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  Then one day that April it came to me, I saw the signs. Or maybe you could say I’d had enough of going without, all senses. If I could do it once I could do it again. £100. All that I might have staked in a good three months’ betting. And one Saturday it was me who went down the shops. When I came back I was humming a tune. If I am fancy-free and love to wander … I looked her in the face like spring had sprung and I was the bringer of joy. I said, ‘There’s something I want you to see – out on the street.’

  She looked out the window and I pointed.

  Rockabilly, Uttoxeter, hundred to eight.

  She said, ‘What is it?’

  I said, ‘It’s a dormobile. A camper-van, deluxe model. A travelling home for two.’

  She said, ‘That’s the last straw.’

  VINCE

  It wasn’t like it is now, a quick race down the motorway and the taste of London still in your mouth half-way through Kent. It was like a voyage, only the other way round. So that instead of the waiting and hoping to sight land, you were moving over land in the first place, all impatient, all ready for that first glimpse. The seaside. The sea.

  I watched Sally’s legs. I watched the fields and the woods and the hills and the cows and sheep and farms and I watched the road, grey and hot, like elephant skin, coming towards us, always coming towards us, like something we were scooping up, eating up, but then I’d watch Sally’s legs, resting on top of Amy’s. Or not so much resting, because they were always moving, shifting, sliding, and when we got near the sea they’d start to jiggle up and down, her feet going under the dashboard, the way they did when she won at the spotting game, ‘O’ for orchard, ‘P’ for petrol station, or when Amy asked her if she needed to stop and have a pee, ‘P’ for pee. Then she and Amy would go off together, separate, behind a hedge, so I knew it wasn’t just a case of pulling out your widdler, it was something different.

  It wasn’t so much the way they moved or even the way her cotton skirt would ride up sometimes so Amy would flip it down again if Sally didn’t. It was their smoothness and bareness, their sticky-without-being-stickiness, and it was that they had a smell which you couldn’t smell above the smells of going along the road but I knew it was there and I knew it was how Sally must smell all over, the bits you couldn’t see. It was like the smell of the seaside, it was like the differentness of the seaside before you got there.

  Sally on Amy’s lap, me in the middle, Jack. We could’ve swapped round, I could’ve gone on Amy’s lap, I wasn’t so heavy. Sally could’ve gone on my lap. But that was how Amy wanted it. I saw that.

  And one day he said anyway, ‘You’ll have to go in the back. You aint getting smaller, either of you. If you want Sally to come, you’ll have to go in the back.’

  So I went in the back where I couldn’t watch Sally’s legs, and all you could smell was the sweet, stale, stick-in-your-throat smell of meat.

  It wouldn’t be there at first. There was the picnic bag and the bag of beach things and the rug they put down for me and the soapy smell of whatever he used to scrub it all out with. But after a while the meat smell would come through, like something that had been hiding, and after a while more the sick feeling would start and you’d have to fight it.

  But I never said, I never said, and I don’t suppose they even guessed, what with the windows down in front and the air rushing in, I never banged on the metal and said, ‘Let me out, I wanna be sick.’ Because I was doing it for Sally’s sake, so she could be there. She was in the front where I couldn’t see or smell her, I could only smell meat, but her being there where I couldn’t see or smell her was better than her not being there at all, and when we got out at the other end she’d be there, really, and so would the seaside. The meat smell and the sick feeling would get blown away by the smell of the seaside, and though you knew it was still there in the van and there was the journey back, you didn’t think about that till it happened. When something’s one thing, it aint another. And when I got back in the van to go home, I’d think, It evens out, because in one direction there’s what’s ahead and in another there’s the memory, and maybe there’s nothing more or less to it than that, it’s nothing more or less than what you should expect, a good thing between two bad things. Air and sunshine and, either side, being in a box.

  I reckon she should’ve been impressed, that I did it for her sake. So I never said. But maybe she wasn’t impressed, maybe she never guessed either, maybe she even thought it was something to laugh at, me being in the back like an animal in a cage, and maybe the real reason why they wanted me in the back was because they preferred Sally to me.

  June aint my sister. I aint got no sister.

  I’d get in and he’d close the doors behind me, the one that said DODDS and the one that said & SON. Then he’d go round and start the engine and I’d start to hate him. I’d hate him and hate the meat smell till they were one and the same. It was better than anything for fighting the sick feeling, better than thinking of good things, the seaside and Sally, because there wasn’t no fight in those feelings. I’d lie there on the rug hating him and I’d think, I aint going to be a butcher never, it aint what I’m going to be. And as I lay there hating him I discovered something else, beyond and beneath the meat smell, something that made those journeys bearable. I’d put my ear to the rug. I’d feel the metal throbbing underneath, I’d hear the grind and grip of the transmission, the thrum of the shafts taking the power to the wheels, and I’d think, This is how a motor works, I’m lying on the workings of this van. I aint me, I’m part of this van.

  But one day I sick up anyway. All over the rug and the beach bag and the picnic an’ all. I never said, I just sicked up. So there aint the smell of meat, there’s the smell of sick.

  The next time, he says Sally aint coming so I can get in the front. So I think, I’ve done it now, Sally aint coming now ever again, and I say, ‘I don’t mind, I don’t mind going in the back. I won’t be sick again, honest.’ But he says, ‘She aint coming anyway, not this time. So hop in the front.’

  Neither of them says much. It’s like when I was in the back it was a sort of punishment but now I’m in the front again it’s a punishment too. But then I think, It’s not me who’s sorry, I aint sorry, it’s them who’s sorry. They’re sorry because they made me go in the back. They’re sorry because they’ve been playing at being Sally’s parents but now they’ve got me again. Then he takes a turn off the main road as if we aren’t going to the seaside at all.

  We stop near the top of a hill, with fields sloping away. It’s all green. I think, I aint saying nothing, I aint saying, ‘Why are we here?’ There’s an old windmill on the top of the hill, I remember that, and there’s a view below: fields and woods and hedges and orchards, a farmhouse, a church tower, a village. It’s spread out in different patches like someone’s pieced it together.

  We sit for a bit with the engine ticking and the breeze outside. Then they look at each other and he says, ‘See down there. That’s where your mum and me first met. Hop-picking.’ But that don’t mean much to me, because I know what it means to hop and I know what it means when he says ‘hop in the van’ but I don’t have the foggiest what hop-picking is. So I say, ‘What’s hop-picking?’ and he tries to explain, like he hadn’t planned on that bit. And I aint much the wiser. And Amy says, ‘They call Kent the Garden of England.’ She’s smiling at me funny. Then he says, like he hadn’t planned on this bit either and he’s only saying it so as not to say something else, ‘It’s like you’ve got to have the country to have the town. See them orchards. Uncle Lenny couldn’t have no apples to sell, could he? See them sheep …’ Then he stops and goes quiet, looking at me. Then he looks at Amy and Amy nods and he says, ‘Come with me.’

  We get out and walk into the fields and I’m scared. There are sheep bleating and staring. He stands and looks at the view. I think, It’s because the sheep get killed. It’s because the sheep get chopped up and eaten. The view’s all far-off and little and it’s as though we’re fa
r-off and little too and someone could be looking at us like we’re looking at the view. He looks at me, and I know the reason I’m scared is because he is. And my dad Jack aint never scared. He doesn’t look like my dad Jack, he looks as if he could be anyone. He takes a deep breath, then another one, quick, and I reckon he wanted to change his mind, but he was already teetering, toppling, on top of that hill, and he couldn’t stop himself.

  LENNY

  So Vincey comes home, in his new civvies, and parks himself on a stool in the Coach, drinks all round, and after loosening me up with a large scotch I should never have accepted, he says, cool as Christmas, ‘How’s Sally?’

  You couldn’t tell from looking at him whether it was bare-faced cheek or whether there really was some dumb part of him that thought he could carry on again where he left off, that reckoned he’d done due penance, courtesy of the regular Army, and now here he was to ask for my daughter.

  I suppose he pulled the same wool over Jacks eyes because you’d think by the way Jack behaves that Vince had had a change of heart, he’d gone and seen the error of his ways. You’d think Jack would have more sense than to believe that the only reason why Vince had bunked off for five years was so he could come back and ask to be forgiven and pick things up just as they were.

  It takes the Army to put a finish on a man.

  Good to have you back, lad. Take your time, rest up, have fun. Always a place for you in the old shop, you know that.

  But he doesn’t rest up and have fun, he gets to work pretty damn fast. He puts a tidy slice of his saved-up soldier’s pay on one of Ray Johnson’s special recommendations, and Ray, as he’s been doing of late, comes good. Witness, one camper-van. Except that’s a touchy subject, we don’t talk about that, same as we don’t talk about how Raysy came good when Lenny Tate needed a special job done for his daughter.

  And Vince don’t buy a camper-van, he buys a ’59 Jaguar, so you might think he’s letting the world know how he means to live. Takes the Army to turn out a true spiv. But he parks the Jag in Charlie Dixon’s old yard, courtesy of Ray. Charlie Dixon having passed on to the scrapyard in the sky. Then he gets himself a set of tools and a trolley-jack and spends most of his days tinkering with the engine and taking it apart and putting it together again, then he touches up the bodywork and sells it. Then he buys another car and does the same, and before the year’s out there are two cars standing there in Ray’s yard, apart from the camper, that is, and I say to Jack, ‘You can’t kid yourself any longer, it aint just the lad’s hobby. He might want nothing better than to lie under a car all day but he aint just doing it for the love of it. It don’t stop there.’

  He says, ‘It’s Ray’s fault.’

  I say, ‘Maybe. But Ray’s got troubles of his own, aint he?’

  But Jack don’t give up easy. He makes one last bid to win Vince over. It’s about as half-baked and cock-eyed as they come and it takes the form of Mandy Black, from Blackburn.

  The story goes she turned up at Smithfield early one morning in a meat lorry, a long way from home and so far as she was concerned the further the better, but tired and lost and hungry. So Jack and his mates get her a decent breakfast. But Jack goes one step further and offers her a roof over her head for the night. Anyone else would have pointed her back in the direction she came and saved himself some sniggers and some trouble, but not Jack. And you’d think Amy might’ve had a thing or two to say about it. You could say it was plain kindness or you could say he was just following the old family tradition the Dodds’ had of picking up strays. Anyhow, Mandy turns up in Bermondsey, in Jack’s van, and my guess is that Jack wasn’t thinking of Vince at all at this stage. He was thinking of June for once. He was thinking of Amy. Poor berk.

  Snag is that with Vince back home there aint no spare bed. But that’s no problem, Vincey says, he’ll see if he can’t kip down in Ray’s camper. It’s only for one night and he’s used to living in a bivvy, even if it is the middle of November. And he’ll be nearer to his precious cars. But one night turns into the best part of a week, she’s begging them not to let on about her and they haven’t got the heart to turf her out, and I reckon it was only when they were getting used to her being a sort of permanent lodger that Jack got it into his head that he could use her somehow as a bribe for Vince. Though why he should’ve thought that, I don’t know. Like he was expecting Vince to say, ‘Thanks, Jack, now I’ll start coming to Smithfield again. Seems like a good spot.’ As if Vince couldn’t make his own moves and that wasn’t just what he was doing. As if Mandy was Jack’s to dispose of anyway. Fact is that there’s Miss Lancashire Hotpot using Vince’s room, and there’s Vince using Ray’s camper, and sooner or later she goes down to the yard to thank him for his trouble and see what he gets up to all day long. And there’s the two of them and there’s the camper and Vincey’s got the key. So blow you, Jack.

  Joke of it all is that Mandy didn’t know how lucky she was, or else she was cleverer than anyone thought, an eye for the long shot. Because, though no one knew it, Vincey was already on his way to being Dodds Motors and later Dodds Auto Showroom. Garage, I call it. And though it always seemed to me a touch-and-go operation and not what you’d hold up as a shining example of a fine career for a man, it worked for him, it’s brought in more dosh than Dodds and Son ever did. Look at that suit. It’s kept her in frocks and hairdos and holidays in the sun. Sometimes I wish my Sally had got back together again with Big Boy, sod him, I do. Because she couldn’t have done much worse than what she did, and I remember them trips to Margate Joan and I never went on, I do.

  He says, ‘How’s Sally?’

  I say, ‘Wouldn’t you like to know.’

  He says, ‘I would like to know, Lenny. Have another one.’ Face don’t crack.

  I say, ‘She got married, didn’t she?’

  I think, The pillock’s got a nerve, I’ll give him that, the tosser’s got a way about him. It takes the Army. He aint got such an ugly mug on him either, more’s the pity, he’s filled out fine. I can see why they’d let him walk all over them, what with the little-orphan act as a standby. I suppose he’ll’ve had a few in the last five years, camp trollops, bints. And why should he be sitting there, standing drinks, like he’s the conquering hero, when all he’s done is have the honour of being one of the last troops to clear out of Aden, and learnt how to use a spanner and a grease gun? It was different for Jack, Ray and me. Bleeding desert.

  I say, She got married, didn’t she? But I don’t say she’s not living with her husband, seeing as her husband’s living in Pentonville Prison. Because he’ll’ve heard that anyway. Four counts of larceny and one of assault. What the country needs is to bring back military service, eh Vincey?

  And I don’t say how she’s making ends meet. Odd jobs for cash. Taking in lodgers. It’s do as you like now. Ask Raysy.

  I don’t say she aint got no kids. Still, that’s one less load on her mind, aint it?

  He says, ‘I heard. I heard she got married.’ Not a flicker. ‘So how’s the fruit-and-veg trade, Lenny?’

  VINCE

  But a good motor aint just a good motor.

  A good motor is a comfort and companion and an asset to a man, as well as getting him from A to B. I can’t speak for women. Mandy drives like it’s nothing special, like a car is a handbag. But a good motor deserves respect, treat it right and it treats you right. And if needs be you can take it apart and see how it works. It aint no mystery.

  People curse ’em. They say, curse of our time. But I say, aint it amazing? Aint it amazing there’s this thing that exists so everyone can jump in and travel where they please? Can’t imagine a world without motors. There’s nothing finer, if you ask me, there’s nothing that shows better that you’re alive and humming and living in this present day and age than when you squeeze the juice and burn up road and there are the signs and the lights and the white lines all so it can happen and everything’s moving, going. Where are we? Gravesend, 3 miles. We’re coming up to Gravesend. Or w
hen you’re cruising through town on a hot day with your shades on and your arm dangling out the window and a ciggy dangling from the end of your arm and some skirt to clock on the pavement. Ridin’ along in my automobeeel …

  And I always say it aint the motor by itself, it’s the combination of man and motor, it’s the intercombustion. A motor aint nothing without a man to tweak its buttons. And sometimes a man aint nothing without a motor, I see that. Motorvation, I call it. Fit the car to the customer, that’s what I say. I aint just a car dealer, I’m a car tailor. I’m an ace mechanic too, as it happens, I know engines like you know your wife’s fanny, but I’ve moved on from them days. A good motor’s like a good suit.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Dodds, I’m very sorry to hear it.’

  Oily twat.

  I said, ‘Business as usual, Mr Hussein. Want to run it round the block?’

  So we got in the Merc.

  He said, ‘When’s the funeral?’

  I said, ‘Thursday. Engine’s good as new. Paintwork and trim’s all custom.’

  He said, ‘A sad blow, Mr Dodds, the worst, losing a father.’

  I said, ‘Front suspension needs a peek, I’ll see to that. Shift’s smooth as cream, aint it?’

  He thinks, Jack’s dead so I’m an easy touch.

  I said, ‘Usual guarantees.’

  We went along Jamaica Road, doubling back at the Rotherhithe roundabout.

  He said, ‘Let me think about it.’

  Which means he might not buy. Which means he’s getting tired of Kath. Which means I aint got no hold and I don’t get no extra.

  And I’m already a grand under.

  We came back down Abbey Street and parked by the kerb and we sat there for a bit. But you always let the punter think about it.

  I said, ‘I’ve had lots of inquiries, Mr H, but – you know me – your first pickings.’