Last Orders (13 page)

Vic says, ‘I was wondering—’

You can trust Vic to do his peace-keeping act.

Lenny slouches to the Gents. I wonder if he’s going to do some blubbing too.

Vince shakes the sachet even though it’s empty, then screws it up. He looks up. ‘What was you wondering, Vic?’ He smiles, calm and polite, and sips his coffee.

‘I was wondering, as we’re close, if we could pop over to Chatham and see the memorial. I’ve never—’

Vince looks at Vic. He raises his eyebrows slightly, he puffs his cigar. Vic’s face is serious and steady. You can’t ever tell with Vic.

‘Don’t see why not,’ Vince says. ‘Do you, Raysy?’ He could be chairing a committee. He gives a quick glance to me then back again to Vic. It’s like he’s forgotten all about Lenny. ‘If a man in your line don’t get enough of memorials.’ He smiles, then wipes off the smile quick, as if it
wasn’t anything to smile over. ‘That’s why we’re here, aint we? To remember the dead.’

‘It means a detour,’ Vic says.

Vince blows out smoke, thinking. ‘We can do detours.’

Lenny comes back from the Gents. His face looks like it’s been having a fight with itself, like it don’t know what expression it should wear.

He says, ‘My round, aint it? Same again, Vic? Ray? Vince? Another coffee? Something to go with it?’

I reckon Lenny’ll need to do better than that.

Vince glances up quick at Lenny but he don’t say nothing. He puffs his cigar, eyes narrowed, then he takes the stub from his mouth, there’s still a few puffs left, and crushes it in the ashtray. He says, ‘I don’t know about you, Lenny, but I’m here to take something to Margate, that’s what we’re all here to do. And Vic here would like us to pay a little extra call on the way, which I aint against, considering. We’re here to remember the dead.’ He looks at his watch. ‘Gone two fifteen. Now if you want to stay here drinking all afternoon’ – he sweeps his gaze round the table as if we’re all suddenly included in some plot against him, it’s not just Lenny – ‘that’s your business. But I’m going to the car right now and I’m driving to Margate. If you don’t want to come too, you better find out where the station is.’

He takes a last sip of coffee. Then he gets up, unhurried, putting on his coat, rolling his shoulders so the cloth sits, tugging at the lapels. Then he walks out, not looking back, the door swinging to behind him. When Vince was a nipper his hero was Gary Cooper.

We look at each other, not moving, though it’s plain we don’t have no choice.

Vic gets up first, then I get up.

Lenny says, ‘Tosshead,’ under his breath, not moving.

Vic says, ‘You shouldn’t judge.’

Then we notice the plastic bag,
Rochester Food Fayre
, lying on the seat and it’s as though a new spark comes into Lenny’s face, there’s a new look in his eye. He picks up the bag and grabs his coat. He’s the first of us to reach the door, though he pauses for a moment in front of it, waiting, as if he’s thought for a moment that Vince might be about to step back in. Then he pushes it open and we follow.

Vince is walking back the way we came. The high street looks like a model. He isn’t looking back but it doesn’t seem like he’s keen to make too much ground. We follow him, Lenny scuttling on ahead with the bag.

‘Hey, Big Boy!’

Vince don’t look back but his pace quickens and he hitches himself up a peg.

‘Hey, Big Boy!’ Lenny’s moving at a fair old lick, you wouldn’t think it. ‘You forgot something, didn’t you? You forgot something!’

Then it’s as though Vince’s shoulders sag just as quickly as they perked up and though he keeps on walking it’s as if he can’t make no more headway, as if his leg’s tied to the end of a rope. He don’t look round, like his neck’s stuck. Then Lenny catches up with him and Vince turns his head slowly like someone else is having to wrench it round for him.

‘Forgot this, didn’t you? Forgot your coffee. You might think you can do without us but you’d look a bloody fool going to Margate without this.’

He says, ‘If it wasn’t for my mate Lucky there.’

It’s that dark-haired nurse, the tasty one, Nurse Kelly. She’s come to change his drip. She holds the glucose pack like it’s something you throw in a game. Here, catch this. She has this gleam in her eye like she’s used to warding off remarks.

He pulls the bed-shirt back over his shoulder where he’s shown her the old scar. He says, ‘I aint ever introduced you proper to my mate Lucky, have I?’

She shoots me a smile.

‘We calls him Lucky but his real name’s Ray. Ray Johnson.’

She says, ‘Hello Ray, hello Lucky. I’ve seen you around.’

‘Hear that, Ray? And, Ray, this is Joy. Joy Kelly.’

It’s like we’re in his home and we’re his guests.

‘Joy by name and Joy by nature.’

She smiles, like she hasn’t heard it a hundred times before.

‘Me and Raysy go back donkey’s, before you was a twinkle. Fighting Rommel. Lucky here saved my life, more than once.’

‘Aint true,’ I say. ‘Other way round.’

‘Owe my life to Lucky,’ he says.

She reaches up to change the drip.

‘We calls him Lucky because he’s lucky to be with, and on account of if you want to put a bet on, he’s your man.’

She hangs up the new drip.

‘It’s like me and Ray have got this bet on that them’s stockings you’re wearing, not tights.’

She don’t say nothing, fiddling with the drip. Then she says, That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?’

‘Wasn’t telling I was thinking of.’

‘How are your pillows? Want propping?’

She leans over him again and he says, ‘You must get some suggestions, working in this place,’ as though he hasn’t just made one.

She says, ‘A girl knows when she’s safe.’

‘And a man knows when he aint no danger.’ He lifts the arm with the tubes going in it, like he’s surrendering. ‘But that don’t apply to Ray here, now. You’d be okay with Ray, Ray’s lucky. And he aint attached, like me.’ He lifts the arm again. ‘Nice pair of names that, nice pair. Ray and Joy.’

She straightens herself up.

‘He’s a little man but—’

‘That’s you done,’ she says. ‘I’ll take this.’

It’s his bottle of piss. It’s all dark and bloody.

‘You see, Ray. All she does is take the piss.’

‘I’ll see you later,’ she says, moving off. She gives me another, head-shaking smile.

He says, ‘I reckon you’re on there, Raysy, I reckon you’re on. Don’t say I don’t know how to fix you up.’

Lenny says, panting, ‘He never said it was up no bleeding hill.’

He never did, and he never said he didn’t know where it was. When we stop and ask, they say, There it is, on top of that hill, see, you can’t miss it, naval memorial, white tower. It’s sticking up like a lighthouse for all to see, with a green ball on top instead of a beacon, it’s a landmark. Except no one says how you get there and there aren’t no signs. It’s a funny memorial that no one remembers the way to.

So we trundle round half Chatham town and half Chatham dockyard with this hill in between, and Vince is filming, though he was fuming in the first place, on account of Lenny. He’s trying not to fume extra at Vic, he’s trying to look the soul of patience for Vic, out of compensation for Lenny. Lenny says to Vic, ‘Didn’t they teach you no navigation in the Navy then?’ And Vic’s sitting there in the front again because this was his idea, all his idea, and it’s looking as though he’s sorry he ever spoke. But I reckon even that could be serving Vic’s purpose: diversionary tactics, the blame on him for once, taking the heat away from Vince and Lenny. Except Vince is fuming like a grill pan. I reckon Vic is making a sacrifice, he makes a good martyr, and anyhow there must be some old lost mates of his with their names chalked up on that memorial for having made their own sacrifice, as they call it, once, so it don’t do to deny them. If we ever get there.

We finally find this car park, half-way up the hill, just the other side of the Town Hall. But though it’s just the other
side of the Town Hall, it’s as though Chatham stops and the wilderness begins. It’s as though Chatham wasn’t ever nothing more than a camp. There’s just a low, scrubby wood with a muddy path leading up through it to where the memorial ought to be, except you can’t see it because of the trees, no signs, no nothing. And the only advantage of the trees and of the fact that it looks like somewhere no one ever goes unless they’re up to no good, is that, what with the beer we’ve drunk and the to-ing and fro-ing in a state of agitation round Chatham, Lenny and I need to piss again badly. So, soon as we’re out of sight of the car park, we strike off the path to get the benefit.

He says, ‘He never said it was up no bleeding hill,’ panting and pissing at the same time. ‘And I know we’re doing Jack a turn, but I never knew it was Remembrance Day either.’

I say, ‘Okay for Vic. It’d take a bit more doing, wouldn’t it, for us to pay respects to our lot?’

He says, ‘I aint so sure, way things are going.’

He breathes hard, though we haven’t come so far. His face looks like strawberry jam. Vic’s up ahead, walking on all by himself, determined, as if he’s trying to put on a proper show. I don’t suppose it helps when he looks round and sees Lenny and me taking a slash in the undergrowth. Whisky puts you at an advantage. He turns and presses on, though you can see him puffing too, and Vince is way on ahead of Vic, all in a huff of his own, not looking back, like he’s team leader and he’s not going to wait for a bunch of walking wounded, he just wants to get to the top quick and get it over with.

He’s carrying the bag,
Rochester Food Fayre
, but he took out the coffee.

There’s buds on the trees. Sunlight’s trickling through the branches.

Lenny says, ‘Wavy Navy. Frigging frigates.’

We move on and the path gets steeper. You can see where it comes out of the wood and there’s just long grass, pale and wintry, with a scraggy bush or two shaking in the wind. We can’t see no memorial. We see Vince stop and look around, a hand on his hip, like he’s taking in a view. His coat flaps in the wind. Vic’s getting nearer to Vince. We see Vince say something to Vic, though we can’t hear it. Then Vince looks down at us as though he’s enjoying watching us suffer.

Lenny stops, coughs and spits. He looks up at Vince. ‘He aint letting go of it now, is he?’ We stumble on, then Lenny stops again, his chest going like a pair of bellows. He leans over with his hands on his knees. It’s as though he might be going to say, ‘Raysy, you better go on without me.’ There’s a touch of froth in the corner of his mouth. I think, It wouldn’t do for Lenny to peg out before we’ve said our last goodbye to Jack. It wouldn’t do for any of us. I don’t feel so A-1 myself.

But he levers himself up slowly. He puts a hand for a moment on my shoulder, leaning. Vince is looking. Then he gives me a soft nudge with his knuckles in the back. ‘Do or die, eh Raysy?’ like he’s read my thoughts.

We carry on, not speaking, breathing too hard to speak. Then we come out of the trees and we can see the memorial all of a sudden, like it’s been waiting for us all along, expecting us, sticking up tall and white against the sky, though the base of it’s hidden behind the brow. There’s a word for it. We can see the view spread out below, with the hill sloping down. Chatham merging into Rochester, the bend of the river with cranes sticking up, the cathedral like some big
old bird sitting on a nest. You can see how a town gets set down where it is, in the folds of a valley by a river, by a bridge, and you can see where the river goes twisting on by the shape of the hills. You can see the sparkle of light on windows and cars. The sun’s shining from under a bank of cloud across the pale grass and it’s as if, though we’re still climbing, we’ve entered an easier, kinder, cleaner zone. It’s as though the tower of the memorial is pulling us up towards it. It’s an obelisk, that’s the word, obelisk. The sun’s shining on it. It’s white and tall. It looks like it’s floating, because you can’t see what it’s attached to, like when you get near to it, it might shift off somewhere else. There’s still no signs up to tell you, just the rough grass, ruffled by the wind, and a ragged path, and there aren’t any people except us. It’s like it got built then forgotten. Vince is going on ahead, getting closer, Vic’s following behind. It’s like it was only half meant to be here and so were we, but here we are, together, on top of this hill. It’s like an effort at dignity, that’s what it is, it’s like a big tall effort at dignity.

 … 
we therefore commit their bodies to the deep.

It would rear up howling and hissing, ice like marzipan on the forward deck, the bows plunging and whacking, so it seemed you didn’t need another enemy to fire off shells and torpedoes at you, the sea was enough. Or it would stretch out broad and big and quiet as the moonlit night up above, the convoy spread like ducks on a lake. Floating coffins. Which was worse, a calm or an angry sea? Or you wouldn’t see it, only feel it, through the swing and judder of steel. You joined the Navy to see the sea but what you saw were the giddy innards of a ship, and what you smelt wasn’t the salt sea air but the smell of a ship’s queasy stomach, oil and mess-fug and cook’s latest apology and wet duffel and balaclavas and ether and rum and cordite and vomit, as if you were already there, where you might be, any moment, for ever, in the great heaving guts of the oggin.

He leant over me and I knew he was hoping I’d be asleep but my eyes were open and I said, ‘Gramps died, didn’t he?’ Because I knew. His cheek was cold from the wet night air and his hair was damp but his clothes still had the hospital smell, the smell of Gramps. It wasn’t so different from the usual smell, the smell on his skin of other people’s dead skin, and you’d think if it was his daily business and had been Gramps’s too that it would be a way of making it not matter so much when it was Gramps.

He said, ‘Yes, Gramps died.’ I knew he’d wanted to save it till morning. I might have pretended, for his sake. Now
he would know he would have to leave me alone soon to face the whole of the night, in this strange room, with the rain at the window, with the knowledge that Gramps had died. But I wanted him to know I could do it, I could take it. Like when he told me what he did. He put people in boxes, because people died. But this wasn’t people, it was Gramps.