Graham Swift - Last Orders

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.

Good to have you back, lad. Take your time, rest up, have fun. Always a place for you in the old shop, you know that.

But he doesn't rest up and have fun, he gets to work pretty damn fast. He puts a tidy slice of his saved-up soldier's pay on one of Ray Johnson's special recommendations, and Ray, as he's been doing of late, comes good. Witness, one camper-van. Except that's a touchy subject, we don't talk about that, same as we don't talk about how Raysy came good when Lenny Tate needed a special job done for his daughter.

And Vince don't buy a camper-van, he buys a '59 Jaguar, so you might think he's letting the world know how he means to live. Takes the Army to turn out a true spiv. But he parks the Jag in Charlie Dixon's old yard, courtesy of Ray. Charlie Dixon having passed on to the scrapyard in the sky. Then he gets himself a set of tools and a trolley-jack and spends most of his days tinkering with the engine and taking it apart and putting it together again, then he touches up the bodywork and sells it. Then he buys another car and does the same, and before the year's out there are two cars standing there in Ray's yard, apart from the camper, that is, and I say to Jack» 'You can't kid yourself any longer, it aint just the lad's hobby He might want nothing better than to lie under a car all day but he aint just doing it for the love of it. It don't stop there.'