Last Orders (7 page)

I always fancied your Auntie Daisy.

I say, 'So what's Andy got to offer you then? What's he got to offer?'

I see them crossing Australia hi a jeep.

But then Carol comes in from the shops. We hear the front door and the sound of bags being dumped. I ought to be down at the Coach by now, first pint on the go, having put on a treble at the turfie's. Then the sparks start really flying, then I cop it as much as Sue. Because it's all my fault, Carol says, all my doing, she hopes I understand that, same as if Sue had got herself pregnant. So I have to take Sue's side, to defend myself, I have to argue for the thing I don't want. I suppose that's just what Sue's reckoned on. But it don't cut much ice either way, what I say, because it's between the two of them, I see that, it's a fight between the two of them. I'm just the man in the middle they each try to dodge behind. They go at it all weekend like two cats, and there comes a point when I'm dazed and baffled and I can't think straight, and I think, I've lived with two of them for over eighteen years and I still don't understand them. There comes a point when I'm not seeing Sue or Carol, I'm seeing Duke's arse.

I put thirty quid on a horse called Silver Lord, outsider of five. Thirty quid, in '65. I don't tell no one. I think, If he wins, it means she goes, and it means she'll have the fare too. Wasn't no other way of settling it. But I suppose you could say I'd already settled it, because I wasn't intending to lose thirty quid. And there are times when you go by the form and the going and every last little thing you know about a nag, but there are times when you just get the feeling, you just see the signs.

It aint everyone who sees signs, but they call me Lucky Johnson.

And sometimes I'm wrong.

I think, I'm putting money on Susie's life, I'm putting money against the thing I want, but at the back of my mind is a little chink of another thought, I don't want to think it, but I think it, and I reckon Sue's thought it too, I reckon even Carol's thought it. That if Sue wasn't here, if she was far away where we couldn't see her, that that might be a way of me and Carol having another bash at it.

He comes in by half a length, twelve to one, and when her mother's not around, I slip her the money, three hundred and sixty smackers. I say, 'Don't breathe a word.' I say, 'Here's your fare. Use it when you need to. If you need to.' I wasn't going to tell her how I got it but I suppose it wasn't a hard guess. So I said, 'Silver Lord, Chepstow. Half a length.'

Then Handy Andy comes round to say his piece, with Sue sitting beside him, hands clasped round her knees. He says they've decided, there's no two ways about it, and he'll look after Sue. He says he's feeling so much more in tune now - now he's tapped into his origins - which is hard to believe with him wearing that Afghan jacket. He says he's feeling so much more 'together' now because of everything, because of Sue. He's got this crinkle in his face, like he's used to peering into sunshine. I want to kick him. I want to squeeze the bugger's shoulder.

Carol walks out the room. We hear the kitchen door slam. There's a pause and he says, 'Thanks, Mr Johnson. Some horse, eh?' I look at Sue who bites her lip and looks down. Andy's smiling like a berk. Then I get up and go to Carol.

She isn't angry any more, she's crying, she's got a hand to her face. It's like that kitchen door was her last round of ammo. She leans over the sink, crying. She says, 'If she goes, I don't want to see her ever again, understand that?' But it's not said in anger, it's said like she's pleading.

I put my arms around her. She's still pretty trim for a woman of forty, I can feel her ribs. If I was taller, she'd have tucked her head under my chin and I'd've kissed her hair. It's like she's become another daughter. She was always her daddy's girl, Charlie's girl. Married me for him.

I say, 'You can't stop her. She's eighteen.'

She says, 'And I'm not.'

And that's when I realized that it wasn't that she didn't want Sue setting off for a new life across the world. It was that she was jealous.

I tried to make it better, I tried to make us a better life. I even gave up the betting. I learnt to go without.

But it didn't work. Or maybe it might have worked if that December her father hadn't died, sudden. Never rains but. Has a fall, out on a job, cast-iron guttering, and cracks his head. Instant. Charlie Dixon, Scrap Metal Merchant, Sites Cleared.

It wasn't like I had a feeling, it wasn't like I saw a sign, but it wasn't like it set her free either. Opposite.

I slept in Sue's old bed, or didn't sleep. Left for work early. Breakfasts at Smithfield.

Then one day that April it came to me, I saw the signs. Or maybe you could say I'd had enough of going without, all senses. If I could do it once I could do it again. £100. All that I might have staked in a good three months' betting. And one Saturday it was me who went down the shops. When I came back I was humming a tune. I'am fancy-free and love to wander... I looked her in the face like spring had sprung and I was the bringer of joy. I said, 'There's something I want you to see - out on the street.'

She looked out the window and I pointed.

Rockabilly, Uttoxeter, hundred to eight.

She said, 'What is it?'

I said, 'It's a dormobile. A camper-van, deluxe model. A travelling home for two.'

She said, 'That's the last straw.'

It wasn't like it is now, a quick race down the motorway and the taste of London still in your mouth half-way through Kent. It was like a voyage, only the other way round. So that instead of the waiting and hoping to sight land, you were moving over land in the first place, all impatient, all ready for that first glimpse. The seaside. The sea.

I watched Sally's legs. I watched the fields and the woods and the hills and the cows and sheep and farms and I watched the road, grey and hot, like elephant skin, coming towards us, always coming towards us, like something we were scooping up, eating up, but then I'd watch Sally's legs, resting on top of Amy's. Or not so much resting, because they were always moving, shifting, sliding, and when we got near the sea they'd start to jiggle up and down, her feet going under the dashboard, the way they did when she won at the spotting game, 'O' for orchard, 'P' for petrol station, or when Amy asked her if she needed to stop and have a pee, 'P' for pee. Then she and Amy would go off together, separate, behind a hedge, so I knew it wasn't just a case of pulling out your widdler, it was something different.

It wasn't so much the way they moved or even the way her cotton skirt would ride up sometimes so Amy would flip it down again if Sally didn't. It was their smoothness and bareness, their sticky-without-being-stickiness, and it was that they had a smell which you couldn't smell above the smells of going along the road but I knew it was there and I knew it was how Sally must smell all over, the bits you couldn't see. It was like the smell of the seaside, it was like the differentness of the seaside before you got there.

Sally on Amy's lap, me in the middle, Jack. We could've swapped round, I could've gone on Amy's lap, I wasn't so heavy. Salty could've gone on my lap. But that was how Amy wanted it. I saw that.

And one day he said anyway, 'You'll have to go in the back. You aint getting smaller, either of you. If you want Sally to come, you'll have to go in the back.'

So I went in the back where I couldn't watch Sally's legs, and all you could smell was the sweet, stale, stick-in-your-throat smell of meat.

It wouldn't be there at first. There was the picnic bag and the bag of beach things and the rug they put down for me and the soapy smell of whatever he used to scrub it all out with. But after a while the meat smell would come through, like something that had been hiding, and after a while more the sick feeling would start and you'd have to fight it.

But I never said, I never said, and I don't suppose they even guessed, what with the windows down in front and the air rushing in, I never banged on the metal and said, 'Let me out, I wanna be sick.' Because I was doing it for Sally's sake, so she could be there. She was in the front where I couldn't see or smell her, I could only smell meat, but her being there where I couldn't see or smell her was better than her not being there at all, and when we got out at the other end she'd be there, really, and so would the seaside. The meat smell and the sick feeling would get blown away by the smell of the seaside, and though you knew it was still there in the van and there was the journey back, you didn't think about that till it happened. When something's one thing, it aint another. And when I got back in the van to go home, I'd think, It evens out, because in one direction there's what's ahead and in another there's the memory, and maybe there's nothing more or less to it than that, it's nothing more or less than what you should expect, a good thing between two bad things. Air and sunshine and, either side, being in a box.

I reckon she should've been impressed, that I did it for her sake. So I never said. But maybe she wasn't impressed, maybe she never guessed either, maybe she even thought it was something to laugh at, me being in the back like an animal in a cage, and maybe the real reason why they wanted me in the back was because they preferred Sally to me.

June aint my sister. I aint got no sister.

I'd get in and he'd close the doors behind me, the one that said DODDS and the one that said & SON. Then he'd go round and start the engine and I'd start to hate him. I'd hate him and hate the meat smell till they were one and the same. It was better than anything for fighting the sick feeling, better than thinking of good things, the seaside and Sally, because there wasn't no fight in those feelings. I'd lie there on the rug hating him and I'd think, I aint going to be a butcher never, it aint what I'm going to be. And as I lay there hating him I discovered something else, beyond and beneath the meat smell, something that made those journeys bearable. I'd put my ear to the rug. I'd feel the metal throbbing underneath, I'd hear the grind and grip of the transmission, the thrum of the shafts taking the power to the wheels, and I'd think, This is how a motor works, I'm lying on the workings of this van. I aint me, I'm part of this van.

But one day I sick up anyway. All over the rug and the beach bag and the picnic an' all. I never said, I just sicked up. So there aint the smell of meat, there's the smell of sick.

The next time, he says Sally aint coming so I can get in the front. So I think, I've done it now, Sally aint coming now ever again, and I say, 'I don't mind, I don't mind going in the back. I won't be sick again, honest.' But he says, 'She aint coming anyway, not this time. So hop in the front.'

Neither of them says much. It's like when I was in the back it was a sort of punishment but now I'm in the front again it's a punishment too. But then I think, It's not me who's sorry, I aint sorry, it's them who's sorry. They're sorry because they made me go in the back. They're sorry because they've been playing at being Sally's parents but now they've got me again. Then he takes a turn off the main road as if we aren't going to the seaside at all.

We stop near the top of a hill, with fields sloping away. It's all green. I think, I aint saying nothing, I aint saying, 'Why are we here?' There's an old windmill on the top of the hill, I remember that, and there's a view below: fields and woods and hedges and orchards, a farmhouse, a church tower, a village. It's spread out in different patches like someone's pieced it together.

We sit for a bit with the engine ticking and the breeze outside. Then they look at each other and he says, 'See down there. That's where your mum and me first met. Hop-picking' But that don't mean much to me, because I know what it means to hop and I know what it means when he says 'hop in the van' but I don't have the foggiest what hop-picking is. So I say, 'What's hop-picking?' and he tries to explain, like he hadn't planned on that bit. And I aint much the wiser. And Amy says, 'They call Kent the Garden of England.' She's smiling at me funny. Then he says, like he hadn't planned on this bit either and he's only saying it so as not to say something else, 'It's like you've got to have the country to have the town. See them orchards. Uncle Lenny couldn't have no apples to sell, could he? See them sheep...' Then he stops and goes quiet, looking at me. Then he looks at Amy and Amy nods and he says, 'Come with me.'

We get out and walk into the fields and I'm scared. There are sheep bleating and staring. He stands and looks at the view. I think, It's because the sheep get killed. It's because the sheep get chopped up and eaten. The view's all far-off and little and it's as though we're far-off and little too and someone could be looking at us like we're looking at the view. He looks at me, and I know the reason I'm scared is because he is. And my dad Jack aint never scared. He doesn't look like my dad Jack, he looks as if he could be anyone. He takes a deep breath, then another one, quick, and I reckon he wanted to change his mind, but he was already teetering, toppling, on top of that hill, and he couldn't stop himself.

So Vincey comes home, in his new civvies, and parks himself on a stool in the Coach, drinks all round, and after loosening me up with a large scotch I should never have accepted, he says, cool as Christmas, 'How's Sally?'

You couldn't tell from looking at him whether it was bare-faced cheek or whether there really was some dumb part of him that thought he could carry on again where he left off, that reckoned he'd done due penance, courtesy of the regular Army, and now here he was to ask for my daughter.

I suppose he pulled the same wool over Jack's eyes because you'd think by the way Jack behaves that Vince had had a change of heart, he'd gone and seen the error of his ways. You'd think Jack would have more sense than to believe that the only reason why Vince had bunked off for five years was so he could come back and ask to be forgiven and pick things up just as they were.

It takes the Army to put a finish on a man.