Last Orders (27 page)

So I slipped into the Coach. Quiet for a Friday. Bernie says, in his just-between-you-and-me voice, bringing me my pint, 'What's the news on Jack?' I say, 'I went in last night, I'll go again this evening. It's just a matter of time, Bern.' Looking at Slattery's clock. Quarter past two. And Bernie shakes his head, like what's happening to Jack is something that ought not to be possible, like it's a miracle working the opposite way. I say, 'You having one too, Bern?

Have one on me. Fetch me a sandwich while you're at it. Ham, no mustard.' And up on its shelf, high up at the end of the bar, Bernie's telly's all set up and switched on, the screen angled and the sound pitched just right, so that any Joe sitting at the bar can keep his eye and ear on what's showing, without having to move an inch to order a drink. Racing from Doncaster. Lincoln Handicap meeting.

Bernie brings my sandwich and sees me looking at the screen and says, 'One or two on, I suppose?' And I say, 'No, as a matter of fact, I haven't. It don't seem right somehow, does it? What with.' Bernie nods, approving. 'But there must be one or two you'd fancy, any case?' he says. I say, 'Be telling, wouldn't it?' biting my sandwich. Bernie smiles, like he knew I'd say that. He pours his drink, nodding at the TV. 'And I suppose you'd be there, wouldn't you? If it wasn't for.' And I say, 'Yep.' Like Jack should've thought.

Cheltenham too, Gold Cup, then Doncaster, first of the flat.

He says, 'Cheers, Ray,' lifting his glass. 'Good health all round.' I say, 'Good health.' He says, 'Sound up high enough for you?' I nod and he waddles off, tea-towel over his shoulder, like he does when he knows conversation's not what's required. But he can see me sitting there, eyes glued to the screen, more than you'd think necessary for a man who hasn't got a bet on. He can see me lighting snout after snout and knocking it back, quicker than usual. Steady drinker is Ray, slow and steady. 'Make the next one a short, Bernie. That's a long short.'

'Caning it a bit, aren't we, Raysy?'

But when the three-five comes on I'm not thinking like a punter, a chancer, needing a slug of courage. I'm thinking like a jockey. I'm thinking like I'm the jockey and I don't have no choice. Some feller called Irons, never heard of him, Gary Irons. Heavy name for a jockey. I'm thinking what does a jockey do saddled with a horse called Miracle Worker? And a name like Irons. I'm sitting on a bar-stool in the Coach but I'm being like a jockey, my toes up on the top rung, my knees braced and squeezing, arse wanting to lift. All I need is the whip. I watch him come out of the paddock, deep chest, sheepskin noseband, and head up to the start and I see in the way he rides out the way he'll ride back, I see the way he takes the turf and hits full gallop quickly, long, clean strides, a stayer, a finisher, and I think, It's this horse's day, it's this jockey's day. Any old irons. It's Jack's day. And then it's only seeing what you saw already, seeing what you knew in your head, it's only letting the horse make the race for you. I watch him run like he's never run before and never will again, or not at these odds, hold the midfield, find the gap, move up to make his challenge like he's dispensing with preliminaries, and with four in front and maybe three lengths in it, kick forward and take them all as if there's a spare gear in him and he could do with another furlong to really find his pace.

Sometimes it's just the glory of a horse.

I don't move a muscle when it passes the post. Or when they lead it round to the enclosure and the jockey dismounts and unsaddles and pats its head, and it dips its neck and snorts like it aint done nothing special. I don't move a muscle when they click up the result and the SPs to confirm. Shortened a shade, but I don't need no SPs.

Thirty-three to one.

Bernie says, 'Someone's lucky day.' And I say, 'Yep,' picking up my whisky glass, draining it, looking through the bleary bottom of it. Then I look at my watch and at Slattery's clock and put my empty glass on the bar and dismount my stool. "Well, must be getting along, Bern. See yer.' Bernie says, 'See yer,' taking the glass. It's hard to imagine Bernie not being there, like Slattery's clock, behind the bar.

Then I go out and I think, I should go straight to see him. Twenty minutes if I'm lucky, lucky even with the bus. I should go straight and tell him. But if he's got any sense, he'll know, he'H've tuned in. Lucky came good, he came good.

And there's his thousand pounds, left for safe keeping. He should have that back, I should take him that. And there's the little matter of how to hand over the winnings, on account of it can't be cash, though that's how he'H've pictured it, if he's pictured it, that's how Jack Dodds will have pictured it. Big wad of readies, shopkeeper's preferred. Thirty-four thousand smackers to stash in that bedside cabinet, like he's ringing up the till. Nursey, you'll never guess what I've got.

But it'll have to be a cheque, Jack. I used my own name, for convenience. Shall I make it out to you? Or to Amy?

So I returned to quarters and got out Jack's thousand and counted it, to be sure, though it hadn't been touched. Eight hundred in fifties and two hundred in twenties. Then I phoned that special number again, to make sure about pay-out, sounding pretty cool, I reckon, for a man who'd just won thirty-odd thousand pounds. I thought, The tax is on me, Jack, I'll give you a cheque with three clear noughts. Then I felt like I could hardly stand. I thought, I must've had one too many at the Coach, I shouldn'tVe gone on the scotch. Wasn't no need, was there, if I knew? And I shouldn't go into that place now, the HDU, breathing beer and whisky and wobbly on my pins. Breathing booze over Nurse Kelly.

So I made myself a strong cup of coffee and sat for a bit to steady up. Half an hour won't make no difference, and if he's got any sense— But instead of steadying up, I dropped off, I slipped away, in a twinkling, and next thing I knew the phone was ringing and it was an hour later though I didn't know it, and my coffee was standing where I'd put it, hardly touched and cold, and outside the sky was thick and grey and shaping up for rain. I picked up the phone and I knew the voice. It was Amy's voice. But it sounded strange and I couldn't make sense of what it was saying. She said, 'He's gone, Ray, he's gone.'

We come in on the Canterbury Road, past faded, peely bay-windowed terraces with that icing-on-an-old-cake look that buildings only have at the seaside. Hotels, B-and-Bs. Vacancies. The buildings look extra pale against the grey, piled-up sky, and against the clouds you can see little twirling specks of white, like broken-off flakes of the buildings, like scatterings of white being flung about by the wind. Seagulls. You can feel the wind, even in the Merc, bouncing up the side-streets and jolting into us, and we're all thinking, Any moment now we'll see it, we've got to see it, it can only be just over there. Then we see it, as we come over a brow and a gap opens up in the buildings: the sea, the sea. With the whole of Margate spread out below us, the front, the bay, the sands, with Cliftonville beyond, except you can't see the sands, or precious little of them, because the tide's right in, like Vie said it would be, and the sea's grey and thick and churny like the sky, with white spray flying up. And that long harbour wall out there on the far side of the bay, the only thing you can see that's like a pier, with the spray lashing up against it extra fierce: that looks like where we've got to go, that looks like where we've got to do it.

With a storm brewing.

Lenny says, 'Journey's end. 'AUelujah. I need a pee.'

Two extra pints in Canterbury.

He says, 'Looks like it's expecting us.'

Vie is sort of perking up, like he's coming into his rightful element. I'm thinking, You could get blown clean off that wall. I'm holding Jack again, in his bag, in his jar, and I hold on to him tighter, like I already need the extra ballast. Vince is looking all cool and careful and deliberate. He don't say nothing. He only had the one at the last port of call, but I reckon we're all glad we took a little extra on board to steady ourselves for what's to come. He drives on slowly down the hill, the sweep of the bay ahead of us, his eyes looking this way and that. It's not exactly thick with traffic or bulging with trippers. It's not season.

We join the front proper and he pulls up by the kerb, leaving the engine running. It seems he's heeded Lenny's little problem. Sudden sight of all this water. One thing it's not hard to find in a seaside resort is a public bog, and he's drawn up close to one, it looks like a blockhouse. But he don't stop at that. He opens his driver's door and gets out. There's a great gust of air. He walks round to the pavement, lifting his head and scanning the bay, his messed-up white shirt flapping like a flag, then he opens the passenger door for Lenny, courtesy itself, like a chauffeur. He cocks his head towards the blank-walled building on the other side of the pavement. 'Make yourself comfy, Lenny,' he says and it sounds as though he says it with a smile. It's like he wants things from now on to be proper and seemly, with no snags and upsets like a bursting bladder. 'Anyone else?' he says. But I'm not feeling the call. I switched to whisky, taking a tip from Vie.

Lenny edges out of his seat, all abashed and obedient. More raw air swirls round the car while his door's open but Vince, out on the pavement, doesn't seem to mind. It's as though he wanted the excuse to be the first of us to stand on the front at Margate and breathe in the briny. I twist my head round so I can see him hoisting back his shoulders and holding up his chin. You can hear the din of the waves. I hold on to Jack. Little pin-pricks of rain are peppering the windscreen and being dried off again almost immediately as if, despite the clouds, the sky's too het-up to start a real downpour. All wind and no piss. Lenny stands on the pavement and takes his own lungful of air, half like it does him a power of good and half like it hurts. He looks around, hunched and braced, and looks at Vince, straight and tall, looking around beside him. He says, 'Remember it, Big Boy? Remember it?'

So I walk into the hospital with the money in my inside pocket. Eight hundred in fifties, rest in twenties, rubber band, brown paper envelope. I think, There can't be many people who turn up at this place like they're hitting a casino. And I hope he understands it wasn't easy. He ought to know a thing or two about cash-flow, him of all people. He might think that kind of dosh is just pocket money to me, because I wear a four-hundred-quid suit, because I flog jalopies for readies on the spot, but he ought to know about margins, now specially. Sometimes cash flows and sometimes it don't. Right now it's hardly trickling.

So Hussein better.

And when am I getting it back? You can't deny a dying man a favour, any crazy thing he asks, but that don't mean. You can't take it with you when you go, but he will, he will.

I think, I might as well be taking this money to chuck it off the edge of a cliff.

But then I come out the lift and walk down the corridor, with the usual traffic of trolleys and wheelchairs, and there's that smell again that's getting so familiar you can smell it when it aint there. I'm standing in the showroom and I can smell it. I'm breathing in cars but I can smell it. Like the smell of the swab they give you after a jab, only scaled up, and beneath it the smell of something stale and thin and used up, like the smell of old tired papery skin. I suppose it's the smell of— I think of all the patients in this hospital, heads in beds, I wonder what the tot-up is, I wonder what today's takings are. And I think, I've done what he asked, I've only done what he asked, and if I don't ever touch this money again, still it's cleared my conscience, aint nothing on my conscience.

So I stride down that corridor with my head held high, like I'm back on the square at the depot and the sergeant's called me out. Deetail! And I look at all those poor crumpled-up bastards and old girls in their wheelchairs, thinking, I bet you aint got a thousand pounds to give away, have you? But it's only money, aint it? Only paper.

I walk in, and there he is with his tubes and his pumps and his meters and his belly all swolled up like he's pregnant. I can see he aint looking so good. I mean, given he's buggered in the first place. Today he's having a worse day than yesterday. Every day's a notch in only one direction. But I can tell what the first thing on his mind is, so I don't play no tricks, I don't tease. I pull out the envelope, giving a quick squint around, like the place is full of spies and thieves, and hand it to him, looking at him, thinking, I aint ever going to see this money never again.

I say, "There you are, Jack, as per promise. You don't have to count it.'

Though I bet he does, soon as I'm gone. He just takes a quick peek inside the envelope, feeling the thickness, stroking it with his thumb, then he looks at me, up and down like he's taking in the whole of me, like he's that sergeant inspecting my turn-out, and says, 'You're a good boy, Vince.'

They'll be there now, where we might have gone. Ended up or started again. New people, old people, the same people.

He looks at me while I sit by the bed, holding his hand, his thumb moving gently, dryly, in tittle circles round the base of mine, and I think, We aren't going to look at each other so many times again, there aren't going to be so many more times we'll speak. First you count the years, the decades, then suddenly it's hours and minutes. And even now, when it's his last chance, he's not going to mention her, he's not going to say a word about her. It's like we could be back there now, fifty years ago, in that guesthouse, with me seeing, with me knowing clear as day suddenly that he didn't ever want to know. You'd think they could come up with something.

He looks at me like he's sorry for having left it too late, for having to be going just when he was going to put things right. He would've been a changed man, course he would, change of heart, the world would've turned upside down just for us. Like he's sorry for having been the man he was. Is. But he's not going to mention her, he doesn't say he's sorry on account of her. He doesn't even look so apologetic for the things he's making you think he's sorry for. He looks at me so firm and straight and steady that I have to look away myself, just a flicker, though you'd think there shouldn't be time for that, not a second to spare from looking. But I think, I'll always see his face, I'll always see Jack's face, like a little photo in my head. Like a person never dies in the mind's eye.