Graham Swift - Last Orders

So I stopped being the humble pick-up man. I became the full-scale, knock-'em-dead funeral director, and she must've seen, because I made her eyes flick away from me.

I said, 'Nice out, I'll take a stroll.'

It was an airy, breezy day, the sunshine coming in quick splashes. I walked out on to the forecourt, checked the Maria was parked okay, then took one of the paths that fanned out across the lawns, feeling like a truant, feeling that I was enjoying this, the boss doing the hired man's job, this slipping in and out of a part like the sun dodging the clouds. Feeling that for twenty minutes I had a special angle on the world.

There were rose beds and trees. Patients were out exercising, taking the air too. What do you call them? Patients? Inmates? Residents? Some of them moving oddly or standing oddly still. A thin man came towards me, his lips and his fingers clenched round the stub of a cigarette as if he was trying to pull a long piece of string from his mouth, but it was pulling back. Others looked quite normal, only the old clothes gave them away. But even then. So if you weren't careful. And how would you explain'? So you think you're an undertaker, do you? You better come along with us.

I sat on one of the benches while the sun came out and went in, came out and went in again. The man with the cigarette turned and came back, as if I'd taken his bench, and as he passed me he snarled like a dog, dribbling, his teeth showing. I wasn't afraid. Have no fear. I wondered if Amy was afraid, whether she'd been afraid when she first came. But women aren't afraid, or not of the same things. I thought, You see all the dead, all the bent and broken or plain stretched-out dead, and you think, These people are strangers now, total strangers. But it's the living who are strangers, it's the living whose shapes you can't ever guess.

And that's when I saw them. There must be something that makes you look. Sitting on a bench, on a bench on another path, in front and to the left. I saw Amy's head of brown hair, the breeze stirring it, the sun putting colour into it, and that way she had of sitting, plain and straight and simple, as if she was waiting her turn. But not before I saw Ray> looking small beside her, almost like her kid. His little coconut-shy head, and that way of scratching his neck, I'd recognize that gesture anywhere, the fingers reaching right into his collar as if a whole mouse had dived in there. I thought, I wonder if he knows, he's definitely thinning on top, bit of pink showing through.

If I'd taken another path I might have walked straight past them. But now I slunk back, behind them, to the van, half thinking I should tread on tiptoe, and then I saw it, it must've been there all the time but you don't see what you don't expect to see: Ray's camper, on the far side of the car park, sludge-green and cream, that funny bit on top that opens up like an accordion for extra head-space.

I climbed back into the Maria. From the front of the van I could see them clearly, fifty yards, ten o'clock, Ray on the side of the bench nearest me. It seemed to me that though they made the shapes of two separate people sitting on the same bench, so you might have thought it was just a chance encounter, they also made a single shape that was the two of them together.

Ray leant forward and lit a cigarette, cupping his hands against the breeze. Then he took a puff, took the cigarette from his mouth and with the same hand, elbow on knee, stroked his bottom lip with his thumb. There was a paper bag wedged between them with the remains of something, because Amy dipped her hand into it and threw crumbs for the birds pecking near their feet, sparrows, pigeons. She did this quickly, with a jerk of her arm, as if she half wanted to shoo the birds away, not feed them, but the crumbs kept them coming back. Ray didn't feed the birds. He smoked and rubbed his lip and scratched his neck. Then he sat back and at that exact moment Amy leant forward as if they were a machine that worked like that. She stroked her leg just below the knee as if she had an ache there.

I looked at my watch: nigh on three. But the superintendent could wait. I'd waited for him. Though it's a serious transaction, release of the body. You need the signature and the verification and the date and time, and you shouldn't be late for the dead, just because they're dead. One of my rules. Don't dilly-dally with the deceased. I'd've given Tony a bollocking.

Five past three and they were still there on the bench, and nothing in the van to pass the time, save an old thumbed A to Z and the forms in my pocket. But I had them by heart. Jane Esther Patterson. Date of birth, date of death. She was eighty-seven. Cause of death: cerebral haemorrhage. Next of kin: John Reginald Patterson. Son. I must ask the superintendent, if he's not shirty with me, how long she'd been in for.

(I did. He said twenty-eight years.)

I watched Amy lean back, without Ray leaning forward this time, and dip her hand again, briskly, into the bag and throw. You felt they both wished they hadn't stuck that bag between them. Then Amy picked up the bag and started crumpling it into a ball and brushing down her skirt as if she was about to stand up, and just before she did, Ray reached out and dasped her far shoulder, then shifted his hand to the back of her neck, the fingers reaching under her hair, just like they'd done into his own collar. As if he'd been meaning to do that all along, or something like it, but it was only her moving to get up and him not having another chance that pushed him to it. Then Amy hesitated for a bit, her head sort of wriggling against Ray's hand. Then she got up like she'd meant to, and Ray jumped up too like he was on a spring and they started walking back towards the car park.

I hunched down in my seat but I don't suppose they could see me, with the reflections on the windscreen, if they were looking anyway. It was like just for a moment they'd been two younger people and now they were two older people trying to act their age. It made them look funny. But I suppose if you were going to look funny, this was the place to do it. Amy dropped the balled-up paper bag into a litter bin and Ray flicked his fog-end a few feet in front of him and stepped on it. They walked separately, like people being careful to walk separately, as if they just happened to be on parallel courses.

I suppose it can happen a lot here. Visitors crossing paths. Time to spare, burdens to share. Regular lonely-hearts' club.

They passed maybe four or five car-widths to the left of me and this time I ducked right down, nose to the passenger seat, acting funny too. Then I lost them as they passed out of sight behind the back of the van. But I watched in the wing mirror, and I had a clear view of the main gate out of the side window. It's one thing about a van, you can see over the roof of a car next to you. I heard an engine start and a bit of reverse gear, then I saw the camper creeping out towards the gate, past the little 'Out/In' bollard with its arrows pointing. The turn to go back was left. The other way took you out of London: Ewell, Epsom, Leatherhead. I watched Ray brake, flash his indicator and turn right.

You shouldn't judge. What you learn in this business is to keep a secret.

I said I felt about as Lucky as I'd ever felt. Being Lucky.

So he said, smiling, he felt about as Jack as he'd ever been, or was ever going to be. About as sweet jack all.

Then he looked at me and I thought, just for a second, He aint saying it's down to me? Like when they first brought him in here, before the op, before he knew, and I felt everyone looking at me sort of special, like I was the man of the hour. Ray'll swing it, Ray'll fix it. All Jack needs is a dose of his old mate Raysy. And while we're at it, we'll take a bet on the surgeon doing a top-notch job.