Last Orders (16 page)

But it comes to rest against a clump of thistles and the cap stays on.

Lenny scoots over and picks it up, twisting the cap on tighter. Then Vince lurches to his feet and goes for him. Vince’s shirt’s come untucked. There’s a muddy green streak
down his left sleeve to match the rusty brown one on his right. He tries wrenching the jar from Lenny’s hands and slips again and puts a hand out to break his fall and Lenny pulls the jar clear.

Vince gets up, all fired up now, all hunched and snorting and puffing, and Lenny holds out the jar in front of him in both hands, teasing and sort of skipping on the spot. I’ve never seen Lenny so neat on his pins. Vince moves forward and Lenny moves back, dodging, like he could chuck the jar to Vic or me if that was the idea and we were ready to catch it, but he does a sort of rugby flip with it, low and quick to one side, so it lands on the grass away from any of us, then he steps round so he’s between it and Vince, and puts out his fists and starts ducking and weaving.

‘Come on, Big Boy. Come on, tosser.’

Vince holds off for a moment, thinking, like he’s not so choked up as to take on a man Lenny’s age. But he can see the jar on the grass behind Lenny, and Lenny don’t look so past it, all of a sudden, he looks like a man with a purpose. He looks like it might be all over for him in just a while but right now he’s planning on having his moment. Vic makes a little sighing, clucking sound beside me. Either of us could sneak round and grab the jar but we don’t. I reckon Vic’s not going to step in and be the referee, not this time.

Lenny says, ‘Wasn’t no love lost, was there? Was there?’

Vince goes forward, not putting his fists up, elbows out, hands splayed, like he’s just daring Lenny, and Lenny goes forward and puts in a punch straight away, no messing, a good quick jab to the middle of the chest. It makes Vince stop and stagger, like he hadn’t really bargained on it.

‘That’s for Sally,’ Lenny says, gasping, then he puts in another punch.

‘And that’s for Jack.’

This time Vince don’t stand and take it. He recovers, then comes in, grabbing Lenny’s leading arm before Lenny can get his puff back. He holds Lenny’s wrist and he shoves him twice under the throat with the flat of his other hand, like he could use more force if he wanted but he aint being so soft either. He moves his hand up on to Lenny’s face, clawing and squeezing, and jerks Lenny’s head back, once, twice, with Lenny’s eyes sort of popping out between his fingers, then he takes the hand away so Lenny can breathe and Lenny says, ‘Fists, pillock,’ and wops Vince on the mouth. It looks like it hurts Lenny more. Then Vince takes hold of Lenny’s arm with both hands and pulls him and swings him round, snarling, so they’re twirling like a pair of ice skaters. He lets go and Lenny goes flying and tumbling. Then Vince goes and stands over him like you can’t tell if it’s to kick him or to see if he’s all right. He puts out a hand and Lenny takes it, pulling himself up, then he socks Vince hard in the ribs and Vince shoves him back down again.

Me and Vic don’t move an inch.

Lenny’s sort of sprawled, half sitting, half lying, leaning on his hands, breathing and dribbling. Vince is standing over him, bent, breathing too. All you can hear is their breathing and the sheep bleating and baa-ing like spectators. Vince could get the jar now but it’s like he’s not sure of Lenny. He moves round slowly, so he’s between the jar and Lenny, as Lenny pushes himself up.

Lenny’s face looks like it’s roasting and he’s hee-hawing like a donkey, swaying on his feet. Vince steps back, gasping too, and picks up the jar. Then he comes forward with it slowly like it’s him who’s teasing Lenny now. You can see the look in Lenny’s eyes, for all he’s trying to hide it. It says, ‘I’m beat, I’m done for. It’s all I can do to breathe,’ and all your feeling would be for Lenny standing there, breathing,
except that Vince is swaying and staggering and gasping too and looking unsure at Lenny. And there’s another thing about Vince. His face is all wet, his eyes are wet. He’s clutching the jar like a kid holding a toy.

He says, ‘I wasn’t going to chuck the lot, I wasn’t going to chuck the lot.’ He’s started to unscrew the cap again.

Lenny looks at him, not speaking, swaying, breathing.

‘Just a bit,’ Vince says, ‘only a bit.’

Lenny looks at him then he speaks, all hoarse and croaky. ‘So what’s the idea? You going to stop off every ten minutes and chuck some more? A handful here, a handful there?’

Vince carries on unscrewing the cap. He wipes his face. It’s like a temptation. It’s like when you take a box of chocolates to someone who’s ill, to someone in hospital, and you start tucking into them yourself, first one, then another. It’s like when you’re looking after what belongs to someone else and you go and take it for yourself.

Vince says, ‘What’s the meaning of “scatter”?’ He wipes his hand across his face. ‘What’s the meaning of the word “scatter”?’

Lenny says, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, pillock.’

But it’s like Lenny’s ashamed of himself too, standing there, ready to drop. It looks like he’s thinking he’s hashed up the day.

Vince has got the cap off now. He looks quickly into the jar. The sheep are still staring at us. I reckon we must look as daft to them as they do to us, and I reckon anyone looking up from down below at the four of us on the top of this hill must think we’re stranger-looking than the sheep.

Vince puts the cap into his pocket, then he hugs the jar closer to him and dips his free hand into it. His eyes are all gooey. He moves away from Lenny, turning his back
towards him. It seems Lenny hasn’t got the heart or strength to stop him. Vic and me don’t stop him either. He moves to the edge of the slope, to face the view, his back to us all. In the distance there’s a sort of trough of sunshine, a parting in the sky, but nearer to us a big, soft, sooty cloud is moving in. The breeze gets up. It’s cold but I don’t suppose Vince or Lenny can feel it. The ground smells of spring, the air smells of winter. Then there’s a dash of rain.

Vince stands, facing the view, with his back straight and his feet planted. I’d say that shirt of his is pretty well wrecked and those trousers are going to need a good clean. Mandy’ll need an explanation. He splutters like he’s trying to announce something but he can’t get it out or he don’t know what it is. He delves in the jar and he throws quickly, spluttering, once, twice. It looks like white dust, like pepper, but the wind blows it into nothing. Then he screws the cap back on and turns, coming towards us.

‘This is where,’ he says, wiping his face. ‘This is where.’

He said, ‘So now I know, Raysy.’

It was a full day and a half after the operation that wasn’t no operation, so he wasn’t groggy and slow and confused any more. Sharp and clear as I’ve ever seen him, sitting up there in that little white smock thing, with the extra tubes going in, some round the back now. It seemed like every day they rigged up another tube. But there were others in there that were all tubes, tubes and wires and bottles and apparatus, complete chemistry sets. So you had to look close to see if there was really a human life, a human component still there somewhere.

But he was sitting up, straight and steady. I thought, It’s like he’s having his portrait done, his last portrait, no flattering, no prettying, and no one knows how long it will take. Two weeks, three. Nothing to do but sit still and be who you are.

I don’t know what you say to someone when they say that they know. I reckon the imagination’s a million miles from the fact. So I looked down at the bedclothes and up at him again and he was still looking at me, straight and steady, straight into my eyes, like if he could get a grip then I should, like he aint stopped being himself, just because. On the contrary.

He says, ‘No telling, is there?’ Then he says, ‘Lambs to the slaughter, eh Lucky.’

The road went on, black and curving and cat’s-eyed, like the one sure thing in the wet and the dark and the spray, the one sure thing in the world. Not the place from or the place to but the road.

I said, ‘So what’ve you got in the back?’ For something to say. He said, looking at me, ‘Carcasses,’ and I thought, Trust my luck. After only six hours.

He said, ‘Long way from home then?’

I nodded, feeling my head heavy, my neck sagging with tiredness.

He said, ‘So where would that be?’

He leant forward, arms hugging the steering wheel.

I said, ‘Blackburn.’

27, Ollerton Road, Blackburn.

He said, ‘But not any more, eh?’ pulling a packet of ciggies from his shirt pocket. ‘Blackburn rover, eh?’ grinning at his own joke. ‘London, eh?’

I nodded.

He shook the packet of cigarettes, nudged one up with his thumb and drew it out with his mouth. He passed the packet to me but I shook my head.

He said, ‘Day trip or for ever?’ feeling for a lighter. I didn’t answer. He flicked the lighter and I saw his face, red and bunched and knotty, in the flame. He said, ‘How old are you, love?’ breathing out smoke.

I didn’t answer.

He said, ‘Seventeen?’ He took another drag on the cigarette, looking at the road like it was his road, the wipers
dancing across the windscreen.
‘Just seventeen, you know what I mean’
, sort of singing. He said, ‘I can take you to London, love. I can take you where I’m taking my meat.’

He turned and I was looking straight at him. He said, ‘What are you looking at?’

I said, ‘You remind me of my dad.’

It’s a good line, a handy line, stops ’em in their tracks. I’d used it before.

Besides, he did, just a bit. Remind me.

And it was him I’d blame, my dad, my dad Bill. It was him I’d give as my excuse, if I was ever called to account, if I ever found myself slinking back, or being carted in a cop car, to Ollerton Road. I wasn’t the first to leave, was I? It was him who set me my example.

Maybe he was thinking of me right now, with his floozy in the Isle of Man, if that was where and how it was. Waking up in the small hours, lighting a ciggy. Rain on the window. I wonder what that Mandy’s up to, I wonder what that lass is doing right now.

He used to say, ‘You’re a wicked girl, Mandy, you’re a wicked girl.’ But always with a sideways smile or a wink or a click of the tongue, whether I’d done wrong or not, as if it was only ever ten per cent a ticking-off and ninety per cent a show of approval. ‘You’re a wicked girl, I don’t know what’s going to become of you,’ looking at me like one day he was going to have to come and pull me out of trouble. And I used to like saying, because it had just a touch of wickedness itself and because it was different from what the other girls said about their fathers, ‘My dad’s a sailor.’ Sailor Bill. Barnacle Bill.

Not that working on car ferries made you a real sailor.
Fleetwood to Douglas, there and back inside a day. And in winter, Heysham to Douglas, an hour longer. But when I heard him leaving in the early mornings, trying to coax that clapped-out Hillman into life, I’d think, He’ll be at sea soon, my dad Bill, the voyage out, the voyage home.

Except one day he never came back.

I never said ‘seaman’, it didn’t sound right, though it was a wicked word too, a giggle word, if you said it the wrong way. Why is a ship like a rubber johnny? Because it’s full of seamen. And he’d been a real sailor once, or so he said. He’d seen the world. Shanghai, Yokohama. But then he’d met Mum and the world-seeing days had come to an end, or so she said. One wild night in Liverpool. Brown arms, tattoos and a large pinch of salt.
Sailor, stop your roaming.
Though it’s hard to imagine that ever having happened, it’s hard to imagine Mum having been that woman, when you saw what she got for herself by way of replacement, that creep Neville from the Town Hall. ‘Mandy, I want you to meet Mr Lonsdale.’ Neville Lonsdale, Town Planning. And from then on we were going to lead a different sort of life.

He used to put that pasty face in front of mine, dimpling like a vicar, and say, ‘So what do you want to be, Mandy, what do you want to do when you grow up?’ As if it earned him points in her eyes. Someone at last with a bit of concern, with a bit of respect. Neville the devil. What I wanted to say was that I wanted to be wicked, I wanted to be wicked like Dad said I was anyway. I wanted to be Mandy Black, and I wanted to be wicked.

And so I was. I hung around in pubs and dance-halls, I twisted and shouted, I let hands scurry up my skirt, and worse. I let myself be pushed up against walls. I gave Mum and Neville hell, which was only what they gave me. But more than that, I said to my best friend and partner-in-sin,
Judy Battersby, ‘How about it? London. Bright lights. You and me.’ But she never showed up, she chickened out, the cow.

And I suppose what I always hoped, right up until the last moment, was that he’d come back anyway, with five years’ worth of excuses. That he’d throw down his kit-bag then he’d throw Neville out the front door. Then I wouldn’t have to run away myself.

But they found the Hillman in Liverpool, not Fleetwood. So he might have gone anywhere. Not a floozy in the Isle of Man but floozies all over, in Shanghai and Yokohama. I had this picture of him, which I still have, it’s a daft picture but I still have it. That he’d sailed away to the South Seas. Grass skirts and coconut trees. He’s still there now, thirty years younger, with a flower stuck behind his ear. Not the Isle of Man. Isle of Woman, more like.

He said, ‘What’s your name, love?’

I said, ‘Judy.’

He said, ‘Mick. Anywhere London or somewhere London?’

I said, ‘Anywhere London.’

He said, ‘I’ll take you to Smithfield. Heard of Smithfield? There in two hours. It’s all right, love, it’s okay, you can nod off.’

So Mandy Black, or Judy Battersby as she was travelling as, arrived in London in a meat lorry and got carted away again in a butcher’s van, without so much as a peep at Leicester Square. It’s a famous story, it’s done the rounds, it might even have reached Ollerton Road. Blackburn to Bermondsey,
going up in the world. But now when I think of it, now when I see them huddled up in shop entrances and archways, in smelly blankets, I think, I was lucky. And when I think of that girl with a rucksack heading down the A5, I think, That was my adventure, my big adventure, though it hardly lasted twelve hours.