Nervelessly we agreed. Talk was limited. We swallowed hungrily, quickly, and peered again towards the pumps.

‘The Lancaster Bomber?’

‘The Whitstable Mule?’

‘How’s about that Mangan’s Organic?’

‘I’d say the Lancaster, all told.’

‘Ring the bell, Everett.’

He did so, and a lively blonde, familiar with her forties but nicely preserved, bounced through from reception. Our eyes went shyly down. She took a glass to shine as she waited our call. Type of lass who needs her hands occupied.

‘Do you for, gents?’

Irish, her accent.

‘Round of the Lancaster, wasn’t it?’ said Everett.

She squinted towards our table, counted the heads.

‘Times six,’ confirmed Everett.

The landlady squinted harder. She dropped the glass. It smashed to pieces on the floor.

‘Maurice?’ she said.

It was Mo that froze, stared, softened.

‘B-B-Barbara?’ he said.

We watched as he rose and crossed to the bar. A man in a dream was Mo. We held our breaths as Mo and Barbara took each other’s hands over the counter. They were wordless for some moments, and then felt ten eyes on them, for they giggled, and Barbara set blushing to the Lancasters. She must have spilled half again down the slops gully as she poured. I joined Everett to carry the ales to our table. Mo and Barbara went into a huddle down the far end of the counter. They were rapt.

Real Ale Club would not have marked Mo for a romancer.

‘The quiet ones you watch,’ said Tom N. ‘Maurice?’

‘Mo? With a piece?’ whispered Everett Bell.

‘Could be they’re old family friends,’ tried innocent Billy. ‘Or relations?’

Barbara was now slowly stroking Mo’s wrist.

‘Four buggerin’ fishwives I’m sat with,’ said John Mosely. ‘What are we to make of these Lancasters?’

We talked ale but were distracted. Our glances cut down the length of the bar. Mo and Barbara talked lowly, quickly, excitedly down there. She was moved by Mo, we could see that plain enough. Again and again she ran her fingers through her hair. Mo was gazing at her, all dreamy, and suddenly he’d got a thumb hooked in the belt-loop of his denims – Mr Suave. He didn’t so much as touch his ale.

Next, of course, the jaunty landlord arrived back on the scene.

‘Oh, Alvie!’ she cried. ‘You’ll never guess!’

‘Oh?’ said the landlord, all the jauntiness instantly gone from him.

‘This is Maurice!’

‘Maurice?’ he said. ‘You’re joking …’

It was polite handshakes then, and feigned interest in Mo on the landlord’s part, and a wee fat hand he slipped around the small of his wife’s back.

‘We’ll be suppin’ up,’ said John Mosely, sternly.

Mo had a last, whispered word with Barbara but her smile was fixed now and the landlord remained in close attendance. As we left, Mo looked back and raised his voice a note too loud. Desperate, he was.

‘Barbara?’

We dragged him along. We’d had word of notable pork scratchings up the Mangy Otter.

‘Do tell, Maurice,’ said Tom N.