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Entering the Woolpack these days is like entering your childhood bedroom, knowing that someone has rummaged through your stuff and put everything back in slightly the wrong position. The tables have new scuff marks; the bottles have been rearranged on the shelves; half the chairs have brighter yellow upholstery. Robert hadn’t known he was ever paying attention until he noticed.
Today, the mid-morning crowd is scant and lazy, much like Robert is feeling himself. It’s his favorite time to come in, when he can. There are fewer lingering gazes. He’s used to being the town freakshow, but now it’s just getting insulting.
When he enters the pub, Chas is behind the bar. He’s managed to skirt around her periphery up til now. Not today. Their eyes meet for a split second; her gaze flits away and then she rolls her eyes in that snooty way of hers before she turns around with a flick of her hair. Robert mimics her behind her back and walks up to the bar anyways.
“Pint, please.” His voice is as light, easy, and free of awkwardness as ever, not that he’s expecting the same from Chas. He’s rewarded with a cold shoulder, even after he drums his fingers against the bartop. He pipes up, “Service in here’s gone downhill.”
Chas flicks around and starts to pour a pint, keeping her body rigid and her head poised tall. This is her trying to tell Robert something, using her body language. Probably something daft and cliched, like What do you think you’re doing here? or Don’t even think about it! In anticipation, he sidles up to the barstool, placing himself firmly in her field of vision.
“Four-seventy,” Chas says tersely, planting the pint glass in front of Robert firmly enough that the beer sloshes over the side.
“Highway robbery, that is,” Robert scoffs, knowing full well that he paid the same price yesterday.
“Don’t test me, Robert,” Chas says lowly, that threatening way of hers.
“Or what?” Robert can’t help himself.
Chas slams her hand down on the counter, making the pint glass rattle. An old bird huddled in the corner jumps. “You are unbelievable, you know that?”
“Yeah, so they say.” Robert takes a sip of his drink before Chas has a chance to spill any more. It’s an old habit, winding Chas up. Like riding a bike.
Chas presses together her lips into a thin line and turns away, wiping furiously at what Robert assumes is a fossilized stain. She’s different, this Chas. Mellowed with age, maybe. He heard that she’s engaged to some doctor, so she’s moved up in the world since he last knew her, or maybe not.
It’s weird. They were family once, or sort of it. The Dingles are cultish on their best day and Robert was happy to not be a part of that, all things considered, but they’d come to a mutual acceptance of sorts. With Aaron at the center. And it had been…nice. He’d never love Chas, but he could like her half the time and tolerate her for most of the rest, which was big of him. He had a weird kind of bond with Belle, what with them both being held hostage at gunpoint by his psycho ex-stepson. Maybe it was absence making the heart grow fonder, but over the years in his cell he might have even grown to miss old Sam. Still, it was more than expected that they’d treat him like dirt upon his return, especially Aaron’s mother, who’s currently pretending not glare at him from the corner of her eye.
“You know, you could do with a warmer welcome,” Robert tells her. Self-restraint was never his strong suite, and she made it so easy. “I know we were never mates, but a part of you had to like me.”
He sees the tension in Chas’ body coil up and snap. She swings around, eyes like fire, and stalks forward.
“This is all just a big game to you, is it?” she snaps, hand on her hip. “Strutting around with that smug little look on your face, not caring about lives you damage?”
“Alright, calm down.” He’s hardly been strutting. “Not like I just got out of prison or anything.”
“You just stay away from Aaron, yeah?” Chas points at him hawkishly. “He doesn’t need any more grief from the likes of you!”
“Seems like he’s doing a pretty good job of it himself.”
Chas’ mouth twitches unpleasantly. “How dare you.”
“Well, he’s hardly walking around in marital bliss, is he?” He can’t help that his gaze is drawn to Aaron whenever they are in each other’s vicinity, and he also can’t help but notice that Aaron with John is not like Aaron with Robert. Robert’s Aaron kept the world spinning, while John’s Aaron is letting the world pass him by.
“It’s not down to you!” Chas’ voice drops into a sort of infuriated plea. “He’s settled now, can’t you see that?”
“Yeah, he’s made that clear,” Robert says, not able to sound like he isn’t bitter. When Chas looks ready to fire off again at him, he holds his hands up in surrender. “I’ve been staying away from him, okay? I know when I’m not wanted.”
“Too right,” Chas mutters, but she loses the ozone tension and goes back to fussing with the till. Robert sips his pint and pretends to ignore her.
It’s hard not to feel restless like this. The village is quieter than Robert remembers; he never realized there was so much negative space until he had fallen into something of a routine again. It’s why he keeps on at Moira’s farm, even though the wage is basically illegal and he’s mainly paid in free meals – at least the tractor noise and cow stench and sweat buildup give him something to focus on. The company could be worse, too.
It's why he just can’t keep his mouth shut, even though he’s promised Vic to stay out of trouble and not make enemies. Let sleeping dogs lie. Nope. “So you’re onboard the John train? Is he the son-in-law you’ve always dreamed of?”
“Robert, I am not discussing my son’s love life you,” Chas hisses with a familiar glare. Unfortunately for her, Robert can detect rhetorical misdirects like a shark can smell blood in water.
“And that’s not a yes,” he points out. “So what is it?” He drops his voice to a whisper. “Did he threaten to eat your liver too?”
Chas splutters – and okay, Robert might have ran his mouth a little with that one. Not his best work. “What is wrong with you? You have no idea how much John has done for our family, and for Aaron, so just – just stay out of it, you hear me? He’s ten times the man you ever were.”
“Ouch,” Robert mutters sarcastically. In a way it’s better than being likened to the man, which people keep trying to do. Still, he’s getting sick of everyone harping on, John, John, John. He’s done so much for us. Sounds fishy to Robert – no one can be that much of a hero. Worse still that he now owes John his life, or whatever it is that everyone seems to think. “Just trying to keep updated. You know I only want what’s best for him.”
Chas rolls her shoulders and braces her hands against the bar, looking Robert dead in the eye. It’s kind of unnerving. “I know that’s how you feel, in your own strange and twisted way-”
“Thanks.”
“-but Aaron’s had a rough go of it in the past few years, and John makes him happy. So don’t go trampling all over that if you actually care.”
“I get it, alright? I know that I lost the right to him years ago,” Robert says. Laying it on a bit thick. A touch of sympathy on her part would go a long way.
In typical Chas fashion, she reacts the opposite way. “Right, so what are you snooping around for? Look – whatever hiccups they’ve had, that’s normal for couples. They are solid.” She crosses her index and middle finger to show just how solid they are.
“Noted. Cheers.” Robert drains his glass and pushes it forward, before standing up to leave. There’s nothing more to be gained from this conversation, even if the mention of hiccups have perked his ears up. He hasn’t missed Chas’ bullheadedness in the last six years, that’s for sure. “I expect we’ll see each other around.”
“Goodbye, Robert,” Chas says, picking up his glass and giving him a dismissive stare, but it’s not as hostile as it once would have been. Just as well, since he’s planning on sticking around. Rest of her life, if he has any say in it, so she had better get used to the idea. It’s a satisfying thought that bolsters him to flash a cheeky wink at her on his way out, which she makes a face at in turn.
Hiccups. Guess he has a bit of digging to do.