Last Orders by Graham Swift

Mr Snow. Life's a process of going before geezers who want to see you crawl.
    He says, 'What do you want to be, Vince? What are you going to be?'
    I think, That's a daft question because I'm something already. He looks at me, twiddling his pen. But the point is I aint even sure what I am in the first place. So I don't say nothing but I ruffle up and he can see it. There's playground noises coming from outside. I'd like to be Gary Cooper but I can't. I'd like to be all kinds of people, I'd even like to be Mr Snow putting some other poor kid on the mat, but I can't because I'm me. I think, This is what it must be like for June. There are all these people around her who aren't like June, because she's different, and if June thinks at all then she must think, I don't want to be like me, I want to be like them but I can't I can't I can't.
    But maybe June doesn't think at all, she aint got a thought in her head, and supposing what you want to be is not like anything. Supposing what you want to be is a drive-shaft.
    They said a flying-bomb killed them all so I was lucky.
    He says, 'What I mean is, what do you want to do? He smiles, like he don't mean no harm really. "What job do you want to do?'
    And I see them all hanging up before me, like clothes on a rack, all the jobs, tinker, tailor, soldier, and you have to pick one and then you have to pretend for the rest of your life that that's what you are. So they aint no different really from accidents of birth. I didn't know that phrase then but I learnt it later. It's a good phrase.
    I think, He wants me to say 'butcher' but I aint going to say it. I aint going to say 'butcher'.
    I said to Amy, 'Take me to see her, take me to see June.' I did something he never did, even if it was only once. Vin-cey's got a sister, face like a blister. And it was Amy who told me that he never wanted to tell me, never at all. Though how he thought he could keep me fooled beats me. It was Amy who told me that June was an accident, an accident of birth. She didn't mean the way June turned out, she meant that they'd never meant to have her.
    So June was their accident and I was their choice, tinker, tailor.
    He says, 'Well, how do you see yourself?'
    He looks at me, knowing I've only got one answer. The whistle goes outside for play to end and the room goes quiet as cotton wool, except for his breathing. It was times like this I'd think, If they can see me, they must be watching me now.
    No one ever kissed her, no one ever missed her.
    I don't say nothing, and maybe he knows what I'd like to do is hit him.
    Then I say, 'What I'd like to do, sir, what I'd like to be, is a hop-picker.'

Ray
    It was Amy's voice but what I heard just for a moment, was Carol's.
    She said, 'There's nothing they can do, Ray'll heard the bravery in her voice, just like Carol's.
    She said he hadn't come round proper from the op yet and Strickland wasn't going to spell it out to him till he had. But he'd spelled it out to her, and to Vince, loud and clear. Nothing doing. Opened him up just to sew him back together again. Then, while she was there by his bed afterwards, he'd come round anyway just for a bit and she hadn't said nothing and he hadn't asked but he'd looked at her and all he'd said was, 'I want to see Lucky.'
    I said, 'So do you think he knows?' And what I meant was: do you think he knows it's all over? But I thought, and maybe Amy was thinking it too, how you could take it another way, and maybe that's why he wanted to see me, because why do people get called to bedsides? I'd been going in to see him anyway, most days, but now he was asking: I want to see Lucky. What you never know won't hurt, but it's different when someone's dying, because it's not like you can say least said soonest mended, because there aint going to be no soonest or latest and you won't ever get the chance again to tell or not tell nothing.
    Maybe that's what she was thinking too because she went all silent and choked.
    So I said, 'You don't think