It's even better than a royal blue Merc.
Vie don't say nothing, like he's already paid his forfeit.
So it's me who says, but like it's Vie who's speaking, while I hang on to the wet jar, 'Good idea, Lenny. Good gesture. He'd be honoured.'
Ray
He looks at me straight and steady, so straight and steatty? that my own face must be all a-quiver in comparison. think, You have to sit straight and still for your final trait, no shifting, no pretending, no ducking out. Then says, like he can see what's in my head, like he sees the? question I want to ask, 'People panic, Raysy. You don't evwf want to panic.
It's like what they said in the war. Number one rule for soldiers: Don't panic. Though I never understood how votl! could lay that down as a command, you can't command a man not to believe that fire'll burn him. Except Jack used to put it into working practice. Like when we ran into that ' trouble outside Sollum and that lieutenant, Crawford, is lying there suddenly like a bloody rag, with his next-in-line yelling, 'What do I do? What do I do?' and Jack says, 'What you have to do, sir, is assume command. If you don't, I will.' And I'm thinking, I'm bleeding glad I don't have to assume command, I'll settle for being commanded.
I suppose that's what he's doing now, assuming command, taking charge of himself.
I say, 'It's a tough one, Jack, it's a tough one.' Like I'm not talking about the thing it is, like it's just an extra tricky test you come out of afterwards.
He says, 'It'll be tougher for Amy.' Looking at me straight and steady. 'If you ever get the choice, Raysy, if you ever get the option, you go first. It's carrying on that's hard. Ending aint nothing.'
I say, 'Well, it aint an option I've got, is it? I mean, if anyone has. Seeing as there's just me.'
He looks at me. 'You never know. Still I reckon I'm lucky, being the first.'
'No, I'm Lucky.'
He doesn't smile, it's not like the old joke. I'm not lucky, you're Lucky. He looks at me. His eyes are like they don't miss nothing, his face is like you can't not look at it. I think, I've seen him most of my life, but now I'm seeing him. I'm not seeing Jack Dodds, quality butcher, Smithfield and Bermondsey, or Jack Dodds care of the Coach and Horses. I'm not even seeing Big Jack, Desert Rat, Private Jack of the Cairo Camel Corps. I'm seeing the man himself, his own man, private Jack, who's assumed command.
He says, 'It'll be harder for Amy. She'll need looking after.'
I say, 'She'll be here any minute. With Vincey.'
'I aint got much for her to be getting on with.'
I look at what he has got. A bed, a bedside cabinet. I reckon he hasn't got much more now than June's had all her life.
I say, 'If there's anything I can do, Jack.'
His hand's lying spare, empty, on the blanket and I see the fingers curl just a bit. Then his eyes close. The lids just roll down of their own accord like a shutter, like the eyes on that doll I bought Sue years ago one Christmas. Just for a moment it's like— Don't panic, don't panic. But his chest heaves. The swelling round his operation scar dips and rises.
I look at his face, at his hand lying on the blanket. I think, Everyone has their own space and no one else can step in it, then one day it's unoccupied. It's a question of territory.
He opens his eyes. It's as if he's been tricking me and he's been watching all along, through the slits, to see if I'm a different person when I think I'm not being looked at. But the lids open slowly. You see the whites before you see the whole eye.
He says, 'Still here, Lucky? Yes, there is something you can do for me. How lucky do you feel?'
Vince
He's still lying there, with the mask over his face and the extra tubes, in the little unit where they put them after they wheel them out, the High Dependency Unit, and he don't know nothing yet because he aint woken up proper, he don't know sweet nothing. He don't know he's inoperable. And that geezer Strickland tells me it only took ten minutes, a quick opening up and sewing back together again, and he uses some word for it, a long fancy word, like something-sodomy. It's like he's pleased with what a quick piece of work it was. He don't spell it out for me plain and simple, he leaves me to work it out. Like it wasn't the two-hour job he said it could be if there was anything they could do. Inoperable, that's the word he uses, inoperable.
And I look across the corridor through the glass partition, where Jack's lying, number one on the right, and I think. He's inoperable, he can't be operated. He's still there but he's stopped running, he's pulled up at the side of the road. But that's how everything feels suddenly. Like we're all in some place where things have come to a standstill, and the rest of the world is whizzing on past, like traffic on a motorway.
He says, 'Is Mrs Dodds here?' And I say, 'Yes, she's gone back to get a cup of tea. She's with my wife.' Then he looks quick at his watch and he says, 'If you could fetch her, I could speak to her now, while I'm here. We could find somewhere private. Maybe the sister's office.' And I'm thinking, You turd. Because he aint thinking of the effect on me, or maybe he's thinking it aint important to me, I don't count, I'll just do as his messenger-boy, and I want to hit him, I want to smash his poxy four-eyed face. But I say, 'I'll go and get her.' He's already turning, as I say it, to a pile of notes some little junior doc's shoved under his nose. He says, Til be here.' He prods his glasses with his finger and gives me a tight little half-measure of a smile.
So I go and find Amy and Mandy. But it's like I aint going nowhere, it's the corridors and swing-doors that move past me, like one of those old machines in arcades, with a steering-wheel and a picture of a road spinning round, so you got the feeling you were travelling though you weren't.
They're sitting there with their cups of tea, and they don't know nothing yet, only that Jack's alive, he aint sparked out on the table, possibility number three. But I can tell that she knows, straight away, just by looking at me, that she can see in my face what I don't even need to tell her. I say, 'He aint come round yet. Strickland's in the ward. He said he'd like to speak to you.' Then I shake my head just a fraction, like it's hard to budge it, and she looks at me like she don't want anyone to say it. As if it's all her fault and she knows it and she's sorry, and she don't see why she has to go before the headmaster and get punished extra for it, when it's punishment already, just knowing. But maybe the headmaster's going to give her a second chance. Don't ever let this happen again. So she gets up, and as she gets up Mandy squeezes her arm. Then Mandy gets up too, giving me a little nod like a question. She looks good, Mandy looks good. And I nod back.
Then we go back along the corridors, which slide past and under us while we just pretend we're walking, and Amy don't say a word till we get near the ward, when she says, "Uncle Ray ought to know.' I say, 'What?' She aint called him that for years: Uncle Ray. Like Uncle Lenny. Like I'm a nipper again.
Strickland sees us coming and he says something quick to one of the nurses, then he ushers us into an office, it aint the sister's office, it's more like a store cupboard, and shuts the door behind us. There's only two chairs and he pulls one round for Amy to sit on and Mandy takes the other one, by the door. I stand close beside Amy, and Strickland stands in front of the desk with his arse half parked on it, and as he starts talking I put my arm behind Amy's head and clasp her shoulder and I feel her hand come across and grab my other hand.
He says he don't believe in not giving the facts straight, it don't serve any purpose otherwise. When he starts to talk he's looking at Amy but he switches his eyes pretty smart to me, as though in order to talk to Amy he has to talk to me, or he's seen something in Amy's face he don't want to look at. I can't see Amy's face. I have to look straight ahead, like when you're up on a charge, before they march you into the cooler. I have to look this bugger straight in the eye.