I've tried and I've hoped and waited for fifty years and you can't blame me now. You can blame me that you were born in the first place but you can't blame me now. Fifty years is pushing it. And being born may be the big mistake in the opinion of a good part of this world, but once you have been, don't snivel, get on with it. That means you too, my girl, even you. There's only you now to show it, to prove it: that it's not the same as if you never were, that it's not as if you might as well have never been. Fifty years is beyond the call, for bringing up baby. And I'm sorry about the false hopes and promises, and the moments of weakness, I'm sorry about ail the second-stringers, VinceySallyMandy. But that doesn't excuse you from being the one you really are. Junejunejune.
I've got to fend for myself now. Though you don't know that, how could you? Look at me, a poor defenceless widow-woman, sitting on a number 44 bus, upstairs, though God knows why, with the world outside, what you can see of it through the fogged-up windows, turned all atrocious. And Bermondsey these days like the back of beyond. Safer where you are, girl, believe me. And now, because we're running late and it's the time they let them out of school, we've gone and stopped at a stop where a whole pack of 'em are screaming to get on. Navy-blue brats. They're piling upstairs, pushing and shoving and yelling like they don't know how just to speak. And I know they're only kids, kids letting off steam, but they scare me half to death. They scare me half to death twice as much as they might if Jack was still here. It shouldn't make any odds, should it, since he wouldn't be here anyway? He'd be there, behind his counter, nice bit of topside missis, not here on this bus with me. Not coming to see you, ever. And never asking, never: How is she? How's June? But it scares me to death that though he's not here, he's not there either, where he always was, nice bit of leg. He's not even propped up on those hospital pillows, like it seemed he was for an age too, for a whole lifetime, being visited. Tell you what, Ame, you come to my place. Even then never saying your name. He's not anywhere. Or by now he'll be washed out to sea or mingling with Margate Sands, if it's all gone to plan, all done before this weather set in. And I know what they'll be saying, thinking: She should've come, she should've been here, she should. Blame me for that too, blame Ame. But someone's got to tell you.
What I'm trying to say is that it's your own damn fault. If no one ever kissed you, no one ever missed you, except me. It's your own damn look-out. And it's too much to hope, I suppose, too much to expect that after fifty years without a peep, without a whisper from you, you should be waiting now, knowing, waiting to say: I understand, I've always understood. It's all right. Forget me.
What I'm trying to say is Goodbye June. Goodbye Jack. They seem like one and the same thing. We've got to make our own lives now without each other, we've got to go our different ways. I've got to think of my own future. It was something Ray said, about how much was I short.
You remember Ray, Uncle Ray? He and I came to visit you once, that summer I missed those Thursdays.
I've got to be my own woman now. But I couldn't have just stopped coming without saying it to your face: Goodbye June. And I couldn't have said the one thing without saying the other. It won't mean anything to you but someone's got to tell you, no one else is going to. That your own daddy, who never came to see you, who you never knew because he never wanted to know you, that your own daddy.
Ray
When he was stripped to the waist for digging in, lorry-loading, ammo-lugging or when he was at what the Army and no one else calls ablutions, and once when he was kipping in the shade of a busted wall at Matruh and I was supposed to be standing guard, half the time there's nothing a soldier wants more than sleep, I'd fish in his breast pocket and take out that wallet. I must've looked like a thief except I wasn't taking nothing, and I'd pull out that photo and wish I was him. There's crazier things that keep you sane, when you're lost in the desert. Though if I'd been him and had her, I wouldn't've had him to be my shield and protector, to place himself between me and the bullets, so to speak. I wouldn't've been little man hiding behind, I'd've been big man in front. Large target.
And I'd only've felt twice-over exposed and unprotected, any case, on account of having recently heard that the old man had died. Because news travels slow in wartime. But he was dead weeks before, when I'd never known it. He was dead when I was sitting on that camel with lack, when we was eyeing up them tarts. When I'd scarcely set foot in Africa, Me, Africa. Well, Ray boy, you'll see a bit of the world, you'll see a bit more than the back end of Bermond-sey, but keep your bleeding head down, that's what I'm telling you. Which were two bits of fatherly advice I couldn't see how you could ever fit together.
Not a bomb, his chest. And you wouldn't think it would make any difference to your immediate safety and security, him not being there any more, when he wasn't there anyway, as far away alive as dead. Except it takes away a sort of allowance, a sort of margin. It makes you feel you've moved to the front, you're next.
And it's strange to think it was that way round. When you'd expect. When I'd dropped him a postcard only just before I got the news of him, to say I was alive and well and enjoying the sunshine, if I didn't exactly wish he was here. Though he could've done a roaring trade, I reckon, what with all the scrap metal lying around, and the air would've been good for his lungs, dry and clean, except for the dust and the smoke and the petrol fumes and the bleeding flies. And he must've been shaping up, bracing himself to get some message about me, Pte. Johnson, R., that I was a goner. Jack said, 'Well he's spared that worry anyhow.' Him flaked out under that wall just like a dead 'un. And I thought of a time in the future when I might have to say to the girl in the photo, "Mrs Dodds? Amy Dodds? You don't know me, but I knew Jack. In Africa.' Holding in my hand a little bundle of what the Army calls personal effects. 'My name's Ray Johnson. I only live just round the corner.'
And just remember, Ray boy, you weren't meant for scrap.
It was a photo taken at the seaside. Somehow you could tell that. Summer frock, summer smile, seaside photographer. And now I know where.
We're moving on round the curve of the sea front, still at this snail's pace, solemn and slow and proper. We ought to hurry up if we want to beat the rain. Except it looks like we're going to get a soaking anyway, judging by the spray hitting that harbour wall, I mean Pier. The wind must be coming smack across the bay, west to east. The frontages are getting less grand and there's not so much wide road between them and the sea. They look more flimsy and for-lorn, on account of they're more exposed or on account of they never had so much in the first place to put up a show with, Marie's Coffee Parlour. Some of them look shuttered up for good. Rowland's Rock Shoppe. The Ruby Lounge Free House. I reckon Lenny's got his eye on that, old ruby face. I reckon we've all got our eye on that. Casanova's Take-away. Femme Fatale - Lingerie, Health and Beauty.
It aint much. It aint much to write home about, if it's what you get. If the sea's just the sea, wet desert, and the rest is knick-knacks. A pier, a postcard, a penny in a slot. Seems to me you could say that Jack and Amy were spared, after all, Amy was spared. It's a poor dream. Except all dreams are poor.
Thirty-four thousand.
I could see the world. It can't be all sea and desert. I could see the other side of the world, Sydney Harbour, Bondi Beach, it must knock Margate into a cocked hat. I could see Sue, before she gets a message, saying— Before she says to Andy, who I reckon aint wearing that Afghan jacket any more, 'It's the old man,'