drop a fiver.”
Sonia was laughing. Terry moved into the epilogue.
“The missus found out about it and got the right hump with me. It’s not like I was saying they was from our chickens, was it? It just said ‘eggs’.”
“Well, they might assume…,” began Sonia.
“No, no. Caveat emptor I say. It is Latin which roughly translates as ‘get away with whatever you can’.”
Sonia did not argue, and nor did the sociology student. Few people felt the need to argue with Terry.
“There’s always of room at the bottom, I say, like my old man. But my wife, she was having none of it, so I had to stop.”
They fell into silence again. Terry waved for the barman to bring Sonia another Coke.
“People will ask me, ‘Terry, why have you always got some little scheme on the go?’ They expect me to say it’s because I get some kind of thrill from it. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy getting one over on people.
It is a family thing. A way of living. ‘There’s always room at the bottom,’ the old man always said. If you just leave it to other people you’re gonna end up at the bottom of the heap, aren’t you?”
Sonia nodded. The sociology student nodded too, despite vehemently disagreeing.
“It is an East End thing. My old man did little bits for the Kray twins, you know, them gangsters from the 60s. He knew Freddie ‘Brown Bread Fred”, Jack ‘The Hat’, and all that lot. You are too young to know about them. They weren’t just gangsters, they were national celebrities, heroes back then.”
Sonia nodded and sipped her Coke.
“Anyway, because of that, he was in and out of nick – prison, I mean – Wandsworth, Wormwood Scrubbs, Pentonville, all the best ones. Six months here, nine months there. It was never nothing serious, just a bit of thieving, handling stolen goods, that kind of thing.
There was that stretch for grievous bodily harm, but there was nothing bad about it. He deserved a good hiding.”
“Mum used to ask him him, ‘Why do you do this, Kenny?’”
“‘There’s always room at the bottom, ain’t there?’ he would reply. The irony was that we was never far from the bottom, but we was never hungry.”
“And he was right. You have to bend the rules to get ahead or even to stay afloat, especially these days.”
“So was your egg scheme the end of it, then?” Sonia asked.
“Oh, no, no, no, far from it, that was just a bit of a laugh on the side. Me and Darryl, my son, have a couple of things going,” Terry said, nodding at his phone. “Council stuff, you know?”
“Council stuff? No, I don’t. Not really,” said Sonia. “Is that to do with eggs too?”
“Well, we do work for the council that don’t never get done or what costs a little bit more than it should, if you know what I mean? And occasionally a bit of heavy machinery might end up in Hungary or Albania. That kind of thing.”
As Terry elaborated, Sonia sucked on her straw and listened in admiration. Once he had finished Terry took a drag on his vape.
“You want a game of darts?”
“Sure,” said Sonia.
And then, just as they got up, her phone rang and she said yes a few times, then hung up. It was the car breakdown people, she said. She had got to go and meet them.
“I’d give you a lift but I’ve had one too many sherberts,” Terry said tapping his glass. “Can’t take a risk with the law you know,” Terry said, winking.
“That’s okay, I’ll manage,” Sonia said, laughing. “Nice meeting you.”
Terry turned back to the bar and scrolled through his messages, feeling old again. Outside, walking away, Sonia looked over her shoulder and dialed.
“I just left, chief, like you said. Proceeding to the extraction point. We got what we needed?… Good.”
Three minutes later a car pulled up and two men jumped out. Seconds later Terry turned to see two police behind him.
“Mr Terrence Kenneth Stanton.”
“Yeah, that’s me. Who’s asking?”
“Met Police. .. You are under arrest on suspicion of serious fraud, theft and handling stolen goods, not to mention minor offences against the Food Safety Act 1990. You do not have to say anything. But anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
“What, you can’t do that, you have nothing on me?”
“Is that so, Mr Stanton? You must remember, ‘There’s always room at the bottom,’” the officer said as he led him away.“Fuck me, the girl.” ■