Last Orders

  I don’t think anything.

  He looks at me and at the thought I’m not thinking. He looks round the office again, cagily, as if he’s half forgotten where he is and that I’m Vic Tucker, undertaker, and not the parish priest.

  He cocks his head towards the door at the back of the office. He says, ‘Any lodgers?’ Usual question.

  I say, ‘Just the one.’

  And I can almost see him remembering it, that time when it was me who went running across to him. All on my own then too, short-staffed, and as luck would have it I had two in storage and one of them needed seeing to badly. It can be a two-man job. A hot day then too. So I thought of Jack across the road. I thought, Maybe a butcher. I said, ‘Jack, can you do me a favour?’ I had to steer him round to the back of the shop, out of earshot of a customer, to explain. He looked at me then he said, ‘No problem, Vic,’ as if I’d asked him if he could help me shift a piece of furniture. He said, ‘Will I need this?’ wiping his hands on his apron. We crossed back over, and I said before we went in, ‘You sure about this?’ and he says, looking at me sharply, ‘I’ve seen bodies.’ I thought, I saw them too, yours wasn’t the only war. Heads bobbing in the oil. I said, ‘Yes, but not women.’ But he didn’t turn a hair, didn’t bat an eyelid, as if a seventy-four-year-old woman who’d died crossing the road wasn’t any different from a joint of beef. I said, ‘Thank you, Jack. It’s not everyone.’ He said, ‘Any time, Vic. I aint everyone.’

  And when the eldest son came to view I thought, You’ll never know your mum was tidied up by the butcher across the road.

  I suppose you’d expect a butcher not to be squeamish, you’d expect a man like Jack not to hold back. Jack Dodds was only ever squeamish about going to see his daughter. His own flesh and blood.

  I say, ‘Just the one. I’ve got someone coming to view.’

  He says, ‘Then I better hop it.’ But he doesn’t move. ‘I suppose a man can change at the last minute.’

  He looks at me and I look at him, as though I’m measuring him up. I think of Amy going to see June. Like Mrs Connolly.

  I say, ‘You sure you’re going to tell Amy? I’m your witness now, Jack.’

  I think, I’m a witness, all right. Shall I tell him?

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ he says, like he’s still got a trick up his sleeve. ‘Or you can keep this.’ And he dredges in his pocket and brings out a handful of crumpled notes. It can’t have been much more than fifty quid.

  ‘Day’s takings,’ he says. ‘Double pledge. My word and my money. Now you can see how I can’t afford to keep on the shop.’

  He shoves the bunch of notes towards me. I don’t refuse to take it.

  Then he says, ‘Do you know, Vic, what I once wanted to be?’

  I look at him.

  ‘A doctor.’

  It’s a good trade.

  RAY

  I said, ‘I fancy seeing the Pyramids.’

  He said, ‘I fancy seeing the inside of the nearest knocking shop.’

  It was Jack who first called me Lucky. It didn’t have to do with the nags, that was later.

  He said, ‘Small fellers have the advantage, small fellers have the luck, hope you understand that. Less of a target for the enemy, less weight to carry in this fucking frying-pan. Mind you, doesn’t take away my advantage. I could knock your block off any time I like. Hope you understand that.’

  Then he smiled, held out his hand, clenched it for a moment, grinning, then opened it again.

  ‘Jack Dodds.’

  I said, ‘Ray Johnson.’

  He said, ‘Hello Ray. Hello Lucky. How d’you get so small anyway? Someone shrink you in the wash?’

  It was out of consideration, that’s what I think. It was out of wanting to make me feel easier, on account of I was new draft and he’d had six months already. But he didn’t have to pick on me. I reckon he decided, for some reason I’ll never know, to choose me. All that luck stuff was eyewash. But if you say something and think it and mean it enough then, sometimes, it becomes the case. Same when you pick out a horse. It’s not luck, it’s confidence. Which is something I’d say that, except in the rarefied business of backing a gee-gee, Ray Johnson’s always had precious little of. But so far as Jack was concerned, I reckon I was like a horse. He picked me. That’s how I became Lucky Johnson.

  He said, ‘Where you from, Ray?’

  I said, ‘Bermondsey.’

  He said, ‘You’re never.’

  And I suppose that settled it.

  I said, ‘You know Valetta Street? You know the scrap merchant’s, Frank Johnson’s?’

  He said, ‘You know Dodds’ butcher shop in Spring Road? I bet your ma buys her meat there.’

  I never said I didn’t have no ma. I reckon that would have made him reassess my luckiness.

  He said, ‘Best bangers in Bermondsey. And, talking of bangers, I suppose you could say we’re as safe out here as there.’

  He said it was because I was lucky that he ought to stick with me, but it was the other way round. It was Jack who underwrote me. It wasn’t that I was small so the bullets would miss me, it was that he was big, like a wall, like a boulder. And the bullets missed him anyway, they missed him so they missed me, except that once. It was because a small man needs speaking up for, like the old man saying I’d got brains and I ought to use ’em. I never knew I had ’em till he insisted on it, and till Jack went and made it a selling point. ‘This is Ray, got it up here has Ray.’ Except one way I knew I had it up here was in sticking with Jack.

  I thought, Stick with this man and you’ll be okay, stick with this man and you’ll get through this war.

  He passed me a ciggy.

  He said, ‘Tell you what, Ray, we could give the Pyramids a miss.’ Then he took a crumpled card with an address scrawled on it from his wallet. ‘Mate gave me this. Personal recommendation.’

  I said, ‘Maybe I could—’

  He said, ‘Pyramids are tombs, aren’t they, Ray? Pyramids are for dead people. Whereas a tart’s tackle.’

  Then he got something else out of his breast pocket, pushed it across the table to me. He said, ‘It’s be-kind-to-your-pecker day.’

  I said, ‘Maybe—’

  He said, ‘What’s up? Not so long since you saw the missis?’

  I said I didn’t have no missis.

  He said, ‘So, then.’ Then he said, blowing out a big cloud of smoke, as if that was about as much as anything meant to him, ‘I have.’ And he took something else from his wallet and passed it to me.

  I looked, and I thought, I want one of those. I want one like that.

  I looked at him and he looked back as if he hadn’t noticed the question in my look or he wasn’t going to answer it.

  He said, ‘Different place, different rules, eh?’

  I said, ‘Lucky man,’ passing back the photo.

  He said, ‘No, that’s you, remember? Drink up.’

  Then he led me out into the noise and the glare and the stink, and I never said – I wasn’t that much of a dummy – ‘I aint ever been to a —. I aint ever.’ Nearest I got was when Lily Foster tossed me off in the air-raid shelter, in the days when the only raids shelters saw were internal. I put my hand down her knickers, like I was rummaging in a bag of All-sorts, but she said, ‘I aint letting you in there.’ And I came so quick and sudden I messed up her skirt, must be hard for a girl to explain. Messed up my chances of any seconds an’ all.

  But as we dodged the touts and beggars he said, ‘Tell you what, Raysy, we’ll go and see the Pyramids after.’ So maybe he knew.

  And so there’s a photo of Jack and me, taken that afternoon, sitting on a camel, with the Pyramids behind us. There must be a thousand bloody photos of old desert campaigners sitting on camels with the Pyramids behind them, but this was Jack and me. And that camel was the nearest I ever got to being a jockey. He said, ‘You sure about this?’ I said, ‘It’s all right, I used to drive the old man’s horse and cart.’ He said, ‘Yes, but this aint a horse an
d cart, it’s a camel.’ You wouldn’t have thought it would’ve bothered him, of all things, a camel. I said, ‘Trust me,’ and he said, ‘I trust you, I aint got no choice.’

  So there we are, sitting on a camel, in the brass frame on Jack’s sideboard, beside the fruit bowl. I’m laughing fit to bust. Jack’s trying to laugh. The camel aint even cracking its face. And Amy never knew, and she still don’t, what we were doing just hours before that photo was taken. ‘Second ride of the day, eh Raysy?’ Or that that was the day I first saw a photo of her.

  I said, ‘Amazing though, aint it, Jack? Ancient Egypt. One of the sights.’

  He said, ‘You’ll see some sights.’

  And so I did, so we both did. Just as well I was in insurance, and Jack was in butchery. It seems amazing now, like ancient history, that I was ever there, with Jack, in the desert. That I advanced with Jack from Egypt into Libya and retreated with him to Egypt and advanced again into Libya. A small man at big history. And somewhere in the same desert Lenny Tate was advancing and retreating, though we never knew him then. And Micky Dennis was killed at Belhamed and Bill Kennedy at Matruh, and Jack said it was unfair that a pharaoh got a whole pyramid when there was a good half of Bill that wasn’t even in that grave. Then on to Tripoli, and never a scratch, never a scratch. Save that once. And it wasn’t me, it was Jack. Clipped him on the left shoulder, went crack over my own head. But he always said if I hadn’t been there to pull him down smart off of those sandbags, he’d’ve copped it worse. He’d’ve been like Bill Kennedy. Smack in the wife’s-best-friend.

  I saw it when he was lying there after his op. The new scar on his stomach, the old scar on his shoulder.

  See this, Nursey? Come a bit closer. Got it in North Africa. If it wasn’t for my mate Lucky there I wouldn’t be here.

  He said, ‘Your first choice, Ray. As long as you don’t pick the one with the big diddies on the right.’

  But it wasn’t easy, because I’d never seen five girls together before, leaning on a wooden balcony, naked except for some beads and frillies. Like looking at a row of iced buns. And all of them giggling.

  I said, ‘They’re laughing, Jack.’

  He said, ‘What do you want ’em to do, cry?’

  So I chose the smallest. No saying why, but it was a good choice as it turned out. I reckon I needed someone who could show me how to do what I’d never done before, so I could do it without help next time, and who wouldn’t let on. No matter that Jack must have guessed anyway. I bet he did.

  ‘Good choice, Ray. Your size.’

  And when she got me into her little bivvy – about fifteen flies and a gallon of perfume – the problem wasn’t so much in the actions as in the words. Like when she said, ‘You lick me?’ This was after she’d dropped everything, turned round, wiggled and turned round again, all of a bobble. And I had my tongue half out, like I was at the docs, before I thought, She means ‘like me’, she means ‘like me’. Though I suppose I’ll never know. Or when, after I’d shot my jollop, quick as spit, same problem as with Lily Foster but at least I got inside, at least I was on target, and I’d got up to go, hoisting up my khakis, because I thought that was it, short and sweet, best not dwelt on, she said, ‘You got ten mints. Look at cluck. What your fren think, you go now?’

  And when we went back on to the balcony it was Jack who was already there, waiting, leaning on the balcony, smoking, telling the other girls, who were still giggling, things they didn’t understand and trading lip with two sappers who were haggling with the madam in the yard below, like he could do them a better price.

  He says, ‘Well how was it, Ray? Madam Yashmak here was just about to come and prise you apart.’

  But I didn’t have to answer because my one was right behind me and she answers for me. She says, ‘Very good, very good. Little man, big cuck.’

  Jack says, ‘Cuck? Cuck!’ Then everyone starts laughing and I go red as ketchup.

  ‘Cuck?’ Jack’s laughing and the girls are giggling and the sappers in the yard are looking up and laughing too, and we’re in Cairo, in Egypt, in Africa, in the middle of a war.

  ‘Well, Raysy, that sounds like just about everything rolled into one.’

  Including luck.

  VINCE

  So I hit her. I hit Sally Tate.

  Because I said, ‘Do you know where babies come from?’ and she said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I do.’ Then I didn’t say nothing, so she said, ‘Well tell me, tell me where babies come from.’ So I said, ‘Hops. They come from hops,’ and she looked at me like she was going to laugh.

  She said, ‘What are hops?’

  I said I wasn’t too sure but they were the things. You had to do something with them, called hop-picking.

  She was looking at me with this laugh in her face, like she knew all along how babies got made. It must have been her who started the joke. You should never share your secrets. A little joke on top of the big joke, but it stuck. So Lenny would say, years after, ‘Have another beer, Vince, have some more baby juice.’

  But it wasn’t why I was asking her, or telling her. It wasn’t the hops or how you picked them, it was who. It was who picked them.

  So then I said what I was meaning to say. It wasn’t Jack and Amy who picked my hops, they picked someone else’s hops. She was called June. So it was true what the other kids said, the ones I hit. Vincey’s got a sister. But it wasn’t true as well, because my hops were picked by someone else, they were picked by—

  And she said she knew, she knew that already.

  So I hit her. She wasn’t laughing but I hit her like I hit those other kids.

  And I didn’t stop hitting those other kids, I carried on hitting them, more and harder. Because I knew now it was true what they said, and not true. Because she wasn’t my sister. June aint my sister, I aint got no sister. And though it was true she wasn’t my sister, I hit all the harder because of her, I hit on behalf of her, because she couldn’t hit for herself. Because before, when I never knew about June, I didn’t have no one to hit on behalf of, I just hit.

  I thought, It’s one thing I can do for her. Because though she wasn’t my sister I reckoned I was like her anyhow. Not like her like they said, funny in the head, but like her for having been played a trick on. So I hit.

  The boys I hit. Alec Clarke I hit, Freddy Newman I hit. The girls I didn’t hit, except Sally. You aint supposed to hit girls, they’re different. But they know about hitting, they aint so different. So when one or two or a whole pack of ’em started up at me, same stuff as the boys only worse sometimes, I wouldn’t hit them, I’d say, ‘Show us your knickers.’

  That was when Sally joined in, I noticed that, when it got like a game, when they’d start skipping and jigging and hopping in front of me, ‘Look, Vince, look at all these hops,’ trying to make me get to the point where I wouldn’t be able to hit them.

  Because up to then she’d kept her distance, we weren’t speaking. Because I’d hit her.

  But she didn’t just give me a quick flash and run off screaming and shrieking like the others then sneak back for more. She said, ‘Come with me, Vince.’ We were picking our way through the bomb-site, through the weeds and bricks and rubbish and I aint ever thought what a bomb-site was before, it was just a word. Then she stopped and stood and looked at me and lifted up her skirt with both hands so the hem was touching her nose, like a veil. And it wasn’t so much her knickers. They were dark blue, they weren’t so interesting. It was the fact that she was standing there in front of me with her skirt held up like she was folding a tablecloth, all ready for inspection. So I said, ‘Show me your pisshole.’

  It was all different now with Sally.

  She said, ‘No.’ So I said, ‘Or I’ll hit you.’ So she said, ‘If you show me yours.’

  I said, ‘I aint got a pisshole, I got a willy.’

  She said, ‘You piss through it, don’t you?’ So I didn’t say nothing and she said, ‘Well?’

  Her face was all big and serious. I thought
, She aint like a girl now, she’s like a woman, with a life.

  So I hoisted up a leg of my shorts, quick, maybe half a second’s worth, but she said, ‘Again,’ like she was in charge. She looked, then she put her hand on it. She put her hand on it and felt, like she was feeling something she might want to buy, a tomato or something, like it was something her dad sold. Don’t Squeeze Me Till I’m Yours.

  So I hit her.

  She was the only girl I hit. She must have known she was special. But the boys I hit unselective. I hit Terry Spencer. I hit Dave Croft. So the headmaster hauls me in for a talking-to. He was called Mr Snow and he used to breathe heavy and slow through his nose whenever he was angry, so we called him Snorter. I suppose it wasn’t so simple for him, if he knew that I knew what I knew. Which I think he did. He said, Could I tell him the meaning of the word ‘bully’? When you’re that age there’s a whole lot of things you can’t find no words for, but what I said to him, one way or another, after he’d snorted a bit, was could he tell me the meaning of the word ‘orphan’?

  And I’d say that was a good answer, I’d say that was one of the best answers I ever give.

  So he leans back in his chair and snorts and twiddles his pen. When I went in to see that surgeon I thought of Mr Snow. Life’s a process of going before geezers who want to see you crawl.

  He says, ‘What do you want to be, Vince? What are you going to be?’

  I think, That’s a daft question because I’m something already. He looks at me, twiddling his pen. But the point is I aint even sure what I am in the first place. So I don’t say nothing but I ruffle up and he can see it. There’s playground noises coming from outside. I’d like to be Gary Cooper but I can’t. I’d like to be all kinds of people, I’d even like to be Mr Snow putting some other poor kid on the mat, but I can’t because I’m me. I think, This is what it must be like for June. There are all these people around her who aren’t like June, because she’s different, and if June thinks at all then she must think, I don’t want to be like me, I want to be like them but I can’t I can’t I can’t.