We get a glimpse of it suddenly, the cathedral tower, popping up over the tops of buildings, and Vince aims as best he can for it, as if he thinks we can drive right up to the front door, in a car like this. But it ducks out of sight, like it's playing tricks with us, and the streets take you this way and that, so Vince says, 'I reckon we could walk it,' and pulls into a car park.
We get out of the car. I'm still holding the jar and I look at Vincey like it's for him to take, it's his by right how, his trophy won in a fight, but he says, 'You hang on to it, Raysy.' So I bend down and find the plastic bag that's still lying by my feet under the dash, and put the jar in it, and I think, I'm the one who's going to carry Jack into Canterbury Cathedral.
We must look a strange bunch. Me and Vie aren't much the worse for wear but Vince is all scuffed and mud-stained. He puts on his coat, which hides most of it except the bottoms of his trousers, where it's worst. Lenny looks like he's been pulled through a hedge. He's hobbling slightly but he's trying not to show it. It's like we aren't the same people who left Bermondsey this morning, four blokes on a special delivery. It's like somewhere along the line we just became travellers.
Vince straightens his tie and gets out his comb.
We follow the signs, 'To the Cathedral' The streets are narrow and the buildings crooked, like that street in Rochester, as if they've come out of the same picture-book. There's whole bits where cars can't go and people are walking in that same haphazard way. Tourists. The pavements are all wet though it's not raining. But now and then the wind suddenly gusts up and, judging from the sky, it looks as though there's more rain coming, more than just a shower.
We turn another corner and there's an old arch and we go through it and suddenly there's nothing in front of us except the cathedral itself, and a few bits of chained-off lawn and cobbles and people walking. It's a big building, long and tall, but it's like it hasn't stretched up yet to its full height, it's still growing. It makes the cathedral at Rochester look like any old church and it makes you feel sort of cheap and titchy. Like it's looking down at you, saying, I'm Canterbury Cathedral, who the hell are you?
I reckon I wouldn't mind if it was just me, passing through in the camper, taking a look, seeing the sights. But I feel all keyed up, with the others, and holding Jack. There's an entrance through a big arch, where people are milling around and lining up to go through some smaller door inside. We head towards it and it's as if, because I'm carrying Jack, I have to go first and they make way for me, and I look up at the arch and the walls and the carvings and the funny knobs and pinnacles and I feel like I felt at the Home when Amy said yes I could go in with her.
Lenny
Canterbury Cathedral. I ask you. I should've kept my big trap shut.
Still, dose of holiness'll do us good, I suppose, the way things were going.
So glory be. Lift up your hearts for Lenny.
Vie
Well it makes you feel humble. It makes a man in my line of business feel humble to think of what they've got in here. Tombs, effigies, crypts, whole chapels. When all I do in the normal course of work is box 'em up and book 'em in for their twenty minutes at the crem.
He's got himself a guidebook, biggest, flashiest one he could find. Wonders of Canterbury Cathedral. Chose it like he chose that tie, I suppose. He stands, flicking through, as if he doesn't want to look at the cathedral, just the guidebook, giving us snippets, as if we can't make a move till we've had the lecture.
He says, 'Fourteen centuries. Fourteen centuries, think of that.' He says, 'They got kings and queens in here, they got saints.'
His coat's hiding most of the damage, but there's a smear of drying mud up his left trouser leg.
"They got cardinals.'
I look at Lenny and half wink and jerk my head just a little, as though I'm saying, 'Come on, let's go. Let Raysy suffer.'
And it's not a bad idea, considering, to get the two of them separated for a bit.
He says, They got nineteen archbishops. You know, if we'd thought, we could've taken him to Westminster Abbey an' all.'
Lenny and me shuffle off slyly, along the side-aisle, over the worn stones, as if we could be treading on tiptoe.
It makes you feel humbled. But it makes a man in my line feel relieved we don't all get to choose or we don't ask for much when we do. Canterbury Cathedral, please. I suppose we're doing our bit for fair dos for the deceased by bringing Jack in here, all thanks to Lenny. Levelling things off, like death's supposed to.
But then he didn't have his sights set so low, as I recall. 'Any lodgers?' he'd say. So I said, as if I was touting for custom, 'You ever thought what you'd want, Jack?' Half a wink. And he looks at me, face wrinkling, and says, 'Ooh, I don't know if you'd be up to it, Vie. I'm thinking big. I reckon nothing short of a pyramid.'
Vince
Amy said, 'Will you go in and see him?' and I said, 'Yeh, I'll go and see him.' She wasn't crying and her voice was clear and steady. She wasn't insisting or demanding. It was like she was asking a polite, considerate question, like a host to a guest. I even reckon she was holding her head a bit higher and her back a bit straighter, as if this was an important day, a very important day, and she had to see it got managed proper, like something special had happened to her and she wanted to share it.
She'd just come out. She'd just been to see him herself.
I said, 'Yeh, I want to see him.' Like I couldn't have said no, even if I'd wanted to. You don't refuse to see someone's prize possession.
She said, 'You go through the door and ask the man,' and I thought, She don't know it's happened yet.
So I went through the door and asked the man. He had a rumpled white jacket and a pale podgy face to go with it, and he looked at me like I shouldn't expect him to understand what a big deal it was for me, any more than he should expect me to understand how it wasn't for him.
It said 'Chapel of Rest'. He said, 'Mr Dodds?' and I wondered which one he meant. I said, 'That's me,' when maybe I should've said, 'That's him.' He said, 'Through there.'
There was this little room with a glass partition down the length of it and an opening at one end you could step through, otherwise you could just look. On the other side of the glass there was Jack, raised up on something and lying on his back, and I thought, That aint Jack, he aim real. I suppose I was right.
You could only see his head because they'd wrapped him up in something like a pale-pink curtain or a tablecloth, right up to his chin. It was covering what he was lying on an' all. Like Jack was just his head, it wasn't a body, there wasn't no dead body.
I went through the opening and stood beside him. It smelt cold. I thought, He don't know I'm here, he can't ever know Fm here. Unless. I thought, He aint Jack Dodds, no more than I'm Vince Dodds. Because nobody aint nobody. Because nobody aint more than just a body, than just their own body, which aint nobody.
Except you can't see his body under that tablecloth.
Then I just stood there looking at him and I felt myself going straight and tall, like I wasn't just standing there, I was holding myself proud and stiff, like Amy. I was standing to attention. Like the only proper thing to do was to go stiff and straight and still and stony just like Jack was, out of sympathy. Except upright.