Last Orders Read online

  He’s carrying the bag, Rochester Food Fayre, but he took out the coffee.

  There’s buds on the trees. Sunlight’s trickling through the branches.

  Lenny says, ‘Wavy Navy. Frigging frigates.’

  We move on and the path gets steeper. You can see where it comes out of the wood and there’s just long grass, pale and wintry, with a scraggy bush or two shaking in the wind. We can’t see no memorial. We see Vince stop and look around, a hand on his hip, like he’s taking in a view. His coat flaps in the wind. Vic’s getting nearer to Vince. We see Vince say something to Vic, though we can’t hear it. Then Vince looks down at us as though he’s enjoying watching us suffer.

  Lenny stops, coughs and spits. He looks up at Vince. ‘He aint letting go of it now, is he?’ We stumble on, then Lenny stops again, his chest going like a pair of bellows. He leans over with his hands on his knees. It’s as though he might be going to say, ‘Raysy, you better go on without me.’ There’s a touch of froth in the corner of his mouth. I think, It wouldn’t do for Lenny to peg out before we’ve said our last goodbye to Jack. It wouldn’t do for any of us. I don’t feel so A-1 myself.

  But he levers himself up slowly. He puts a hand for a moment on my shoulder, leaning. Vince is looking. Then he gives me a soft nudge with his knuckles in the back. ‘Do or die, eh Raysy?’ like he’s read my thoughts.

  We carry on, not speaking, breathing too hard to speak. Then we come out of the trees and we can see the memorial all of a sudden, like it’s been waiting for us all along, expecting us, sticking up tall and white against the sky, though the base of it’s hidden behind the brow. There’s a word for it. We can see the view spread out below, with the hill sloping down. Chatham merging into Rochester, the bend of the river with cranes sticking up, the cathedral like some big old bird sitting on a nest. You can see how a town gets set down where it is, in the folds of a valley by a river, by a bridge, and you can see where the river goes twisting on by the shape of the hills. You can see the sparkle of light on windows and cars. The sun’s shining from under a bank of cloud across the pale grass and it’s as if, though we’re still climbing, we’ve entered an easier, kinder, cleaner zone. It’s as though the tower of the memorial is pulling us up towards it. It’s an obelisk, that’s the word, obelisk. The sun’s shining on it. It’s white and tall. It looks like it’s floating, because you can’t see what it’s attached to, like when you get near to it, it might shift off somewhere else. There’s still no signs up to tell you, just the rough grass, ruffled by the wind, and a ragged path, and there aren’t any people except us. It’s like it got built then forgotten. Vince is going on ahead, getting closer, Vic’s following behind. It’s like it was only half meant to be here and so were we, but here we are, together, on top of this hill. It’s like an effort at dignity, that’s what it is, it’s like a big tall effort at dignity.

  VIC

  … we therefore commit their bodies to the deep.

  It would rear up howling and hissing, ice like marzipan on the forward deck, the bows plunging and whacking, so it seemed you didn’t need another enemy to fire off shells and torpedoes at you, the sea was enough. Or it would stretch out broad and big and quiet as the moonlit night up above, the convoy spread like ducks on a lake. Floating coffins. Which was worse, a calm or an angry sea? Or you wouldn’t see it, only feel it, through the swing and judder of steel. You joined the Navy to see the sea but what you saw were the giddy innards of a ship, and what you smelt wasn’t the salt sea air but the smell of a ship’s queasy stomach, oil and mess-fug and cook’s latest apology and wet duffel and balaclavas and ether and rum and cordite and vomit, as if you were already there, where you might be, any moment, for ever, in the great heaving guts of the oggin.

  He leant over me and I knew he was hoping I’d be asleep but my eyes were open and I said, ‘Gramps died, didn’t he?’ Because I knew. His cheek was cold from the wet night air and his hair was damp but his clothes still had the hospital smell, the smell of Gramps. It wasn’t so different from the usual smell, the smell on his skin of other people’s dead skin, and you’d think if it was his daily business and had been Gramps’s too that it would be a way of making it not matter so much when it was Gramps.

  He said, ‘Yes, Gramps died.’ I knew he’d wanted to save it till morning. I might have pretended, for his sake. Now he would know he would have to leave me alone soon to face the whole of the night, in this strange room, with the rain at the window, with the knowledge that Gramps had died. But I wanted him to know I could do it, I could take it. Like when he told me what he did. He put people in boxes, because people died. But this wasn’t people, it was Gramps.

  I said, ‘Will you tuck Gramps up yourself?’

  He said, ‘Course.’

  He leant over me. He said, ‘Night night. God bless.’

  The rain made a noise like needles on the window, the wind swished. It would have been raining when Gramps died, it had rained all day. But I don’t suppose he knew, or that it mattered, where he was, the weather outside. Whether it was sunny or wet, cold or warm. Or if you could see the sea, which you could if you went to the big window at the end of the ward, shiny and smooth, crinkly and grey. Though Gramps couldn’t.

  That’s why they’d come here, Grandma and Gramps, to be by the sea. Bexhill-on-Sea. That’s where people go when.

  On a night like this you could think of all the people out at sea and how you were warm and safe and cosy, and how the people out at sea must be wishing they were warm and safe too, but Gramps couldn’t think like that, not any more.

  I could hear them talking downstairs, not the words, only the voices. Later when I woke in the night I could hear them being awake too. There were no voices, just the wind and the rain, but I could hear them being awake. I could hear how we were all lying awake in this dark, wind-rattled house, so each of us was like Gramps lying awake in that strange ward with all those other men around him, but alone, and all those other men alone too, like we were all together in this house but alone really, each of us in our beds, tucked up like we would be one day for ever and ever.

  We’re Tuckers, we fix up dead people. It’s what we do for a living. We tuck ’em up.

  Civilian occupation: undertaker’s assistant.

  It would spread, quick as fire, as things do in a ship. ‘ ’Ere, Buffer, we’ve got a gravedigger on board.’ Like in the school playground: ‘We know what your dad does,’ except that then I’d never touched a corpse, and I wasn’t at sea, or at war. Don’t go on Tucker’s watch, not if you can help it, don’t be on Tucker’s fire party. As if it were a way of altering your chances.

  I wanted to say, I know about this, in a small way, I know about what you fear. I don’t know much about ships and signals and bearings and soundings, any more than a Chatham rating learns in two months. But I know about the dead, I know about dead people, and I know that the sea is all around us anyway. Even on land we’re all at sea, even on this hill high above Chatham where I can read the names. All in our berths going to our deaths.

  Floating coffins.

  So when the Lothian was hit, forward, and I was forward fire party but got sent aft for more hoses and then the second shell came in, killing Dempsey and Richards and Stone and Macleod, I knew, sharper than most, the pain of survival. It wasn’t Tucker, notice. It was Dempsey and Richards, not Tucker. As if you could alter your chances.

  He said he wouldn’t hold me to it, I should choose my own life. Just because he and Gramps, just because the name of Tucker. But at least I shouldn’t decide without knowing, and seeing, at least I shouldn’t decide against out of unfounded fears. So I said yes, like it was my test. So he showed me, explaining, and I saw that there was, really, nothing to fear, nothing to be afraid of. It even made you feel a little calmer, surer. I was fourteen years old, the two of us together in the parlour. Three of us. So later I said, ‘Yes, all right.’ Your life cut out for you, your chances altered. And then it was too late to have any other foolish notio
ns, like running away to sea.

  They said, Here’s a job for you, one you’re equipped for, one no one else will volunteer for. Men at sea get foolish notions, like mermaids and monsters and that this convoy will be their last. So when we stopped engines, four days out of Iceland, to pick up survivors, they were all thinking, Here’s work for Tucker, Tucker’ll be busy. Though why pick them up, coughing up their last and half frozen-through, if it’s only to crowd the mess deck and tip them back in a little while? Out of the sea they come and back they go, hardly making a splash in the grey swell Tucker’ll see to ’em, it’s what he’s good for. After a while I even earned respect, consideration. You shouldn’t judge your fellow men, you shouldn’t hold things against them. It even turned the other way round: You want to keep on the right side of Tucker, you want to keep in with Tucker. Yes, I’ll be ship’s bogeyman, someone has to do it. Tucker’s here, have no fear. Tucker. Rhymes with. First name, Victor, good name in a war. Tucker’ll do it, Tucker’ll see to it. It’s a tradition of the service to make use of the landsman’s craft, like carpenter, ropemaker, surgeon. And the service has its own traditions for disposing of the dead. Out of the sea. A fold of canvas, a sinker of shot, and the last stitch, just in case and by custom, through the poor unfortunate frigging jolly Jack Tar’s nose.

  RAY

  I reckon Vic’s not going to tell us which are the names that matter, he’s just going to look and keep quiet.

  The obelisk is in the middle, it’s for ’14-’18, and there’s a high white stone wall in a big half-circle with an iron gate in the centre where we’ve come in, and they’re listed up on the wall on the inside of the curve in panel after panel, ’39 onwards, like runners on a card. There’s Captains and Lieutenants and Midshipmen and Petty Officers and Able and Ordinary Seamen, even some Boys. But there’s also Stokers and Signalmen and Cooks and Telegraphists and Engine Room Artificers and Sick Berth Attendants, like there’s a whole world on a ship.

  And you can’t tell nothing by looking at the lists because there aren’t no odds quoted, there aren’t no SPs. You can run your eyes down a card, when you’re used to it, and work it out in your head that the bookies won’t suffer, that the punter’s going to lose. Like the insurance houses can do their sums and know they aren’t going to come off worse in the long run, no matter what bad luck hits Joe Average Insured. There’s always the gamble to make you think you’re in with a chance and there’s always the larger mathematics to make you think you should’ve saved your money and kept up your premiums. It depends on your underlying attitude.

  But it’s hard to have an attitude when there aren’t no odds given and you can’t see no larger mathematics. All you can tell by looking down the lists, and it don’t matter that they’re set in bronze on a white wall on top of a hill with an obelisk stuck in front an’ all, is that a man is just a name. Which means something to him it attaches to, and to anyone who deals, same way, in the span of a human life, but it don’t mean a monkey’s beyond that. It don’t mean a monkey’s to things that live longer, like armies and navies and insurance houses and the Horserace Totalisator Board, it all goes on when you’re gone and you don’t make a blip. There’s only one sensible attitude to take, looking at the lists, there’s only one word of wisdom, like when Micky Dennis and Bill Kennedy copped it: ‘It aint me, it wasn’t me, it aint ever going to be me.’ And there’s only one lesson to be drawn, it’s as cheery as it’s not cheery, and that’s that it aint living you’re doing, they call it living, it’s surviving.

  But I reckon I could do it, I could still turn it into living again. I could forget the larger mathematics and take the gamble. Live a little, live again. See them grandchildren of mine, if there are any, the ones who’ll survive me. In the surviving years of my life.

  I could see the world. I could go to Bangkok.

  I could say to Amy, ‘About that shortfall.’

  He stands there, looking, not telling. His face is all neat and straight, like a list itself. He’s taken off his cap and shoved it in his pocket. The breeze lifts the hair on the top of his head. It’s hard to picture Vic in a sailor suit, dancing a hornpipe, climbing the rigging, ship ahoy. Lenny’s standing, stooped, just inside the gates, like he’ll get round in a moment to seeing what’s what, if he can just get his breath back first from coming up that hill. He shoots me a glance as though to say this is a place for sailor-boys but maybe us old soldiers should keep our end up. I reckon it’s a toss-up, the sea, the desert. Vince has mooched off towards the obelisk. The sun’s dazzling on the white stone. Either side of the gates there’s a stone sailor, in duffel-coat and sea boots, at the ready, staring into space, so it looks like Lenny’s shirking, it looks like he’s a real sloucher. The gates are painted blue. Over the top it says, ‘All These Were Honoured In Their Generations And Were The Glory Of Their Times.’

  VINCE

  Old buggers.

  LENNY

  All the same, I’d like to think my Joan would show up for me, though I wouldn’t ever put her to such foolishness. I’d do the same for her, if it was that way round. Which it won’t be.

  Bleeding hill nearly finished me.

  It’s a question of duty, that’s what it is.

  Vic’s standing there, looking, and Ray’s gone over to chat to Vincey, at the foot of that tower thing. They’re gazing up at it like a couple of tourists peering at Nelson’s Column. ‘Heligoland’ it says on it, wherever that is, ‘Heligoland. Jutland. Dogger Bank.’ But it don’t look like they’re talking about the tower, it looks like they’re talking about something else, strictly between the two of them.

  Well I suppose I’m the odd man out here, I’m the odd man out on this whole caper, just along for the ride and the beer, and the hill-climbing. There’s Vic there with his lists of dead, as if he don’t get enough of that on a daily basis, and them two thick as thieves at the foot of the tower. I never understood how Raysy could get pally with that pillock. I suppose he never had no daughter up the spout by him, though he might’ve done, if Susie hadn’t been whisked off to Australia first.

  There’s Ray and Jack who go back to the desert, same desert as me, Gunner Tate, except I never knew either of them then. There’s Vic and Jack who had pitches opposite for the best part of fifty years, Dodds and Tucker, steaks and stiffs. And there’s Jack and Vince, one in a bag and one off his rag.

  The only reason I’m here, if you don’t count being his regular boozing partner for close on forty years, is because of Sally. Is because Jack took her to the seaside when we couldn’t take her ourselves. It was a kindness, one of the few that girl ever got. And now I’m taking Jack.

  It’s a question of duty. There’s a soldier’s duty, a sailor’s duty. Heligoland. Jutland. But if you ask me, that aint duty so much as orders. Doing your duty in the ordinary course of life is another thing, it’s harder. It’s like Ray always said that Jack was a fine soldier, Jack should’ve got a medal, but when it came to being back in Civvy Street, he didn’t know nothing better, like most of us, than to stick like glue to what he knew, like there was an order sent down from High Command that he couldn’t ever be nothing else but a butcher. That shop was his bleeding billet, it’s a fact.

  Then he fancies going to the seaside.

  They look like two spies on a rendezvous, standing there by that tower. One of ’em’s got a bag, look, a suspicious-looking bag.

  It’s like Sally done wrong, for all I don’t blame her, for all her having married that nutter on the rebound from Big Boy. Tommy Tyson, care of Pentonville Prison. She should’ve stuck with him, it’ll be worse when he gets out, she should’ve kept going to see him. Like Amy sees June.

  It’s a question of paying your dues.

  It’s like Ray should patch things up with Susie, like Carol should never’ve run out on Ray. There shouldn’t ever be no running off, deserting. Like Vincey should’ve knuckled down and done what was wanted of him, because he owed Jack and Amy for nigh on everything, and Jack was that lad’s
father to all intents and purposes.

  And Jack shouldn’t ever’ve given up on his own.

  Nor should I.

  Joan might show up, but not Sally.

  They’re moving round behind the tower.

  So you could say it was Amy who always done her duty, her duty and a half, year in, year out. Never a squeak in return, for all I’ve heard. You could say she’s doing it now, if she’s going to see June. Except she could see June tomorrow or she could’ve seen her yesterday. You’d think she could spare the one day for Jack.

  RAY

  Vince looks up at the obelisk, all intent, as if it might do something sudden and he don’t want to take his eyes off it, as if he’s glad he don’t have to look at me. It’s the first time we’ve slipped away from Vic and Lenny. The sun and the view are behind us. He’s got his hands in his pockets, his left wrist stuck through the handles of the carrier bag. It must be getting heavy, the plastic cutting into him, but he don’t seem to mind. It’s like he don’t want to be separated from it.

  … who have no other grave than the sea.

  He looks up at the obelisk and I look up at him. It’s hard when you’ve got the years without the height. But this obelisk must be having a littling effect on Vince, because though he doesn’t turn to look at me I can see his face going all sort of boyish and outranked.

  It’s like when he was pumping me about the yard and he wasn’t sure how I’d stand. ‘Uncle Ray’, he went and called me.