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him sitting beside me up there on the cart I don't think of scrap metal, brass, copper, lead, cast-iron. I think of Duke. I think of the life of carters and pedlars. I see him lean forward, elbows on knees, after I've taken up the reins, and start to look around him as if he hadn't noticed the world passing by. I see him scratch his neck and reset his cap. I see him light up a snout, dicky chest or no dicky chest, and breathe out the first drag, bottom lip jutting, then rub his chin with the tip of his thumb, cigarette between his fingers, then run the ball of his thumb across his forehead, and I know I do all those things, without helping it, the same gestures, the same motions.
    I should never have let Vince have that yard.

Lenny
    Sunday outings in the meat van, as if I don't remember.
    As if I don't remember them dropping our Sally off -half asleep she'd be sometimes - and my Joan saying, 'Won't you come in for a cuppa?' And Amy saying, 'Best not, we'd better get Vince home to bed.' As if I don't remember the sand between Sally's toes and that toy bucket full of shells and bits of seaweed and dead crabs, and the smell of the seaside on her, in her hair, in her clothes, and the pints of calamine lotion Joan and I got through for her sunburn.
    We'd have taken her ourselves, only we didn't have the train fare, and we didn't have no motor, of course. No motor, no shop, no house to speak of, scratching a bleeding living, that's what we was doing. I was better off in the Army if you ask me. And I remember that look Am/d give - but maybe I imagined it, it don't do credit to a woman like Amy - when she said, no, they wouldn't come in. Like it was because we lived in a prefab and they lived in bricks and mortar. Like Amy was getting above herself. She and Jack had been to the sea for the day and me and Joan had been to feed the ducks in Southwark Park.
    Amy'd be standing there still holding on to Sally's hand and stroking her hair and stooping down to give her a kiss, so I'd feel like saying, "That's one thing we've got that you aint got.' But I didn't. I just watched Amy kissing my daughter, and Joan would suck in her breath.
    Well it wasn't our fault the bombs fell where they did. It wasn't my fault that all the old man left was three-and-six in the Post Office and a barrow in the Borough Market.
    And you had to remember that Jack and Amy had their hard luck too, and little Vince, of course, poor little pillock. There's luck and there's luck. So maybe I did imagine it, maybe it was me just thinking: Amy looks pretty good on a day out and some sea air, she looks pretty good. She still looks a cracker, Jack.
    Jack would say, 'Come on then, Ame.' And Vincey would be sitting up there in the front of the van, ready for being carted off to bed, but he wouldn't look so sleepy because he'd be watching Amy and Sally too while they hung around on our doorstep, hoping like hell Sally was going to turn round and wave goodbye to him.
    We could have done with a day out ourselves. I said the last beach I paddled on was at Salerno, I aint so keen on beaches, but we could have done with a day out. I could have done with seeing Amy in her bathing-suit. But that's what parenthood is, I reckon, it's drawing the short straw deliberate. There wasn't no room for us too in the front of that van, it's a wonder the four of them managed to squeeze in. So it was all for Sally's sake. And for Jack and Amy's, of course, specially Amy. As if we didn't get the message.
    Joan says, 'Them two kids are getting just like brother and sister, aren't they?'
    But one day Sally comes in from school and says how they're starting to say things in the playground about Vince. How he aint all there in his head. Same as his big sister. How he ought to be in a Home too, a Barnardo's Home. Though when you think about it, it had to be one or the other, either the orphanage or the bin. She says Vince is getting into fight after fight and she don't know where she stands