Cap’n Johnjo sat by the fire gossiping to Ruby, his brindle Collie.  The old man was nursing a neat whisky and smoking Balkan Sobranie in the awful briar he invariably produced as he finished his meal.  Only the ever-faithful Ruby stayed near him in these moments.   Ancient and all but blind, she worshiped Johnjo.  As she listened, he rambled on in his raspy whisper, feeding her leftovers from his plate of roast beef, mash, and gravy.

‘Will you ever look at Siobhan O’Reagan, girl?  She’s left her walking frame at the table and is dancing with Sheila Buckley. She must have had an extra glass of wine with her lunch. The old girl’s sailing three sheets to the wind.  You know, between them two you could stack enough years to reach back to The Battle of Bunker Hill, but there they are, still dancing like lassies.  

‘Oh, I remember Siobhan in the day.  It’s no surprise she’s got more grandchildren than Queen Victoria.  She just had that look about her, something in her eyes. And fair play to her man Seamus for going along. People think Henry Ford invented the assembly line. He must have studied from our Siobhan feedin’ that brood. 

‘Seeing them dancin’ takes me back though, Ruby.  Long before you were whelped my Mary taught me to dance in her parents’ parlour.  She said she wouldn’t be courted by a left-footed sailor. She’d turn on the gramophone and we danced. Sweet Jesus, we danced. If only she were here, we’d still be dancing.’ Johnjo’s blue eyes paused on the dancers and, briefly, lost focus.

Ruby, wearing a Christmas bow on her collar, looked on with rapt affection for Johnjo and, of course, for the bit of bread he was soaking with rich, brown gravy.  Her eyes might have been going, but there was nothing wrong with Ruby’s nose.  It twitched to the wonderful smells of beef and onion and seven different spices all mingled with the odour of her captain’s Sobranie.

Across the room, a slender, wavy haired man in red checked trousers and green cardigan accompanied himself on an electric guitar while singing country renditions of popular songs.  He stood on a small bandstand in front of which a space had been cleared for dancing.  Before him, there was a sea of elderly women finishing their lunches, gossiping, and exchanging grandchildren’s photographs.  Johnjo, one of a handful of men salting the audience, felt uncomfortable among so many women, but came annually because he’d grown up and grown old right here in Dogtown, among these people. They’d all known his Mary too. With them, he sometimes felt nearer to her.

On stage, the singer, groaned ‘Oh Rooo-bee, don’t take your love to town.’ 

Johnjo sniggered and said, ‘Now Ruby, I think we’re well beyond all that carry-on, you and me.  You had your day, but you were always a good girl; came home to have your pups.  Then you took your vows, to the grief and mortification of the dog population of Glouster.  You had your day, my Mary and me, we had ours.’ 

Ruby, no mean observer of human beings, had somewhere along her path learnt to smile, showing all her teeth like a denture advertisement, but not growling.  She smiled at Johnjo and he rewarded her with the gravy-soaked bit of bread he’d been preparing. 

Looking across the sea of Santa hats and blue-grey hair in front of him, Johnjo said, ‘Ruby darling, this is like going to mass, lonely hearts and hearing aids in every pew.  It’s no snug harbour for a lonesome old fisherman.  I wonder how many of those girls have the faintest idea what’s being said at them from across the table.  I can’t understand a word, it’s all mush to me.’  Ruby smiled again and wagged her tail hopefully.

Soon the singer would belt out his last tune and they’d clear the decks for bingo.  Johnjo planned to weigh anchor during the intermezzo.  Nothing could bind him to weather the tempest of bingo calling, bingo lingo, and bingo squalls about to lash the lee shores of The Blue-Grey Sea.  (There was, after all, a Christmas grand prize of $100 at stake in the progressive jackpot.)  There might be fistfights in the fo’c’sle, bloodshed and mayhem on the quarterdeck.  He and Ruby would coast down the street to the bookie and place an honest wager on a decent horse.  He fancied Mermaid Princess in the 3:30 at Suffolk Downs.

Johnjo rose and moved as quickly as he could to the bar.  Ruby stayed beneath their table, knowing her master had gone for a second whisky and soon would return to put his plate on the floor for her to clean.

As Johnjo navigated back to the table, the singer launched into his sure-fire finale, a sentimental rendering of When You Were Sweet Sixteen.  After a few lines, the audience joined in the chorus:

I love you as I never loved before

Since first I saw you on the village green

Come to me e’er my dream of love is o’re,

I love you as I loved you, when you were sweet

When you were sweet sixteen.

As the audience reprised the final lines, Johnjo looked up to see his lost Mary coming through the tables, as young and fresh and beautiful as the day they’d wed – before the children came, before all the other days happy and sad.  She stood smiling in front of him, offering him her hand.  He rose to dance.

Ruby wagged her tail in greeting to her old mistress. Cap’n Johnjo and his Mary danced and danced.

Siobhan O’Reagan, seeing old Johnjo dancing with empty arms in front of the fire, whispered something to Sheila, who turned to look through the tobacco haze to see the old sailor stepping and swaying all by himself.  They’d later swear he looked twenty years old; his face had shed all its age.

After the coaches were loaded, someone noticed Johnjo asleep by the fire, or so they thought.  He’d gone.  Ruby, of course, had tagged along with him.    She’d cleaned the platter first, but Johnjo hadn’t touched his whisky. 

It gave Dogtown something to talk about. … And, oh yes, Mermaid Princess, a longshot, won by a nose.