He says, 'Okay men, follow me,' like he's leading a patrol of marines, and he marches off across the car park. I see Lenny turn his head as if he's going to spit.
We come out on the high street. It's not big and bustling like your normal high street. It's narrow and quiet and crooked and historical and full of lop-sided old buildings. There are people ambling up and down it, aimless, the way tourists walk. It looks like a high street in a picture book, like you shouldn't be here, walking in it, or like it shouldn't be here itself, with the traffic belting along on the A2 close by. Except it was here first.
There's a fancy grocer's opposite, the Rochester Food Fayre, the sort that sells funny teas and posh tins of biscuits, and Vince ducks in sudden, leaving us standing. Then he comes out again with a plastic carrier-bag. He's slipping the box into it but there's something else already in there, by the look of it. He says, 'Mandy said we were out of coffee.' Then we look this way and that and Vince scoots off again as if he can't abide ditherers. There's a sign up ahead saying 'Bull Hotel' and he heads straight for it, like he's been meaning to all along. He says, 'There, gents, this should do us.' It's a big old rambling place, with a Carvery and a Grill and a regular bar with snacks, I can see Vince considering the Carvery, like he's thinking of lashing out special and making us feel like we owe him. Then he back-tracks along the pavement, settling on the bar and snacks. You can see the bridge over the river from the hotel entrance. The high street dips down towards it and the main road, and if you shut your eyes and open them again you can picture how a stage-coach might once have rattled across and up the slope and swung into the yard of the Bull, with the castle looking down just like a Christmas card.
It's an old coaching inn, tarted up and buggered about. But I don't make no jokes.
It's warm and glinty and chattery inside. Vince says, I'll get 'em,' before we're hardly through the door. 'You take this, Ray.' He hands me the carrier bag. 'Grab that table over there. Pints all round and a shortie for you, Vie?'
He pulls out his wallet and steps up to the bar, like everyone round here knows Vince Dodds.
There's a barmaid with a white blouse and cherry red lipstick.
We go to the table. We hear Vince say, 'Any grub going, darling?' He wasn't ever one for speaking soft but maybe he means us to hear. He cocks his head in our direction. 'Three old codgers to look after, and one extra who aint eating.' The barmaid looks our way, puzzled, then back at Vince, as if she's not sure whether to smile or what. I can't see Vince's face but I know he's looking at her with that special look he has, like he knows he might seem just a bit ridiculous but he's daring her to make the mistake of thinking he really is.
Like when he said, 'Wanna do a deal on the yard?'
She reaches over for some menu cards, her face a bit pink. I can hear Vince thinking, 'Nice jubbies.'
We start on our drinks, then we order our nosh. Then Vie gets in another round. Then the food arrives: jumbo sausage, beans and chips for me and Lenny, steak and chips for Vince, quiche of the day for Vie. I reckon today he should eat meat. The barmaid brings over the plates and stretches across and Vince says, 'Looks a treat, sweetheart,' with his face in her armpit, and none of us says a thing. There's a strand of blonde hair that falls down her cheek like it's not meant to but it's meant to at the same time. Then we eat up and drink up and Lenny and I light up ciggies and Lenny gets in a round and it seems like we've always known the Bull in Rochester and it's always known us, and we're all thinking the same thing, that it's a pity we can't just carry on sitting here getting slowly pickled and at peace with the world, it's a pity we're obliged to take Jack on to Margate. Because Jack wouldn't have minded, it's even what he would've wanted for us, to get sweetly slewed on his account. You carry on, lads, don't you worry about me. If he was here now he'd be recommending it, he'd be doing the same as us. Forget them ashes, fellers. Except if he were here now there wouldn't be no problem, there wouldn't be no obligation. There wouldn't be no ashes. We wouldn't even be here in the first place, half-way down the Dover road.
Lenny says, 'It's a crying shame he aint here,' like Jack was planning on it but something else came up.
'He'd've appreciated it,' Vince says.
'He shouldn't've hurried off like he did,' I say, entering the spirit.
'Daft of him,' Lenny says.
Vic's gone quiet.
'Crying shame,' Lenny says.
It's as though, if we keep talking this way, Jack really will come through the door, any second now, unbuttoning his coat. 'Well, had you all fooled, didn't I?'
Then Vie says, like it's a truth we're not up to grasping, that has to be broke gently, 'If he was here, we wouldn't be, would we? It's because he's not that we are'
'All the same,' Lenny says.
'He'd've appreciated it,' Vince says.
Lenny looks at Vince.
'If it weren't for him we wouldn't be here,' Vince says. 'We wouldn't be here without him,' and he looks sort of snagged up by his own words. We're all looking snagged up, like everything means one thing and something else at the same time.
I say, 'I've got to take a leak.'
But it's not just to take a leak. I find the Gents and I unzip, then I feel my eyes go hot and gluey, so I'm leaking at both ends. It's cold and damp and tangy in the Gents. There's two condom machines, one says 'Glowdom' and one says 'Fruit Cocktail'. It's be-kind-to-your-pecker day. There's a frosted window with a quarter-light half open so I get a peek of a bit of wall, a bit of roof, a bit of tree and a bit of sky, which isn't blue any more, and I think for some reason of all the pissers I've ever pissed in, porcelain, stainless steel, tarred-over cement, in pubs and car parks and market squares up and down the country, wherever there's a racecourse to hand. There's always a frosted quarter-light, chinked open, with a view of the back end of somewhere, innyards, alleyways, with some little peephole out on life. Racecourse towns. It's when you stand up to piss you can tell how pissed you are. A drink or two helps for putting on a bet. A drink or three buggers your judgement. When I can't get to sleep I tick off in my head all the racetracks I've been to, in alphabetical order, and I see the map of England with the roads criss-crossing. AscotBrightonCheltenham-DoncasterEpsom.
I shake myself out and zip myself up again. I sniff and I run my sleeve across my face. Some other punter comes in, a young feller, but I don't reckon he sees, or thinks twice if he does. Old men get pissy eyes. He gets out his plonker like a young feller does, like it's a fully operational piece of machinery.
Well, that's that over with. Crying's like pissing. You don't want to get caught short, specially on a car journey.
But as I head back into the bar and I see them at the table, with the barmaid collecting glasses, nice arse an' all, and all the bar-room clobber, brass rails, pictures on the wall, of a pub I've never been in before and won't ever be in again, it's as though I'm looking at them like I'm not here. Like it's not Jack, it's me and I'm looking on, afterwards, and they're all talking about me. HaydockKempton. Like I'm not here but it's still all there, going on without me, and all it is is the scene, the place you pass through, like coachload after coachload passing through a coaching inn. NewburyPontefract.
I say, 'Same again, fellers?'
Vic's looking at me. He looks like he's thinking.