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.
And don't tell me that there weren't general compensations. Doing it for free, getting it for free, down there in the garden of England, with the sunshine and the fresh air and the haystacks and the hop-bines, and that feeling, though it was stay-put and keep-at-it work, bins all in a row, three or four to a bin like a factory outdoors, of being set loose. On the loose. Living in huts and tents like natives, living on the land, no fixed abode. No hawkers, no gypsies, no dogs, no hoppers. The smell of fry-ups at night. Wood fires, billycans, oil lamps, natter.
The gypsies came with their caravans and horses, needing the hopping just like us, but made their camp separately, over by the wood, eyeing us like we were the ones who'd pitched up where we shouldn't, and I used to envy them because they were a stage further at being outlaws than us and because they were professionals at it and we were just amateurs and when we were back again in Bermondsey, all bricked up and boxed in, the/d still be wandering the woods and lanes. I used to envy them their nut-brown skins, against our London dough, white turning red, like a barber's pole. I used to watch one of them lead his horse every evening to the pond for watering, just as us hoppers finished. Though no hopping for him, it seemed, city chits' work. Big feller. Bare-backed both of them, him and his horse.
I suppose you could say it was more than envy.
My mother said 'I never should'.
And I didn't, though I might Ve. I played with Jack Dodds instead, Jack Dodds from the other end of Bermondsey. It's a big wide world. And I don't know what Shirley Thompson did, what Shirley Thompson used, but she never got herself knocked up, but I did, first time of asking.