Graham Swift - Last Orders

I thought, First my daughter buggers off to Sydney and stops writing, now my wife goes and bunks it. And they call me Lucky.

I thought, It don't help you much, having been at the battle of El Alamein.

Another man wouldVe acted different. But what I did was to sit there in the dark, not moving, not budging, till I wasn't sitting there any more, I was curled up with all my clothes still on and it was six in the morning. Then I got up and washed and shaved and changed my clothes and put two slices of toast under the grill and made tea like I wasn't thinking of anything. I washed up what was in the sink. I checked what was in my wallet and put some things in a bag. Then I went round to the yard, where the old stable had been turned by Charlie Dixon into a lock-up. I bought a Sporting Life on the way and twenty Player's and thought, I'm alive on this Wednesday morning. It was late April. I backed out the camper and wiped the dust off the windscreen with the engine still running. I looked at the tyres and thought of opening the engine compartment, but what was there to fuss over when the thing had hardly been driven? I checked all was okay in the back: the gas burners and cylinder, water carrier, the standby box with the kettle and mugs and tea-towel and stuff. Guide to Places of Interest in England and Wales. I drove out through the gates, stopped, got out and closed the gates, CHAS. DIXON, SITES CLEARED, and did the bolts and the padlock. It was a bright, clear morning. Then I jumped back in and drove to Newmarket.

And passion wagons.

If you want to get your oats, get a car.

I said, 'Hop in, Mand.'

I used to drive her out along the old A20, or the Sevenoaks road or where we're driving right now. Turn off somewhere before Rochester. Badger's Mount, Shoreham Valley, Brands Hatch, all that part of Kent. But I never took her further - down Memory Lane. I could've stopped, just like Jack did, and said, This is where. But it didn't need no mystery tours, because I told her straight out anyway, the time we first had it off in the back of Ray's camper, the whole story, the complete Jack and Amy set-up. June an' all.

She said, 'So Jack and Amy took you in, just like me. They were good to you like they were good to me.' Like she was speaking up on their behalf.

I said, 'I never asked 'em no favours.'

But we were two of a kind, all the same, Mandy and me.

You'd hit the country sooner, them days, driving out, and the traffic wasn't so thick, so it served two purposes. I could test my handiwork on the latest motor, I could see if it didn't go a lot better for having been given a going-over by me. Then we could test our handiwork on each other. In them early days we saw a fair range of back seats.

It's true we could've got out and walked and spread a rug down somewhere on some cosy patch of grass and done it like the bunny rabbits. Sometimes we did. But the ground aint always dry and the air aint always warm and I suppose she cottoned on anyhow soon enough that I liked doing it in cars, I did. An old black cracked leather seat the best. I liked it cramped and squashed and hasty, as if that was how you really had to do it, seeing as you had nowhere proper to do it, and I reckon that's how she liked it too, because it didn't take much coaxing, a look, a nod, and there she'd be with her legs round my neck. I said, 'You sure you aint done it in cars before?' and she said she never had no boyfriends in Blackburn with cars. I said, 'Boyfriends? What are they? You must have done it somewhere though.' She said, 'How d'you work that out?'

She'd sit on my cock, then she'd reach up to the roof of the camper, which was just about at the right height, and push.

I know it wasn't what she'd reckoned on, what she'd pictured, but people adapt quick, they adjust quick. They shove aside the pie-in-the-sky. I know she'd seen herself swinging away in Swinging London, wherever that was, or tooling around, making love not war with some long-haired tossers. Instead of which she gets scooped up off the streets, no questions asked, by Jack and Amy on her first night in town, as if she's run away from one mum and dad just to find another. And she aint so ungrateful, all things considered, she aint so disappointed. I said, They've done this before, you know, a long time ago. I said, spelling it out> 'It's because you're supposed to be the sister I aint got' Which is when she could've done another runner, smart, if she'd wanted, but she didn't.

Instead of what she'd reckoned on, she got me: Vince Dodds, son of a doodlebug, fresh back from the arsehole of Arabia. Lying under a motor most of the time, when he wasn't lying on top of her.

I said I ran away an' all. I ran away to the Army. Most people run away from the Army but I ran away to it. Because I wasn't going to be no butcher's boy, just for him. She said, lSo why did you come back?' I said it was different now, wasn't it? I had my own set-up now, thanks to Uncle Ray, and thanks to the Royal Electrical and Mechanicals. If Jack thought I was going to give up mucking around with motors and put on a white apron again, he had another think coming.

She said, 'If you hate him so much, why haven't you moved out?'

I said, 'I have, sweetheart, aint you noticed? It's you that's moved in.'

She said, (I meant permanent.'

I said I was biding my time. Step by step, little by little. First my business had to take off, then I'd get a place of my own.

She said, 'Your business?' I said, 'Yeh.'

She used to lick my tattoos, like she might lick 'em off. She said, 'When you get a place of your own, will there be room for me?'

I said, 'Might be, if you ask nice. This aint bad for now.' Came in handy, that camper.

Two of a kind, though we didn't look it. She was eighteen, I was twenty-three. I suppose I must have seemed to her at times like I belonged with some other bunch, some older bunch, like I was her bleeding uncle. She used to say now and then I ought to change, get with it, switch on. Roy Orbison had shot his bolt. I said I changed a long time ago, I switched right over, didn't I? Became a different person, didn't I? And 'with it'? Did she think I aint been around? I'd been on the hippie trail to Aden. Had she ever seen someone with their head sliced off? Well then.

She looked at me, blinking.

The world was changing all right, I knew that. I aint unaware. But I said I'll tell you what the big change is, the change underneath all the change. It aint the Beatles and it aint the Rolling Stones and it aint long hair or short skirts or free milk and baby-stoppers on the National Health. It's mobility, it's being mobile. How did you get to here from Blackburn? How did you get to shake off your ma and pa? Time was when the only way you got to travel was in the Army, though not everywhere's worth the trip, I'm telling you. But watch 'em all on the move now, watch 'em all going places. You listening? Ten years from now the Beatles and the Stones will be old-time music but what they'll still want is wheels. Wheels. More and more wheels. And I'll be there to sell 'em, Vince Dodds'll be right there to sell 'em. I'm in the right trade, the travel trade. So don't tell me I aint with it.

She looked at me as if she was doing a bit of trading of her own in her head.

She said, 'Course you are, lover.'

SheM twist the ends of her hair and suck 'em, like a schoolgirl.

I said, 'If it weren't for Hitler, Jack would never've budged from that shop. But one day Jack'll come crawling to me, you see.'

She said, 'Course he will, pet,'

We'd hit the road and head out through the suburbs, like we'd robbed a bank and were on the run. Just runnin' scared! Du-du-du-duml There was a lay-by out beyond Swanley with a mobile caff where they'd sizzle up bacon waddies and brew tea like it had to be stirred with a dipstick. The cars would whack by and the slipstreams would tug the steam from our mugs and flip her long hair. I'll always see her standing by a road. Then we'd find our own little private lay-by somewhere. It was like the car joined in with us. Crazy for it, we'd be. Slippery with it, have to mop down afterwards. Then we'd go for a walk in the woods, across the fields, listen to the birdies, take the air, clock the view. I said - I thought it would impress her, coming from Blackburn, I thought she'd be impressed, it coming from me -They call Kent the Garden of England: