Last Orders (31 page)

It's true what Vie said. The wind takes it, it's gone in a whirl, in a flash. Now you see it, now you don't. Then I take the jar in both hands again, giving a quick peek inside, and say, 'Come on, come on.' They all huddle round to take another scoop. There isn't much more than four men can scoop out twice over. They dip in again, one by one. Lucky dip. And I dip and we all throw again, a thin trail of white, like smoke, before it's gone, and some seagulls swoop in from nowhere and veer off again like they've been tricked. Then I know there's not enough for another share-out, another full round, so I just start scooping myself, they don't seem to mind. I scoop and scoop like some animal scratching out its burrow, and I know in the end I'm going to have to hold up the jar and bang it like you do when you get to the bottom of a box of cornflakes. One handful' two handfuls, there's only two handfuls. I say, 'Goodbye Jack.' The sky and the sea and the wind are all mixed up together but I reckon it wouldn't make no difference if they weren't because of the blur in my eyes. Vie and Vincey's faces look like white blobs but Lenny's looks like a beacon, and across the water you can see the lights of Margate. You can stand on the end of Margate Pier and look across to Dreamland. Then I throw the last handful and the seagulls come back on a second chance and I hold up the jar, shaking it, like I should chuck it out to sea too, a message in a bottle, Jack Arthur Dodds, save our souls, and the ash that I carried in my hands, which was the Jack who once walked around, is carried away by the wind, is whirled away by the wind till the ash becomes wind and the wind becomes Jack what we're made of.