Last Orders by Graham Swift Read Free Book Online Page A

looks at me juggling with the box. He says, 'Jack in a box, eh Raysy?'
    I put the box down on the jacket and give the cloth a little pat like I don't want to so much as wrinkle it. Vince angles the mirror a bit to see what I'm doing but I can tell somehow he dbesn't mind, it's not his jacket he's thinking of- He doesn't shift back the mirror.
    We drive on in silence, though it feels like Vince is working up to saying something. He keeps looking at the box on his jacket. At last he lifts his head and tilts it as though to say he aint talking to anyone in particular but if he is, it's Lenny. There's an odd pitch to his voice.
    He says, 'I used to think they could see me. I used to think, I couldn't see them but they could see me.'

Ray
    Susie puts the dryer down and gives her head a couple of brisk, stern shakes to loosen the hair and I think, I can't deny it, she's better-looking than Carol ever was, even Carol at her age. It's a kind of disrespect and unfairness to Carol to think it but that don't matter because she's a part of Carol, there's a part of Carol in her, we're all part of each other. It's not as if, given a second chance, I could choose Sue not Carol, because without Carol there couldn't have been no Sue. But it's still true that if I were a different man, a younger one, if my name was Andy and I came from Sydney, Australia, then I'd fancy Sue, like I fancied Carol, only more. I'd fancy my own daughter.
    And another thing's still true, that they have it better now, better, easier, quicker. When I was her age it was time to get your kit and get fell in. Should've been born later perhaps, like Vincey. But I aint like Vincey. And then there wouldn't have been no Susie alive and eighteen now.
    Her transistor radio's going. Round, round, get around, I get around... She moves her shoulders to the beat like she's dancing but sitting down. I knock again on the half-open door. She didn't hear me the first time, what with the dryer going and the radio, so I've stood there for maybe half a minute, holding the mug of coffee.
    Carol's down the shops, Sue's washing her hair. Saturday morning. And any second I'll be off myself. The regular run: the baccy shop, the betting shop, the boozer. The cup of coffee's a way of smoothing my exit, but it's also a way of spying on my daughter.
    She looks round, smiles, tosses her hair again, this time just for the sake of tossing it, and I say to myself as I said for the first time years ago when she was hardly out of her pram, She's a flirt, she damn well knows how to flirt. She flirts with her own father, she knows when she's doing it and it means she wants something.
    She says, 'Thanks,' turning down the radio, and curls her fingers round the mug and takes a quick sip, blowing first across the top. Then she puts down the mug and starts combing her hair and looks at me, suspicious, like I'm up to no good, and says, 'Off down the Coach?' It's not a question that needs asking since I'm off down the Coach most Saturdays, but she asks it anyway to catch me off balance, which is another reason why I know she's after something. And when I make the old joke - 'The Coach won't come to me' - she smiles but she frowns at the same time, there's a little hard pucker just above her nose, which makes me think it's not something small.
    She drops the smile and sips her coffee again. 'Well don't go just yet.' She takes a deep slow breath. She holds the coffee in her lap and looks into it, hair tumbling, like she's making a wish, like she's saying her prayers, and I think, Christ. I almost say it aloud. Remembering Sally, remembering how Lenny came to me: 'Raysy, I need a winner, quick.' Remembering the name of the horse that won at Kempton: Bold Buccaneer, eleven to two. She looks up. She can read my face like a results board. 'No, it isn't that! she says, almost with a laugh, almost with relief. 'It's not that, it's something else.'
    Then she pats the bed for me to sit down, the little narrow single bed