Pilgrim Souls. Jan Murray

about to say something.

      ‘Well?’ I asked.

      He looked down at the bottle again, rolling the syringe around in the plastic barrel, watching the way it tumbled. Finally he turned and walked up the yard to the street and without turning to look back, waved the bottle in the air above his head to bid me a final goodbye.

      ‘Russian-Irish? Is that right?’ I called out.

      ‘You got it.’ He didn’t stop or look back but waved again with the loaded bottle.

      ‘I hear they like a drink, those guys? Right?’

      He turned and eyeballed me as I came closer, holding the stare for several seconds, challenging me to be the first to look away. But neither of us blinked. Not till he broke out in a smile and shrugged. ‘Yeah. They’ll take a sherry or two at Christmas.’

      ‘If you’re up for it, then how about a glass of Christmas cheer?’ I was offering to buy him a drink. A hitchhiker I had just picked up. So, what? I was invincible. Still trawling Mt Olympus.

      He looked puzzled. ‘It’s only September. A little early for Christmas, don’t you reckon?’

      ‘It’s one of the ‘er’ months,’ I said. ‘It’s Christmas once you hit the ‘er’ months. That’s the rule.’

      ‘Er months?’

      ‘September. October. November. December. The ‘er’ months.’ I was challenging him to question my logic. ‘September? It’s a down-hill run from here.’

      ‘Life’s a downhill run.’ He said it and it seemed that straight away, he regretted the bitter tone.

      ‘C’mon. Hear those sleigh bells?’

      ‘You’re crazy, y’know that?’

      ‘And I like you, too. Mr Builder of Fine Timber Boats. A Christmas drink around the corner at my local? Please?’

      I retrieved my bag from the Golf and slung it over my shoulder. ‘I’ve been here a whole day,’ I said as I came back to him. ‘It’s time I got acquainted with my local watering hole. Don’t want to walk in there on my own if I can help it. It’s a lovely day so what say we walk around?’

      ‘Okay by me.’

      I fell in beside him. We reached the front of the yard and turned left.

      When I began walking ahead of him to pick frangipani off the ground I imagined I could feel his eyes on me.

      But they weren’t.

      He was back at the skip bin in front of the renovation site, moving aside cardboard boxes and pieces of broken plasterboard. I watched him bury the plastic bottle deep down beneath the refuse.

      Good man, I thought as I started walking backwards, dodging the branches of an overhanging hibiscus.

      He plucked a red blossom from the tree and handed it to me. A romantic gesture? It landed on me as such.

      We were soon strolling through the back door of the Suffolk Park Hotel and it wasn’t until I let him guide me to the bar, where he ordered a gin and tonic for me and a White Russian for himself, that I stuck the hibiscus flower behind my ear. Left or right?