Graham Swift - Last Orders

But Jack's not special, he's not special at all. I'd just like to say that, please. I'd just like to point that out, as a professional and a friend. He's just one of the many now. In life there are differences, you make distinctions, it's the back seat for me from now on. But the dead are the dead, I've watched them, they're equal. Either you think of them all or you forget them. It doesn't do in remembering one not to remember the others. Dempsey, Richards. And it doesn't do when you remember the others not to spare a thought for the ones you never knew. It's what makes all men equal for ever and always. There's only one sea.

He slows down suddenly, moving across to the inside lane, and we all breathe easier. He takes the slip road for the exit coming up, not saying a word. Junction 6, Ashford, Faversham. He takes the Ashford road, like he knows exactly what he's doing, though it aint the way to Margate, and after a mile or so he turns off that too. We're all looking at him, not speaking. He says, 'Detour,' eyes on the road, not budging his head, 'detour.'

The road gets narrower and twistier, trees arching across, hedges, fields. I suppose you could say we're in the country now, we're a long way from Bermondsey. The trees are all flecked with green. The sky's blue and grey and white, the sun coming in bursts. He takes another turn, and another, like there's a map in his head. We go along a ridge with a view off to our right, a big, wide view, wherever there's a gap in the hedge. It's as though he's got keen on views. Then the road climbs a bit, still on the ridge, and near the top of the climb he slows, looking this way and that, and pulls over where there's a wide bit of verge and a gate in the hedge. There's just a bare track leading off and down across a field, two chalky ruts, and there's one of those green signs sticking up and pointing by the gate: 'Public Footpath'.

He turns off the engine. We can hear sheep bleating in the distance. He looks at me and says, 'Raysy,' holding out his hand, palm up, fingers twitching, and I know he means the bag, the box, he means Jack. He says it in a way you don't argue with or ask why, so I hand it over. He takes the box out of the bag and tosses the bag back into my lap, Rochester Food Fayre. Then he flips open the box and pulls out the jar and chucks the box back into my lap too. His face is set hard. He opens his door and gets out, holding the jar tight against his chest.

He doesn't reach over for his jacket or go round to the boot for his coat. He slams the door and walks over to the gate. The breeze whips his tie over his shoulder and balloons out his shirt. The gate's metal and clanky. He fiddles with a bolt, pushing up on one of the crossbars, then opens the gate just enough for him to slip through. There's a rusty streak on the sleeve of his white shirt. He looks out across the field, then he swings shut the gate, which clangs and judders behind him, and sets off along the track.

Lenny says, 'Jesus, what now?'

Vie don't say a thing, like it's all down to him, it's him who's given Vince the idea in the first place. Find yourself a hill.

I say, 'Search me.'

It's Lenny who gets out first, then me, then Vie. The breeze hits us sharpish. It's muddy underfoot. We ought to get our coats from the boot but Lenny's already moved to the gate, struggling with the bolt, like he's twigged quicker than us what's going on.

'Toe-rag,' he says, 'toe-rag. He aint got no prior claim.'

Vince is walking across the field to where it starts to slope steeply, his red tie flicking like a tongue over his shoulder. It's not so much a field as an open hillside. We can see the full sweep of the view, like we're standing on the rim of a big, crooked bowl. Down in the valley it's all green and brown and patchy, woods marked off with neat edges and corners, hedges like stitching. There's a splodge of red brick in the middle with a spire sticking up. It looks like England, that's what it looks like.

The field slopes up to the left, to a crest, where there's a clump of trees and, peeping up from the other side, a tar-brown stump of a building, a windmill, with its sails missing. In front of us the field slopes down gently, maybe for eighty yards, then drops away. There must be a whole chunk of the view you can't see till you get to the brow.

Near the gate the grass is trodden bare and sprinkled with sheep shit. There's a water trough tucked in by the hedge, galvanized metal. We can hear sheep and smell sheep and we can see them, off to the left, dotted across the slope. They're all staring at Vince as he walks across the field, except for the little 'uns, the lambs. They seem keener on running this way and that or tucking in under their mothers. Now and then one of them starts jumping about like it's stepped on something electric.

Lenny wrestles with the bolt.

'He aint got no special rights,' he says, 'he aint kin.' He frees the bolt. 'Never was, was he?'

He pushes open the gate and before Vie and me have slipped through behind him he darts off along the track after Vince. It's like the climb up to that memorial has got him in shape, it was just a warm-up.

Vince is getting near the brow, he hasn't looked back once. One elbow's stuck out where he's holding the jar and his shirt's billowing and flapping. If it wasn't that everything seems to have gone crazy, you'd say he looked a complete berk, out there in the middle of a field, holding a plastic pot, with his white shirt and his flash tie and a flock of sheep baa-ing at him.

Lenny's moving so fast me and Vie are struggling to keep up with him. He's about twenty yards away from Vince when Vince stops on the brow and stands there, steady, pausing but like he's already made up his mind about something. For a moment he looks like a man perched on the edge of a cliff but as we get closer, we can see the hillside dipping sharply away and we can see the hidden part of the valley below: a wood, a road, a farmhouse. Orchards, oasthouses.

Then we see Vince start to unscrew the cap from the jar.

Lenny says 'Toe-rag,' as if he'd known in advance what Vince was going to do.

The cap looks hard to shift, like the lid on a new jar of jam. We're just a few yards from Vince now and he can see us coming at him. It's like he's prepared for that, like he even wants us as witnesses. But he aint prepared for what Lenny does next.

Lenny snatches at his arm, the arm that's working on the cap, and Vince pulls away and lifts the jar up high so Lenny can't reach it. The cap's still on but it looks like it's hanging on loose, just by the thread. Vince dodges to one side but Lenny goes at him again. This time he grabs him by the tie and with his other hand takes hold of his shirt front. I see a wodge of Vince's stomach and a button flying. Then Vince goes down, sudden, caught off balance, arm held up high. He tries to hang on to the jar but as he tumbles, it pops out of his grasp and Vince and me watch it falling. We watch it falling keener than we watch Vince falling because when it hits the ground one of two things could happen, or both. The loose cap could fly off and what's inside spill out, or the jar could bounce bad and start rolling all the way down the steep slope of the hill.

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 Vie 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.