All I've got to interest him is an '85 Granada Scorpio and he sniffs round it for a bit, more than he needs if he aint going to cut cake, but I see him looking at Kath, I see him clocking her as much as he clocks the car. She's sitting there in the office, behind the partition, with the door wide open, and it aint my fault she's wearing a skirt like an armband and a tight white T-shirt, and where he comes from they dress 'em up like nuns. It aint my fault she's grown up from being my little girl Kath, that she's eighteen and out of school and can't get no job. I said, You can work in the showroom, if you like, if it'll get you off your arse.
So I let him hover another thirty seconds till I can tell what makes him tick, good and proper. Women, motors and haggling. That's fair, them's fair hobbies. Then I go over, slow, unpushy, and say, 'Can I help you, sir?' And he looks at me, and one eye's saying he don't want to bother with the likes of me, he aint interested in a three-year-old Ford, and the other's still trying to peek round my shoulder at Kath.
He says, 'I was looking at the Granada.'
I say, 'Sweet car, sweet engine, all tuned and tickled. You won't get better value. Want to run it round the block?'
I can see him backing off, so I say, watching his eyes, 'Keys are in the office. Shall I get 'em?' Then I say, looking at my watch, 'I'd come with you myself, but I've got another client coming, three o'clock appointment. But I'll see if Kathy here can't do the honours. You in a hurry?'
And he says, looking at his own watch, it's a bleeding Rolex, 'Maybe not.'
So I poke my head round the office door and I say, 'Kath, will you go with this gentleman while he takes the Granada for a spin? I'm tied up myself. Mr—?' I turn round and he's right at my shoulder. He says, 'Mr Hussein.' I say, 'Mr Hussein.' Then I pick the keys off the rack and toss 'em to her and they land in her lap.
I'd never asked her to do that before and she looks at me, uncertain. But one thing you can say about Kath is that she aint no dummy when it comes to cars. I taught that girl how to use a motor soon as she could get a licence. Took to it like a natural, like her dad's daughter.
So she even backs it out for him, neat and nifty.
It aint my fault she was built like she was, it aint my fault she was her mother's daughter an' all.
I said, 'This is Kath, my daughter Kath. You're in good hands with Kath.'
Other client coming, my arse.
So I say when they get back, 'Well? Goes a treat, don't it? Vince Dodds don't deal in duds.' And he looks at me as though to say, Throw in the girl and I'll buy, and I look at him as though to say, Throw in an extra half-grand and she's yours. He says, 'Okay.'
Then he says, getting all chummy, 'My little weakness, Mr Dodds, my little indulgence. I buy a car, then I grow tired of it, then I get another one, like toys.' The coat's a camel-hair. 'You should look out for anything I might like. I could make it worth your while.'
And I knew he never meant to buy the Granada. I knew he'd be back before long to buy another and there'd be extras in it if I so much as hinted that I was missing Kath around the place, that a girl of her age ought to be earning a decent living.
There goes Vince Dodds who pimps for his own daughter.
But it aint as if she didn't know what she was doing, it aint as if she can't take care of herself. Her mother's daughter. And she aint on no regular rummage. Not like Sally.
But now if he wants to ditch her, if he thinks he can chuck her out on the street, another motor, another muff, then he's got another think coming. I'll pop over to that posh pad of his and bust in the door. Then I'll bust in his head. And it don't matter, I don't care, if he don't buy the Merc and he never forks out that extra grand. Because maybe a grand aint nothing, it aint nothing at all, now Jack aint nothing neither. But Kath's my own living daughter, she is. She's a Dodds. And she turns up at Jack's funeral wearing the best little black outfit you ever saw, which must have cost half a grand for a start, half a grand if it was a penny. And maybe I aint done right by her, maybe I aint.
Ray
She would go and see June twice a week. Mondays and Thursdays, regular as clockwork, like she still does. And this was when I swung it so I only worked three days at the office, Mondays to Wednesdays, two days less for only a quarter less pay, taking into account my increment. Hen-nessy said, 'You're up for promotion, take it from me,' putting a finger to his lips. 'All you have to do is be a good boy till your annual review.' He was taking pity on me, I think, on account of Carol, and had put in a word, reminded them I was still working at the place. He said, 'About time too, Ray, if you ask me. How old are you these days?' I said, 'Forty-five.' But I wasn't interested in promotion, I wasn't interested in getting on in insurance. I was interested in the opposite. I said, 'They could do me a better turn than that. Less time for less pay, that's what I'm interested in, I don't want no leg-up.'
It stood to reason, with only me to consider. And a camper-van.
Besides, I was getting lucky, I was getting canny, I was starting to live up to my name. The gee-gees were doing me favours, if no one else was.
And why shouldn't a man who's all on his own, with no one to fend for but himself, arrange his life to suit his own hankering? Mondays to Wednesdays at the office, Thursdays to Saturdays at the races or on the open road.
It's just the gypsy in my...
And any shortfall in my pay-cheque the horses made up, more or less, sometimes with extra on top. It's the same business, after all, the chance business. Insurance, gambling.
Hennessy said, 'And by the way, what do you fancy for Goodwood?'
So Amy would go and see June on Thursdays and I would be chasing off all over the country, following the nags. And for a long time I thought about it before I said it, for a long time I chewed it over, then one day I plucked up and I said it. I said, 'Amy, I aint going nowhere this Thursday. I suppose the horses can run without me. That's a long old bus ride you have to do. Let me drive you over to see June. Let me take you in the camper.' So she said, 'All right, Ray,' and I took her.
And it was either the second or the third time I took her, either the second or the third Thursday, that I said, 'I met you same time as I met Jack, did you know that?' She looked at me, puzzled, and she said, 'What, in the desert?' I said, 'Yep, in the desert. Egypt.' She sort of frowned and laughed at me at the same time. So I said, 'I saw your photo,' and when I said it my voice wasn't like I meant it to be, like I was just playing a game, answering a riddle, it came out different, it came out sort of like the truth. I aint ever been a dab hand with women.
She looked at me, long and hard, soft and sharp at the same time, and that was when I knew that she knew, or that she'd wondered all along. That I'd just had this thing about her, always. In spite of Carol, in spite of Sue, in spite of her being Jack's anyway, in spite of her having lost her looks by now. But there's a beauty in that itself, I reckon, that's a lovable thing, fading beauty, it depends on your attitude. And they aint all been lost. In spite of her and Jack getting stuck in their ways as if they'd been put in a mould long ago and come out and gone solid. But I suppose we all do that. We all need something to stir us up.
I'd had this thing about her always.
And I'd say it worked in my favour that Sue and then Carol did a flit, one after the other, because I reckon she took pity on me. Not Hennessy's kind of pity. Maybe she'd always taken pity on me, and if all it ever was was pity, I suppose I wasn't going to complain.