Last Orders (15 page)

I thought, That aint my dad, that aint my dad, laughing.

I said, ‘He doesn’t look like a soldier.’ She said, ‘That’s why I like the picture.’ She didn’t explain.

She said it was in the desert, they were in the desert, like Uncle Lenny was too. It was before I was born.

The bananas in the fruit bowl came from Uncle Lenny’s.

You had to be grown-up to be a soldier, that’s what they said. It was like all the other things you had to be grownup for, like you had to be grown-up before you could die. Which was a lie. The two things went together because in order to die you had to be brave, and soldiers were brave.

But I know now you don’t have to be brave to be a soldier and you don’t have to be a soldier to be brave.

‘Amy, can I have that photo? Just for a bit.’

‘Course you can, Vince. You can keep it.’

The sun’s in his face and he’s staring at you, grinning, still alive, like he knows you don’t know who he really is. He’s staring at you out of that brass frame like he knows
he’s in another world, peeping out at your one. He’s wearing shorts and his shirt’s untucked and unbuttoned and there’s a tin helmet, tilted, on his head but it looks like it’s something he’s wearing for fun, and there’s sand all around. He doesn’t look like a soldier, he doesn’t even look grown up. He looks like a kid on a beach.

And if Amy was here I reckon she’d keep us all in check, she wouldn’t have no misbehaving, we’d all have to clean up our acts. Which wouldn’t be no bad thing. I can’t see it passing off smooth. Four geezers and a box.

They’re coming back now from behind the tower, not talking, like they’ve spoken and now they’re thinking. Big Boy and little Raysy, like Jack and Lucky. Half shut your eyes, and you can see the one pair in the other. Maybe it’s the attraction of opposites. It always seemed to me that when you saw Jack and Ray together, Ray was like this little midget Jack’d pulled out from under his coat, this little mascot. Meet my friend Lucky.

But you have to watch Raysy. Just when you think he aint got no advantage he pops up and surprises you, he pops out and does something canny. It’s like he hides behind being small.

Vic’s still looking at his lists. How much time do we give him? I bet Jack never guessed that to get to Margate he’d have to call in on the Royal Navy. You could say Vic’s got a nerve, dragging us up here to look at all these names when it’s Jack’s day, like saying Jack aint special. But I don’t hold it against him, my grouch aint with Vic. It’s a question of duty.

The sun comes out again and the obelisk casts a long, thin shadow across the lawn towards the curved wall, as if we’re standing on a sun-dial. At the right time of the year, when the sun’s low, the shadow must shift slowly, every day, over first one row of names then another.

We’re moving off now, heading for the blue gates. Lenny’s still loitering by them, like he was the one who let us in and he’s waiting to lock up. Give him a quid for his trouble. Vic’s finished, he’s put his cap back on, but it’s as though Vince has given an order anyway: time’s up, back on the coach. We pass through the gates, not in a bunch, talking, but one by one, silent. It’s like we’ve come out from seeing a show and none of us has got a neat comment worked out ready. Vincey’s first, I’m last.

We walk back across the open hilltop. The sun and the view and the breeze are in our faces. There’s no one else around and all you can hear is our feet scuffling and Lenny wheezing. Where the path starts to slope down towards the trees Vince suddenly comes to a halt and we all shuffle up behind him, like he’s held up a hand. Our faces are all bright in the sunshine. He steps off the path on to the grass. He says, ‘I’ll catch you up, you all go on. I’ll catch you up down there.’

We don’t have to do as he says, we don’t have to take orders, but it’s true he won’t have a job catching us. Judging by coming up. So we carry on, slowly, single file, gaps between us, me last looking over my shoulder at Vincey. He walks off across the grass, he don’t seem to mind about
his smart suit and shoes, and I see him stop on the edge of the hill and look at the view like Vic looking at the names.

I dawdle a bit behind the others. Maybe he wants me to do just that. Maybe he’s giving me a second chance. But he just stands there, with the bag by his side, staring, like one of them stone sailors.

The sun goes in again behind the edge of a cloud but only for a moment. I look at the view too, I don’t want to lose it either, but I turn and walk on down, following the others, so the trees come up and the view slips away. It’s shivery among the trees.

We get back to the car but we can’t get in because Vince has got the key, so we hang around in the car park, not talking, giving each other quick glances. Lenny looks at his watch. Vic’s looking like it’s all his fault, but you can’t blame him, once he’d decided. It would’ve been a sort of affront to say, Not if it’s going to mean trouble, not if it’s up a hill, let’s skip it.

And it’s not him who’s holding us up now.

We wait about a minute. Then we see him coming down the path, carrying the bag. It seems he’s as keen as we are now to be pressing on, because he’s walking fast, slipping now and then on the mud. His face is all fixed and distant as he comes towards us, like he wishes we weren’t around.

I’d say he’s done some blubbing too. We all need our moment.

He puts the bag with the box inside it gently on the bonnet, then he unlocks the car and moves round to stow his coat. We take off our own coats but none of us gets in, as if we’ve got to wait to be told. He shuts the boot then comes back round to the driver’s door, twisting out of his
jacket. He opens the rear door and slips his jacket, folding it, back on to the rear seat.

‘Right,’ he says, impatient, ‘who’s going where?’

Vic says, ‘I’ll go in the back,’ quick as a flash. Lenny and me look at each other.

‘So who’s going in front?’

It’s like he’s Daddy and we’re kids, and Daddy’s getting in a temper.

Lenny looks at Vince.

‘Okay Ray,’ Vince says, ‘in the front.’

It’s not where I want to be, not now, but I get in and the big seat swallows me up.

Lenny gets in the back beside Vic.

Vince pauses for a moment by the driver’s door, smoothing his hair, straightening his tie, scraping mud from his shoes with a stick he’s picked up, then he takes the bag from the bonnet. I think he’s going to say, ‘So who wants—?’ but he passes the bag straight to me. It’s like he’s passing it to me just so I can mind it for him, close and handy, it goes with being in the front. But I don’t know how to take it, I don’t know how to take charge of it.

‘ ’Ere Raysy, cop hold.’

He starts the engine, grabbing his shades from the dash, and moves off so quick the wheels slip and growl. He swings back through Chatham like everything’s in his way. When you’ve been thinking of the dead you notice how the living hurry. We drive out and join up with the M2, Junction 3, Dover 48, then he really puts his foot down. He’s driving like he’s making up for lost time, like he’s late for an appointment. But there aint no deadline. His neck’s gone all tight and rigid. I look across the dash and see the needle flick past ninety-five. In a big plush car you don’t notice the
speed. Junction 4, Junction 5. So much for driving as fits the occasion. We’re all sitting there like we ought to say something but we daren’t open our mouths and I can feel Vic feeling that it’s all his fault, but you shouldn’t blame Vic.

But Jack’s not special, he’s not special at all. I’d just like to say that, please. I’d just like to point that out, as a professional and a friend. He’s just one of the many now. In life there are differences, you make distinctions, it’s the back seat for me from now on. But the dead are the dead, I’ve watched them, they’re equal. Either you think of them all or you forget them. It doesn’t do in remembering one not to remember the others. Dempsey, Richards. And it doesn’t do when you remember the others not to spare a thought for the ones you never knew. It’s what makes all men equal for ever and always. There’s only one sea.

He slows down suddenly, moving across to the inside lane, and we all breathe easier. He takes the slip road for the exit coming up, not saying a word. Junction 6, Ashford, Faversham. He takes the Ashford road, like he knows exactly what he’s doing, though it aint the way to Margate, and after a mile or so he turns off that too. We’re all looking at him, not speaking. He says, ‘Detour,’ eyes on the road, not budging his head, ‘detour.’

The road gets narrower and twistier, trees arching across, hedges, fields. I suppose you could say we’re in the country now, we’re a long way from Bermondsey. The trees are all flecked with green. The sky’s blue and grey and white, the sun coming in bursts. He takes another turn, and another, like there’s a map in his head. We go along a ridge with a view off to our right, a big, wide view, wherever there’s a gap in the hedge. It’s as though he’s got keen on views. Then the road climbs a bit, still on the ridge, and near the top of the climb he slows, looking this way and that, and pulls over where there’s a wide bit of verge and a gate in the hedge. There’s just a bare track leading off and down across a field, two chalky ruts, and there’s one of those green signs sticking up and pointing by the gate: ‘Public Footpath’.

He turns off the engine. We can hear sheep bleating in the distance. He looks at me and says, ‘Raysy,’ holding out his hand, palm up, fingers twitching, and I know he means the bag, the box, he means Jack. He says it in a way you don’t argue with or ask why, so I hand it over. He takes the box out of the bag and tosses the bag back into my lap,
Rochester Food Fayre.
Then he flips open the box and pulls out the jar and chucks the box back into my lap too. His face is set hard. He opens his door and gets out, holding the jar tight against his chest.

He doesn’t reach over for his jacket or go round to the boot for his coat. He slams the door and walks over to the gate. The breeze whips his tie over his shoulder and balloons out his shirt. The gate’s metal and clanky. He fiddles with a bolt, pushing up on one of the crossbars, then opens the gate just enough for him to slip through. There’s a rusty streak on the sleeve of his white shirt. He looks out across the field, then he swings shut the gate, which clangs and judders behind him, and sets off along the track.

Lenny says, ‘Jesus, what now?’

Vic don’t say a thing, like it’s all down to him, it’s him who’s given Vince the idea in the first place. Find yourself a hill.

I say, ‘Search me.’

It’s Lenny who gets out first, then me, then Vic. The breeze hits us sharpish. It’s muddy underfoot. We ought to get our coats from the boot but Lenny’s already moved to the gate, struggling with the bolt, like he’s twigged quicker than us what’s going on.

‘Toe-rag,’ he says, ‘toe-rag. He aint got no prior claim.’

Vince is walking across the field to where it starts to slope steeply, his red tie flicking like a tongue over his shoulder. It’s not so much a field as an open hillside. We can see the full sweep of the view, like we’re standing on the rim of a big, crooked bowl. Down in the valley it’s all green and brown and patchy, woods marked off with neat edges and corners, hedges like stitching. There’s a splodge of red brick in the middle with a spire sticking up. It looks like England, that’s what it looks like.

The field slopes up to the left, to a crest, where there’s a clump of trees and, peeping up from the other side, a tar-brown stump of a building, a windmill, with its sails missing. In front of us the field slopes down gently, maybe for eighty yards, then drops away. There must be a whole chunk of the view you can’t see till you get to the brow.

Near the gate the grass is trodden bare and sprinkled with sheep shit. There’s a water trough tucked in by the hedge, galvanized metal. We can hear sheep and smell sheep and we can see them, off to the left, dotted across the slope. They’re all staring at Vince as he walks across the field, except for the little ’uns, the lambs. They seem keener on running this way and that or tucking in under their mothers. Now and then one of them starts jumping about like it’s stepped on something electric.

Lenny wrestles with the bolt.

‘He aint got no special rights,’ he says, ‘he aint kin.’ He frees the bolt. ‘Never was, was he?’

He pushes open the gate and before Vic and me have slipped through behind him he darts off along the track after Vince. It’s like the climb up to that memorial has got him in shape, it was just a warm-up.

Vince is getting near the brow, he hasn’t looked back once. One elbow’s stuck out where he’s holding the jar and his shirt’s billowing and flapping. If it wasn’t that everything seems to have gone crazy, you’d say he looked a complete berk, out there in the middle of a field, holding a plastic pot, with his white shirt and his flash tie and a flock of sheep baa-ing at him.

Lenny’s moving so fast me and Vic are struggling to keep up with him. He’s about twenty yards away from Vince when Vince stops on the brow and stands there, steady, pausing but like he’s already made up his mind about something.
For a moment he looks like a man perched on the edge of a cliff but as we get closer, we can see the hillside dipping sharply away and we can see the hidden part of the valley below: a wood, a road, a farmhouse. Orchards, oasthouses.

Then we see Vince start to unscrew the cap from the jar.

Lenny says ‘Toe-rag,’ as if he’d known in advance what Vince was going to do.

The cap looks hard to shift, like the lid on a new jar of jam. We’re just a few yards from Vince now and he can see us coming at him. It’s like he’s prepared for that, like he even wants us as witnesses. But he aint prepared for what Lenny does next.

Lenny snatches at his arm, the arm that’s working on the cap, and Vince pulls away and lifts the jar up high so Lenny can’t reach it. The cap’s still on but it looks like it’s hanging on loose, just by the thread. Vince dodges to one side but Lenny goes at him again. This time he grabs him by the tie and with his other hand takes hold of his shirt front. I see a wodge of Vince’s stomach and a button flying. Then Vince goes down, sudden, caught off balance, arm held up high. He tries to hang on to the jar but as he tumbles, it pops out of his grasp and Vince and me watch it falling. We watch it falling keener than we watch Vince falling because when it hits the ground one of two things could happen, or both. The loose cap could fly off and what’s inside spill out, or the jar could bounce bad and start rolling all the way down the steep slope of the hill.