Graham Swift - Last Orders

But what I said was, 'Have you heard from Vincey at all? I hear they're going to ship 'em all back home.'

But next time when I picked her up I had the words all ready and the opportunity all crying out to be taken. It was a bright, breezy day in April. It was like this day, with Jack's ashes. I felt, Life can change, it can, even when you think it can't any more. All the same it took me all the way to Clapham before I said it. The sun was flickering through the trees on Clapham Common. I said, 'We aint going to the Home today, Amy, we aint going to see June.' Somehow I knew she wouldn't argue. I said, 'I've got a picnic all ready in the back there. Sandwiches, thermos.' It was the spring meeting at Epsom. I said, 'You fancy a day at the races?'

But we didn't see so much of the races. It must've been the first time I'd been to a racecourse without taking a proper punt. I parked up on the Downs and we wandered down to the track in time for the two o'clock. We did a bet with each other, like a couple of amateurs. Her horse against mine, a quid says, and I made sure she won. Conquistador, seven to two. I could have put fifty on it and come home flush. But the weather was changing and before the next race it came on to rain, like you might have said it was timed special. Sometimes luck just runs. So I said, 'Picnic time,' and we hurried back to the camper. I suppose two people know when something's going to happen, even when they're not so sure it ought to and they don't know how they're going to bring it about and they're as afraid of it as wanting it. But they know if it's ever going to happen, now's the time. There were curtains you draw across the windows in that camper, blue and white check, so no one would know. Except by the rocking of the suspension. But I don't suppose there was much of that. I said, pulling the curtains, 'Just like home, eh? Home from home.' The rain was drumming on the roof. I thought, It can't be helped, even if it aint right. I thought, Amy chose June, she didn't choose Jack, now I've chosen Amy. They weren't so faded. When the rain stopped we heard the crowd cheering for the three ten, the big race, the strange noise of people getting het-up over a bunch of horses. And afterwards that became our regular spot, Epsom Downs, every Thursday, for fourteen weeks, racing or no racing. Till Vince showed up, then Mandy.

Well, I should've known better than to pick a fight I hadn't got a hope of winning. But that's one thing I aint ever known, better. They say it was the boxing bashed out my brains all them years back, but if you ask me there never was much brains there in the first place. I should've known better when I came out the Army than to get back into the fight game. You'd think that five years of shooting and being shot at and picking up the pieces of your dead mates would teach you a better way to make a living than trying to knock another man off his feet, but it was that or pushing a fruit-and-veg cart and that aint got no glory to it, nor quick readies neither.

I reckon I showed that pillock a thing or two, all the same. My chest feels like a bag of nails.

It's the way you're made. It's hard fighting against your own nature when it's in your nature to fight. We aint here to do the honours and pay respects to Jack because he worked so hard on his own nature he turned into something else. We're here because he was Jack.

It's like when I got back from fighting for my country and there were more bomb-holes in Bermondsey than there was at Benghazi and they couldn't find nothing better for us than a pre-fab and a ration book, I'd say to Joan, It's better I get up there in that ring and knock some feller who's chosen to do the same smack against the canvas, than I let fly at all and sundry. That's for nothing, mush, now start something. I said it's the world that makes you want to kick and punch. And she said, 'Hooey. There's another way of going about things. You can hold your head up and put your mind to it and make the best of what's available, like most people.' She's that kind of woman. I said, 'Not on hand-cuts and half a crown a day, you can't.' I said, 'Suppose I won the Worthington Tournament, that's fifty smackers. I'll put my mind to that.' I said, 'You used to like it when I won a bout, girl.' And she said, 'You're seven years older and you're going to lose.'

And I suppose it wasn't till Sally came along that I stopped proper, that I hung up my gloves and my hopes and started putting a button on my loose lip an' all. So you could say it wasn't Lenny Tate getting a hold on his own nature, it was someone else coming along and doing the trick for him, same stuff, same flesh, but different. Little Sally Tate.

It made me see too, when I got to know him and heard the story - and I never would've done if it wasn't for Sally and Vince taking a shine to each other in the playground -how hard it was for Jack, not having a little helper, only having June. How it was a darn sight harder for Amy. And how you couldn't blame Vince for being the mixed-up tyke he was. So I suppose you couldn't blame me neither for being a soft-brained berk and wanting Sally to be part of their family too.

And I think I could've forgiven Vincey in the end, if it wasn't for Sally hitching up with Tommy Tyson, and Tommy going along to Vincey's with a good-as-new BMW, only one previous owner, which he knew Vincey could see was stolen but he reckoned Vincey'd play along, being an old pal, so to speak, of Sally's. But Vincey don't take the car off him and what's more he puts the word out, and Tommy, what with his previous record and other offences taken into, does a spell inside, first of several. And I say to Vincey, 'You prick. You didn't have to take the car but you didn't have to finger Tommy. Tommy might be right where he belongs now, but you might have thought of Sally.'

He said he was doing his duty, wasn't he? His duty as a citizen. And I was the one who should've thought of Sally, seeing as it was looking like I'd disowned her.

He says, 'A hot car's a hot car. Two wrongs don't make a right.'

I might have forgiven Vincey. Sally might have forgiven me. I might never have gone spoiling for another fight again.

I reckon I showed that toe-rag, all the same, I did.

Gunner Tate. That's what they called me, because of having been in the artillery and because of the temper I used to have on me. It sounded good, like my fists were my guns. And in the semi-final of the Worthington they put me up against this scraggy kid who aint even had his call-up yet, same age as I was when I started fighting before the war. I said, 'No contest, no contest. What's the half-pint got that I aint got double?' And Dougie says, tying my gloves, 'Control on himself, and a big right.' I was thinking of the final before I even stepped in the ring for the semi. I thought, That's twenty quid for certain, that'll keep Joan quiet, and if it's me and Dan Ferguson in the big one, then it aint impossible. The bell went and I came out quick and eager and I thought, This one's going to be a cinch, two rounds, if that. Gunner Tate. Later on it became just a name that stuck: Gunner Tate, middleweight. Always pissed, always late. I came forward and he hung back, skipping round me, and I thought, You aint been nowhere, sunshine, and you aint going nowhere. You aint dragged five-fives through Libya, Sicily, all over sunnygunny Italy. You don't deserve nothing but I do. A man's got to grab a bit of glitter, a bit of pride, before he clocks off at the end of his stint. It aint worth nothing if you go down in the record books as having done distinguished service in the cause of fruit and veg. I came forward again for the quick kill and I saw his face, cool and sharp and steady as a machine. I thought, Six years between us, sonny boy, that cuts both ways. Then I saw his glove where his face had been. And then I didn't see nothing, nothing at all. Or rather I did. Because you know what they say about seeing stars. Well I saw 'em.