Graham Swift - Last Orders

Then he smiles quickly and lifts his glass. 'Cheers.' So I lift my glass and drink. He says, 'Just think about it.' Then I drink some more, not saying nothing, then I say, Td want to keep the camper there. I'd still need my own space for the camper.' He looks at me and says, 'Course you can. No charge. I'd even give it a regular once-over for you. And if you ever wanted to trade it in, I'd see you got a good deal.' He holds his glass to his lips and it's almost as though I see him wink.

'That's not as though I'm agreeing,' I say.

He says, 'Course you aren't, Raysy.'

I think, Jack won't forgive me. Either way, he won't ever forgive me. Wound a man once, you can wound him twice. I think of him down there at the shop even now, chopping and weighing, not knowing, while we sit here drinking. He always had a rule: no boozing at lunchtime, not even a quick mouthwash, not when you're handling knives.

Then Vince downs the rest of his pint quickly and looks at his watch, hands all grubby, not like Jack's. There's the tattoo on his forearm, blue and red, made in Aden, a little scroll with his initials on with a fist holding a thunderbolt on top: 'V.I.P.'

But 'Dodds Motors'.

He says, wiping his mouth on his wrist, 'Better dash, gotta see a man about a car.' Grinning. He slips his packet of ciggies into the breast pocket of his shirt and gets off his stool, giving me a nudge on the shoulder with his knuckles. 'Think it over,' he says, sloping off, like it's nothing special, like it aint neither here nor there.

And I sit there for a while, finishing my own beer slowly, getting out my own packet and lighting up again, Slattery's clock edging round to quarter to three. Then I say, 'Ta-ta, Bernie,' and go down to Billy Hill's, like I'm not thinking, and I put a one-pound bet each-way on a steeplechaser at Sedgefield, thinking, It's not to make, it's to decide. If it's placed, I hang on, if it's not, I sell. You shouldn't bet on superstition. And it comes in fourth in a nine-horse race. O'Grady Says, five to one. So I walk out, thinking, That don't settle nothing, and I go over to the yard, thinking, Either he'll be there or he won't, and if he is.

And he isn't. There's the Rover and the Alvis, sitting there in the sunshine, like someone's ditched them, with a panel off here and a panel off there, and the Alvis with its back end hitched up on two stacks of bricks, and his tools and oil cans and greasy rags lying around. I think, He ought to have an inspection ramp. Lying all day on his back with his nose up an oil sump. The camper's parked outside the lockup, the weather being mild for the middle of February, and it being in regular use at the moment. Regular and irregular. But it's not in use right now, either kind. I think, I haven't had a good trip out for a while, on account of making room for that girl, on account of being so accommodating.

I think, I sell Vince the yard. I never sold Jack the camper.

Then I just stand there in the middle of the yard, in the middle of my own yard, with the lock-up that used to be Duke's old stable, and the new blocks rising up against the fuzzy blue sky and the railway arches running across, every arch some joker's business premises, and the smell of dust and rust and the rumble of traffic and something banging away on a building site somewhere. I think, First Johnson, then Dixon, then Dodds. Or Pritchett. It's a question of territory. It's when you say, This is my patch, this is my pitch, that the trouble starts. TowcesterUttoxeter.

So let him have the yard.

And now I think that he never knew, he never knew then and he doesn't know now either. Because he'dVe said, by now, he'dVe come right out with it, today of all days. Surely he would.

I reckon he was only so cocksure and keen because that's how he's made, and because he was getting it at the time, from Mandy, in my camper. Not even guessing. But he still had me selling him that yard for a knock-down price and missing out on value for money, so I reckon that's another reason why I should keep that thousand.

And I suppose now he's given me my chance, that's what he's done. Tit for tat. Thrown it back at me. You were the one, girl, who wanted me to believe that life don't ever play so mean that you don't get a second chance, that it don't start up again just when you think it's finished.

Well, here's your chance. That feller you lived with for fifty years, the one with the striped apron and the jokes for the housewives, he was just a stand-in. And now he's gone, see, just when you thought the real Jack might be putting in a fresh appearance. Let's all go to the seaside. Funny that, pops up again just to pop off. Don't know what you've got till you miss it, do you missis? Have a bit of best end. So here's your chance, here's your life all over again. And it's never too late.

Though it's easier when you're eighteen.

He levelled up the gun, one eye looking along the barrel, the other squeezed tight, and of course I thought, One day he might be doing this for real, not tin ducks but people. Or someone might be doing it to him. There must have been a few of them that summer taking pot-shots in sideshows and thinking it wasn't such a game. But I suppose his call-up came at just about the right time, so far as he was concerned. Get me out of this, get me out of here, put me somewhere where I can start again. It's possible, after all. Facing bullets would be easier, he'd be good at it. 'Ere, Nursey, take a peek at this. I suppose I knew already he'd be better at facing some things than others.

'Have a go, have a go for the lovely lady. Three shots for tuppence.'

But I thought, like the fool I was, If he hits then we'll find a way somehow, if he misses, never.

He said you'd think they'd be able to do something, these days, you'd think they'd come up with something. They. To make dud babies whole again. As if they could wave a wand. It was the only time we ever talked about her, in that guesthouse bedroom with its fine view of the tram depot, the only time she ever came up in the conversation. Then he said did I know he'd had this idea once, it was just a stupid idea, of being a doctor.

But he said he wasn't no doctor, was he? No more, he said, than I was Florence Nightingale.

So I knew it wasn't the simple rescue operation I thought it was going to be, the simple kill or cure. Margate or bust. Because maybe you don't ever get your life over again, try telling it to June.

Which I have been these fifty years.

Best thing we can do, Ame, is forget all about her.

The ducks moved along in a never-ending row, on some hidden belt, each one painted red and white and green, but scratched and dented where shots had hit, each one with one big eye fixed open wide and its beak curled up in a smile, as if it was only too eager to be shot at again, to disappear with a ping and a clang then pop up again.

I stood behind him on the boards of the Jetty, with the lights and the noise and the crowds and the slither of the sea in the dark below, you could just feel it. The white cliffs looming towards Cliftonville. A steamer was moving out across the bay, chugging back to London, all lit up, like most of its passengers. I thought, Maybe he's thinking it too: hit or miss, kill or. Three ducks says that life aim finished yet. He seemed to take an age to fire each shot. Ping! One duck. Three more swam past, each one giving him the eye. Ping! Another duck. Ping! And after another two slipped goggling and smiling by, a third took a dive in the pond that wasn't there.

'Good shooting sir! Every one a winner! You see, folks, it can be done. They may be ducks but they don't know how to duck, do they? Any more now, any more? So what'll it be, sir? The chocs, the china or the teddy bear? Let the lady choose, shall we? The lucky lady.'