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  But maybe June doesn’t think at all, she aint got a thought in her head, and supposing what you want to be is not like anything. Supposing what you want to be is a drive-shaft.

  They said a flying-bomb killed them all so I was lucky.

  He says, ‘What I mean is, what do you want to do?’ He smiles, like he don’t mean no harm really. ‘What job do you want to do?’

  And I see them all hanging up before me, like clothes on a rack, all the jobs, tinker, tailor, soldier, and you have to pick one and then you have to pretend for the rest of your life that that’s what you are. So they aint no different really from accidents of birth. I didn’t know that phrase then but I learnt it later. It’s a good phrase.

  I think, He wants me to say ‘butcher’ but I aint going to say it. I aint going to say ‘butcher’.

  I said to Amy, ‘Take me to see her, take me to see June.’ I did something he never did, even if it was only once. Vincey’s got a sister, face like a blister. And it was Amy who told me that he never wanted to tell me, never at all. Though how he thought he could keep me fooled beats me. It was Amy who told me that June was an accident, an accident of birth. She didn’t mean the way June turned out, she meant that they’d never meant to have her.

  So June was their accident and I was their choice, tinker, tailor.

  He says, ‘Well, how do you see yourself?’

  He looks at me, knowing I’ve only got one answer. The whistle goes outside for play to end and the room goes quiet as cotton wool, except for his breathing. It was times like this I’d think, If they can see me, they must be watching me now.

  No one ever kissed her, no one ever missed her.

  I don’t say nothing, and maybe he knows what I’d like to do is hit him.

  Then I say, ‘What I’d like to do, sir, what I’d like to be, is a hop-picker.’

  RAY

  It was Amy’s voice but what I heard, just for a moment, was Carol’s.

  She said, ‘There’s nothing they can do, Ray.’ I heard the bravery in her voice, just like Carol’s.

  She said he hadn’t come round proper from the op yet and Strickland wasn’t going to spell it out to him till he had. But he’d spelled it out to her, and to Vince, loud and clear. Nothing doing. Opened him up just to sew him back together again. Then, while she was there by his bed afterwards, he’d come round anyway just for a bit and she hadn’t said nothing and he hadn’t asked but he’d looked at her and all he’d said was, ‘I want to see Lucky.’

  I said, ‘So do you think he knows?’ And what I meant was: do you think he knows it’s all over? But I thought, and maybe Amy was thinking it too, how you could take it another way, and maybe that’s why he wanted to see me, because why do people get called to bedsides? I’d been going in to see him anyway, most days, but now he was asking: I want to see Lucky. What you never know won’t hurt, but it’s different when someone’s dying, because it’s not like you can say least said soonest mended, because there aint going to be no soonest or latest and you won’t ever get the chance again to tell or not tell nothing.

  Maybe that’s what she was thinking too because she went all silent and choked.

  So I said, ‘You don’t think he thinks that because I’m called Lucky—?’

  Make a fool comment.

  Then she started crying. I could hear the noise of people in corridors.

  I said, ‘Do you want – someone with you?’

  She said, ‘It’s all right. I’m with Vince and Mandy. They’ll stay the night.’

  I said, ‘I’ll be there first thing tomorrow. Soon as they let in visitors.’

  Then she said, ‘Goodbye Ray,’ as if she was setting out on some long journey, as if I might not see her again, not the same Amy. But it was Jack who was leaving, not Amy, and that’s when her voice went like Carol’s.

  ‘I mean it, Ray, I’m not coming back. You listening to me? I’m not coming back.’

  She couldn’t tell me to my face.

  I pressed the receiver to my ear as if I couldn’t hear properly and I remembered when Sue first called from Sydney and I hunched right up to the phone as if you had to do that when someone was speaking from the other side of the world, but Sue had sounded like she was just round the corner. I said, ‘You sound like you’re just round the corner, sweetheart.’ And now Carol was sounding like she was the other side of the world, but I knew where she was phoning from.

  Not Sydney, Sydenham.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you to your face but I’m telling you now.’

  But I could see her face, I could see it down the phone, trying to say her last words to me. I can still see it.

  ‘I’m with him, Ray. I’m with him now and I’m not coming back. Goodbye Ray.’

  I didn’t say, ‘Goodbye Carol.’ Goodbye Mrs Johnson. I didn’t give her that satisfaction, or me that shame. That was all, my one cheap come-back, I never said goodbye. I put down the receiver. I sat in the silence, with the evening coming on outside. I thought, I won’t go to the Coach, I can’t go to the Coach. I couldn’t imagine her with another man, even when I knew she had one. Barry Stokes. As daft as imagining me with— But if she had to have another man she might at least have found some rich ponce, or some flash ponce, or some handy-between-the-sheets ponce, if that was it. Instead of the sub-manager at the domestic-appliance centre where she worked part-time.

  If I’d been another man I wouldn’t have just sat there with it getting dark, but not bothering to put the lights on, as if, if I sat very still, I might fade away altogether. Another man would’ve kicked in a cupboard or two or swept every knick-knack off the mantelpiece with one swing of his arm. Another man would’ve put on his coat and gone straight round to where she was and bust open the door if needs be, then bust open his face.

  But I aint another man, I’m a little bloke.

  I thought, First my daughter buggers off to Sydney and stops writing, now my wife goes and bunks it. And they call me Lucky.

  I thought, It don’t help you much, having been at the battle of El Alamein.

  Another man would’ve acted different. But what I did was to sit there in the dark, not moving, not budging, till I wasn’t sitting there any more, I was curled up with all my clothes still on and it was six in the morning. Then I got up and washed and shaved and changed my clothes and put two slices of toast under the grill and made tea like I wasn’t thinking of anything. I washed up what was in the sink. I checked what was in my wallet and put some things in a bag. Then I went round to the yard, where the old stable had been turned by Charlie Dixon into a lock-up. I bought a Sporting Life on the way and twenty Player’s and thought, I’m alive on this Wednesday morning. It was late April. I backed out the camper and wiped the dust off the windscreen with the engine still running. I looked at the tyres and thought of opening the engine compartment, but what was there to fuss over when the thing had hardly been driven? I checked all was okay in the back: the gas burners and cylinder, water carrier, the standby box with the kettle and mugs and tea-towel and stuff. Guide to Places of Interest in England and Wales. I drove out through the gates, stopped, got out and closed the gates, CHAS. DIXON, SITES CLEARED, and did the bolts and the padlock. It was a bright, clear morning. Then I jumped back in and drove to Newmarket.

  VINCE

  And passion wagons.

  If you want to get your oats, get a car.

  I said, ‘Hop in, Mand.’

  I used to drive her out along the old A20, or the Sevenoaks road or where we’re driving right now. Turn off somewhere before Rochester. Badger’s Mount, Shoreham Valley, Brand’s Hatch, all that part of Kent. But I never took her further – down Memory Lane. I could’ve stopped, just like Jack did, and said, This is where. But it didn’t need no mystery tours, because I told her straight out anyway, the time we first had it off in the back of Ray’s camper, the whole story, the complete Jack and Amy set-up. June an’ all.

  She said, ‘So Jack and Amy took you in, just like me. They were good to you
like they were good to me.’ Like she was speaking up on their behalf.

  I said, ‘I never asked ’em no favours.’

  But we were two of a kind, all the same, Mandy and me.

  You’d hit the country sooner, them days, driving out, and the traffic wasn’t so thick, so it served two purposes. I could test my handiwork on the latest motor, I could see if it didn’t go a lot better for having been given a going-over by me. Then we could test our handiwork on each other. In them early days we saw a fair range of back seats.

  It’s true we could’ve got out and walked and spread a rug down somewhere on some cosy patch of grass and done it like the bunny rabbits. Sometimes we did. But the ground aint always dry and the air aint always warm and I suppose she cottoned on anyhow soon enough that I liked doing it in cars, I did. An old black cracked leather seat the best. I liked it cramped and squashed and hasty, as if that was how you really had to do it, seeing as you had nowhere proper to do it, and I reckon that’s how she liked it too, because it didn’t take much coaxing, a look, a nod, and there she’d be with her legs round my neck. I said, ‘You sure you aint done it in cars before?’ and she said she never had no boyfriends in Blackburn with cars. I said, ‘Boyfriends? What are they? You must have done it somewhere though.’ She said, ‘How d’you work that out?’

  She’d sit on my cock, then she’d reach up to the roof of the camper, which was just about at the right height, and push.

  I know it wasn’t what she’d reckoned on, what she’d pictured, but people adapt quick, they adjust quick. They shove aside the pie-in-the-sky. I know she’d seen herself swinging away in Swinging London, wherever that was, or tooling around, making love not war with some long-haired tossers. Instead of which she gets scooped up off the streets, no questions asked, by Jack and Amy on her first night in town, as if she’s run away from one mum and dad just to find another. And she aint so ungrateful, all things considered, she aint so disappointed. I said, They’ve done this before, you know, a long time ago. I said, spelling it out, ‘It’s because you’re supposed to be the sister I aint got.’ Which is when she could’ve done another runner, smart, if she’d wanted, but she didn’t.

  Instead of what she’d reckoned on, she got me: Vince Dodds, son of a doodlebug, fresh back from the arsehole of Arabia. Lying under a motor most of the time, when he wasn’t lying on top of her.

  I said I ran away an’ all. I ran away to the Army. Most people run away from the Army but I ran away to it. Because I wasn’t going to be no butcher’s boy, just for him.

  She said, ‘So why did you come back?’

  I said it was different now, wasn’t it? I had my own set-up now, thanks to Uncle Ray, and thanks to the Royal Electrical and Mechanicals. If Jack thought I was going to give up mucking around with motors and put on a white apron again, he had another think coming.

  She said, ‘If you hate him so much, why haven’t you moved out?’

  I said, ‘I have, sweetheart, aint you noticed? It’s you that’s moved in.’

  She said, ‘I meant permanent.’

  I said I was biding my time. Step by step, little by little. First my business had to take off, then I’d get a place of my own.

  She said, ‘Your business?’

  I said, ‘Yeh.’

  She used to lick my tattoos, like she might lick ’em off.

  She said, ‘When you get a place of your own, will there be room for me?’

  I said, ‘Might be, if you ask nice. This aint bad for now.’

  Came in handy, that camper.

  Two of a kind, though we didn’t look it. She was eighteen, I was twenty-three. I suppose I must have seemed to her at times like I belonged with some other bunch, some older bunch, like I was her bleeding uncle. She used to say now and then I ought to change, get with it, switch on. Roy Orbison had shot his bolt. I said I changed a long time ago, I switched right over, didn’t I? Became a different person, didn’t I? And ‘with it’? Did she think I aint been around? I’d been on the hippie trail to Aden. Had she ever seen someone with their head sliced off? Well then.

  She looked at me, blinking.

  The world was changing all right, I knew that. I aint unaware. But I said I’ll tell you what the big change is, the change underneath all the change. It aint the Beatles and it aint the Rolling Stones and it aint long hair or short skirts or free milk and baby-stoppers on the National Health. It’s mobility, it’s being mobile. How did you get to here from Blackburn? How did you get to shake off your ma and pa? Time was when the only way you got to travel was in the Army, though not everywhere’s worth the trip, I’m telling you. But watch ’em all on the move now, watch ’em all going places. You listening? Ten years from now the Beatles and the Stones will be old-time music but what they’ll still want is wheels. Wheels. More and more wheels. And I’ll be there to sell ’em, Vince Dodds’ll be right there to sell ’em. I’m in the right trade, the travel trade. So don’t tell me I aint with it.

  She looked at me as if she was doing a bit of trading of her own in her head.

  She said, ‘Course you are, lover.’

  She’d twist the ends of her hair and suck ’em, like a schoolgirl.

  I said, ‘If it weren’t for Hitler, Jack would never’ve budged from that shop. But one day Jack’ll come crawling to me, you see.’

  She said, ‘Course he will, pet.’

  We’d hit the road and head out through the suburbs, like we’d robbed a bank and were on the run. Just runnin’ scared! Du-du-du-dum! There was a lay-by out beyond Swanley with a mobile caff where they’d sizzle up bacon waddies and brew tea like it had to be stirred with a dipstick. The cars would whack by and the slipstreams would tug the steam from our mugs and flip her long hair. I’ll always see her standing by a road. Then we’d find our own little private lay-by somewhere. It was like the car joined in with us. Crazy for it, we’d be. Slippery with it, have to mop down afterwards. Then we’d go for a walk in the woods, across the fields, listen to the birdies, take the air, clock the view. I said – I thought it would impress her, coming from Blackburn, I thought she’d be impressed, it coming from me – ‘They call Kent the Garden of England.’

  ROCHESTER

  We come up to the start of the M2 but Vince stays on the A2, through Strood to Rochester. We cross the Medway by the old road bridge, beside the railway bridge. It comes as a surprise, the sudden wide view of the river, like it’s a whole look-out on the world you hadn’t been thinking of, you’d forgotten it was there. Boats, jetties, moorings, mud banks.

  Vic says, ‘Tide’s out,’ and looks at his watch. ‘It’ll be coming in at Margate.’

  Lenny says, ‘Good thing, I suppose. Considering.’

  You can see the castle and the cathedral spire ahead, standing out, like toy buildings set down special.

  Vince says, ‘So, anyone know any good pubs in Rochester?’

  Vic says, ‘No, but I knew a few once in Chatham.’ Navy man.

  Vince says, ‘Memory Lane, eh Vic?’

  The weather’s changing, clouds brewing.

  We overshoot on the main road then double back, getting lost in the side-streets and the one-way systems. Then we slip into a car park at the foot of the castle hill. Lenny says, ‘I never knew this was a sight-seeing tour.’ Vince says, ‘Everybody out.’ He takes off his shades and pats his hair. I lift up the box so he can get his jacket and he turns and reaches for it. He looks at Lenny as if Lenny might hand it to him but Lenny don’t, then I put the box back on the seat. Then we all get out, stretching and putting on our clobber. It’s nippy after being in the car. The castle looks dry and bony in the sunshine. Vince opens the boot and takes out a coat. Camel hair.

  Then we should all move off but we stay put, loitering, looking at each other, sheepish.

  I say, ‘It don’t seem right just to leave him there on the back seat, does it?’

  Lenny says, ‘Where d’you think he should go, in the boot?’

  I say, ‘I mean, it don’t seem ri
ght us going off and just leaving him on his own.’

  Lenny shrugs.

  Vic don’t say nothing, like it’s not his business any more, it’s not his say-so, now he’s handed over the goods. He gives me a quick sharp look, settling his cap, then he squints up at the clouds in the sky.

  Vince says, ‘You’re right, Ray. He should come with us, shouldn’t he?’

  He leans in and picks up the box. It’s the first time he’s held it. He tucks it under his arm while he locks the car, then he straightens up with it hugged against his chest. Now he’s holding it, now he’s standing there in that coat with the box, it’s as though he’s in charge, it’s as though he’s got his badge of authority. It was Vic who was in charge, in charge but sort of neutral at the same time, but now it’s Vince.

  He says, ‘Okay men, follow me,’ like he’s leading a patrol of marines, and he marches off across the car park. I see Lenny turn his head as if he’s going to spit.

  We come out on the high street. It’s not big and bustling like your normal high street. It’s narrow and quiet and crooked and historical and full of lop-sided old buildings. There are people ambling up and down it, aimless, the way tourists walk. It looks like a high street in a picture book, like you shouldn’t be here, walking in it, or like it shouldn’t be here itself, with the traffic belting along on the A2 close by. Except it was here first.

  There’s a fancy grocer’s opposite, the Rochester Food Fayre, the sort that sells funny teas and posh tins of biscuits, and Vince ducks in sudden, leaving us standing. Then he comes out again with a plastic carrier-bag. He’s slipping the box into it but there’s something else already in there, by the look of it. He says, ‘Mandy said we were out of coffee.’ Then we look this way and that and Vince scoots off again as if he can’t abide ditherers. There’s a sign up ahead saying ‘Bull Hotel’ and he heads straight for it, like he’s been meaning to all along. He says, ‘There, gents, this should do us.’ It’s a big old rambling place, with a Carvery and a Grill and a regular bar with snacks. I can see Vince considering the Carvery, like he’s thinking of lashing out special and making us feel like we owe him. Then he back-tracks along the pavement, settling on the bar and snacks. You can see the bridge over the river from the hotel entrance. The high street dips down towards it and the main road, and if you shut your eyes and open them again you can picture how a stage-coach might once have rattled across and up the slope and swung into the yard of the Bull, with the castle looking down just like a Christmas card.