The Last Days of Howard Hill by JS Apsley
Barkeep Stevie recalls one of the more colourful characters that frequented his Glasgow pub in the 90s.
Jim McQueen was one of the few people I ever met in whose company I was a willing bit-part player. He had charm; compassion. He was just so well-drawn. The three short years our paths crossed I gained a degree, I lost my Uncle Charlie, I met my wife. But whenever I was with Jim, he was the main character, and I was his sidekick.
And what a wonderful time it was.
Our triennium in the mid-nineties was spent tending bar in an honest-to-goodness Glasgow boozer where folk from all backgrounds would converge like a Venn Diagram. It was also the occasional locus of some rough and tumble. In fact, let's call the pub that, since I can't give you its real name. The Rough & Tumble.
Jim had nicknames for most of the cast who were listed on the Rough & Tumble playbill. Some by what they drank, such as Jimmy Lager, Harry Heavy-Heid, and Vodka John. Others he christened by their appearance or association with an unfortunate event, such as Govan Buffy, a thirty-something who looked like a drug-addicted Sarah Michelle Gellar, Myra Hindley's Dug (how did he make that association?), and of course Shits-on-the-floor Acker Bilk, a nickname which ticked both boxes.
The language of bar-life was an alluring code, a sub-cultural patois. I learned the terms of art quickly as Jim gave me many a run home. Those drives were existential good ol' fun, bantering over some sci-fi trope. Jim loved Dr Who when it was extremely unfashionable and not to be discussed in the pub. He'd learned that lesson after a classic Jim monologue resulted in the scrunched, beetroot red face of Sandra Hendry (vodka, soda and lime) retorting, "What the Christ's a dalek, Jim?"
The night-drives were how I came to realise I was a side-kick on The Jim Show. As we chatted about the customers we had served, it hit me hard. He was Danger Mouse; I his Penfold.
Of all the characters we encountered, the punter whose story stands clear above all others was Howard Hill. Perhaps you recognise the name.
The night I met Howard Hill I had strolled into the bar and exchanged banter ("battle stations, Captain") before Jim disappeared for his break. My eyes landed on a shrivelled walnut of a man, sitting alone. He had the wizened, cracked face of a North Sea fisherman. Atop his head was a mop of wiry white hair. You could scrub the decks with that hair. Above his ruddy cheeks were two piercing red eyes; not red through booze, but like sniper-scope lasers, through which peered the demanding stare of a man who had little time for fools.
Upon his table lay a curious and care-worn leather-bound scrapbook. He had one bony hand placed upon it, as if swearing to the almighty.
He wobbled to his feet to get my attention. He grimaced; putting his hand to his back. As he stood, I thought he looked warped, like he had been left out in the sun too long. Standing at the bar was one of the loveliest guys you could ever meet, Slim Alan (pint of heavy). He had a thin moustache and loved the Eagles (I can hear Jim now: "Stevie, it's just Eagles, man - not The Eagles").
"You alright there, Howard?" Slim Alan said, offering a hand. The walnut grimaced, and glanced at his empty glass. He uttered a single word: "Pint." His voice was always a bark, whether approving or disapproving. It scraped out of his throat like he was dragging his Sunday shoes through gravel.
The walnut placed his pint glass on the bar like he had laid down a gauntlet. He eyed me with great suspicion before taking his seat, his back creaking. He slapped his hand back upon that strange folio, drumming his fingers.
I poured a pint, Alan paid for it, and the evening wore on as Jim and I strutted our stuff as bartenders extraordinaire. Later, I glanced over to see old man with the strange leather book, but he was gone.
Alan was now in deep conversation with Ross Wallace (Vladivar and Coke) at the bar. Ross was a weasel-faced self-proclaimed ladies' man who worked as a security guard at a chemist across the road. It didn't strike me as odd that a chemist would need security at the time; shoplifters were rife. They'd be in the pub frequently to sell their stolen wares, from soaps and shampoos to cuts of meat. Ross swaggered, thinking his white shirt and black epaulettes rendered him handsome. I asked what had happened to the walnut, and it was Ross who answered.
"Old Howard? Robin Hood hisself? He's flying like an arra back up the road!" He had spat his response over his glass with a snigger.
You had to be quick in this environment; smart as a whip. Why was Ross calling the old man Robin Hood? My immediate suspicion was that this was some sort of rhyming slang, or perhaps a wind-up. Slim Alan lanced my befuddlement.
"That old boy is Howard Hill. Or used to be. He was the world's most famous archer. I think he won gold medals at the Olympics."
"He did more than that Christssakes. Aye, gold medals awright - but that grumpy old bugger taught Errol Flynn how to fire a bow and arra," Ross added.
Jim and I shared an excited look: we've got one! Looking at me, Ross said, "You'll no remember Errol Flynn, but Jimbo here knaws his flicks, eh pal?"
"Captain Blood," said Jim, diagonally one-upping his unworthy interrogator with the less obvious reference.
Ross didn't get it. He ignored Jim and turned back to me.
"Did ye know ye'd served a gold medallist?" he snaked, poking his finger. I was still leery of the whole scenario.
"It's aw in his scrapbook. You want tae see they newspaper cuttings. He's kept them aw. Glory days. Next time he's in, ask fir a look-see."
Top-billed for the night drive later was Howard Hill. I was eager to know if Jim knew more about the world's most famous archer. Jim was curiously quiet. "I'll ask my brother Alasdair, he'll remember."
Jim's older brother Alasdair was another great guy, perhaps even smarter than Jim. I wonder now if Jim thought he was the side-man in the Alasdair show. But then, did Sherlock think he was in the shadow of Mycroft?
I found out on the next shift. Howard had been a truly famous individual back in the day: a consultant in the golden age of Hollywood. He had performed that famous scene in which Robin Hood splits another arrow in two, with Errol Flynn's Robin Hood taking the credit. Howard Hill, Alasdair told Jim, had even fired the arrow in the original Strongbow Cider advert. Now here he was, a genuine legend in his dotage, whiling away his twilight years in a boozer in Glasgow, his scrapbook and chronic back pain for company.
It was another couple of weeks before I saw Howard Hill again, there in the crinkled flesh, in wizened glory. He was in company with the Two Bills, a couple of regulars. There was Bill the Janny (cider - and nothing but), and Bill Wayne (Guinness, moving on to Morgan's and Coke) who at Christmas time was always greeted with rendition after rendition of "A Wayne in a Manger." At last, a lull, and I found myself cleaning the table of the World's Greatest Archer.
"Big man, come and have a look at this," coached Bill the Janny. He swivelled Howard's scrap book around to face me. Howard smiled from behind his hand-rolled cigarette, and gave me one of those signature gravelly throat-clears. Permission had been granted. I sat down, the latest in a long line of acolytes.
"Howard here used to be a champion archer, he's brought his memory book in for us to see," simpered Bill Wayne. I remember thinking the use of "memory book" was unusual; childlike. The leather creaked like Howard's back.
There was a blurry black and white photograph of a younger Howard Hill, in full safari suit, kneeling next to a dead elephant. The beast had a smear of blood down its trunk, below two arrow shafts. The younger Howard still had that distinctive wiry hair, but it was dark, and his nose seemed broader. Howard beamed with pride; an old man revelling in the exploits of his younger self.
"Tembo," he barked, pointing to the photograph. His fingers were brown and yellow from tobacco stains. I wondered how many arrows those fingers had loosed over the years.
"That means elephant," Bill the Janny slurred, eyes wide with admiration. "Howard here was the first white hunter to kill a bull elephant with a bow and arrow."
Each page of his scrapbook was packed with worn clippings, newspaper stories, photos and exploits. He was even in an old American newspaper advert for Chesterfield cigarettes, with the tagline Hitting the Mark.
As I studied on, Howard was suddenly fidgety and uncomfortable. He grabbed the book back from me curtly. He reminded me of my grandfather, and I suddenly realised that his restricted speech might have been the legacy of a stroke. I wondered if he had family or someone to look after him. The scrapbook was stowed in a well-worn Presto plastic bag, and it did not resurface.
Later, Bill the Janny came to the bar, and I asked him how long he'd known Howard. "He's been here for years," he drawled. "I ken seeing him in George Square when that poll-tax malarky was going on."
When Howard agitated to head home, the Two Bills offered to help. When Bill Wayne tried to lift the Presto bag, Howard slapped his hand away and bared his teeth like an animal.
On our night drive, Jim was awfully quiet. "Howard must be a fair age. In his eighties maybe?" he muttered. I explained that Bill the Janny remembered Howard protesting the poll-tax. Jim's brow furrowed.
"Why is Howard Hill in Glasgow? What's he been doing all these years?" Jim asked. Suddenly, he pulled his car over to the side. His face was ashen, his two hands gripping the wheel for dear life.
"This stinks, Stevie."
I asked him what he meant.
"Something's rotten in Denmark, Stevie."
I could see the cogs starting to whir and spin, but I offered a solution. My parents had got me a PC to help with my university studies. And with it came the latest mod-con: dial-up internet. We finished the rest of that drive sombre, realising that the timeline was as warped as the old fella's back. We'd been hornswoggled. Duped. In a city of dupers, this was one to end them all.
Searching the internet in those days was not like it was now. Christ, the whole history of the world is in the palm of our hands these days. Eventually, I struck gold. I found a documentary movie from 1952, called Tembo, proclaimed as GREATEST OF ALL WILD ANIMAL PICTURES! no less. With rising mortification, I realised that our Howard could not be the real Howard Hill. The truth of it flashed on my screen like a Danger: High Voltage sign. Howard Hill had died in 1975, before I was even born.
Our Howard was an imposter! I fumbled for my brick-sized Motorola, and sent Jim a single SMS message:
The next morning, Jim's opening salvo was a warning. "Stevie - we've got to be careful. I've been up all night with this. If we confront him or betray him to his cronies... it ain't gonna go well. He's been living off these guys for years, getting drinks bought for him. If they find out he's a liar - a bloody liar - they might lynch him."
Jim was right. Our Howard had carefully cultivated his facade over long years. He had curated and falsified documentary evidence to lend credence to his conspiracy. He had built a whole life around that tattered scrapbook, stealing not just the name but the legacy of an Alabaman archer, long since dead.
Howard Hill was real. He had been the World's Greatest Archer. He had won every competition known to man. He had indeed coached Errol Flynn; he had fired that famous arrow. He had hunted big game in Africa with a longbow, and committed his adventures to celluloid and print. But our man was not Howard Hill. He was someone else.
It was only now, in the vanguard of the digital age, that history had caught up with the imposter. But Jim and I had to pay a price for our discovery - forced complicity. Old Howard had, at some point, suffered a stroke. He suffered from terrible back pains. He must have been a very lonely old man to have concocted and maintained this charade for so long.
"We can't take this from him," Jim pronounced. And so, we made our own pact, Jim and I. To play along, and keep our mouths shut. Howard's hingers-oan took as much joy out of it all as he did. If we betrayed his secret, that symbiosis would fracture.
Life moved on, shifts came and went. Eventually, Howard reappeared. Jim brought a pint to his table, and wiped it down whilst allowing the old man to suggestively show his scrapbook. He looked at a few pages, smiled and small-talked, and played his part with Oscar-winning finesse.
Later that evening Howard decided his back was too sore to carry on boozing, and shuffled off into the night. Jim and I were diverted. Some fool had politely lifted a guys jacket from the floor, a guy who was a paranoid ex-con, and thought his pockets were being rifled. It took Jim and I a while to sort that one out. As the dust settled, I heard Jim audibly gasp.
Howard's scrapbook was lying on the table. Holy Christ.
It was lies, but it was his world. One shared look and I knew Jim was going to take the scrapbook to Howard, with the Two Bills as guides. I waved him off on his adventure and held the fort. I was in my element, at the top of my game, whirling around sorting multiple orders using my instincts as much as my hands. All the while, I knew the camera of life was on the real action. I chuckled to myself. Of course it was. The Jim Show audience would be spellbound. What an episode this would make!
As the last of the revellers were leaving, Jim appeared at the oak doors like the ghost of Christmas Future; a harbinger, a revenant. "Clear up, Stevie, clear up," he muttered, staggering past me. I was eager to know what had happened.
"Get the pub cleared first."
Jim disappeared down into the cellar. I did as I was bid. I cleared all the tables, swept the floor of all the cigarette ends and sorted the bins, and eventually shouted all clear. After a moment or two, I heard Jim below decks. His footsteps were laboured. The hatch opened, and he appeared as if ascending from Dante's ninth circle of hell. I asked him if he was okay.
"No, Stevie, I'm not. Howard Hill is dead."
Well of course he was. We knew that. He had died in nineteen-seventy-five.
"No Stevie, I mean our Howard. He's dead. He's brown bread, Stevie. Take a pew."
Jim poured me a drink (double Lamb's Navy Rum and Coke) and stared at me with dreadful eyes. His hands were flat down on the counter to steady himself, to tether himself to reality. If you're imagining him with a towel over his shoulder; don't. In one of our earliest shifts together he'd excoriated me for such a breach of protocol ("You'll get cold shoulder, Stevie").
Having set me up as his audience of one, I realised I was to be treated to a private denouement of tonight's episode of The Jim Show. My stomach was in knots.
"We pitched up at Howard's close and I had the scrapbook in my hand, Stevie. The Two Bills came up the stairs with me. His door was painted jet black, and the light in the stairwell was flickering. It was a bad vibe, Stevie, a bad vibe. Bill the Janny knocked on his door... but no answer."
Then Jim did something I'd never seen him do - he poured himself a drink (Macallan, straight up). He pushed up on the optic for a single shot, and drained it in one, rubbing his hand over his mouth.
"I noticed the wee nameplate under his doorbell. I had to scrunch my eyes to see it," Jim whispered, wiping his lips again. My mind was doing somersaults. Had Jim discovered our interlopers real name?
"It said 'H. Hill'."
Even the nameplate was fake. Jesus!
"It gets worse, Stevie. There was no answer. I'd have to be muggins to explain if a neighbour pitched up, and the Two Bills were egging me on. So, I tried the door. And... dear God and all the sunny saints help me... it opened."
My eyes were bulging. What had they uncovered?
"Inside Stevie... Christ... inside. The whole house was a shrine. A shrine to Howard Hill. Books, magazines, posters, African art... the whole lot. We shouted for him, no answer. We ventured down his hallway - leopard skins on the walls - to his front room."
"The poor bastard was lying face down on the carpet. The TV was on. And Christ-on-a-bike, Stevie, it was Robin Hood. He'd been watching that bloody Robin Hood movie! I turned him over. Stevie... it was awful. His face was contorted. He was lying on top of a corset - a surgical brace for his back. One arm was still through it. The old bugger must have had a stroke trying to take it off. A corset, Stevie. He was lying dead on top of a bloody corset."
I had to ask if he was absolutely sure old Howard was dead.
"Dead as Tuesdays."
That wasn't the end of it.
"Bill Wayne was on an old rotary phone in the hallway, calling an ambulance. Bill the Janny appeared, holding a framed newspaper article. It was the obituary of the real Howard Hill, from the New York Times. Nineteen-seventy-five, Stevie... nineteen-fecking seventy-five."
I asked Jim how the Two Bills had reacted to the discovery Howard had been a fraud. Jim took a deep breath, and he let out a laugh. His eyes glistened, and his posture relaxed.
"Bill the Janny said 'He's been lying to us all this time.' But Bill Wayne's face lit up with laughter. Soon they were both at it, Stevie. Tears. Tears of joy and sadness. Proper belly laughs. They knew they'd been hoodwinked. But they were utterly delighted."
I had been worried they'd be embarrassed, taken for fools all these years.
"None of it, Stevie. They were on cloud nine! 'That grumpy old bugger! He must have had a hundred pints out of me all these years!' was the patter. So, we all stood there, laughing away, and the poor old bugger was lying there, dead on his carpet."
I asked if the ambulance had pitched up.
"Aye, but not before his neighbour over the landing - looked like a proper bruiser, but he was so confused with all the hunting gear on the walls. The guy had no idea about Howard's double-life.
"Bill Wayne stepped over, and put his hand on the neighbour's shoulder."
At this point, Jim did the same to me from across the bar, mimicking the action.
"Don't you know who your neighbour was? He was Howard Hill... the greatest archer who ever lived."
And so that was that. Our Howard had been a living hoax, but so what? He had carved out a Boy's Own adventure for himself in his twilight years. Perhaps he had been a superfan of the real Howard Hill. Perhaps the first stroke took away his ability to differentiate between reality and fantasy. None of that matters anymore. What matters, I guess, is that the legacy of our imposter was to keep exploits of the real Howard Hill alive.
And as for Jim and I? Well, we closed up the bar, and our night drive was one of silent, sombre disbelief at the incredible last days of our Howard Hill. Then, as we idled at a red light, Jim shouted at the top of his voice out of nowhere, grabbing the wheel till his knuckles were white. "A bloody corset, Stevie! A corset!"
And we laughed together, Jim and I, till the tears ran down our cheeks.
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And what a wonderful time it was.
Our triennium in the mid-nineties was spent tending bar in an honest-to-goodness Glasgow boozer where folk from all backgrounds would converge like a Venn Diagram. It was also the occasional locus of some rough and tumble. In fact, let's call the pub that, since I can't give you its real name. The Rough & Tumble.
Jim had nicknames for most of the cast who were listed on the Rough & Tumble playbill. Some by what they drank, such as Jimmy Lager, Harry Heavy-Heid, and Vodka John. Others he christened by their appearance or association with an unfortunate event, such as Govan Buffy, a thirty-something who looked like a drug-addicted Sarah Michelle Gellar, Myra Hindley's Dug (how did he make that association?), and of course Shits-on-the-floor Acker Bilk, a nickname which ticked both boxes.
The language of bar-life was an alluring code, a sub-cultural patois. I learned the terms of art quickly as Jim gave me many a run home. Those drives were existential good ol' fun, bantering over some sci-fi trope. Jim loved Dr Who when it was extremely unfashionable and not to be discussed in the pub. He'd learned that lesson after a classic Jim monologue resulted in the scrunched, beetroot red face of Sandra Hendry (vodka, soda and lime) retorting, "What the Christ's a dalek, Jim?"
The night-drives were how I came to realise I was a side-kick on The Jim Show. As we chatted about the customers we had served, it hit me hard. He was Danger Mouse; I his Penfold.
Of all the characters we encountered, the punter whose story stands clear above all others was Howard Hill. Perhaps you recognise the name.
The night I met Howard Hill I had strolled into the bar and exchanged banter ("battle stations, Captain") before Jim disappeared for his break. My eyes landed on a shrivelled walnut of a man, sitting alone. He had the wizened, cracked face of a North Sea fisherman. Atop his head was a mop of wiry white hair. You could scrub the decks with that hair. Above his ruddy cheeks were two piercing red eyes; not red through booze, but like sniper-scope lasers, through which peered the demanding stare of a man who had little time for fools.
Upon his table lay a curious and care-worn leather-bound scrapbook. He had one bony hand placed upon it, as if swearing to the almighty.
He wobbled to his feet to get my attention. He grimaced; putting his hand to his back. As he stood, I thought he looked warped, like he had been left out in the sun too long. Standing at the bar was one of the loveliest guys you could ever meet, Slim Alan (pint of heavy). He had a thin moustache and loved the Eagles (I can hear Jim now: "Stevie, it's just Eagles, man - not The Eagles").
"You alright there, Howard?" Slim Alan said, offering a hand. The walnut grimaced, and glanced at his empty glass. He uttered a single word: "Pint." His voice was always a bark, whether approving or disapproving. It scraped out of his throat like he was dragging his Sunday shoes through gravel.
The walnut placed his pint glass on the bar like he had laid down a gauntlet. He eyed me with great suspicion before taking his seat, his back creaking. He slapped his hand back upon that strange folio, drumming his fingers.
I poured a pint, Alan paid for it, and the evening wore on as Jim and I strutted our stuff as bartenders extraordinaire. Later, I glanced over to see old man with the strange leather book, but he was gone.
Alan was now in deep conversation with Ross Wallace (Vladivar and Coke) at the bar. Ross was a weasel-faced self-proclaimed ladies' man who worked as a security guard at a chemist across the road. It didn't strike me as odd that a chemist would need security at the time; shoplifters were rife. They'd be in the pub frequently to sell their stolen wares, from soaps and shampoos to cuts of meat. Ross swaggered, thinking his white shirt and black epaulettes rendered him handsome. I asked what had happened to the walnut, and it was Ross who answered.
"Old Howard? Robin Hood hisself? He's flying like an arra back up the road!" He had spat his response over his glass with a snigger.
You had to be quick in this environment; smart as a whip. Why was Ross calling the old man Robin Hood? My immediate suspicion was that this was some sort of rhyming slang, or perhaps a wind-up. Slim Alan lanced my befuddlement.
"That old boy is Howard Hill. Or used to be. He was the world's most famous archer. I think he won gold medals at the Olympics."
"He did more than that Christssakes. Aye, gold medals awright - but that grumpy old bugger taught Errol Flynn how to fire a bow and arra," Ross added.
Jim and I shared an excited look: we've got one! Looking at me, Ross said, "You'll no remember Errol Flynn, but Jimbo here knaws his flicks, eh pal?"
"Captain Blood," said Jim, diagonally one-upping his unworthy interrogator with the less obvious reference.
Ross didn't get it. He ignored Jim and turned back to me.
"Did ye know ye'd served a gold medallist?" he snaked, poking his finger. I was still leery of the whole scenario.
"It's aw in his scrapbook. You want tae see they newspaper cuttings. He's kept them aw. Glory days. Next time he's in, ask fir a look-see."
Top-billed for the night drive later was Howard Hill. I was eager to know if Jim knew more about the world's most famous archer. Jim was curiously quiet. "I'll ask my brother Alasdair, he'll remember."
Jim's older brother Alasdair was another great guy, perhaps even smarter than Jim. I wonder now if Jim thought he was the side-man in the Alasdair show. But then, did Sherlock think he was in the shadow of Mycroft?
I found out on the next shift. Howard had been a truly famous individual back in the day: a consultant in the golden age of Hollywood. He had performed that famous scene in which Robin Hood splits another arrow in two, with Errol Flynn's Robin Hood taking the credit. Howard Hill, Alasdair told Jim, had even fired the arrow in the original Strongbow Cider advert. Now here he was, a genuine legend in his dotage, whiling away his twilight years in a boozer in Glasgow, his scrapbook and chronic back pain for company.
It was another couple of weeks before I saw Howard Hill again, there in the crinkled flesh, in wizened glory. He was in company with the Two Bills, a couple of regulars. There was Bill the Janny (cider - and nothing but), and Bill Wayne (Guinness, moving on to Morgan's and Coke) who at Christmas time was always greeted with rendition after rendition of "A Wayne in a Manger." At last, a lull, and I found myself cleaning the table of the World's Greatest Archer.
"Big man, come and have a look at this," coached Bill the Janny. He swivelled Howard's scrap book around to face me. Howard smiled from behind his hand-rolled cigarette, and gave me one of those signature gravelly throat-clears. Permission had been granted. I sat down, the latest in a long line of acolytes.
"Howard here used to be a champion archer, he's brought his memory book in for us to see," simpered Bill Wayne. I remember thinking the use of "memory book" was unusual; childlike. The leather creaked like Howard's back.
There was a blurry black and white photograph of a younger Howard Hill, in full safari suit, kneeling next to a dead elephant. The beast had a smear of blood down its trunk, below two arrow shafts. The younger Howard still had that distinctive wiry hair, but it was dark, and his nose seemed broader. Howard beamed with pride; an old man revelling in the exploits of his younger self.
"Tembo," he barked, pointing to the photograph. His fingers were brown and yellow from tobacco stains. I wondered how many arrows those fingers had loosed over the years.
"That means elephant," Bill the Janny slurred, eyes wide with admiration. "Howard here was the first white hunter to kill a bull elephant with a bow and arrow."
Each page of his scrapbook was packed with worn clippings, newspaper stories, photos and exploits. He was even in an old American newspaper advert for Chesterfield cigarettes, with the tagline Hitting the Mark.
As I studied on, Howard was suddenly fidgety and uncomfortable. He grabbed the book back from me curtly. He reminded me of my grandfather, and I suddenly realised that his restricted speech might have been the legacy of a stroke. I wondered if he had family or someone to look after him. The scrapbook was stowed in a well-worn Presto plastic bag, and it did not resurface.
Later, Bill the Janny came to the bar, and I asked him how long he'd known Howard. "He's been here for years," he drawled. "I ken seeing him in George Square when that poll-tax malarky was going on."
When Howard agitated to head home, the Two Bills offered to help. When Bill Wayne tried to lift the Presto bag, Howard slapped his hand away and bared his teeth like an animal.
On our night drive, Jim was awfully quiet. "Howard must be a fair age. In his eighties maybe?" he muttered. I explained that Bill the Janny remembered Howard protesting the poll-tax. Jim's brow furrowed.
"Why is Howard Hill in Glasgow? What's he been doing all these years?" Jim asked. Suddenly, he pulled his car over to the side. His face was ashen, his two hands gripping the wheel for dear life.
"This stinks, Stevie."
I asked him what he meant.
"Something's rotten in Denmark, Stevie."
I could see the cogs starting to whir and spin, but I offered a solution. My parents had got me a PC to help with my university studies. And with it came the latest mod-con: dial-up internet. We finished the rest of that drive sombre, realising that the timeline was as warped as the old fella's back. We'd been hornswoggled. Duped. In a city of dupers, this was one to end them all.
Searching the internet in those days was not like it was now. Christ, the whole history of the world is in the palm of our hands these days. Eventually, I struck gold. I found a documentary movie from 1952, called Tembo, proclaimed as GREATEST OF ALL WILD ANIMAL PICTURES! no less. With rising mortification, I realised that our Howard could not be the real Howard Hill. The truth of it flashed on my screen like a Danger: High Voltage sign. Howard Hill had died in 1975, before I was even born.
Our Howard was an imposter! I fumbled for my brick-sized Motorola, and sent Jim a single SMS message:
Howard Hill RIP
No way Stevie! I knew it. Spk 2moro.
The next morning, Jim's opening salvo was a warning. "Stevie - we've got to be careful. I've been up all night with this. If we confront him or betray him to his cronies... it ain't gonna go well. He's been living off these guys for years, getting drinks bought for him. If they find out he's a liar - a bloody liar - they might lynch him."
Jim was right. Our Howard had carefully cultivated his facade over long years. He had curated and falsified documentary evidence to lend credence to his conspiracy. He had built a whole life around that tattered scrapbook, stealing not just the name but the legacy of an Alabaman archer, long since dead.
Howard Hill was real. He had been the World's Greatest Archer. He had won every competition known to man. He had indeed coached Errol Flynn; he had fired that famous arrow. He had hunted big game in Africa with a longbow, and committed his adventures to celluloid and print. But our man was not Howard Hill. He was someone else.
It was only now, in the vanguard of the digital age, that history had caught up with the imposter. But Jim and I had to pay a price for our discovery - forced complicity. Old Howard had, at some point, suffered a stroke. He suffered from terrible back pains. He must have been a very lonely old man to have concocted and maintained this charade for so long.
"We can't take this from him," Jim pronounced. And so, we made our own pact, Jim and I. To play along, and keep our mouths shut. Howard's hingers-oan took as much joy out of it all as he did. If we betrayed his secret, that symbiosis would fracture.
Life moved on, shifts came and went. Eventually, Howard reappeared. Jim brought a pint to his table, and wiped it down whilst allowing the old man to suggestively show his scrapbook. He looked at a few pages, smiled and small-talked, and played his part with Oscar-winning finesse.
Later that evening Howard decided his back was too sore to carry on boozing, and shuffled off into the night. Jim and I were diverted. Some fool had politely lifted a guys jacket from the floor, a guy who was a paranoid ex-con, and thought his pockets were being rifled. It took Jim and I a while to sort that one out. As the dust settled, I heard Jim audibly gasp.
Howard's scrapbook was lying on the table. Holy Christ.
It was lies, but it was his world. One shared look and I knew Jim was going to take the scrapbook to Howard, with the Two Bills as guides. I waved him off on his adventure and held the fort. I was in my element, at the top of my game, whirling around sorting multiple orders using my instincts as much as my hands. All the while, I knew the camera of life was on the real action. I chuckled to myself. Of course it was. The Jim Show audience would be spellbound. What an episode this would make!
As the last of the revellers were leaving, Jim appeared at the oak doors like the ghost of Christmas Future; a harbinger, a revenant. "Clear up, Stevie, clear up," he muttered, staggering past me. I was eager to know what had happened.
"Get the pub cleared first."
Jim disappeared down into the cellar. I did as I was bid. I cleared all the tables, swept the floor of all the cigarette ends and sorted the bins, and eventually shouted all clear. After a moment or two, I heard Jim below decks. His footsteps were laboured. The hatch opened, and he appeared as if ascending from Dante's ninth circle of hell. I asked him if he was okay.
"No, Stevie, I'm not. Howard Hill is dead."
Well of course he was. We knew that. He had died in nineteen-seventy-five.
"No Stevie, I mean our Howard. He's dead. He's brown bread, Stevie. Take a pew."
Jim poured me a drink (double Lamb's Navy Rum and Coke) and stared at me with dreadful eyes. His hands were flat down on the counter to steady himself, to tether himself to reality. If you're imagining him with a towel over his shoulder; don't. In one of our earliest shifts together he'd excoriated me for such a breach of protocol ("You'll get cold shoulder, Stevie").
Having set me up as his audience of one, I realised I was to be treated to a private denouement of tonight's episode of The Jim Show. My stomach was in knots.
"We pitched up at Howard's close and I had the scrapbook in my hand, Stevie. The Two Bills came up the stairs with me. His door was painted jet black, and the light in the stairwell was flickering. It was a bad vibe, Stevie, a bad vibe. Bill the Janny knocked on his door... but no answer."
Then Jim did something I'd never seen him do - he poured himself a drink (Macallan, straight up). He pushed up on the optic for a single shot, and drained it in one, rubbing his hand over his mouth.
"I noticed the wee nameplate under his doorbell. I had to scrunch my eyes to see it," Jim whispered, wiping his lips again. My mind was doing somersaults. Had Jim discovered our interlopers real name?
"It said 'H. Hill'."
Even the nameplate was fake. Jesus!
"It gets worse, Stevie. There was no answer. I'd have to be muggins to explain if a neighbour pitched up, and the Two Bills were egging me on. So, I tried the door. And... dear God and all the sunny saints help me... it opened."
My eyes were bulging. What had they uncovered?
"Inside Stevie... Christ... inside. The whole house was a shrine. A shrine to Howard Hill. Books, magazines, posters, African art... the whole lot. We shouted for him, no answer. We ventured down his hallway - leopard skins on the walls - to his front room."
"The poor bastard was lying face down on the carpet. The TV was on. And Christ-on-a-bike, Stevie, it was Robin Hood. He'd been watching that bloody Robin Hood movie! I turned him over. Stevie... it was awful. His face was contorted. He was lying on top of a corset - a surgical brace for his back. One arm was still through it. The old bugger must have had a stroke trying to take it off. A corset, Stevie. He was lying dead on top of a bloody corset."
I had to ask if he was absolutely sure old Howard was dead.
"Dead as Tuesdays."
That wasn't the end of it.
"Bill Wayne was on an old rotary phone in the hallway, calling an ambulance. Bill the Janny appeared, holding a framed newspaper article. It was the obituary of the real Howard Hill, from the New York Times. Nineteen-seventy-five, Stevie... nineteen-fecking seventy-five."
I asked Jim how the Two Bills had reacted to the discovery Howard had been a fraud. Jim took a deep breath, and he let out a laugh. His eyes glistened, and his posture relaxed.
"Bill the Janny said 'He's been lying to us all this time.' But Bill Wayne's face lit up with laughter. Soon they were both at it, Stevie. Tears. Tears of joy and sadness. Proper belly laughs. They knew they'd been hoodwinked. But they were utterly delighted."
I had been worried they'd be embarrassed, taken for fools all these years.
"None of it, Stevie. They were on cloud nine! 'That grumpy old bugger! He must have had a hundred pints out of me all these years!' was the patter. So, we all stood there, laughing away, and the poor old bugger was lying there, dead on his carpet."
I asked if the ambulance had pitched up.
"Aye, but not before his neighbour over the landing - looked like a proper bruiser, but he was so confused with all the hunting gear on the walls. The guy had no idea about Howard's double-life.
"Bill Wayne stepped over, and put his hand on the neighbour's shoulder."
At this point, Jim did the same to me from across the bar, mimicking the action.
"Don't you know who your neighbour was? He was Howard Hill... the greatest archer who ever lived."
And so that was that. Our Howard had been a living hoax, but so what? He had carved out a Boy's Own adventure for himself in his twilight years. Perhaps he had been a superfan of the real Howard Hill. Perhaps the first stroke took away his ability to differentiate between reality and fantasy. None of that matters anymore. What matters, I guess, is that the legacy of our imposter was to keep exploits of the real Howard Hill alive.
And as for Jim and I? Well, we closed up the bar, and our night drive was one of silent, sombre disbelief at the incredible last days of our Howard Hill. Then, as we idled at a red light, Jim shouted at the top of his voice out of nowhere, grabbing the wheel till his knuckles were white. "A bloody corset, Stevie! A corset!"
And we laughed together, Jim and I, till the tears ran down our cheeks.
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