Last Orders (3 page)

It veers a shade to the left. Lenny says, 'Don't go and give it a dent, will you, Big Boy? Don't want you to lose a sale.'

Vince says he don't dent cars, ever, least of all when he's driving extra steady and careful, on account of the special occasion.

Lenny says, "With your hands off the wheel.'

Then Vince asks Vie what they do in a hearse when they have to go on a motorway.

Vie says, 'We step on it.'

Vince isn't wearing a black tie. It's just me and Vie. He's wearing a red and white jazzy tie and a dark blue suit. It's his showroom clobber, and he's come from the showroom, but he could have chosen some other tie. He's taken off his jacket, which is lying folded on the back seat between me and Lenny. Good-quality stuff. I reckon Vince is doing all right, he's not so badly placed after all. He says now they're feeling the pinch in the City they pop across in their lunch hours to do deals for cash.

Lenny says, 'Don't encourage him, Vie.'

Vie says, 'A hearse is different, everyone makes way for a hearse.'

Lenny says, 'You mean they don't make way for Vincey here?'

Vie sits in the front beside Vince, holding the box on his knees. I can see it's how it should be, Vie being the professional, but it don't seem right he should hold it all the time. Maybe we should take it in turns.

Vince looks across at Vie. He says, smiling, 'Busman's holiday, eh, Vie?'

Vince is wearing a white shirt with silver cuff-links' and pongy after-shave. His hair is all slicked back. It's a brand new suit.

We head on past the gas works, Ilderton Road, under the railway bridge. Prince of Windsor. The sun comes out from behind the tower blocks, bright in our faces, and Vince pulls out a pair of chunky sun-glasses from under the dashboard. Lenny starts singing, slyly, through his teeth, 'Blue bayooo,..' And we all feel it, what with the sunshine and the beer inside us and the journey ahead: like it's something Jack has done for us, so as to make us feel special, so as to give us a treat. Like we're off on a jaunt, a spree, and the world looks good, it looks like it's there just for us.

Well let 'em go, eh June? Let 'em do it, the whole bunch of 'em. Let 'em do without me. And you. Boys' outing. Do 'em good.

Jack should know that. All work and no play. Unless you count propping up the bar in the Coach.

That's what I told him all those years ago. We should give ourselves a break, a treat, we should give ourselves a holiday. His brave little Amy. When you fall off your horse you should get straight back on again. We should get ourselves out of ourselves. New people.

It might never have come to a choice between you and him.

My poor brave Jack.

Back on the merry-go-round, back on the swings. Seaside fun. All those things, June, you never knew. Donkey rides, bucket and spade, Punch and Judy. The waves coming in and the crowds on the beach and kids yelling, running, kids everywhere, and him looking at it like it was all a trick. Watch the birdie, kiss me quick, end of the pier.

But it wasn't the Pier, he even got that wrong. It was the Jetty. He ought to have remembered: the Pier and the Jetty, two different things, even if the Jetty looked more like a pier, and the Pier was only a harbour wall. Except there isn't no Jetty now, all swept away in a storm, years ago, and good riddance, I say, and amen. So maybe it wasn't his mistake, maybe it was his alternative arrangement. If he had to be chucked, if it was a case of chucking, if he had to be taken to the end of somewhere and chucked, but count me out, Jack, I won't be doing any chucking, then it had to be the Pier. Though it should have been the Jetty.

Vie says, 'Pam sends regards. Shell be thinking of us.'

Lenny says, 'Same goes for Joan.'

Vince says, 'And Mandy.'

I reckon if wives are being mentioned I should shut up.

Vince says, 'It was good to see Pam at the funeral, Vie. Aint often we get the pleasure.'

Vie says, 'Sad pleasure.'

Lenny says, 'Went a treat.'

We're coming up to the lights by New Cross Gate station and the traffic's slowing to a crawl.

I don't suppose Carol's even heard. I'dVe got the shock of my life if she'd showed up at the funeral.

Lenny says, 'They might all've come along too. Joan was all set But I suppose if Amy—'

I say, 'I don't know how we'dVe squeezed in seven of us, Lenny, even into this thing.'

Vince says, 'Four of us is comfy. Maybe it's a blokes' job anyway.'

I say, 'Five.'

Vince says, 'Five.' Then he says, 'It aint a thing, Raysy, it's a Mercedes.'

Lenny looks at me then at the traffic all around us. 'Still, aint no car built yet that'll beat a jam, is there, Big Boy?'

Lenny's a stirrer.

Vie says, 'Pam was all for doing us sandwiches and a thermos but I said I thought we were old enough to take care of ourselves.' He's holding the box like it might be his lunch.

Vince says, 'She's a good 'un, Vie. It was good to see her.'

Lenny says, 'Joan was dead set'

We creep forward five yards then stop. People are walking past us on the pavement, slipping into the station entrance like it's an ordinary day. We should have a flashing sign up:

Lenny says, 'Every car's the same in a snarl-up, aint it?'

Vince drums his fingers on the steering wheel.

Vie says, 'Anyhow Pam says he's got a good guard-of-honour.'

We all straighten up, as if we've got to be different people, as if we're royalty and the people on the pavement ought to stop and wave.

It's a 380 S-Class, that's what it is. V8, automatic. It's six years old but it could do a hundred and thirty without a wobble. Though not in the New Cross Road it won't.

Custom paintwork, all-leather upholstery.

So Hussein better buy it soon, cash, he better just. Otherwise I'm out of readies.

I'm not telling no one, not Amy, not Mandy, about Jack's little last request, or about my little hand-out. I always said, Don't come running to me, Jack, don't expect me to do any shelling out.

Seems to me the only time a man can get what he asks is when he's dying. Though he didn't ask for an S-Class Merc, extra long wheelbase, walnut dash. So I hope he damn well appreciates it, I hope he damn well does.

Hussein better damn well an' all.

It's got white-walled tyres. It needs some air in the front near-side.

I said, 'Let me get you another, Jack, then I'm off home. Family man now, aint I?' But he looks at me, holding up his hand sudden like everyone should shut up, like it was that last remark that did it, and I see Ray and Lenny start peering into their beers.

But it was true. Me, Mand and little Kath. She was still in short socks then.

He says, 'Excuse us, gents, Vince and me have got to have a private word,' and he jostles me over to a table in the corner. He says it's been a tough week and could I spare him a fiver, just so he can buy Ray and Lenny there a drink and not look a fool, but I knew it wasn't the five quid, I knew it wasn't why he'd asked me to call by in the first place. Five quid- Five large might be nearer the mark. If you're going to plead, plead straight.

But he don't go all humble and pleading. He looks at me like I'm the one who should be begging, as if it aint a loan he's after but more like I should be settling my dues. As if the least I owed him, and hasn't he let me know it, was to have teamed up with him years ago and acted like it was a real case of flesh and blood. Except it wasn't flesh and blood, it was meat. Meat or motors. That was the choice.

I say, 'Don't expect me to bail you out.'

But he stares at me like that's exactly what I'm required to do, like we struck a deal and now he's calling in my side of it. I should know about deals, shouldn't I, being a dealer myself, a used-car dealer? As if there was something wrong about used cars and something bleeding holy about meat.

I say, 'If you can't see what's under your nozzle. A new supermarket just up the road and they offer you first refusal as their meat manager. Aint got no choice, have you?'

He says, 'Haven't I?'

I say, 'Stay put if you want. It's your funeral.'

He says, 'At least I'd be my own man.'

I say, 'Your own man? You never were your own man. You were your old man's man, weren't you? What does it say over the shop?'

He looks at me as if he could knock me between the eyes.

He says, 'That cuts two ways, don't it?'

I say, 'Don't expect me to bail you out, that's all,' giving him a fiver. 'Don't expect nothing.' Slipping him another fiver.

I say, 'There's ten, Jack. Go and buy your mates a drink. Buy one for yourself an' all. Now I'm shoving off.'

And what did he ever do anyway? It was Amy. All he did was come home from winning the war and there I was - his welcome-home present - lying in that cot that was meant for June.

It's got cruise control, power steering.

And there he was, forty-odd years later, lying with the tubes in him, his own bleeding man all right, and he says, 'Come here, Vince. I want to ask you something.' He don't give it a rest.

It's a beautiful car.

And that surgeon - Strickland - looks at me like I'm his next victim, like it's me he's going to stick his knife in. I think, It's because he knows I'm not really next-of-kin. But then I think, No, it's because the old bastard's given him a hard time in the first place, and now this prick's passing it on. It would be like Jack to give a hard time even to the man who could save his life.

He starts to explain. He says, 'Do you know what your stomach looks like?' as if I'm a complete arsehole.

He says, 'And do you know where it is?'

It's the only way I could think of it. Like doing a repair job. A rebore or something, a decoke. I don't know how we work inside but I know a good motor when I see one, I know how to strip an engine. If you ask me, flesh and blood aint such a neat piece of work, not always, but a good motor is a good motor.

So Hussein better cough.

Jack would say, 'Bunch of ghosts, that's what you are in that office, Raysy. Bunch of bleeding zombies.' He'd say, 'You want to come up to Smithfield some time and see how real men make a living.'

And sometimes I did. In the early mornings, specially when it was all falling apart with me and Carol, when we weren't even speaking. I'd slip out early and get the 63 as usual but get off two stops later and walk up from Farring-don Road, up Charterhouse Street, in the half light. Breakfast at Smithfield. We'd go to that caff in Long Lane or to one of those pubs that serves beer and nosh at half past seven in the morning. There was Ted White from Peckham and Joe Malone from Rotherhithe and Jimmy Phelps from Camberwell. And of course, in the early days, there'd be Vince, being trained up. Before he joined up.

They'd say, what you need, Raysy, is a good feed-up, you're looking peaky. What you need is some meat on you. I'd say it was my natural build. Flyweight. Shovel it in, it don't make no difference.

Strange thing but you never see a thin butcher.

He used to give me all that old Smithfield guff, all that Smithfield blather. How Smithfield was the true centre, the true heart of London. Bleeding heart, of course, on account of the meat. How Smithfield wasn't just Smithfield, it was Life and Death. That's what it was: Life and Death. Because just across from the meat market there was St Bart's hospital, and just across from Bart's was your Old Bailey Central Criminal Court, on the site of old Newgate prison, where they used to string 'em up regular. So what you had in Smithfield was your three Ms: Meat, Medicine and Murders.

But it was Jimmy Phelps who told me that when he said all that, he was only saying what his old man used to say to him, Ronnie Dodds, word for word. And it was Jimmy Phelps who told me, when Jack was well out of earshot, when Jack and Vince were loaded up and on the way back to Bermondsey, that Jack had never wanted to be a butcher in the first place, never. It was only because the old man wouldn't have it otherwise. Dodds and Son, family butchers since 1903.

He says, 'Do you know what Jack wanted to be? Don't ever tell Jack I told you, will you?' And his face goes half smiling, half frightened, as if Jack's still there and might be creeping up behind him. 'When Jack was like Vince is now, being 'prenticed up, just like I was, he used to spend every spare minute eyeing up the nurses coming out of Bart's. I reckon it was the nurses that did it, he thought every doctor got a free couple of nurses to himself, but he says to me one day, and he aint joking, that he could chuck it all up and tell the old man to stew in his own stewing steak, because what he really wanted was to be a doctor.'

Jimmy creases up. He sits there in his smeared overalls, hands round a mug of tea, and he creases up. He says, 'He was serious. He said all it took was a change of white coats. Can you picture it? Doctor Dodds.'

But he sees I'm not laughing, so he sobers up.

'You won't tell Jack,' he says.

'No,' I say, sort of thoughtful, as if I might.

And I'm wondering if Jimmy Phelps always wanted to be a butcher. I'm remembering what Jack said, in the desert, that we're all the same underneath, officers and ranks, all the same material. Pips on a man's shoulders don't mean a tuppenny toss.

It wasn't out of wishing it that I became an insurance clerk.

But I never did tell Jack, and Jack never told me. Though you'd think when he was lying there in St Thomas's, with doctors and nurses all around him, it would have been a good time to let it slip. But all he said was, 'It should have been Bart's, eh Raysy? Bart's, by rights'

And it seems to me that whether he ever wanted to be a doctor or not, all those years of being a butcher, all those years of going up to Smithfield stored rum up a pretty good last laugh against the medical profession. Because he tells me that when the surgeon came to see him for the old heart-to-heart, the old word in the ear, he didn't want no flannel. No mumbo-jumbo.