He says, 'I wasn't going to chuck the lot, I wasn't going to chuck the lot.' He's started to unscrew the cap again.
Lenny looks at him, not speaking, swaying, breathing.
'Just a bit,' Vince says, 'only a bit.'
Lenny looks at him then he speaks, all hoarse and croaky. 'So what's the idea? You going to stop off every ten minutes and chuck some more? A handful here, a handful there?'
Vince carries on unscrewing the cap. He wipes his face. It's like a temptation. It's like when you take a box of chocolates to someone who's ill, to someone in hospital, and you start tucking into them yourself, first one, then another. It's like when you're looking after what belongs to someone else and you go and take it for yourself.
Vince says, 'What's the meaning of "scatter"?' He wipes his hand across his face. 'What's the meaning of the word "scatter"?'
Lenny says, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself, pillock.'
But it's like Lenny's ashamed of himself too, standing there, ready to drop. It looks like he's thinking he's hashed up the day.
Vince has got the cap off now. He looks quickly into the jar. The sheep are still staring at us. I reckon we must look as daft to them as they do to us, and I reckon anyone looking up from down below at the four of us on the top of this hill must think we're stranger-looking than the sheep.
Vince puts the cap into his pocket, then he hugs the jar closer to him and dips his free hand into it. His eyes are all gooey. He moves away from Lenny, turning his back towards him. It seems Lenny hasn't got the heart or strength to stop him. Vie and me don't stop him either. He moves to the edge of the slope, to face the view, his back to us all. In the distance there's a sort of trough of sunshine, a parting in the sky, but nearer to us a big, soft, sooty cloud is moving in. The breeze gets up. It's cold but I don't suppose Vince or Lenny can feel it. The ground smells of spring, the air smells of winter. Then there's a dash of rain.
Vince stands, feeing the view, with his back straight and his feet planted. I'd say that shirt of his is pretty well wrecked and those trousers are going to need a good clean. Mandy'll need an explanation. He splutters like he's trying to announce something but he can't get it out or he don't know what it is. He delves in the jar and he throws quickly, spluttering, once, twice. It looks like white dust, like pepper, but the wind blows it into nothing. Then he screws the cap back on and turns, coming towards us.
'This is where,' he says, wiping his face. 'This is where.'
Ray
He said, 'So now I know, Raysy,'
It was a full day and a half after the operation that wasn't no operation, so he wasn't groggy and slow and confused any more. Sharp and clear as I've ever seen him, sitting up there in that little white smock thing, with the extra tubes going in, some round the back now. It seemed like every day they rigged up another tube. But there were others in there that were all tubes, tubes and wires and bottles and apparatus, complete chemistry sets. So you had to look close to see if there was really a human life, a human component still there somewhere.
But he was sitting up, straight and steady. I thought, It's like he's having his portrait done, his last portrait, no flattering, no prettying, and no one knows how long it will take. Two weeks, three. Nothing, to do but sit still and be who you are, I don't know what you say to someone when they say that they know. I reckon the imagination's a million miles from the fact. So I looked down at the bedclothes and up at him again and he was still looking at me, straight and steady, straight into my eyes, like if he could get a grip then I should, like he aint stopped being himself, just because. On the contrary.
He says, 'No telling, is there?' Then he says, 'Lambs to the slaughter, eh Lucky.'
Mandy
The road went on, black and curving and cat's-eyed, like the one sure thing in the wet and the dark and the spray, the one sure thing in the world. Not the place from or the place to but the road.
I said, 'So what've you got in the back?' For something to say. He said, looking at me, 'Carcasses,' and I thought, Trust my luck. After only six hours.
He said, 'Long way from home then?'
I nodded, feeling my head heavy, my neck sagging with tiredness.
He said, 'So where would that be?'
He leant forward, arms hugging the steering wheel.
I said, 'Blackburn.'
27, Ollerton Road, Blackburn.
He said, 'But not any more, eh?' pulling a packet of ciggies from his shirt pocket. 'Blackburn rover, eh?' grinning at his own joke. 'London, eh?'
I nodded.
He shook the packet of cigarettes, nudged one up with his thumb and drew it out with his mouth. He passed the packet to me but I shook my head.
He said, "Day trip or for ever?' feeling for a lighter. I didn't answer. He flicked the lighter and I saw his face, red and bunched and knotty, in the flame. He said, 'How old are you, love?' breathing out smoke.
I didn't answer.
He said, 'Seventeen?' He took another drag on the cigarette, looking at the road like it was his road, the wipers dancing across the windscreen. 'Just seventeen, you know what I mean] sort of singing. He said, 'I can take you to London, love. I can take you where I'm taking my meat.'
He turned and I was looking straight at him. He said, 'What are you looking at?'
I said, 'You remind me of my dad.'
It's a good line, a handy line, stops 'em in their tracks. I'd used it before.
Besides, he did, just a bit. Remind me.
And it was him I'd blame, my dad, my dad Bill It was him I'd give as my excuse, if I was ever called to account, if I ever found myself slinking back, or being carted in a cop car, to Ollerton Road. I wasn't the first to leave, was I? It was him who set me my example.
Maybe he was thinking of me right now, with his floozy in the Isle of Man, if that was where and how it was. Waking up in the small hours, lighting a ciggy. Rain on the window. I wonder what that Mandy's up to, I wonder what that lass is doing right now.
He used to say, 'You're a wicked girl, Mandy, you're a wicked girl.' But always with a sideways smile or a wink or a click of the tongue, whether I'd done wrong or not, as if it was only ever ten per cent a ticking-off and ninety per cent a show of approval. 'You're a wicked girl, I don't know what's going to become of you,' looking at me like one day he was going to have to come and pull me out of trouble. And I used to like saying, because it had just a touch of wickedness itself and because it was different from what the other girls said about their fathers, 'My dad's a sailor.' Sailor Bill. Barnacle Bill.
Not that working on car ferries made you a real sailor.
Fleetwood to Douglas, there and back inside a day. And in winter, Heysham to Douglas, an hour longer. But when I heard him leaving in the early mornings, trying to coax that clapped-out Hillman into life, I'd think, He'll be at sea soon, my dad Bill, the voyage out, the voyage home.
Except one day he never came back.
I never said 'seaman', it didn't sound right, though it was a wicked word too, a giggle word, if you said it the wrong way. Why is a ship like a rubber johnny? Because it's full of seamen. And he'd been a real sailor once, or so he said. He'd seen the world. Shanghai, Yokohama. But then he'd met Mum and the world-seeing days had come to an end, or so she said. One wild night in Liverpool Brown arms, tattoos and a large pinch of salt. Sailor, stop your roaming. Though it's hard to imagine that ever having happened, it's hard to imagine Mum having been that woman, when you saw what she got for herself by way of replacement, that creep Neville from the Town Hall. 'Mandy, I want you to meet Mr Lonsdale.' Neville Lonsdale, Town Planning. And from then on we were going to lead a different sort of life.