If she won't be the wiser, he won't either.
And I don't think I could've done it. Stood there on the Pier, when it should've been the Jetty anyway, waves below me, salt in my eyes, stood there with them all watching me. You first, Amy, whenever you're ready, take your time. Wind up my skirt. The way the day's turned out, I'd say it's blowing half a gale down there in Margate.
This is where I belong, upstairs on this bus. It seems to me that for years now I've been more at home on a number 44 than I have been anywhere else. Neither here nor there, just travelling in between. I don't know if I could ever have made my home in a bungalow in Margate. Tin packing it in, Ame,' he says. When I'd long since given up on him, when I'd long since thought it could never happen, when I thought, One day he'll just drop dead there, behind the counter, in his striped apron, cleaver in his hand, and that's how he'd want it, another carcass to deal with. Tm jacking it in. Geddit?' Ha. 'It's a new life for you and me, girl.' I don't know what caused it, what suddenly tipped him over, what blinding flash. But he looked at me as if I'd be overjoyed, as if he wasn't looking at the woman he'd been looking at for fifty years, he was looking at someone new. He said, 'Margate. How about Margate?' As if we could put the clock back and start off again where it all stopped. Second honeymoon. As if Margate was another word for magic.
That's when I knew that the tables had turned. It was me who'd thought all those years ago, when I first said goodbye to him, that you always get a new beginning, the world doesn't come to an end, just because. I still had the power to choose. I chose June not him. I watched him set solid into Jack Dodds the butcher, Jack Dodds, high-class butcher, have a bit of mince, missis, have a bit of chuck, because he couldn't choose June too, couldn't choose what was his, it was all he had to do, and I thought I'm the one who can still change. I did, once. But when he looked at me then, like he was looking at someone I wasn't, I knew I was stuck in a mould of my own. Of this woman who sits every Monday and Thursday afternoon on a number 44 bus. Even a week after her husband has died.
As if it was my fault, after all, for deserting him, for saying goodbye. Once, twice.
And she'll never know. Never.
Margate, Margate. And what about June?.
There's something about a bus. A red double-decker, sloshing and chugging through the rain, with its number up front and its destination and its route, which doesn't change from one year to the next. As if as long as there's a number 44 going from London Bridge to Mitcham Cricketers the world won't fall apart, London Bridge won't fall down. As if, if it's true what he always used to yanter on about and only because his old man used to spout the same, that Smithfield is the heart of London, bleedin 'eart-a-Lunnun, then the red lines of the bus routes must be the arteries, bleedin arteries, and veins.
Never once in a cab. On Jack Dodds' takings? And never on the Tube, though it's quicker, Northern Line, all the way to Morden. Because I like to see, I like to think while I'm journeying, while I'm in between. I like to look around me. And only a dozen times in a camper. How many times was it? Not much more than a dozen, eh Ray?
But why have I come upstairs today? Upper deck like a ship, swishing through the rain. To prove I'm still an able-bodied woman, not one of the old crows downstairs? To prove I can still choose? To get a new view of the world slipping by? Lambeth, Vauxhall, Battersea, Wandsworth. How could I have done it, Ray, stood there with you, sharing his ashes? This is where I belong, number 44. Have a bit of ash, missis. And as long as the red buses keep on running, then the red blood will keep on flowing, the heart will keep on pumping, pumping. Oh Ray, you're a lucky man, you're such a little man. Oh my poor Jack.
Ray
So I spread the Racing Post in front of me with the whole Doncaster card. Then I lit a ciggy and I got out my form book and my notes. Ray Johnson's Register, '87, '88, '89. Always keep a log of your bets. Then I scanned the races and runners, doing the calculations in my head that come natural after a while, the eliminations, the percentages, the fields to go for and the fields to stay clear of. People think I'm Lucky Johnson and it's all done by sixth sense, and sometimes it is, sometimes a flutter's a flutter. But the reason why I'm quids-in, just about, with the nags, and Jack Dodds and Lenny Tate won't ever be, is because everyone wants to believe in hunch bets, and it may look like luck but it's ninety-per-cent careful clerking, it's ninety-per-cent doing your sums. I aint worked in that insurance office for nothing. People think it's horses from heaven, answering your prayers, but it's learning how to beat the bookie, and if you want to beat the book-keeper, keep a book.
So I studied the runners, stroking my jaw, thinking, Long odds, long odds. Off-course bet, so there's the tax. On a thousand quid. Thinking, Early-season handicaps are a pig in a poke. Thinking, If I was there it'd be easier, it's always easier if you're there. You see the nags, you get the scent, it aint no blind date. And you get the compensations. The hooves on the turf, sun on the silks, Irish gab. The whole great ballyhoo of beer and hope. Thinking of all the things Jack won't ever look on or listen to again.
The smoke from my ciggy curled towards the window.
Fluffy clouds after showers, a breeze, the going good to soft. The going.
I looked at my watch: eleven thirty. Only a fool bets early, the scent changes, every minute, there's the sums and the scent. Only a fool bets early. But what if? Suppose, if Jack.
I kept not looking at the name looking up at me from the middle of the list for the three five. Twenty-two runners. What's in a name? They call me Lucky. Only a fool bets on a name. And Jack can't be saved, he can't be.
I thumbed my notebooks, jotted some figures. Rule number one: value for money. But Jack don't want value for money, he wants a one-off winner to end all winners, to save his bacon, his fried eggs and bacon. He's not in the business of averaging out.
So this aint your regular sort of bet.
But I kept not looking at the name staring up at me. Rank outsider, twenty-to-one the field. Though it kept staring back at me. There's luck and there's luck. There's safe luck that keeps you from harm, that keeps bullets from hitting you or makes you live to a hundred and five, and there's wild luck that makes you grab at gold. There's the sums and there's the scent, getting stronger, and sometimes the scent is all there is, and you can tell all you need to know about a nag from the tilt of its head. It's like it's the bet that's the thing but sometimes it's just the run and the rush and the roar of the race. Sometimes it's just the glory of horses.
So I stubbed out my ciggy and lit up another and took a pace or two across the room like I couldn't sit still. I stood at the window. Back end of Bermondsey. And the track at Donnie a wide, flat gallop. You'd have to be a fool. I felt the flutter in my ribs and the luck in my veins. What you do it for in the first place, why you're in it in the first place. I opened the window like I was short of breath. I felt the air and the smoke in my nostrils and the life in my limbs and Jack's money burning a hole against my heart. Miracle Worker.
Amy
But it was easy to make a man smile in those days. Even that tallyman, Alf Green with his puffed-out chest, the sticks dangling from it, and his black tash and his stare like a sergeant-major's, watch out if your stick didn't tally, used to crack his face just a little bit for me, just a bit. Unless I imagined it. You'd think he might've stretched a point now and then, called six bushels seven. Me there by the bin in my thin frock, hot and sticky, and him with his notcher. Seven bushels the shilling-tally and you were pushing it to make two-and-six a day. Hard work, up at the crack. But don't tell me there weren't short cuts, and more than one way of collecting hop tokens. Shirley Thompson should've been a champion picker, tokens she had. Two hundred bushels the week, except it wasn't all bushels. She'd end up with nearly ten pounds' worth, not counting extras for cash. And her ma and pa in Deptford would be chuffed with her for the fiver she'd hand over. Our little Shirl, champion hopper.