Graham Swift - Last Orders

I think, You might have done both.

He says, 'Amy don't give up.'

I think, Who's talking?

He says, 'June aint ever going to change, is she? Still a baby, aint she, a fifty-year-old baby? But maybe I can.'

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 Vie 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, Vie,' 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, Vie. 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?

Til 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, Vie, what I once wanted to be?'

I look at him. 'A doctor.'

It's a good trade.

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 aim 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 and 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.'