Last Orders

Mandy

The road went on, black and curving and cat's-eyed, like the one sure thing in the wet and the dark and the spray, the one sure thing in the world. Not the place from or the place to but the road.

I said, 'So what've you got in the back?' For something to say. He said, looking at me, 'Carcasses,' and I thought, Trust my luck. After only six hours.

He said, 'Long way from home then?'

I nodded, feeling my head heavy, my neck sagging with tiredness.

He said, 'So where would that be?'

He leant forward, arms hugging the steering wheel.

I said, 'Blackburn.'

27, Ollerton Road, Blackburn.

He said, 'But not any more, eh?' pulling a packet of ciggies from his shirt pocket. 'Blackburn rover, eh?' grinning at his own joke. 'London, eh?'

I nodded.

He shook the packet of cigarettes, nudged one up with his thumb and drew it out with his mouth. He passed the packet to me but I shook my head.

He said, "Day trip or for ever?' feeling for a lighter. I didn't answer. He flicked the lighter and I saw his face, red and bunched and knotty, in the flame. He said, 'How old are you, love?' breathing out smoke.

I didn't answer.

He said, 'Seventeen?' He took another drag on the cigarette, looking at the road like it was his road, the wipers dancing across the windscreen. 'Just seventeen, you know what I mean] sort of singing. He said, 'I can take you to London, love. I can take you where I'm taking my meat.'

He turned and I was looking straight at him. He said, 'What are you looking at?'

I said, 'You remind me of my dad.'

It's a good line, a handy line, stops 'em in their tracks. I'd used it before.

Besides, he did, just a bit. Remind me.

And it was him I'd blame, my dad, my dad Bill It was him I'd give as my excuse, if I was ever called to account, if I ever found myself slinking back, or being carted in a cop car, to Ollerton Road. I wasn't the first to leave, was I? It was him who set me my example.

Maybe he was thinking of me right now, with his floozy in the Isle of Man, if that was where and how it was. Waking up in the small hours, lighting a ciggy. Rain on the window. I wonder what that Mandy's up to, I wonder what that lass is doing right now.

He used to say, 'You're a wicked girl, Mandy, you're a wicked girl.' But always with a sideways smile or a wink or a click of the tongue, whether I'd done wrong or not, as if it was only ever ten per cent a ticking-off and ninety per cent a show of approval. 'You're a wicked girl, I don't know what's going to become of you,' looking at me like one day he was going to have to come and pull me out of trouble. And I used to like saying, because it had just a touch of wickedness itself and because it was different from what the other girls said about their fathers, 'My dad's a sailor.' Sailor Bill. Barnacle Bill.

Not that working on car ferries made you a real sailor.

Fleetwood to Douglas, there and back inside a day. And in winter, Heysham to Douglas, an hour longer. But when I heard him leaving in the early mornings, trying to coax that clapped-out Hillman into life, I'd think, He'll be at sea soon, my dad Bill, the voyage out, the voyage home.

Except one day he never came back.

I never said 'seaman', it didn't sound right, though it was a wicked word too, a giggle word, if you said it the wrong way. Why is a ship like a rubber johnny? Because it's full of seamen. And he'd been a real sailor once, or so he said. He'd seen the world. Shanghai, Yokohama. But then he'd met Mum and the world-seeing days had come to an end, or so she said. One wild night in Liverpool Brown arms, tattoos and a large pinch of salt. Sailor, stop your roaming. Though it's hard to imagine that ever having happened, it's hard to imagine Mum having been that woman, when you saw what she got for herself by way of replacement, that creep Neville from the Town Hall. 'Mandy, I want you to meet Mr Lonsdale.' Neville Lonsdale, Town Planning. And from then on we were going to lead a different sort of life.

He used to put that pasty face in front of mine, dimpling like a vicar, and say, 'So what do you want to be, Mandy, what do you want to do when you grow up?' As if it earned him points in her eyes. Someone at last with a bit of concern, with a bit of respect. Neville the devil. What I wanted to say was that I wanted to be wicked, I wanted to be wicked like Dad said I was anyway. I wanted to be Mandy Black, and I wanted to be wicked.

And so I was. I hung around in pubs and dance-halls, I twisted and shouted, I let hands scurry up my skirt, and worse. I let myself be pushed up against walls. I gave Mum and Neville hell, which was only what they gave me. But more than that, I said to my best friend and partner-in-sin, Judy Battersby, 'How about it? London. Bright lights. You and me.' But she never showed up, she chickened out, the cow.

And I suppose what I always hoped, right up until the last moment, was that he'd come back anyway, with five years' worth of excuses. That he'd throw down his kit-bag then he'd throw Neville out the front door. Then I wouldn't have to run away myself.

But they found the Hillman in Liverpool, not Fleetwood. So he might have gone anywhere. Not a floozy in the Isle of Man but floozies all over, in Shanghai and Yokohama. I had this picture of him, which I still have, it's a daft picture but I still have it. That he'd sailed away to the South Seas. Grass skirts and coconut trees. He's still there now, thirty years younger, with a flower stuck behind his ear. Not the Isle of Man. Isle of Woman, more like.

He said, 'What's your name, love?'

I said, 'Judy.'

He said, 'Mick. Anywhere London or somewhere London?'

I said, 'Anywhere London.'

He said, 'Til take you to Smithfield. Heard of Smithfield? There in two hours. It's all right, love, it's okay, you can nod off.'

So Mandy Black, or Judy Battersby as she was travelling as, arrived in London in a meat lorry and got carted away again in a butcher's van, without so much as a peep at Leicester Square. It's a famous story, it's done the rounds, it might even have reached Ollerton Road. Blackburn to Bermondsey, going up in the world. But now when I think of it, now when I see them huddled up in shop entrances and archways, in smelly blankets, I think, I was lucky. And when I think of that girl with a rucksack heading down the A5, I think, That was my adventure, my big adventure, though it hardly lasted twelve hours.

To run away from home and find another home in less than a day, though the new home wasn't a real home, any more than the one I left. The new home was all the opposite of what it seemed: a son whose home it wasn't but it was, a daughter whose home it was but it wasn't because she had to be kept in a Home, a mum and dad who weren't really a mum and dad, except to me.

Why should I have fitted into that? Why shouldn't I have taken off again like a shot? When the world was saying anyway everything is changing now, everything goes. It couldn't have just been him, Vince. That we were somehow, underneath it all, like brother and sister, worse, father and daughter. Just back from the Middle East, 'from the bleeding garden of Aden, sweetheart,' with his kit-bag slung in a corner of that bedroom he'd hardly moved back into before he moved out again for me. 'V. I. Dodds.' The smell of him in there, sweat and engine oil and Senior Service. Tattoos up his arm. 'You can lick 'em but they won't come off.' So it was like committing incest, like throwing the whole thing open, like being dangerous where you ought to be most safe. Safe as houses. And in a camper-van too, Uncle Ray's camper, like a pair of gypsies.

Blackburn to Bermondsey, aiming high. But that's where I stayed and that's what I became. Vince's floozy, Vince's wife, Vince's sister, daughter, mother, his whole family. And Jack and Amy's little grown-up girl. So it's as though I don't know any more who that lassie on the A5 was. As though in those twelve hours on the road I might have been aboutfl to become anyone. What do you want to be, Mandy? November '67. The year of Sergeant Pepper. Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. It wasn't Wednesday morn- f ing at five o'clock, it was Thursday evening at eight o'clock. But I couldn't help carrying that song in my head, like my theme tune: She's leaving home, bye, bye.

He said, 'A doodlebug.'

I said, 'What?'

He said, 'A buzz-bomb. V-l. Flattened the house, killed 'em all, except me. I aint who you think I am, I aint Vince Dodds.'

I thought, I could have guessed that. Not just from the way you look but from the way you keep to your own separate space, from the way you were so ready to move out and kip down in this camper-van. But that was a sly move, wasn't it, Vince, a crafty move?

She can sleep in my room.

And what about you> Vincey?

I'll think of something.

I thought of saying to him, Tm not who you think I am either.' Because I don't know who Mandy Black is, not yet, I'm discovering.

But I'd already told Jack, sitting there in that meat van while we did a sort of dawn tour of London: Tm not who I said I was, my name's not Judy. It's Mandy, Mandy Black, from Blackburn.' And he said, 'So who's Judy?' And I said, 'No one.'

Old Bailey, St Paul's, London Bridge, the light breaking over the grey river.

Vince said, 'My real name's not Dodds, it's Pritchett.'

I felt him shrinking, slipping inside me. I sank down so my face was on his chest.

He said, 'It aint no secret. It's a known fact. Except he tries to pretend it never was a fact.'

'Who?'

He said, 'Old man. I mean, Jack, Why d'you think I took off in the first place? Why d'you think I joined up? Because I wasn't going to be no Vince Dodds. I wasn't going to be no butcher's boy.'

I said, 'But you came back,'

He said, 'I came back to show 'im.'

I said, 'It's easier for men. They can go and be soldiers, they can run away to sea.'

He said, "You ever done a stretch in Aden?'

I started to lick his tattoos. One of them said 'V.I.P.', with a fist and a thunderbolt. I said, 'It says "Dodds" on your kit-bag. So what are you going to be, Vince? What do you want to be?' And he said, 'Motors.'

I said, 'Motors?'

He said, 'You saw that old Jag in the yard, didn't you? '59, Mark 9. It's a start, aint it? Aint any old jam-jar, it's a Jag. I'll make it like new again.'

Then he told me about motors, he told me all about motors.

I thought, It's never how you picture it, never how you picture it at all. Me and Judy Battersby knocking around the West End, getting picked up by a couple of fellers in a rock band.

A butcher's van, an ex-soldier with oil under his fingernails. Meeting a man from the motor trade.

He said one day Jack would come crawling to him, I'd see.

I licked the hairs on his chest.

I said, 'How do you know I'm who you think I am, either? How do you know my name's really Mandy Black? I could be anyone too, couldn't I?'

I put my hand on his sticky cock.

He said, 'I aint teasing you, I aint having you on. I'm telling you so you know what's what. I'm telling you so you don't get no wrong ideas. That's fair, aint it?'

I said, 'Yes.'

'That's only honest.'

I said, 'Yes, Vince.'

He said, 'I was only three months, I didn't know nothing, did I?'

I felt his cock stiffening under my hand.

Tm telling you so you'll be prepared.'

'Prepared?'

'He'll try and do the same with you. They'll try and do the same with you.'

I said, 'What?'

"I bet it even suits them that you and me are doing this.'

'What are you talking about?'

'So I won't want to move on again, you neither. So we'll have to show 'em, together. We'll have to stay put and scarper at the same time.'

I said, 'How do you do that?'

He said, 'Motors.'

It felt safe in that camper, like a hiding-place.

I said, 'What are you talking about?'

He rolled me over and shoved into me and I lifted my knees and gripped him.

He said, 'They haven't told you, have they? Course they haven't. You don't know the half yet, do you?'

It's never how you picture it. Mrs Vincent Dodds, Mrs Dodds Autos. A husband in the motor trade, a daughter on the hustle.

The bright lights of London. There were bright lights all right. There were these rows of long, tall buildings, each of them lit up like a fairground, each of them full of meat and men and din, as if the men were shouting at the meat and the meat was shouting back. And outside it was still dark, extra dark because of the brightness inside, the air full of wet murk. There were lorries throbbing and reversing, the drizzle like sparks in their lights, and doors being swung open and puddles shining red and white, and more meat, on barrows, on shoulders, being lugged into the brightness, the men doing the lugging all streaked and smeared with blood, their faces red and glistening as the loads they were carrying. I thought, Jesus Christ, Mandy Black, where have you come to? And the noise like some mad language, as if it might as well have been the meat still yelling and protesting, still kicking, except that coming out of it I heard that voice, sounding unreal because I'd heard it before on the telly, on the radio, like a voice no one ever really used, but here they were all using it, natural as breathing, as if this was the very spot it came out of, the very spot. Cockney. Cockneys. Cock. Knees. Why do men from London get stiff in the legs?

He said, 'Smithfield Market, love. All meat and mouth, all beef and grief. I've got work to do but see up there,' and he pointed, leaning across the cab, leaning across me, putting an arm behind me. 'Kenny's caff. Good cuppa, good bacon sandwich. Stick around, I'll see you there,' and he winked.

The noise changed as I clambered down. It drew back then closed in on me like waves. Slop, slap, slurp, look what Mick brought in. Like wading out at Morecambe, trying to keep your fanny dry till the last moment. I walked towards the caff, pushing my way through meat and men and noise, and if I'm honest, what I was thinking then, in the middle of my great adventure, was: I'll wait for him, my driver Mick. I'll cadge a breakfast off him, I'll go along with whatever nudgings, noddings and pretendings he wants to fit me into. Then I'll say, quietly, with a flash or two of the eyelashes, 'Can you take me back? Can you take me as far north as you're going?'

I never thought that an hour from then I'd be carried off to my future, to the rest of my life, in a butcher's van. By a big, round-armed, round-edged, big-voiced man who was like some uncle I never knew I had, who was like some man on the spot who'd been waiting specially for me to arrive. 'You come to the right place, sweetheart. 'Eart of London, Smithfield, life and death, Smithfield. See that over there? That's the Old Bailey. I'll take you by the scenic route, since you aint never seen none of it before. 'Op in.'

St Paul's, London Bridge, the Tower, like things that weren't ever real. The grey, wet light it all seemed made for. He slowed down, crossing the bridge. He said, 'You live in it all your life, then one day you notice it.' Then he said, 'Want a job in a butcher's shop? Quid a day, plus board and lodging.'

I said, 'My name's not Judy.'

He looked at me long and hard. 'And mine aint mud.'

And my breakfast date never showed up anyhow, or if he did, I never saw him, he never tried to come between Jack Dodds and me.

The smell, that had you trapped, of frying bacon. Steam and smoke and gab and cackle. Heads turning, smirking.

All pork and talk. I thought, This is worse than outside. All with that look on their faces like you were a sight for sore eyes but at the same time you'd invaded their precious territory. All chomping and guzzling and big and blood-smeared and butchery. Except one. Except for this odd little feller in a grey raincoat, a collar and tie showing underneath, who looked as out of his way as I did, who sat stirring and stirring his tea and peered up at me as if his thoughts were far away but I might have just stepped out of them. I thought, Buy me a breakfast, little man, buy me a breakfast. You look as though I could handle you. You look sad and safe enough to buy me breakfast, as if you don't use food yourself.

So I sat down opposite him, at the table he seemed to be saving for someone else, and he was just about to say something, still stirring his tea like it would set solid if he didn't, when in came these other three he seemed to know. And one of them was bigger than the others, even bigger, and put himself to the front like a sergeant, and I thought, I don't know why but you know these things when you see them, I could be taken in hand by this man. He looked at me, then at the little man, then he looked at me again, like I can remember men of a certain age looking at me once, but not any more, Mandy Dodds, like they wished they were ten years younger but they're facing the fact that they're old enough to be your father. Then he looked again, smiling, slyly, at the little man, who said, clearing his throat, flustered, 'This is—' So I said, 'I'm Judy. From Blackburn.'

I saw the little pause in the big one's face. Then he spoke, in that too loud, too bold voice, that didn't know, that had never learned and never would and wouldn't care if it did, that it was too loud and too bold, that wouldn't ever be afraid of being heard: "This is Ted. This is Joe. I'm Jack Dodds. And you've met Ray. You're all right with Ray. Ray's in insurance, Ray's lucky, small but lucky. He needs a good feeding up an' all.'