Last Orders (19 page)

Well, I should’ve known better than to pick a fight I hadn’t got a hope of winning. But that’s one thing I aint ever known, better. They say it was the boxing bashed out my brains all them years back, but if you ask me there never was much brains there in the first place. I should’ve known better when I came out the Army than to get back into the fight game. You’d think that five years of shooting and being shot at and picking up the pieces of your dead mates would teach you a better way to make a living than trying to knock another man off his feet, but it was that or pushing a fruit-and-veg cart and that aint got no glory to it, nor quick readies neither.

I reckon I showed that pillock a thing or two, all the same. My chest feels like a bag of nails.

It’s the way you’re made. It’s hard fighting against your own nature when it’s in your nature to fight. We aint here to do the honours and pay respects to Jack because he worked so hard on his own nature he turned into something else. We’re here because he was Jack.

It’s like when I got back from fighting for my country and there were more bomb-holes in Bermondsey than there was at Benghazi and they couldn’t find nothing better for us than a pre-fab and a ration book, I’d say to Joan, It’s better I get up there in that ring and knock some feller who’s chosen to do the same smack against the canvas, than I let fly at all and sundry. That’s for nothing, mush, now start something. I said it’s the world that makes you want to kick and punch. And she said, ‘Hooey. There’s another
way of going about things. You can hold your head up and put your mind to it and make the best of what’s available, like most people.’ She’s that kind of woman. I said, ‘Not on hand-outs and half a crown a day, you can’t.’ I said, ‘Suppose I won the Worthington Tournament, that’s fifty smackers. I’ll put my mind to that.’ I said, ‘You used to like it when I won a bout, girl.’ And she said, ‘You’re seven years older and you’re going to lose.’

And I suppose it wasn’t till Sally came along that I stopped proper, that I hung up my gloves and my hopes and started putting a button on my loose lip an’ all. So you could say it wasn’t Lenny Tate getting a hold on his own nature, it was someone else coming along and doing the trick for him, same stuff, same flesh, but different. Little Sally Tate.

It made me see too, when I got to know him and heard the story – and I never would’ve done if it wasn’t for Sally and Vince taking a shine to each other in the playground – how hard it was for Jack, not having a little helper, only having June. How it was a darn sight harder for Amy. And how you couldn’t blame Vince for being the mixed-up tyke he was. So I suppose you couldn’t blame me neither for being a soft-brained berk and wanting Sally to be part of their family too.

And I think I could’ve forgiven Vincey in the end, if it wasn’t for Sally hitching up with Tommy Tyson, and Tommy going along to Vincey’s with a good-as-new BMW, only one previous owner, which he knew Vincey could see was stolen but he reckoned Vincey’d play along, being an old pal, so to speak, of Sally’s. But Vincey don’t take the car off him and what’s more he puts the word out, and Tommy, what with his previous record and other offences taken into, does a spell inside, first of several. And I say to Vincey, ‘You
prick. You didn’t have to take the car but you didn’t have to finger Tommy. Tommy might be right where he belongs now, but you might have thought of Sally.’

He said he was doing his duty, wasn’t he? His duty as a citizen. And I was the one who should’ve thought of Sally, seeing as it was looking like I’d disowned her.

He says, ‘A hot car’s a hot car. Two wrongs don’t make a right.’

I might have forgiven Vincey. Sally might have forgiven me. I might never have gone spoiling for another fight again.

I reckon I showed that toe-rag, all the same, I did.

Gunner Tate. That’s what they called me, because of having been in the artillery and because of the temper I used to have on me. It sounded good, like my fists were my guns. And in the semi-final of the Worthington they put me up against this scraggy kid who aint even had his call-up yet, same age as I was when I started fighting before the war. I said, ‘No contest, no contest. What’s the half-pint got that I aint got double?’ And Dougie says, tying my gloves, Control on himself, and a big right.’ I was thinking of the final before I even stepped in the ring for the semi. I thought, That’s twenty quid for certain, that’ll keep Joan quiet, and if it’s me and Dan Ferguson in the big one, then it aint impossible. The bell went and I came out quick and eager and I thought, This one’s going to be a cinch, two rounds, if that. Gunner Tate. Later on it became just a name that stuck: Gunner Tate, middleweight. Always pissed, always late. I came forward and he hung back, skipping round me, and I thought, You aint been nowhere, sunshine, and you aint going nowhere. You aint dragged five-fives through Libya, Sicily, all over sunnygunny Italy. You don’t deserve nothing but I do. A man’s got to grab a bit of glitter,
a bit of pride, before he clocks off at the end of his stint. It aint worth nothing if you go down in the record books as having done distinguished service in the cause of fruit and veg. I came forward again for the quick kill and I saw his face, cool and sharp and steady as a machine. I thought, Six years between us, sonny boy, that cuts both ways. Then I saw his glove where his face had been. And then I didn’t see nothing, nothing at all. Or rather I did. Because you know what they say about seeing stars. Well I saw ’em.

We troop back across the field, not saying nothing. You can hear Lenny and Vincey breathing like a little duet. Vince is carrying the jar. He’s holding it extra tight and careful. It’s like the reason we’re out here in this field is because the jar’s gone and made a bolt for it and we’ve had to run after it and catch it. It’s all the jar’s fault. Except we know it aint, it’s the other way round. It’s all our fault. Fighting over a man’s ashes. And the jar’s sitting there in Vince’s hands like it’s shaking its head at us all, like Jack’s inside there peeping out and sighing over us, with a bit of him left behind in the field for the sheep to trample on. He didn’t expect this, he didn’t expect this at all.

The wind’s whipping up on our backs and as we reach the gate the shower hits us good and proper. We just get back inside the car in time to avoid a soaking. We get in the same seats as before. Vincey hands me the jar, wincing as he moves in behind the wheel, and then he looks around for something to wipe away the stains on his sleeve and trousers but he can’t find nothing and he gives up and we all sit there for a moment, the engine not switched on and the rain beating against the windows like we might as well be in a boat. I look at Vincey’s face and it looks far away and I can hear Lenny wheezing in the back seat. It’s as though it’s not a car, it’s an ambulance. Meat wagon after all. It’s as though we’re all wondering whether we should press on with this exercise or quit now on the grounds of not being up to it. Two detours, one fight, a piss-up and a near-wetting.

Then Vincey sort of snaps to, and switches on the ignition and the wipers. We can see the rain sloshing down on the narrow road and the sky all grey and heavy, but up on the crest of the hill, by the disused windmill, there’s a faint gleam on one side of the clump of trees, as though the clouds are going to pass over before long.

Vincey says, ‘Right. We want the Canterbury road. Look out for signs to Canterbury. A28 and Canterbury.’ He starts the engine.

Lenny says, ‘Canterbury?’ He stops wheezing. ‘We might as well call in there an’ all. We might as well pop into the bleeding cathedral.’

He says it like he’s joking, but Vince sits there for a bit staring at the rain on the windscreen, not making the car move. He says, ‘If you say so, Lenny,’ all fierce. ‘If you say so. Why shouldn’t we take him round Canterbury Cathedral?’

I can feel Vic and Lenny looking at each other in the back seat.

Another fool’s errand, another detour. Lenny’s turn.

Vince puts the car in drive and we move off. He doesn’t speak but I can tell from his face he’s serious, he means it, he might even be wishing he’d had the idea himself.

It’s even better than a royal blue Merc.

Vic don’t say nothing, like he’s already paid his forfeit.

So it’s me who says, but like it’s Vic who’s speaking, while I hang on to the wet jar, ‘Good idea, Lenny. Good gesture. He’d be honoured.’

He looks at me straight and steady, so straight and steady that my own face must be all a-quiver in comparison. I think, You have to sit straight and still for your final portrait, no shifting, no pretending, no ducking out. Then he says, like he can see what’s in my head, like he sees the question I want to ask, ‘People panic, Raysy. You don’t ever want to panic.’

It’s like what they said in the war. Number one rule for soldiers: Don’t panic. Though I never understood how you could lay that down as a command, you can’t command a man not to believe that fire’ll burn him. Except Jack used to put it into working practice. Like when we ran into that trouble outside Sollum and that lieutenant, Crawford, is lying there suddenly like a bloody rag, with his next-in-line yelling, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’ and Jack says, ‘What you have to do, sir, is assume command. If you don’t, I will’ And I’m thinking, I’m bleeding glad I don’t have to assume command, I’ll settle for being commanded.

I suppose that’s what he’s doing now, assuming command, taking charge of himself.

I say, ‘It’s a tough one, Jack, it’s a tough one.’ Like I’m not talking about the thing it is, like it’s just an extra tricky test you come out of afterwards.

He says, ‘It’ll be tougher for Amy.’ Looking at me straight and steady. ‘If you ever get the choice, Raysy, if you ever get the option, you go first. It’s carrying on that’s hard. Ending aint nothing.’

I say, ‘Well, it aint an option I’ve got, is it? I mean, if anyone has. Seeing as there’s just me.’

He looks at me. ‘You never know. Still I reckon I’m lucky, being the first.’

‘No, I’m Lucky.’

He doesn’t smile, it’s not like the old joke. I’m not lucky, you’re Lucky. He looks at me. His eyes are like they don’t miss nothing, his face is like you can’t not look at it. I think, I’ve seen him most of my life, but now I’m seeing
him.
I’m not seeing Jack Dodds, quality butcher, Smithfield and Bermondsey, or Jack Dodds care of the Coach and Horses. I’m not even seeing Big Jack, Desert Rat, Private Jack of the Cairo Camel Corps. I’m seeing the man himself, his own man, private Jack, who’s assumed command.

He says, ‘It’ll be harder for Amy. She’ll need looking after.’

I say, ‘She’ll be here any minute. With Vincey.’

‘I aint got much for her to be getting on with.’

I look at what he has got. A bed, a bedside cabinet. I reckon he hasn’t got much more now than June’s had all her life.

I say, ‘If there’s anything I can do, Jack.’

His hand’s lying spare, empty, on the blanket and I see the fingers curl just a bit. Then his eyes close. The lids just roll down of their own accord like a shutter, like the eyes on that doll I bought Sue years ago one Christmas. Just for a moment it’s like— Don’t panic, don’t panic. But his chest heaves. The swelling round his operation scar dips and rises.

I look at his face, at his hand lying on the blanket. I think, Everyone has their own space and no one else can step in it, then one day it’s unoccupied. It’s a question of territory.

He opens his eyes. It’s as if he’s been tricking me and he’s
been watching all along, through the slits, to see if I’m a different person when I think I’m not being looked at. But the lids open slowly. You see the whites before you see the whole eye.

He says, ‘Still here, Lucky? Yes, there is something you can do for me. How lucky do you feel?’

He’s still lying there, with the mask over his face and the extra tubes, in the little unit where they put them after they wheel them out, the High Dependency Unit, and he don’t know nothing yet because he aint woken up proper, he don’t know sweet nothing. He don’t know he’s inoperable. And that geezer Strickland tells me it only took ten minutes, a quick opening up and sewing back together again, and he uses some word for it, a long fancy word, like something-sodomy. It’s like he’s pleased with what a quick piece of work it was. He don’t spell it out for me plain and simple, he leaves me to work it out. Like it wasn’t the two-hour job he said it could be if there was anything they could do. Inoperable, that’s the word he uses, inoperable.

And I look across the corridor through the glass partition, where Jack’s lying, number one on the right, and I think, He’s inoperable, he can’t be operated. He’s still there but he’s stopped running, he’s pulled up at the side of the road. But that’s how everything feels suddenly. Like we’re all in some place where things have come to a standstill, and the rest of the world is whizzing on past, like traffic on a motorway.

He says, ‘Is Mrs Dodds here?’ And I say, ‘Yes, she’s gone back to get a cup of tea. She’s with my wife.’ Then he looks quick at his watch and he says, ‘If you could fetch her, I could speak to her now, while I’m here. We could find somewhere private. Maybe the sister’s office.’ And I’m thinking, You turd. Because he aint thinking of the effect on me, or maybe he’s thinking it aint important to me, I don’t
count, I’ll just do as his messenger-boy, and I want to hit him, I want to smash his poxy four-eyed face. But I say, ‘I’ll go and get her.’ He’s already turning, as I say it, to a pile of notes some little junior doc’s shoved under his nose. He says, ‘I’ll be here.’ He prods his glasses with his finger and gives me a tight little half-measure of a smile.

So I go and find Amy and Mandy. But it’s like I aint going nowhere, it’s the corridors and swing-doors that move past me, like one of those old machines in arcades, with a steering-wheel and a picture of a road spinning round, so you got the feeling you were travelling though you weren’t.

They’re sitting there with their cups of tea, and they don’t know nothing yet, only that Jack’s alive, he aint sparked out on the table, possibility number three. But I can tell that she knows, straight away, just by looking at me, that she can see in my face what I don’t even need to tell her. I say, ‘He aint come round yet. Strickland’s in the ward. He said he’d like to speak to you.’ Then I shake my head just a fraction, like it’s hard to budge it, and she looks at me like she don’t want anyone to say it. As if it’s all her fault and she knows it and she’s sorry, and she don’t see why she has to go before the headmaster and get punished extra for it, when it’s punishment already, just knowing. But maybe the headmaster’s going to give her a second chance. Don’t ever let this happen again. So she gets up, and as she gets up Mandy squeezes her arm. Then Mandy gets up too, giving me a little nod like a question. She looks good, Mandy looks good. And I nod back.