Last Orders

Amy

They'll be there now, where we might have gone. Ended up or started again. New people, old people, the same people.

He looks at me while I sit by the bed, holding his hand, his thumb moving gently, dryly, in tittle circles round the base of mine, and I think, We aren't going to look at each other so many times again, there aren't going to be so many more times we'll speak. First you count the years, the decades, then suddenly it's hours and minutes. And even now, when it's his last chance, he's not going to mention her, he's not going to say a word about her. It's like we could be back there now, fifty years ago, in that guesthouse, with me seeing, with me knowing clear as day suddenly that he didn't ever want to know. You'd think they could come up with something.

He looks at me like he's sorry for having left it too late, for having to be going just when he was going to put things right. He would've been a changed man, course he would, change of heart, the world would've turned upside down just for us. Like he's sorry for having been the man he was. Is. But he's not going to mention her, he doesn't say he's sorry on account of her. He doesn't even look so apologetic for the things he's making you think he's sorry for. He looks at me so firm and straight and steady that I have to look away myself, just a flicker, though you'd think there shouldn't be time for that, not a second to spare from looking. But I think, I'll always see his face, I'll always see Jack's face, like a little photo in my head. Like a person never dies in the mind's eye.

But he doesn't mention June. He mentions Vince, who isn't, who wasn't ever ours. He says, 'Vince'll look after you. He's a good boy. He aint such a bad job.' He says that I'll be all right, I'll be looked after, but he doesn't say how he never looked after June, he doesn't say, 'And give June my love.'

So I think, Then I won't mention Ray, I won't say a thing about Ray. Though it's my last chance, and it's the time for it, at the bedside, now or never.

He won't mention June so I won't mention Ray. Fair dos. What you don't know can't hurt. But he looks at me with that unflinching, unblinking look, so I have to dart my eyes away again. I look at the next bed which, just for now, is empty, the sheets and covers stripped off, and when I look back, his own eyes haven't budged an inch, they're looking into me and beyond, like he'd like to step right through me and go on then turn round and come back and hug me. And he says, like it's his last word on everything, on why he's lying there and why I'm sitting there holding his hand, and why it had to be him, why I was saddled with him and not a thousand others, luck of a summer night, 'All a gamble, aint it? Ask Raysy. But you'll be all right.'