Graham Swift - Last Orders

I reckon that's when it really happened, that's when we really parted company, though it wasn't till later, till she teamed up with that Tyson toe-rag, then started taking on all-comers, that I washed my hands altogether, did a Vie. Daughters, eh Raysy?

It was me who found the doc to do the job. O'Brien. And it was me who found the money to pay him. I need a winner, Raysy, I need some readies double quick. So Raysy was a party.

You just leave it all to me, girl, you just make yourself ready. Well, you should've thought of that. You just make yourself nice and ready.

And the fact is I never even spared a thought at the time for that poor little unborn perisher. Except it went through my head, like some sort of excuse, like some sort of cockeyed warning, that it might turn out like June, it might turn out to have been better not born. Settling up for your sins. So, either way, you end up short.

And the fact is that when you can remember, just a few years before, loading and firing, loading and firing, whacking it home and knowing that that's a few more of 'em blown to bits, and not thinking twice about it, even being glad, because it's them not you, less of them to do it to you and it's only what's asked of you, any case, what you're trained for, then what's one little unborn sod who aint ever going to see the light of day?

Gunner Tate.

And what they call a sin and a crime and against the law at one time aint at another, is it? Like if it'd been five years later, we could've solved that little problem, no fuss, all above board and legal. Different time, different rules. Like one moment we're fighting over a whole heap of desert, next we're pulling out of Aden snappy.

It's only now that I think what it might've been. It. He. She. A whole life. All these stony geezers. It might've been the next Archbishop of Canterbury. It might've been Kath, Kathy Dodds. Different mother, same result: Vincey's brat. Same old game now, it seems, for Kathy as for Sally anyhow. Just better luck at it. Turns up at the funeral dressed to kill.

I'm carrying the bag, but like it aint got nothing to do with me. Rochester Food Fayre. Vic's walking ahead. I tap him on the shoulder. I say, 'Here, Vie.' Like it's a relay, a relay round Canterbury Cathedral, and it's his lap.

He says, reading, ' "Edward Plant— Edward Plant— Edward Plantagenet. The Black Prince. Son of Edward the Third. English commander in the Hundred Years War. Fought at Cressy and Pottiers Sounds like a proper soldier-boy. Looks like one too, with his helmet and his chain-mail and his coat of arms. All level in death.

' " … Married Joan, the 'Fair Maid of Kent'." There you are, Lenny, he got spliced to a Joan an' all.'

Lenny touches my arm while Vince reads. He holds out the bag for me to take. Vince lifts his eyes, noticing, as if he's the teacher and we ought to listen. Pay attention at the back.

I take the bag.

' " … Died in 1376." '

Well Jack, if it's any consolation, if it means anything to you, we had you rubbing shoulders, so to speak, with the Black Prince.

It smells of stone and space and oldness. The pillars go up and up, then they fan out like they're not pillars any more, they've let go of their own weight and it's not stone any more, it's not material. It's like wings up there, arching and reaching, and I know you're supposed to gaze up and think it's amazing and feel yourself being raised up too, and I'm gazing, I'm staring, I'm peering hard, but I can't see it, I can't make it out. The next world.

But I reckon I could fly to Australia. Cross this world. Money I've got. Save Sue the trouble of doing it, other way. When. If.

Though I reckon she would, Fd lay odds she would. Though you'd think it'd serve no purpose, you'd think it'd be immaterial, and there's a hundred things you could better put the fare towards. New car, swimming pool.

It's a far sight further, Sydney to London, than London to Margate, a far cry further. And when she got here she'd only wonder why she ever came, it wouldn't be like the place she left years ago, roots, there wouldn't be no country churchyard with birds tweeting, God knows where I'll get shoved. But someone's got to do it, you've got to have someone, and I bet she would.

But I could save her the trouble.

I found that doc to do the job. O'Brien. I'd like to know what register he was on or had been struck off of, I'd like to know how he washed his hands.

Doctor. Butcher more like. Family butcher.

Which strikes me as funny now. You shouldn't joke in church. Because when Jack in that bag there was still up and breathing, or not up but still breathing, flat on his back like one of these holy Joes but not yet turned to stone, he went and said to me that he always wanted to be a doctor.

I stared at him, a bit lost for a comment- He said, 'You know, a doctor, a quack, a sawbones. Cure the sick, chase after nurses, that sort of thing. I'd say live meat's better than dead meat any day, wouldn't you?'

I looked around at the other bed-cases and I looked back at him, because I thought he must be having me on, and he said, 'What are you sniggering at, Gunner?'

I said, 'Well it's a turn-up, Jack.'

This Black Prince feller don't look like he ever smiled.

Vince says, studying that guidebook, 'I say we should take a gander at the cloisters, then make tracks.'

I say, 'Okay, Big Boy, you lead on.' Vie and I have a quick smirk at each other and we traipse on, following Vince, like we can't leave till we've done the lot, it's obligatory.

You shouldn't joke in church, or in hospital, it seems. But it's either a crying shame or it's the biggest joke out to end up wishing we was something we aint. And I'd rather laugh than cry. And, thinking it all over and sizing it all up, I'd say Big Boy there's got the last laugh, since he knows he aint Vince Dodds, he knows he never was, though it's looking like he'd like to change his tune over that. But there aint none of the rest of us know who we really are. Boxer, Doctor. Jockey.

Except Vie.

We're slipping through the doorway that leads to the cloisters. It looks like we've lost Raysy.

Live meat's better than dead meat, that's what he said, though we'll never know June Dodds' honest and considered opinion on that. And Sally'll always have wanted to have had that baby, that pillock's dead baby, though she could've done without some of the live meat she's lived off since. It's a thin line sometimes between the one and the other. But flesh is flesh. It can't be denied.

Maybe the first thing I ought to do after we've done our duty by Jack here is go and pay Sally a visit. It's me, girl. It's your old dad, remember? It aint just another passing prick.

It can't be denied. It shouldn't be encouraged either, sometimes, but it shouldn't be denied. It's like I shouldn't be thinking right now, when I'm taking a turn in the cloisters, of Amy, forty years ago, when Sally was a nipper, fresh back from the seaside. But I am all of a sudden, I am. It don't do when you're escorting her dead husband's remains for their final disposing to think of the way her tits used to point and the way her frock used to hang on her. But I am. You shouldn't ever have wicked thoughts in church, but you do, you want to have 'em, like it's an encouragement. You shouldn't think such things when you're an old man of sixty-nine with no breath in your lungs and nothing but a penny whistle between your legs, but I do, I am, like I'm free to, seeing as Jack's in the bag. I'm thinking of how she'd kiss and pet Sally and I'd be jealous of my own daughter, and how I used to think Jack was the luckiest bastard alive.

And this was my idea, to come here. Dose of holiness. It wasn't for him. Who's he going to tell, who's he going to brag about it to over a slow beer at the end of the day? My mates did me proud, they carried me round Canterbury Cathedral.