More fool me. Give 'em an inch. First they drive to Somerset, then they want to fly to Sydney. I think, This is one Saturday I aint going to get down the Coach.
She puts her hand on my arm and gives it a squeeze as if she's trying to say that, just for the moment, it's something between me and her only - Andy boy don't come into it -it's something she and I have got to work out. Like if I said no, she'd accept.
But the one thing I don't say, like Carol wouldVe said if it'd been just up to her, is 'No. No, girl. No again.'
I say, 'Aint you got a home here?' But I know that's a poor start even as I say it because all she has to say, if put to it, is 'I'm eighteen and you don't own me.' But she don't say it, she just gives me the look of someone who could say it.
I say, 'What about college?'
Which isn't such a small point, it's not such a small point that Ray Johnson's daughter is going to college and means to be a teacher. The old man would have been proud.
She says, 'There's colleges in Australia, there's teachers in Australia.' She looks at me as if she's ready and waiting if I want to go further down this line of argument, because she knows it aint exactly through my example that she's done what she's done. It's always been a sore point with her, though she doesn't bring it up any more, like she's started to give her own dad up for lost, that I could've found a better use for those brains I'm supposed to have.
'Got it up here,' Jack would say, 'got it up here, Raysy has.'
You could do something better, Dad, than go to that boring office.
But I do, I go to the bookie's. I work, I play the nags.
I say, 'You don't know nothing about Australia.'
She says, 'Til find out, won't I? And Andy' show me.' She winces because she's been trying not to mention his name.
I say, 'I bet he will. I bet I could show him the back of my hand.'
She looks all surprised and hurt and furious at the same time, because it's unfair, it's unworthy, it aint me. Fighting talk. With my brains, with my physique. And I never said I never liked Andy. I do, I like him, I like the toe-rag.
Her face flames up, her eyes glare but then she switches tack - she's not stupid either - and goes all soft and imploring.
And I think, It's only right that she should look better than her mother ever did when she was eighteen, because the world gets better, yes it does, it's meant to get better, it's no one's fault they're born too soon. Except I never saw Carol when she was eighteen, I was still getting fell in. So how do I know? And, anyhow, the fact is, I've never told Sue this, maybe now's the time, I fancied her mum's big sister.
I always fancied your Auntie Daisy.
I say, 'So what's Andy got to offer you then? What's he got to offer?'
I see them crossing Australia hi a jeep.
But then Carol comes in from the shops. We hear the front door and the sound of bags being dumped. I ought to be down at the Coach by now, first pint on the go, having put on a treble at the turfie's. Then the sparks start really flying, then I cop it as much as Sue. Because it's all my fault, Carol says, all my doing, she hopes I understand that, same as if Sue had got herself pregnant. So I have to take Sue's side, to defend myself, I have to argue for the thing I don't want. I suppose that's just what Sue's reckoned on. But it don't cut much ice either way, what I say, because it's between the two of them, I see that, it's a fight between the two of them. I'm just the man in the middle they each try to dodge behind. They go at it all weekend like two cats, and there comes a point when I'm dazed and baffled and I can't think straight, and I think, I've lived with two of them for over eighteen years and I still don't understand them. There comes a point when I'm not seeing Sue or Carol, I'm seeing Duke's arse.
I put thirty quid on a horse called Silver Lord, outsider of five. Thirty quid, in '65. I don't tell no one. I think, If he wins, it means she goes, and it means she'll have the fare too. Wasn't no other way of settling it. But I suppose you could say I'd already settled it, because I wasn't intending to lose thirty quid. And there are times when you go by the form and the going and every last little thing you know about a nag, but there are times when you just get the feeling, you just see the signs.
It aint everyone who sees signs, but they call me Lucky Johnson.
And sometimes I'm wrong.
I think, I'm putting money on Susie's life, I'm putting money against the thing I want, but at the back of my mind is a little chink of another thought, I don't want to think it, but I think it, and I reckon Sue's thought it too, I reckon even Carol's thought it. That if Sue wasn't here, if she was far away where we couldn't see her, that that might be a way of me and Carol having another bash at it.
He comes in by half a length, twelve to one, and when her mother's not around, I slip her the money, three hundred and sixty smackers. I say, 'Don't breathe a word.' I say, 'Here's your fare. Use it when you need to. If you need to.' I wasn't going to tell her how I got it but I suppose it wasn't a hard guess. So I said, 'Silver Lord, Chepstow. Half a length.'
Then Handy Andy comes round to say his piece, with Sue sitting beside him, hands clasped round her knees. He says they've decided, there's no two ways about it, and he'll look after Sue. He says he's feeling so much more in tune now - now he's tapped into his origins - which is hard to believe with him wearing that Afghan jacket. He says he's feeling so much more 'together' now because of everything, because of Sue. He's got this crinkle in his face, like he's used to peering into sunshine. I want to kick him. I want to squeeze the bugger's shoulder.
Carol walks out the room. We hear the kitchen door slam. There's a pause and he says, 'Thanks, Mr Johnson. Some horse, eh?' I look at Sue who bites her lip and looks down. Andy's smiling like a berk. Then I get up and go to Carol.
She isn't angry any more, she's crying, she's got a hand to her face. It's like that kitchen door was her last round of ammo. She leans over the sink, crying. She says, 'If she goes, I don't want to see her ever again, understand that?' But it's not said in anger, it's said like she's pleading.
I put my arms around her. She's still pretty trim for a woman of forty, I can feel her ribs. If I was taller, she'd have tucked her head under my chin and I'd've kissed her hair. It's like she's become another daughter. She was always her daddy's girl, Charlie's girl. Married me for him.
I say, 'You can't stop her. She's eighteen.'
She says, 'And I'm not.'
And that's when I realized that it wasn't that she didn't want Sue setting off for a new life across the world. It was that she was jealous.
I tried to make it better, I tried to make us a better life. I even gave up the betting. I learnt to go without.
But it didn't work. Or maybe it might have worked if that December her father hadn't died, sudden. Never rains but. Has a fall, out on a job, cast-iron guttering, and cracks his head. Instant. Charlie Dixon, Scrap Metal Merchant, Sites Cleared.
It wasn't like I had a feeling, it wasn't like I saw a sign, but it wasn't like it set her free either. Opposite.
I slept in Sue's old bed, or didn't sleep. Left for work early. Breakfasts at Smithfield.
Then one day that April it came to me, I saw the signs. Or maybe you could say I'd had enough of going without, all senses. If I could do it once I could do it again. £100. All that I might have staked in a good three months' betting. And one Saturday it was me who went down the shops. When I came back I was humming a tune. I'am fancy-free and love to wander... I looked her in the face like spring had sprung and I was the bringer of joy. I said, 'There's something I want you to see - out on the street.'