Young Writers Society

There she was again. Ronnie had taken to calling her Doc, and Marsha had to admit that the old gal bore more than a fleeting resemblance to Christopher Lloyd. Ropy skin, wrinkles, hair like spun sugar. It was the eyes, mostly. Even from the opposite side of the bar, with the lights making misty patterns of everything, she could pick them out like twin moons.

“Swear to god, she’s staring at me again,” Marsha muttered, fiddling with the microphone.

Ronnie didn’t look up from tuning his guitar strings. “She’s gonna invite you for a spin in the DeLorean.”

“Not a bad idea. Could pop back to 1985 and knock out Thatcher,” Marsha said.

Ronnie laughed, then brushed his fringe out of his eyes and looked up at her. “You ready, then?”

Marsha nodded. She turned her eyes towards the rest of the bar, breathing the nerves away. It wasn’t a busy night, which somehow made it worse. There was a straggly bunch of people outlining the bar, a few groups hunched around tables, a bunch of shifty-footed freshers staring into their ciders. People stared more when it was quiet. She felt it like a weight, like fingers pressed into the dip between her ribs.

The woman’s gaze pressed the hardest. Marsha looked away from it. When Ronnie strummed the first chord, she let the sound ease up through her like steam. Her lips met the mottled surface of the microphone. She closed her eyes and sang.

After, the applause was lukewarm and scattered, but no worse than usual. A song or two later, when the cider had doubtlessly oozed its way in fully, there came a few whoops and whistles from the students. As she bobbed a mock-bow, Marsha folded the memory of the sounds – the downwards swoop of the cheers; the arching keen of the whistles – into the tight corners of her mind. They never preserved as well as pressed flowers did, but she had to try.

When she and Ronnie packed up, they turned invisible. The conversation had risen to a simmer, more than enough to blanket them, and the spell of the music had decayed to nothing more than cases and zips and wires and practicalities, nothing to draw the eye.

Yet the woman still watched.

“I’ll get this lot in the car,” Marsha said, lugging the guitar case onto her back. “I want an OJ in my hand when I come back in.”

“Wow, really going wild tonight,” Ronnie said.

She edged bulkily between the growing crowds, hands weighed down by amps. When she pushed the pub door open with her knee, the cold scraped over her skin, her neck, her face, making her hiss. She hobbled down the pavement, in and out of the streetlamps, breath misting the air in front of her. She put the amps down and scrabbled for the keys, the keys, where were the damn keys-?

“You’ve got a lovely voice,” someone said.

Marsha turned. The old woman stood behind her, glazed orange by the nearest streetlamp. Wind sifted through her caramelised hair, and the shadows made fissures of her wrinkles.

“Sorry?” Marsha asked.

“Your voice. It’s beautiful,” the woman said.

“Oh, well - thank you,” Marsha said. “Sorry, are you…new around here? I’ve seen you in the pub a few times recently.”

“Just visiting,” the woman said. Out here, with the lamplight and the cold and the silence, her eyes were almost cavernous. Almost hungry. “Just wanted to hear a bit of good music.”

Marsha flushed, but the cold stole the heat immediately. “You’re very kind.”

“I mean it,” the woman said. “You’ve got a talent.”

“It’s just a hobby, really- I’m not really-”

“You have a talent,” the woman said again, landing more heavily on the words. “Stick at it. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Marsha stood, her chest leaden with awkwardness. “Right, well, I… thank you,” she said. “Sorry, but I think I left my car keys in there, so I better just…”

She picked up the amps and edged past the woman. As she pushed her shoulder to the pub door again, chatter seeping out into the silence, she heard the woman call out.

“What was that?” Marsha asked, turning.

The woman tucked her hands in her fleece. “I said they’re to the left of the stage.”

Marsha frowned. Haltingly, as if her gears were winding down, she eased her way into the heat of the pub and back to where Ronnie was waiting, orange juice in hand. He said something to her, but it was only words, a smear of noise. Her eyes were fixed on the stage. On the left side, jutting out of a tangle of wires, the edge of the car key winked at her.