Jim dubbed his pub “That Good Night,” after his favorite poet’s most notable poem. Jim lived in Clydach, Wales, only 9.2 kilometers from Dylan Thomas’ home in Swansea. The pub was at the edge of town, just past the attached and semi-attached homes, just beyond “the Mond,” Clydach’s nickel refinery, where Jim had worked for over forty years, until new manufacturing processes depleted the workforce. Jim was fine with that. Pub life was what he wanted now. Except, the pub’s neighbors were the sheep and cattle in the nearby fields.
“Why’d you want to be here?” his wife Mary asked. “We’re nowhere near anyone. Can’t call this the neighborhood pub, now can you, my dear?”
She was right. “That Good Night” was vacant most of the day, except for a straggle now and then. But, once a day, at 13:00 on the dot, the tour bus drove onto the pub’s gravel lot. Then, for an hour, Jim had clients. He’d hear the bus’s wheels churning on the gravel, hear the hiss of the pneumatic brakes pumping, hear the wheels screech to a stop, hear the gears crank and rattle, and then hear the hush of the bus’s door open. And out they came, tourists.
Jim stood behind his bar counter, sipping on a pint of his finest, a wet towel over his left shoulder, and waited for the pub door to open.
Inevitably, invariably, without fail, the first tourist would enter, always wearing shorts, a Union Jack T-shirt, one size too small to cover his girth, a camera around his neck, the talisman of the tourist, and say in his best British faux accent, “Haloo.” Then he’d wave what all Americans thought to be the official Queen’s wave, an upraised hand dancing a rotating tango, and say, “a pint of your best, matey.”
Jim always responded, “Prynhawn da,” good afternoon in Welsh, lilting like birdsong hopping on a telephone wire. “How can I serve you, me Lords and Ladies.”
The tourists, inevitably, invariably tittered, poking each other, saying, “Hear that Mabel. I’m your Lord from now on, ha!”
“I’ll take a G and T,” said one man, sure that he had picked the correct British drink.
“Yes, me Lord. And you sir?” Jim asked the man behind.
It always got odd at this point. After the requisite G and T, drink orders ranged from “Gimme a Bud” to “I’ll take a 7 and 7” to “I’d love a Grasshopper” to “How ‘bout Sex on the Beach,” drinks that Jim couldn’t and wouldn’t fill.
“Sorry, me Lords and Ladies. We are limited to the best of the Isles. I can offer pints, half pints for the ladies, an orange squash, brandy, and maybe a snifter of cognac for the gentlemen.”
The crowd would settle, look around the pub for “British” things, like dart boards, wonder why there wasn’t an Irish band playing “Molly Malone,” assuming that all of Britain was the same country, and then ask, “Where’s everyone? Why’s no one else here, barkeep?”
Jim would shrug, the bus’s horn would honk, the driver would appear and say, “Hurry on folks. We’re off to Swansea now, Dylan Thomas’ home.” The tourists would take their requisite photos with Jim, wearing his bowler, buy a few souvenir shot glasses, and then they’d file out, thinking to themselves, “Yep, I just saw me a real-time British pub.”
Jim watched them leave. He’d hear the bus door hush open, the gears crank and rattle, the pneumatic brakes release, and the wheels churn on the gravel—harsh sounds he remembered from working in the nickel refinery, deafening noises that led to employee hearing problems for decades.
Once gone, the tourists left Jim in silence, the silence he treasured after forty years of clamorous din.
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