Last Orders (25 page)

I think I was ready to ditch you then, I think I came as near as I ever did to chucking you.

I said to Jack, We’re going to Margate for the weekend. No, don’t ask, all fixed. Just get your old man to give you the time off. Say it’s your honeymoon. Steamer from Tower Bridge. Wanting him to say, to show, that if he didn’t want her, then he’d better still want me, he’d better. Wanting me to say or show that it was all right if he didn’t want her, so long as he still wanted me. You won’t ever have to know, June, what hard-nosed little tricksies we can be.

I bought a new summer frock. Undies, shoes, stockings, swimsuit, the lot. Uncle Bert went and hocked his grandfather clock.

And the sun came out, like it was on our side, and the waves sparkled and I wore my new frock, etcetera. Except the mother inside you sneaks up on you when you least want it. You won’t ever have to know that either. Even when you’re only eighteen and you’re at the seaside, ice-cream and Punch and Judy, in a new swimsuit, and men are eyeing you. Yes they were, left, right and centre. I must’ve looked like I was anyone’s.

I thought, Well you had your chance, well I gave you your chance.

The Pier, the Jetty, the Sands. Dreamland.

I thought the war might change things, put everything in its place. So you think you’ve got troubles. Bombs whistling down on Bermondsey, whole streets going. I thought, He might be killed. Or I might. Or you might. A stray bomb on a home for the hopeless, no one need grieve, a mercy really. What hard-nosed. But what the war did was to push things further the way they’d gone. It was me and you together, no one else near and dear, and it was Jack far away being a soldier, not being killed, being one of the lads again.
With Ray Johnson. So when Vince Pritchett, but forget the Pritchett, dropped into my lap, into our lap, I ought to have known it wouldn’t help a bit, it wouldn’t win him back. You can’t make a real thing out of pretending hard. You can lead a horse. That Amy Dodds’ a kind soul, taking in that Pritchett kid, what with her own little problem. Ah, but that’s the reason, aint it, don’t you see?

From then on it was me and you, and him and Vince. Meaning him and Vince against each other, him and Vince at daggers drawn, cleavers drawn. But it keeps men together, it keeps them occupied, fighting.

Yes it was here, Vince, here. This was where. Here, in the garden of.

And what
you’ll
never know is that it was even truer than you once believed, before you learnt better. All done with hops, all done on the hop. Because it was in a hop-bin. A twenty-bushel hessian hop-bin, slung between its trestles. All-round privacy, could’ve been made for the purpose. Like two rabbits in a sack.

And what you’ll never know either is that three nights later up on that hill, near that old windmill, which had its sails then, he looked at me, firm and steady, straight and steady, and said, ‘You’re beautiful, d’you know that? You’re beautiful.’ It’s not what you expect from a butcher’s boy. It turns you over to hear a man say that, fills you up. To be alive, to have lived to hear a man say that, any man, and to know, by his smile, that he means it.

Like you never did, June, or could or ever will.

The things that do and don’t get told. The tallyman would come with his sticks and his notcher, to count your bushels, to take a look at your bushels. With his stony face that said, I’m the tallyman and don’t think you can get round me. Your stick better tally, your notch better marry,
serious business, tallying. ‘Now then. Mitchell, Amy …’ Never smiling. So maybe I imagined it, but maybe he would’ve smiled, just a hint, just a glint, if he’d known, that it was in that very bin.

Just as well, I thought, I was still in my uniform. All the nice girls. Only a month or so from demob. Four-year stripe now as well.

But she said, ‘So what do you do then, Vic, when you’re not mucking about in boats?’

I thought, Well, here it comes, it had to come, and I know just what follows. First she’ll look at my hands, just a dart of a look like she thinks I won’t notice, but I will. Then she won’t look at me at all but she’ll start taking a keen interest in the features of this thrown-together dance hall, except she won’t be looking at them either so much as doing some quick rethinking in her head. Then when I ask her about the next time, she’ll come up with all the usual excuses.

And she was the best of the bunch so far, Pam Summerfield, the best of a not-so-long and not very long-lived list, best as a straight eyeful but more than that. A bounce, a balance, a nerve. Like she wasn’t going to miss out on any fun going, she wasn’t going to not take her chances then regret it later, but there was something there that was for the long course too, that wasn’t born yesterday either.

And she was kitted out as good as you could expect for Gosport, Christmas 1945. Pink and black number, like she meant serious business.

The band was playing
Chattanooga Choo Choo.

I said, ‘Ships, not boats.’ But I thought, You’ve got to be straight with this one, and I’m not going to come the old
son-of-the-sea, and she was going to have to ask sooner or later, and maybe her asking now was a sign.

So I said, ‘I’m in the undertaking trade. Family business.’

She looked at me. She didn’t look even for one moment at my hands. She looked at me and said, ‘Well I never, Vic, well I’d never have guessed. Well at least you won’t be out of a job, will you?’ Then she looked down then up again quickly as if she wasn’t going to change her course, and there was a smile just in one corner of her mouth. ‘So you’ll be used to handling bodies then.’

He says, ‘Wanna do a deal with the yard?’

Springing it on me quick and sudden, looking at me with that cocksure, you-aint-going-to-refuse-me look, like he can see me thinking, He must be joking, since what’s he got to do a deal with? But he’s not joking, he’s serious, and he knows I’m going to come round, just wait and see, to whatever it is he’s fishing for.

I say, ‘What deal? We already got a deal.’

He says, ‘We aint got a deal, we got an arrangement.’

I say, ‘A pretty good arrangement I’d say, from where I’m looking. So what’s the problem?’ Thinking as how he’s got two cars in there now that he’s stripping down to fancy up. There’s a Rover as well as an Alvis, not to mention recent use of the camper. Recent use. Like the place has become his home.

He says, ‘A very good arrangement, for which I aint ungrateful. But that was like your kindness. Your kindness to an ex-soldier-boy who wanted to mess around with motors, who wanted to keep his hand in as a mechanic. I can’t expect that to go on indef, can I? I can’t expect to rely on your kindness.’

He picks up his pack of ciggies and shakes a couple up out of the foil, all neat and practised, and offers me one and lights it. He says, ‘I aint ungrateful, Uncle Ray.’

Uncle Ray.

And I think, I wonder if he knows how I got it all wrong, read the picture all wrong. How I thought he could do with a bit of taking under my wing, seeing as how Jack once took
me under his. Seeing as how I might not be here otherwise, twenty-five years on, having a beer and a smoke with Vincey in the Coach, I might be lying under a cross in Libya. Least I could do was return the favour, give the lad a help-out on his return to Civvy Street, and take him off Jack’s hands. Except Jack didn’t see it that way, I should’ve known. He hadn’t given up, even after five years of having to. Dodds and Son.

My foot in it, my big little foot.

And things had shifted now anyway, they’d shifted into a whole new picture, what with that girl sleeping under Jack and Amy’s roof, at least part of the time, what with all the comings and goings, what with it seeming suddenly like everyone was looking for a new place to pitch their tent. What with them afternoons at Epsom.

I hear that you and Auntie Carol. I’m sorry to hear that, Raysy.

And maybe I’d never’ve let Vincey use the yard, maybe I’d never’ve picked him a horse to buy his first used car with, Shady Lady, Sandown, six to one, if Amy hadn’t said, ‘Vincey’s coming home, he’ll be home in a month or two. I think we better stop this.’

He says, ‘Besides,’ and he pauses to light his own ciggy and to blow out a big cloud of smoke, he looks at the smoke like he’s looking at his life. His knuckles are all cracked and blackened. ‘Besides, now I’m going into business, I’ll need premises, I’ll need to do it all proper. If you’re going to have a business you got to have premises, aint you?’

I say, ‘You’re going into
what
?’

He says, ‘You heard, Raysy.’ Raysy. Getting cockier, lifting his beer and taking a swallow. ‘It’s like I always said all along, I aint just doing it for fun, except maybe you thought I wasn’t serious. But I want to do it proper, see, I want to
do it right. Otherwise you could always say, “You know that arrangement we’ve got, Vincey? Well, I don’t want to keep it going any more, sorry, I’ve got other ideas for the site.” And that would be that, wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t have no choice.’

I say, ‘But I haven’t got other ideas for the site.’

He says, ‘Well maybe you should have, Raysy. It’s good commercial space, aint it?’

I look at him. I say, ‘It’s not a site, it’s a scrapyard. It’s still got Dixon written on the gate.’

He says, ‘Exactly. And Charlie Dixon popped off over a year ago, didn’t he? Since when you aint been collecting rent or nothing. You just been being a bleeding office-boy. And chasing horses.’

I say, ‘That’s my look-out.’

I look at him. He blows out another swirl of smoke.

I say, ‘So what are you suggesting? You pay me rent? What with?’

He shakes his head. ‘I’m talking ownership, I’m talking buying.’

I look at him. There’s something in his face that stops you laughing.

I say, ‘Same question, twice over. What with?’

He says, ‘I’m asking you to make an investment, Raysy. In Dodds Motors. A non-cash investment, you don’t have to fork out a penny. An investment of time. There aint no Dodds Motors now, course there aint, but there will be in five years, I’m telling you. You sell me the yard as premises but you loan me out the asking for five years. Come five years, I pay you your price plus a percentage. If I can’t stump up – but I will – the yard’s yours again. Plain and simple, can’t lose. Soon as I’ve got another car on the go
and I’ve got the margin, I’ll give you a deposit. You’d get to keep that an’ all.’

Maybe he can see me thinking that I ought to laugh but I can’t. I say, trying to look like I know when my leg’s being pulled, ‘Why should I take on a cock-eyed offer like that? Why shouldn’t I just put it up for the highest bidder?’

He takes a swig of beer, squeezing his lips on it slowly. ‘Seems to me you aint been rushing to do that this last year or so. Seems to me that you aint minded me parking my motors in your yard anyway, for free. That’s where your kindness comes in, and my being grateful. That’s where I’d reckon on us having a special understanding.’

I look at him. I think, He bounced right out the way of a V-bomb.

He says, ‘I aint forcing, I’m only asking. If I’ve put other ideas into your head then that’s my problem. It’s a gamble, course. But you’d understand that, wouldn’t you, Uncle Ray? With me it’s motors, with you it’s horses.’

But he looks at me like it’s a certainty, a racing certainty. The glint in his eye sharpens. And that’s when I think that he
knows.
I don’t know how, but he knows. By scent, by doing the same. Sleeping in that camper. And not just sleeping.

Chasing horses.

That’s why he thinks I can’t refuse him.

He says, ‘Nother one?’ holding out his hand, all smiles, to grab my glass, but I shake my head, like I don’t want to interrupt a different sort of flow. All flowing his way.

I say, ‘What about the price?’ like I’m not interested, I’m just raising an objection, testing him. Thinking, he won’t have a straight answer to that, because he knows anyway he aint got a hope.

But he says, quick as a shot, his hand still hovering by
my glass, ‘Two grand. Plus twenty per cent over the five years. Twenty per cent. Call it five grand to come – after I’ve put down a deposit.’

Like he’s done his sums.

He blows out another cloud of smoke then he stubs out his snout, taking his eyes off me, looking at the ashtray, while I look at the smoke now, floating up and disappearing, because I know and he must know, without any asking around, that that’s still a cheap price, even in 1968, even for a disused junkyard round the back of Spa Road. And if I’d’ve known what would happen in five years’ time, if I’d’ve known what those years would do, but Vincey had his finger on that pulse too, I’d’ve said, Forget it, Vincey, just forget it. I aint selling. Have it for nothing, meantime.

Value for money.

He says, looking up, ‘I’m only offering, I aint insisting. I’m only putting it to you. You sure you won’t have that other one?’

I say, ‘Yes.’ Then I say, ‘Yes, I’ll have another one,’ in case he gets me wrong.

He says, ‘Think about it. You could be in there at the beginning of Dodds Motors. Founding father. Bernie! You here?’

I think, Maybe he doesn’t know, but I won’t ever know that he doesn’t know.

Then Bernie comes out of hiding and pours us two more pints and Vince pays for them and I say, before I take a sip, ‘There’s just one thing in all this, Vincey.’ Realizing as I say it that it’s taking me down the path he wants me to go.

He says, ‘What’s that?’

I say, ‘It’s called a butcher’s shop.’ Realizing it’s like I’ve committed myself. ‘It’s called Dodds and Son.’

He stops his beer half-way to his mouth, looking all hurt
and taken-aback, like it seems I didn’t understand him and he had reason to suppose I did. He says, ‘Do me a favour, give me a break. I thought you was on my side.’ Giving me the little-lost-orphan look.

Then he smiles quickly and lifts his glass. ‘Cheers.’ So I lift my glass and drink. He says, ‘Just think about it.’ Then I drink some more, not saying nothing, then I say, ‘I’d want to keep the camper there. I’d still need my own space for the camper.’ He looks at me and says, ‘Course you can. No charge. I’d even give it a regular once-over for you. And if you ever wanted to trade it in, I’d see you got a good deal.’ He holds his glass to his lips and it’s almost as though I see him wink.