Graham Swift - Last Orders

I thought, What are you doing, Amy Mitchell, what are you doing? You don't even know this boy. You don't even fancy him, not that much, not so much. But the air was soft and ripe and still. And there was that feeling inside me, between me, like a bowl. And who should we see as we crossed the road by the pond but Romany Jim, with his horse. Clip-clop. Things come together in this world to make things happen, that's all you can say. They come together.

But you'll never know, June, that that was how you came together. Or not quite together, not quite. Like Jack won't ever know it was the sight of that gypsy. The things that do and don't get told. You'll never know, you never had the chance, about warm August nights and colanders. You'll never know, you'll never need to and maybe you're better off as you are, how one thing leads to another. If you lead a man to water, he'll drink. And there you are with your bellyful, trying to tell yourself that you're no more to blame than he is, but feeling anyhow, you can't help it, that you've got him on a rope, saying, I do, I will, in a borrowed suit, with the rest of them looking on like butter wouldn't melt. Hitched, they call it.

But it was only after you arrived that I felt him tug away, tug and twist and turn against me at the same time, as if it really was all my fault now, my problem, not his. There you are, you see, look what happens. And it would've been better all along, wouldn't it, if we'd done what other couples do when a hot night in a hop-field catches up with them?

But I thought, It's not a punishment, because one thing leads to another, it's not a punishment. The important thing is not to take it as a punishment.

I don't know how I scraped up the money No hop-picking that summer. How could we? No extra shillings. And this extra mouth to feed. Except it was being fed for us, it was being taken out of our hands. I nearly got down on my knees with Dad and with Uncle Bert. I said, Jack and me never had no honeymoon, did we? And now, and now. Have a heart.

I think I was ready to ditch you then, I think I came as near as I ever did to chucking you.

I said to Jack, We're going to Margate for the weekend. No, don't ask, all fixed. Just get your old man to give you the time off. Say it's your honeymoon. Steamer from Tower Bridge. Wanting him to say, to show, that if he didn't want her, then he'd better still want me, he'd better. Wanting me to say or show that it was all right if he didn't want her, so long as he still wanted me. You won't ever have to know, June, what hard-nosed little tricksies we can be.

I bought a new summer frock. Undies, shoes, stockings, swimsuit, the lot. Uncle Bert went and hocked his grandfather clock.

And the sun came out, like it was on our side, and the waves sparkled and I wore my new frock, etcetera. Except the mother inside you sneaks up on you when you least want it. You won't ever have to know that either. Even when you're only eighteen and you're at the seaside, ice-cream and Punch and Judy, in a new swimsuit, and men are eyeing you. Yes they were, left, right and centre. I must've looked like I was anyone's.

I thought, Well you had your chance, well I gave you your chance.

The Pier, the Jetty, the Sands. Dreamland.

I thought the war might change things, put everything in its place. So you think you've got troubles. Bombs whistling down on Bermondsey, whole streets going. I thought, He might be killed. Or I might. Or you might. A stray bomb on a home for the hopeless, no one need grieve, a mercy really. What hard-nosed. But what the war did was to push things further the way they'd gone. It was me and you together, no one else near and dear, and it was Jack far away being a soldier, not being killed, being one of the lads again.

With Ray Johnson. So when Vince Pritchett, but forget the Pritchett, dropped into my lap, into our lap, I ought to have known it wouldn't help a bit, it wouldn't win him back. You can't make a real thing out of pretending hard. You can lead a horse. That Amy Dodds' a kind soul, taking in that Pritchett kid, what with her own little problem. Ah, but that's the reason, aint it, don't you see?

From then on it was me and you, and him and Vince. Meaning him and Vince against each other, him and Vince at daggers drawn, cleavers drawn. But it keeps men together, it keeps them occupied, fighting.

Yes it was here, Vince, here. This was where. Here, in the garden of.

And what you'll never know is that it was even truer than you once believed, before you learnt better. All done with hops, all done on the hop. Because it was in a hop-bin. A twenty-bushel hessian hop-bin, slung between its trestles. All-round privacy, could've been made for the purpose. Like two rabbits in a sack.

And what you'll never know either is that three nights later up on that hill, near that old windmill, which had its sails then, he looked at me, firm and steady, straight and steady, and said, 'You're beautiful, d'you know that? You're beautiful.' It's not what you expect from a butcher's boy. It turns you over to hear a man say that, fills you up. To be alive, to have lived to hear a man say that, any man, and to know, by his smile, that he means it.

Like you never did, June, or could or ever will.

The things that do and don't get told. The tallyman would come with his sticks and his notcher, to count your bushels, to take a look at your bushels. With his stony face that said, I'm the tallyman and don't think you can get round me. Your stick better tally, your notch better marry, serious business, tallying. 'Now then. Mitchell, Amy...' Never smiling. So maybe I imagined it, but maybe he would've smiled, just a hint, just a glint, if he'd known, that it was in that very bin.

Just as well, I thought, I was still in my uniform. All the nice girls. Only a month or so from demob. Four-year stripe now as well.

But she said, 'So what do you do then, Vie, when you're not mucking about in boats?'

I thought, Well, here it comes, it had to come, and I know just what follows. First she'll look at my hands, just a dart of a look like she thinks I won't notice, but I will. Then she won't look at me at all but she'll start taking a keen interest in the features of this thrown-together dance hall, except she won't be looking at them either so much as doing some quick rethinking in her head. Then when I ask her about the next time, she'll come up with all the usual excuses.

And she was the best of the bunch so far, Pam Summer-field, the best of a not-so-long and not very long-lived list, best as a straight eyeful but more than that. A bounce, a balance, a nerve. Like she wasn't going to miss out on any fun going, she wasn't going to not take her chances then regret it later, but there was something there that was for the long course too, that wasn't born yesterday either.

And she was kitted out as good as you could expect for Gosport, Christmas 1945. Pink and black number, like she meant serious business.

The band was playing Chattanooga Choo Choo.

I said, 'Ships, not boats.' But I thought, You've got to be straight with this one, and I'm not going to come the old son-of-the-sea, and she was going to have to ask sooner or later, and maybe her asking now was a sign.

So I said, Tm in the undertaking trade. Family business.' She looked at me. She didn't look even for one moment at my hands. She looked at me and said, 'Well I never, Vie, well I'd never have guessed. Well at least you won't be out of a job, will you?' Then she looked down then up again quickly as if she wasn't going to change her course, and there was a smile just in one corner of her mouth. 'So you'll be used to handling bodies then.'

He says, 'Wanna do a deal with the yard?'

Springing it on me quick and sudden, looking at me with that cocksure, you-aint-going-to-refuse-me look, like he can see me thinking, He must be joking, since what's he got to do a deal with? But he's not joking, he's serious, and he knows I'm going to come round, just wait and see, to whatever it is he's fishing for.