Graham Swift - Last Orders

So I go and find Amy and Mandy. But it's like I aint going nowhere, it's the corridors and swing-doors that move past me, like one of those old machines in arcades, with a steering-wheel and a picture of a road spinning round, so you got the feeling you were travelling though you weren't.

They're sitting there with their cups of tea, and they don't know nothing yet, only that Jack's alive, he aint sparked out on the table, possibility number three. But I can tell that she knows, straight away, just by looking at me, that she can see in my face what I don't even need to tell her. I say, 'He aint come round yet. Strickland's in the ward. He said he'd like to speak to you.' Then I shake my head just a fraction, like it's hard to budge it, and she looks at me like she don't want anyone to say it. As if it's all her fault and she knows it and she's sorry, and she don't see why she has to go before the headmaster and get punished extra for it, when it's punishment already, just knowing. But maybe the headmaster's going to give her a second chance. Don't ever let this happen again. So she gets up, and as she gets up Mandy squeezes her arm. Then Mandy gets up too, giving me a little nod like a question. She looks good, Mandy looks good. And I nod back.

Then we go back along the corridors, which slide past and under us while we just pretend we're walking, and Amy don't say a word till we get near the ward, when she says, "Uncle Ray ought to know.' I say, 'What?' She aint called him that for years: Uncle Ray. Like Uncle Lenny. Like I'm a nipper again.

Strickland sees us coming and he says something quick to one of the nurses, then he ushers us into an office, it aint the sister's office, it's more like a store cupboard, and shuts the door behind us. There's only two chairs and he pulls one round for Amy to sit on and Mandy takes the other one, by the door. I stand close beside Amy, and Strickland stands in front of the desk with his arse half parked on it, and as he starts talking I put my arm behind Amy's head and clasp her shoulder and I feel her hand come across and grab my other hand.

He says he don't believe in not giving the facts straight, it don't serve any purpose otherwise. When he starts to talk he's looking at Amy but he switches his eyes pretty smart to me, as though in order to talk to Amy he has to talk to me, or he's seen something in Amy's face he don't want to look at. I can't see Amy's face. I have to look straight ahead, like when you're up on a charge, before they march you into the cooler. I have to look this bugger straight in the eye.

And when he's done, it's like Amy's pretending she hasn't heard him, she's pretending she aint even in the room. So it's up to me to keep things going, to ask the questions, though there's only one question, How long? Strickland looks pleased when I do, like we've shifted into a different area which aint his department, he's a repair-man, he aint a scrap dealer, and he'll be quit of all this just as soon as he walks out of this room. He starts talking about "symptom control', which sounds to me about the same as 'inoperable', and it's while he's talking about this that I feel Amy's hands start to clutch and grab at me and I hear her start to catch her breath. Strickland carries on about symptom control, looking straight at me, but Amy keeps clutching and grabbing, like her symptoms need controlling an' all. It's like her hands are climbing, scrambling up me and I'm a ladder, an escape route, up to some hatchway out of this room. But it seems to me Amy aint ever going to get out of this room, she's going to be locked up in it for ever, her own cooler. She's like June now. And I go rigid and fixed, like a mast, like a tower, while she clings and grabs at me. Thinking, She aint my mum, she aint my mum.

Then suddenly we're out of that room, as if we didn't do nothing, again, to make it happen, the world just shifted, twisted for us, and Strickland's disappeared, he's disappeared down his own escape route. Mandy's taken charge of Amy now, she's holding her and steering her towards the exit and looking at me sort of sharp, like this is a thing between women. But Amy aint Mandy's mum either.

Like my job's the thing between men. So I go back into the unit, before I follow them out, and just stand there by his bed, looking at him. He still aint so much as flicked an eyelid, he's just lying there under the mask, and Strickland said he'd speak to him, he'd speak to him himself, but he'd leave it a good twenty-four hours, even when he's come round, because what with the anaesthetic and everything, he won't take in proper what you say to him. But it seems to me that it aint Strickland's job to tell him, it aint really his job.

I stand by the bed, like I'm a tower, a mast still, but Jack aint trying to climb up me, he's just lying flat beneath me, and I think, It might be better if he died now, without waking up, so he'd never know and no one need ever tell him. Just him never knowing and the world travelling on and on without him. What you never know don't hurt. It's like I don't remember that bomb falling, I can't ever remember that bomb falling. They said so long as you could hear them, you were all right, it was when the sound cut. But I don't even remember not hearing it. So if that bomb had killed me too, I'd never've known I'd been born, I'd never've known I'd died. So I might've been anyone. I look at him like I'm looking down at a view. Golden days before they end. And I think, Someone's got to tell him, someone's got to.

I peered over the rim of my glass at Slattery's clock.

He said, 'It aint much good to you now though, is it?'

I said, 'How come?'

He said, 'I mean, now there's just you. Now it don't look like she's coming back.'

I said, 'Other way round, aint it? I can go as I please now, I'm my own man now. Free as a bird. If I want to take off for a couple of days, then off I go, and I don't have to worry about nowhere to kip.'

I took a swill of beer and smacked my lips like a man who knows what he's about.

He said, 'That aint no life for a man. All by yourself. Dossing down in car parks, at the side of the road.'

I said, 'Maybe it's the only life, maybe it's the only life for me right now.' Then I didn't say nothing for a bit. Then I said, 'Why you asking anyway, Jack?'

He said, 'I was just thinking. If you didn't need it, if you didn't want it, I could take it off you.'

I said, 'You? What the hell would you want with a camper?'

He said, 'Well, when Carol went and hopped it - excuse me, Raysy - it set me thinking. About me and Amy. Only natural.'

I looked at him and fished out a snout.

'I mean, not that Amy— Only that we got ourselves sort of in a rut. Only that we don't get about much, do we? And I reckoned what with Sundays and some help at the shop and some time off.'

He pushed his glass around on the bar.

'I mean, now Vincey's buggered off, good and proper. Overseas. And Sue— It's like the whole world's buggering off. 'Cept Amy and me.'

I looked at him, sharp, lighting up my ciggy. I said, 'You know that's what I thought an' all, don't you? I thought, Me and Carol are just getting all cooped up, we aint seeing much of the world, are we? I'll get us a means of travel. That's what I thought. Look what happened.'

'She buggered off.' He glugged some beer. 'But Amy aint—'

We stopped talking for a bit. There was just the sound of the Coach on a Friday night. Rattling on, going nowhere.

I said, 'Amy in the know about this?'

He said, 'No, I want it to be a surprise.'

I said, 'A surprise? That's what I thought with Carol too.'

He said, 'You must've paid a bit for it an' all. I'll give you a thousand. Straight cash, no messing. You don't need no camper, Raysy, all you need is some little pop-pop motor.'