Last Orders

Ray

Jack would say, 'Bunch of ghosts, that's what you are in that office, Raysy. Bunch of bleeding zombies.' He'd say, 'You want to come up to Smithfield some time and see how real men make a living.'

And sometimes I did. In the early mornings, specially when it was all falling apart with me and Carol, when we weren't even speaking. I'd slip out early and get the 63 as usual but get off two stops later and walk up from Farring-don Road, up Charterhouse Street, in the half light. Breakfast at Smithfield. We'd go to that caff in Long Lane or to one of those pubs that serves beer and nosh at half past seven in the morning. There was Ted White from Peckham and Joe Malone from Rotherhithe and Jimmy Phelps from Camberwell. And of course, in the early days, there'd be Vince, being trained up. Before he joined up.

They'd say, what you need, Raysy, is a good feed-up, you're looking peaky. What you need is some meat on you. I'd say it was my natural build. Flyweight. Shovel it in, it don't make no difference.

Strange thing but you never see a thin butcher.

He used to give me all that old Smithfield guff, all that Smithfield blather. How Smithfield was the true centre, the true heart of London. Bleeding heart, of course, on account of the meat. How Smithfield wasn't just Smithfield, it was Life and Death. That's what it was: Life and Death. Because just across from the meat market there was St Bart's hospital, and just across from Bart's was your Old Bailey Central Criminal Court, on the site of old Newgate prison, where they used to string 'em up regular. So what you had in Smithfield was your three Ms: Meat, Medicine and Murders.

But it was Jimmy Phelps who told me that when he said all that, he was only saying what his old man used to say to him, Ronnie Dodds, word for word. And it was Jimmy Phelps who told me, when Jack was well out of earshot, when Jack and Vince were loaded up and on the way back to Bermondsey, that Jack had never wanted to be a butcher in the first place, never. It was only because the old man wouldn't have it otherwise. Dodds and Son, family butchers since 1903.

He says, 'Do you know what Jack wanted to be? Don't ever tell Jack I told you, will you?' And his face goes half smiling, half frightened, as if Jack's still there and might be creeping up behind him. 'When Jack was like Vince is now, being 'prenticed up, just like I was, he used to spend every spare minute eyeing up the nurses coming out of Bart's. I reckon it was the nurses that did it, he thought every doctor got a free couple of nurses to himself, but he says to me one day, and he aint joking, that he could chuck it all up and tell the old man to stew in his own stewing steak, because what he really wanted was to be a doctor.'

Jimmy creases up. He sits there in his smeared overalls, hands round a mug of tea, and he creases up. He says, 'He was serious. He said all it took was a change of white coats. Can you picture it? Doctor Dodds.'

But he sees I'm not laughing, so he sobers up.

'You won't tell Jack,' he says.

'No,' I say, sort of thoughtful, as if I might.

And I'm wondering if Jimmy Phelps always wanted to be a butcher. I'm remembering what Jack said, in the desert, that we're all the same underneath, officers and ranks, all the same material. Pips on a man's shoulders don't mean a tuppenny toss.

It wasn't out of wishing it that I became an insurance clerk.

But I never did tell Jack, and Jack never told me. Though you'd think when he was lying there in St Thomas's, with doctors and nurses all around him, it would have been a good time to let it slip. But all he said was, 'It should have been Bart's, eh Raysy? Bart's, by rights'

And it seems to me that whether he ever wanted to be a doctor or not, all those years of being a butcher, all those years of going up to Smithfield stored rum up a pretty good last laugh against the medical profession. Because he tells me that when the surgeon came to see him for the old heart-to-heart, the old word in the ear, he didn't want no flannel. No mumbo-jumbo.

'Raysy,' he says, 'I told him to give me the odds straight. He says he aint a betting man but I winkle it out of him. "Let's say two to one," he says. I say, "Sounds like I'm the bleeding favourite, don't it?" Then he starts up about how he can do this and he can do that, and I says, "Don't muck me about." I pulls open my pyjama top. I say, 'Where d'you make the cut?' And he looks all sort of like his nose is out of joint and I aint playing according to the rules, so I say, "Professional interest, you understand. Professional interest" Then he looks at me puzzled, so I say, "Don't it say in that file of yours what I do for a living? Sorry, I mean 'did'." So he glances quickly down his notes - a bit sheepish now. Then he says, "Ah—I see that you were a butcher, Mr Dodds." And I says, "Master butcher." '