and gives Al his arm to help her out of the van. She tumbles to the ground, her sore feet impacting hard.
The soft-top stands by, lacquered once again to a perfect hard scarlet. “There’s a new nail bar at the end of our road,” Mandy says. “I thought after we’ve had some lunch we could pop in and treat ourselves.”
For a moment Al sees her fist, dripping with gore; she sees herself, bloody to the elbows. She sees, back at Admiral Drive, the tape unspooling in the empty house; her past unspooling, back beyond this life, beyond the lives to come. “That will be nice,” she says.
MORRIS: And another thing you can’t get, you can’t get a saveloy.
CAPSTICK: You can’t get tripe like you used to get.
DEAN: When I get my tongue guard off, I’m going for a curry.
MORRIS: You can’t get a decent cuppa tea.
DEAN: And then I’m going to get a swastika studded into it. I can hang it over walls and be a mobile graffiti.
MART: Tee-hee. When Delingbole comes you can wag it at him and then bugger off.
AITKENSIDE: Etchells could make a good cuppa.
CAPSTICK: She could. I’ll give her that.
MORRIS: By the way, Mr. Aitkenside.
AITKENSIDE: Yes? Speak up.
MORRIS: I only mention it.
AITKENSIDE: Spit it out, lad.
MORRIS: It’s a question of fundage.
AITKENSIDE: Warren, you have already tapped me for a sub. When I look in my wages book I find it ain’t the first time either. You are spending in advance of your entire income, as far as I can see. It can’t go on, me old mate.
MORRIS: I don’t want a sub. I only want what’s due.
MACARTHUR: He’s right, Mr. Aitkenside. It ain’t fair that Pete should keep all the money he got from Etchells’s personal effects, seeing as we all helped to frighten her to death, and especially me rising up with my false eye rolling.
AITKENSIDE: Pete! What you got to say about this? (
CAPSTICK: Bugger me. Taken to the road. His wodge of cash wiv him.
MORRIS: Ain’t that his sort all over?
BOB FOX: What can you expect, Mr. Aitkenside, taking on pikeys?
AITKENSIDE: Don’t you tell me how to do my job, lad! I’ve got a diploma in Human Resources from Nick himself. We are working towards equal opportunities for all. Don’t tell me how to recruit, or you’ll be knocking on windows for all eternity.
CAPSTICK: We’ll have to contact the missus, then. If we want our cut. She’ll nail down Pikey for us. He likes her. He can’t keep away.
AITKENSIDE: Pardon me, but I don’t know if you’ll see your missus again.
DEAN: You’ve pissed her off good and proper.
CAPSTICK: What, not see her? Who we going to mediumize, then?
BOB FOX: Morris? Morris, speak up. It’s you in charge of this fiasco.
MORRIS: You can’t get decent vinegar, neither. You go in for vinegar, there’s bloody shelves and shelves of the stuff. There’s only one sort of proper vinegar, and that’s brown.
CAPSTICK: Morris? We’re talking to you.
AITKENSIDE: It was you, Warren, according to my ledger, what requested to have that crustie hanged, that lived in her shed.
MORRIS: He was on my manor! Only just got a proper outbuilding, where I can put me feet up evenings, and some geezer with an ’at moves in.
AITKENSIDE: But what did you fail to see, my son? You failed to see he was her good deed.
WAGSTAFFE: A good deed in a naughty world.
AITKENSIDE: That you, Wagstaffe? Bugger off, we’re talking.
MORRIS: Besides, you was all agreeable. Oooh, Morris, you said, let’s have an ’anging, haven’t had a good ’anging in years, it’ll be a right laugh when the little bugger kicks his feet!
AITKENSIDE: You failed to see that little bugger was her good deed. And what’s the result? She’s looking to commit a few others. They get the habit … see? They get the habit. It’s sad. But they get the taste for it.
MORRIS: So she don’t want to know us no more?
AITKENSIDE: I very much doubt it, old son.
MORRIS: But we go back, me and the missus. (
CAPSTICK: Oh, leave off, do! Bring on the bloody violins! You wouldn’t think so well of her if she’d had away your balls.
MACARTHUR: You wouldn’t think so well of her if you’d seen your eye on her spoon.
DEAN: You can get another place, Uncle Morris.
MORRIS: (
AITKENSIDE: Not the bloody waterworks! Pull yourself together, Warren, or I’ll demote you. (
WAGSTAFFE: Any handkerchief in particular?
AITKENSIDE: Wagstaffe? Put a sock in it. Listen, lads, I’ve an idea. Maybe she’ll come back if her dad asks for her.
(
MACARTHUR: Who
CAPSTICK: I always thought it was you, MacArthur. I thought that’s why she took your eye out.
MACARTHUR: I thought it were you, Keef. I thought that’s why she took your bollocks off.
AITKENSIDE: Don’t look at me! She’s not my daughter, I was in the forces.
MORRIS: She can’t be mine because I was still in the circus.
PIKEY PETE: She can’t be mine—
MORRIS: Oh, there you are, Pete! We thought you’d scarpered. Give a dog a bad name and hang him! We thought you had made off with the emoluments.
PIKEY PETE: I say, she can’t be mine, because I was in jail for painting horses.
CAPSTICK: Painting horses?
PIKEY PETE: You paint one racehorse to look like another, innit?
MORRIS: Don’t the paint run off, Pikey, when there’s a downpour?
PIKEY PETE: It’s an old Romany skill. Anyway, she ain’t mine.
CAPSTICK: She ain’t mine, because I was in the nick too.
MACARTHUR: And me. Serving five.
AITKENSIDE: So who’s left? Bob Fox?
BOB FOX: I never did nothing but tap on the window.
(
MACARTHUR: Got to be that Derek bloke. Innit.
AITKENSIDE: Couldn’t have been. Bloody errand boy? He never had no money. Emmeline Cheetham, she didn’t do it for free.
MACARTHUR: True. You made sure of that.
CAPSTICK: Not like these girls you get these days, eh Dean?
MORRIS: So who’s left?
(
MACARTHUR: Oh, blimey.
MORRIS: Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Only the great man himself!
