Graham Swift - Last Orders

Amy said, 'Will you go in and see him?' and I said, 'Yeh, I'll go and see him.' She wasn't crying and her voice was clear and steady. She wasn't insisting or demanding. It was like she was asking a polite, considerate question, like a host to a guest. I even reckon she was holding her head a bit higher and her back a bit straighter, as if this was an important day, a very important day, and she had to see it got managed proper, like something special had happened to her and she wanted to share it.

She'd just come out. She'd just been to see him herself.

I said, 'Yeh, I want to see him.' Like I couldn't have said no, even if I'd wanted to. You don't refuse to see someone's prize possession.

She said, 'You go through the door and ask the man,' and I thought, She don't know it's happened yet.

So I went through the door and asked the man. He had a rumpled white jacket and a pale podgy face to go with it, and he looked at me like I shouldn't expect him to understand what a big deal it was for me, any more than he should expect me to understand how it wasn't for him.

It said 'Chapel of Rest'. He said, 'Mr Dodds?' and I wondered which one he meant. I said, 'That's me,' when maybe I should've said, 'That's him.' He said, 'Through there.'

There was this little room with a glass partition down the length of it and an opening at one end you could step through, otherwise you could just look. On the other side of the glass there was Jack, raised up on something and lying on his back, and I thought, That aint Jack, he aim real. I suppose I was right.

You could only see his head because they'd wrapped him up in something like a pale-pink curtain or a tablecloth, right up to his chin. It was covering what he was lying on an' all. Like Jack was just his head, it wasn't a body, there wasn't no dead body.

I went through the opening and stood beside him. It smelt cold. I thought, He don't know I'm here, he can't ever know Fm here. Unless. I thought, He aint Jack Dodds, no more than I'm Vince Dodds. Because nobody aint nobody. Because nobody aint more than just a body, than just their own body, which aint nobody.

Except you can't see his body under that tablecloth.

Then I just stood there looking at him and I felt myself going straight and tall, like I wasn't just standing there, I was holding myself proud and stiff, like Amy. I was standing to attention. Like the only proper thing to do was to go stiff and straight and still and stony just like Jack was, out of sympathy. Except upright.

And I thought, I should see him naked. Because we all are, aren't we? He's naked underneath, under the tablecloth. I should see his body. I should see his hands and his feet and his knees and his bleeding bollocks an' all. I should see Jack Dodds' body. Because this is Jack, Jack Dodds, but he don't look like Jack, he looks like the bleeding Pope. Because naked we come and naked we. But they've kitted him out so he looks like the Pope.

I say, 'It's all right, Vince, You go ahead.'

Because IVe sat down suddenly in one of the wooden seats in the side-aisle, clutching the bag, like some old geezer on a shopping trip who's run out of puff.

He looks down at me, holding the guidebook, and I can see Lenny and Vie at the far end of the aisle. I reckon they moved off pretty smart, like they knew me and Vincey might have business to discuss.

He says, 'You okay, Lucky?'

I say, 'Yeh, give me a mo.'

He flips shut the guidebook. 'Gabbing on a bit, was I?'

I say, 'No, it wasn't that.'

He looks at me.

There aim no hiding, if it's true what they say, least of all in a church. Because He's supposed to see everything, innermost thoughts. But I reckon if Vince can't tell, if he can't see my innermost, and if it was his thousand in the first place and he gave it to Jack in his dying days, on his death-bed, he's not going to ask for it back, not now. Like asking for the money back you've put in the collection box. He aint going to tell no one.

And Jack aint going to tell no one.

He looks at me. 'You sure?'

'Yeh, give us a mo. You go on.'

He looks at me. Then he looks round quickly at the pillars and the arches and the windows, then back at me as if he's twigged the situation. Except he aint twigged it all. And I'm saying to myself, Miserable sinner. That's what you're supposed to tell yourself, miserable sinner. You're supposed to sink down on your knees. But all I'd been thinking, suddenly, was that it's a far cry, all this around me, from what I'm carrying in my hand, all this glory-hallelujah, from Jack and his drips. What's a plastic jar up against this lot? What's the lick and spit of a human life against fourteen centuries? And it was the same as I thought at that crematorium, though I never told no one, that none of it had to do with him, none of it. The velvet curtains, the flowers, the amens, the music. I stood there, looking at the curtains, trying to make it have to do with him, and Vie says, touching my arm, 'You can go now, Ray.' Because nothing aint got to do with Jack, not even his own ashes. Because Jack's nothing.

So I had to sit down, sink down, like I'd been hit. Like Vincey'd taken a swing at me an' all.

He says, 'Okay, Raysy, fair enough. Take it easy.' I say, 'Here,' handing him the bag, looking at him, 'I'll catch you up,' and he takes the bag, looking at me. He half moves to slip the guidebook into it but thinks again. Then he walks off, slowly, along the side-aisle, along the row of pillars, in his camel-hair coat, mud on his trousers. Lenny and Vie have reached a spot where some stone steps go up and they stop there for a bit like they're wondering which way to go. Then Vince catches up with them. He taps Lenny on the shoulder and Lenny turns and Vince holds out the plastic bag and Lenny takes it.

1. It's not the wins, it's the value.

2. It's not the betting, it's the knowing when not to.

3. It's not the nags, it's the other punters.

4. Old horses don't do new tricks.

5. Always look at the ears, and keep your own twitched.

6. Never bet shorter than three to one.

7. Never bet more than five per cent of your kitty, except about five times in your life.

8. You can blow all the rules if you're Lucky.

He gives me the bag. He don't look at me, he looks at the guidebook. It's like the only reason he's given me the bag is so he can flick through the guidebook. But I can see it aint. He's studying that guidebook like it's got all the answers.

He says, 'They got the Black Prince in here somewhere.'

I say, 'Who's he when he's in?' Maybe they got Snow White an' all.

He says, 'I reckon we should find the Black Prince.'

I say, 'Whatever you say, Big Boy.'

So we shuffle on, down some steps and up some steps, past all these geezers made of stone, lying face up, flat out, out for the count.

I reckon he's sorry, that's what he is. I reckon he's trying to make amends. We've all got a bit of that to do if you look back over the years. Excluding Vie maybe. Clean hands, as always.

Seeing as there's three of us here involved, counting Raysy. And Sally's paid her price, if you can say she ever deserved to in the first place, being the innocent party, or at least the least guilty. Since I don't suppose it happened while she was looking the other way. It was Vincey's doing in the first place, but it was me who said, when she came right out with it and said she wanted to have the baby, 'No you don't, my girl.' My first fully weighed-up response as a father, words just shot from my gob. She said he'd come back and do right by her. I said, 'Don't talk bollocks, girl. What book've you been reading?' And she aint ever forgiven me since.