Two extra pints in Canterbury.
He says, ‘Looks like it’s expecting us.’
Vic 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 Vic.
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?’
VINCE
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.’
AMY
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 little 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.
But he doesn’t mention June. He mentions Vince, who isn’t, who wasn’t ever ours. He says, ‘Vince’ll look after you. He’s a good boy. He aint such a bad job.’ He says that I’ll be all right, I’ll be looked after, but he doesn’t say how he never looked after June, he doesn’t say, ‘And give June my love.’
So I think, Then I won’t mention Ray, I won’t say a thing about Ray. Though it’s my last chance, and it’s the time for it, at the bedside, now or never.
He won’t mention June so I won’t mention Ray. Fair dos. What you don’t know can’t hurt. But he looks at me with that unflinching, unblinking look, so I have to dart my eyes away again. I look at the next bed which, just for now, is empty, the sheets and covers stripped off, and when I look back, his own eyes haven’t budged an inch, they’re looking into me and beyond, like he’d like to step right through me and go on then turn round and come back and hug me. And he says, like it’s his last word on everything, on why he’s lying there and why I’m sitting there holding his hand, and why it had to be him, why I was saddled with him and not a thousand others, luck of a summer night, ‘All a gamble, aint it? Ask Raysy. But you’ll be all
right.’
MARGATE
It doesn’t look like journey’s end, it doesn’t look like a final resting-place, where you’d want to come to finish your days and find peace and contentment for ever and ever. It aint Blue Bayou. If you look one way, beyond the public bog where Lenny’s disappeared, there’s only grey thick sky and grey thick sea and a grey horizon having a hard job trying to mark the difference between the two, and the other way, across the road, it’s like someone’s put up a frontage in a hurry to outstare the greyness, it’s like the buildings are a row of front-line troops drawn up to put a brave show on it, but it don’t help exactly that they’ve been dressed up in joke uniforms.
Flamingo. Tivoli. Royal. Grab City.
Vince says, ‘Marine Terrace.’ He’s got back in the car while we wait for Lenny. It’s like he’s decided to be our tour guide again, like in Canterbury Cathedral, except this time he’s reeling it off out of memory. ‘Marine Terrace, Margate. “Golden Mile”.’ But it’s a short mile, it’s about two furlongs and it don’t look so golden, not in this weather, it don’t look like it’s made of gold. BurgersHotdogsIcesShakesTeasPopcornCandyflossRock. There are signs and coloured lights, some of them on, some of them flashing, everything rattling and shaking in the wind, and here and there a pavement placard on a chain lying where it’s been blown flat. Most of the arcades look shut but one or two are lit up, all flickering and winking. By one of the entrances there’s a geezer in a flat cap and a donkey jacket, perched inside a little booth, like he’s only doing his duty. But they aint exactly flocking in.
Vince says, ‘It’s not season, of course.’
You can imagine Vince running an arcade. It’s not so different after all. Dodds Showrooms.
Mirage. Gold Mine. Mr B’s.
More little spots and spatterings are dotting the windscreen and Vince turns on the wipers but only gets a smear, so he turns them off again. The rain doesn’t want to rain yet, though the sky’s getting darker every second.
Vic says, ‘Timed it perfect, didn’t we? Wouldn’t have thought, by this morning.’
Vince says, ‘Well we’re here.’
The sea don’t know that.
Vic says, ‘It’s not good scattering weather,’ as if the thought hadn’t occurred.
Vince says, ‘Depends how you look at it.’
I’m holding the box.
Vic says, ‘Fair old wind.’
I say, like I only want to be sure, ‘Where’s the Pier?’
Vince says, slow and patient, ‘You’re looking at it, Raysy. That thing right there that you’re looking at, that’s the Pier.’
I say, ‘It don’t look like a pier.’
Vince says, ‘But it’s called the Pier. It’s a harbour wall but it’s called the Pier.’ Then he launches into his tour-guide patter. ‘There used to be this other thing called the Jetty, which looked like a pier, which you went on like a pier, where the steamboats came in. But they called it the Jetty, and that thing over there which is really a harbour wall, they call that the Pier.’
I say, ‘Sounds reasonable. So what happened to the other thing – the Jetty?’
Vince looks at me like I ought to have mugged up on that too. ‘Got swept away, didn’t it, in a storm. Nineteen seventy-something. I remember Amy saying, “Did you hear about Margate Jetty?” I reckon that’s why Jack specified the Pier. He didn’t mean the Pier, he meant the Jetty. That’s what we all remember, going on the Jetty. But he must’ve remembered there wasn’t no Jetty any more, so he settled on the Pier.’
I’m getting confused so I don’t say nothing.
Vince says, ‘You can’t see it from here, it must be behind the Pier, but there’s supposed to be a bit of the Jetty still left, still standing, all by itself out to sea.’
I say, ‘Well maybe that’s been swept away today an’ all.’
Vic says, ‘This isn’t a storm.’ Voice of authority.
I think, Course not, looking at the spray.
The seagulls are whizzing around the sky like they’re either having the time of their lives or they wish they’d never taken off.
Vince says, peering across the pavement, ‘What’s he doing? Gone for a paddle an’ all?’
Then we see him, emerging from the lee of the walled-round entrance to the Gents. He can tell we’re looking at him and he staggers a bit, deliberate, at the point where the wind catches him, pretending it’s worse than it is. All the same, he glances grimly up at the sky, then he smiles, weakly, like a man always can when he’s just emptied his bladder. He looks like the one who’s always last and knows it, always keeping everyone waiting. He stands for a moment, with the railings and the grey sea behind him, as if because it’s the seaside and he’s the focus of attention he ought to do a quick comic turn but he can’t think what, so he just stands there grinning, awkward, like he’s having his photo taken. This is me at Margate. Shocking weather. He goes up on his toes all of a sudden, holding up his fists, rolling one shoulder, jabbing with his right. I reckon Lenny’s face is its own comic turn. Then he moves towards the car, like it’s hard work, he could be swimming for it, and opens the door. There’s a blast of air.
‘Aint weather for the beach,’ he says.
‘Mad March days,’ Vince says.
Vic says, ‘It’s April.’
‘April bleedin fools,’ Lenny says.
‘Mad Gunner Tate,’ Vince says, like he didn’t mean it to mean anything, it just came out.
‘Mad Jack Dodds,’ Lenny says, shutting the door. ‘April first yesterday. You think he’s whisked it all up special?’
You can’t tell from holding the jar, no little trembles. Just the engine purring.
Vince looks at Lenny in the driving mirror then he looks straight ahead. We sit by the kerb.
Vic says, ‘Well,’ as if the moment’s come.
Lenny says, ‘Well.’
I don’t say nothing. It’s like we’re all waiting for someone else to give the word and maybe it needs to be me since I’m the one holding Jack, I ought to sense him saying, ‘Come on, lads, get shifting.’ But I don’t say nothing. I aint taking command.
Vince is staring ahead, his hands resting square on the wheel like he’s driving though we’re staying still, it’s a pretend car. The windscreen’s all silvery, the sky’s like lead. Then just as I’m about to say, ‘Come on, let’s go,’ we start to move anyway. As if Vince hasn’t done nothing and the car’s decided for us, as if we’re all just payload and it’s switched itself into motion, like that belt suddenly starting to move, you could hear a little clicking sound, that carried Jack’s coffin out of sight behind the blue velvet curtains.
It doesn’t look like the end of the road, it doesn’t look like what you’d aim for and work for. It looks like it’s trying to keep going all year round something that only happened once one whoopsy weekend. So this is what you get, this is where you come. I reckon it’s all about wanting to be a kid again, bucket and spade and a gob full of ice cream. Or it’s all about being on the edge, which you are, other sense, and you know it. Not where the road’s going, just where it don’t go no further, on account of the ogwash. End of the road, end of the pier. Splash. And if the seaside was such a fine and wonderful thing in itself, then there wouldn’t be no need, would there, for this whole china-shop of Amusements? All of them trying to tickle your fancy like a troop of tired old tarts. Like it aint the coast of Kent, it’s Cunt Street, Cairo.
Flamingo. Tivoli. Royal.
Vince lets the car roll slowly forward, barely touching the gas, as though it knows what to do, a Merc has a mind of its own, like Duke always knew the way home anyway, and I can see what he’s doing, I can see how he wants it to be. It’s like the car has become a hearse, a royal blue hearse. Because this is Jack’s last ride, along Marine Terrace, Margate, along the Golden Mile. Last ride of the day, eh Jack? Vince looks straight ahead, hands on the wheel, like he don’t want no distractions. Mirage, Gold Mine, Ocean. They’re all painted up and decked
out like poor men’s palaces, except one, at the end of the parade, looming over them all, a bare brick tower with just a few big words on it. It looks more like the way into a prison than a funfair. We’ve already passed it, but we all noticed, as we came down that hill, the big wheel rising up behind it and the big dipper, black and spindly against the grey sky. It’s what Margate’s famous for, it’s what people come here for. Dreamland.
AMY
And the most I’ve wanted, the most I’ve hoped in fifty years, believe me I’ve never asked the earth, is that you should have looked at me, just once, and said, ‘Mum.’ It isn’t much to have wished, all this time. Damn it, you’re fifty years old. You should’ve fled the nest by now, you shouldn’t want me around, you should be leading a life of your own. For God’s sake, Mum, I’m a big girl. Well, all right then, go on then, big girl, have it your own way. It’s your life, you go and ruin it.
I’ve tried to know what it’s like to be you. To be in that Home always, which I only visit. To be in that body all the time, which I only look at twice a week. Which shouldn’t be so difficult, should it, since it was once part of mine? Flesh of my. But I think when they snip that cord they snip off everything else too. They say, You’re by yourself now, you’re as different and as separate as all the others, it’s hoo-ha thinking otherwise. And when I tot up all those twice-weekly visits, then it seems we haven’t shared each other’s company for much more than one whole year, which isn’t much in fifty, which isn’t much for mother and daughter. But if you look at it another way, it’s one whole year of just visiting.
That’s what I am, that’s what I’ve been: a visitor. And when I went in to see Jack, in that little room, Vincey waiting outside, to visit Jack’s body, like you could say I was a visitor to it when it was alive, but I haven’t counted up the times in fifty years, I thought: What’s the difference? He isn’t ever going to turn into something else now, but don’t kid yourself, Amy Dodds, that was just as true of Jack alive as dead.