A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  When I got close he gave me a ferocious slap across the face that bundled me against the shed. He picked me up and threw me half across the garden: ‘Next time, don’t get caught, d’you hear me? Never get caught.’ He slammed the door and went in to eat his breakfast.

  It was all right for him, but how was it possible to separate getting caught from stealing? If anybody could tell me, I’d listen eagerly. I was forbidden to leave the garden for a week, but got out before then by a bit of skilful climbing and ran off to find Billy King. Putting my face to the cellar grate I softly called his name, then louder when he didn’t answer, and louder still. Neither he nor his family were there, and I could only assume they’d found a house at last. Wherever it was, it must have been a long way off.

  All I liked to do at school was read. There wasn’t much else. I didn’t like arithmetic, and couldn’t stomach writing. Reading took me right out of school, and into the world of the book-adventure, so it was like not being at school at all, and was the only way to avoid it without playing truant. The teacher caught me at it time and time again, but I always took the book back that he snatched from me, even when he lost his temper and thumped me. He was a young man, so it puzzled him, because he couldn’t honestly call me the fool I probably was for not learning other things as well.

  At home I wouldn’t be seen dead reading a book, not until I left school anyway. If I did they’d have thought I was either mad or ill, and I didn’t want them tucking me up in bed or sending for a doctor without good reason. When I did leave school, I read at work, and it was taken more amiss than before. After being sacked for this from a couple of factories (that I couldn’t stand anyway because of the stink and noise, not to mention the work) I was careful to get jobs as an errand boy or messenger, pushing a bike with a high front loaded with cloth or groceries from one place to another. On my way back I’d lean the bike by the wall of a canal bridge and take half an hour at my book or comic. I was consequently looked on as intelligent because I never lost my way, but not very diligent because I always took so long over it.

  On one trip I lingered through town and looked in a bookshop window. One of the titles which caught my eye was The Way of All Flesh. I stood in my overalls and gazed at it, and when a young girl also looked into the window I felt embarrassed in case she thought I had nothing but eyes for a book with a title like that. In a way I had, but I held my ground. I’d always liked books about sex, and this one I hadn’t heard of, and as it was a paperback I went in to buy it. The girl had also decided to buy something, a young fair beauty of an office tart no doubt, and she stood by the row of books wherein I knew I would find the one I was looking for. So I held back, and glanced at a row of prayer books and Bibles, and I couldn’t understand why they were in the same shop with the sort of book I longed to get.

  An assistant asked what I wanted, and I told him I was just looking around, so the toffee-nose slunk back to his desk to wrap up parcels. I’d been out from my work-place too long to stay much more, and because the girl wouldn’t move from the paperback shelves I made up my mind to come again the following day. This I did, handed the book to the man, who took my money and slid it into a bag so that no one would I’d stolen it as I went out.

  But I’d slid one book under my jacket, on the principle of buy one – nick one, which merely meant I’d got them both for half-price. I certainly wasn’t a thief, to get them for nothing. The book I’d taken free was called The Divine Comedy because I thought that was dirty as well, especially as it was written by an Italian. I was so pleased with my haul I began reading by the fire that night after Mother had gone out. My eyes were avid and my mind eager as I propped both feet on the coal scuttle and opened The Way of All Flesh. I didn’t imagine it would be easy, because I knew that in this sort of Penguin book you could hardly expect to read about anybody in bed together for the first fifty pages. But it turned out to be so interesting that I stuck at it, and by the time Mother came back at half past ten I’d forgotten what I’d expected from the book when I opened it.

  After that, other good books were chewed into my maw, and though I never got the throstle-titillation that drew me to them in the first place (which is not to say I was always disappointed), I nevertheless saw that there was more to books than reading about sex and gangsters. I had always been unsatisfied by these two subjects, because the sex seemed unreal and always had to be paid for in some grisly way, and the gangsters were all rotten and made of cardboard and so got what they deserved at the first punch of the law. I can see how innocent I was, and though this may be usual in any ordinary youth it was no great advantage if you were a bastard. While labouring under my pleasurable education of reading, I began to see that all was not well with the life I had chosen to lead, because it was life itself that had chosen to lead me a dance that. I did not want. To put it bluntly, I was fed up with work, with home, and with living the way I did.

  I was eighteen by the time this slow fuse started burning, as if my litmus toes had been touched off and were smoking slowly up to my heart. When Mother asked what was up I said the sky, and grabbed my coat to go, before she could begin her carpet-bombing about how useless and dead stupid I was. She would have been right, and I couldn’t stand that, so the only thing left was to wander up Norton Street and see if Alfie Bottesford was back yet from the foundry office he worked at.

  It was mid-week but he unlatched the door wearing a collar and tie, creased trousers, smart coat, and an extra polish to his glasses. ‘Are you in?’ I asked.

  ‘I might be,’ he said, ‘but my girl is here.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said, edging closer.

  He opened wider: ‘Come in, then,’ whispering in the scullery: ‘Her name’s Claudine, and we’re going steady.’

  I boggled at this, and he introduced me (as he called it: I’d never been ‘introduced’ before) in the proper way, meaning he allowed us to shake hands, which was his first and last mistake. ‘This is my girlfriend, Claudine Forks,’ he said. ‘Claudine, this is an old friend of mine, Michael Cullen.’

  She sat back in an armchair by the fire, and I tried to catch her eye and give her the wink while Alfie was turning the record over on his gramophone. She had a small mouth and big breasts, and as she sat back I could see halfway up her thin legs.

  There wasn’t much of a welcome for me from either her or Alfie, and I supposed that his mother was out, and that they’d expected a frolic all to themselves before she came back. I wanted to spoil their fun, if not take it over, and when Alfie went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, which he saw as the quickest way of getting me to go, I concentrated my gaze on his sweetheart, till she stood up and looked along the mantelshelf for a cigarette.

  ‘I’ve got some,’ I said, flashing them under her nose. ‘Make us a sandwich while you’re at it,’ I called to Alfie. Before she put the fag to her mouth I kissed her, and pulled her into my chest. She struggled, but seemed well practised at making no noise. ‘If you say owt,’ I whispered, ‘I’ll say you kissed me first.’ Her eyes were like octopus lamps at this prime mischief, so I kissed her again and pressed her so that I could feel all she’d got.

  I struck a match and lit her fag, and Alfie fried under his jealousy when he saw us so close. It baffled him, but Claudine took his arm and kissed him to prove that all was well, and encouraged by this he pulled her on to his knee and kept her until the red kettle on the gas stove whistled half-time and made him ease her off and rush into the scullery.

  It was my turn and I lost no time about it. I sucked her mouth and closed those heavy eyes, my leg forcing hers apart so that she breathed hard and I thought I’d got her on my hands for life, until I remembered Alfie in the kitchen, at which I put my hand down and almost into her drawers.

  She hissed like a snake and pushed me away. ‘You dirty bastard!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Alfie.

  ‘He knows,’ she said, tight-lipped and scarlet.

  ‘I only asked if she’d g
ot a sister I could be introduced to,’ I said. ‘But I know when I’m not wanted. You can keep your tea and sandwiches. I hope it gets cold and stale while you get stuck into your hearthrug pie and can’t get out. I won’t stay where I’m not welcome.’

  From the scullery door I added a bit more, and Alfie hovered in a worried fashion, trying to get a word in, while his girlfriend stood with her face even tenser, as if feeling guilty already at any falsehoods I might throw into their den. ‘Another thing,’ I added, staring at Claudine so that Alfie turned pale. ‘As far as I know I’m not the only bastard in this room, and maybe not the only dirty one, either.’

  ‘Shurrup,’ Alfie screamed, pushing me out so hard that I turned and pushed him back half across the room. I went of my own accord, slamming the door with less force than either of them expected.

  I forgot about her in the next few days, because I was hard at it trying to get a date with one of the shopgirls at work who’d caught me reading a book in the warehouse and, on seeing what it was, thought I might be interesting enough to get to know. So one Saturday morning as I was walking up Wheeler Gate in the sunshine, I saw Claudine coming down the same side of the street, and I greeted her as if we were friends from long ago.

  ‘What do you want?’ she snapped, stopping nevertheless. She wore a purple summer coat and thick red lipstick, dark stockings, and a hairstyle puffed high.

  My wanting her came back, and the fact that this might have been because she was Alfie’s steady girlfriend didn’t bother me a bit. ‘I’ve been hoping I’d bump into you,’ I said, ‘to say I was sorry for running out on you the other night.’

  ‘Is that all you’re sorry about?’ she said.

  ‘If it comes to that,’ I answered, ‘maybe you ought to apologize to me as well, for what you called me.’

  ‘What did you expect, shoving your hand up my clothes like that. I just came right out with it.’

  ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’

  ‘P’raps next time you will.’

  ‘I hope so. I’m not usually a dirty beast. Only sometimes.’

  ‘That’s too often for me,’ she said.

  ‘Not according to Alfie,’ and I watched her go so red I didn’t notice the coat or lipstick any more. ‘Did I say something wrong?’ I added, as if trembling for my sinful way of talking. ‘Alfie and me are old pals, right from birth. We talk a lot to each other. It don’t mean much, duck.’

  She got out a few words at last: ‘He said he’d stopped seeing you, after that night. He swore he’d never talk to you again.’

  ‘You know how it is,’ I said, ‘we’re old mates. It ain’t so easy for him. Maybe he meant to break it off bit by bit. Don’t think Alfie’s a liar. He’s one of the best.’

  ‘I’ll tell him a thing or two.’

  I asked her not to: ‘It ain’t worth it if you’re going steady. Why break it up for a thing like this? Let’s go into that Lyons on Long Row for a cup of tea.’ She looked around, as if to find her mother there and ask if it would be all right. ‘Everybody talks about everybody else,’ I said, ‘but nobody thinks any the worse. I could tell you a few things that happen at the place I work at, but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before, so why bother?’

  Over a cup of tea, she said bitterly: ‘I suppose Alfie told you everything about me?’

  ‘Only that you were going steady, and that that made it all right, whatever you did between you.’ I was anxious to get off this topic, because though it had served its purpose in bringing us closer together than I’d expected, it might now shove us apart if it went on too long. I wanted to get off with Claudine, not push her into a quarrel with Alfie which might only get them back into an even cosier hugger-mugger. Nor did I want to discuss their problems as if I was her brother. If we’d been in a more private place I’d have done something as daring as I had on the first night, just to bring us back to reality, and with this in mind I touched her wrist across the table and, when this wasn’t repulsed, made a brief stroke at her knee under the table, but only for a second so that not having had time to push it away she began to wonder whether I’d done it at all. Which was all right by me because she didn’t even blush, of which I was glad because when she did it made her look angry, an expression which took away the few good looks she had.

  ‘I’ve just been around the bookshops,’ I told her, ‘but there wasn’t much worth buying this morning. I usually call at them on Saturday. I like to get through a couple of books a week.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were like that. You looked a bit rough the other night.’

  ‘That’s because I wasn’t wearing my best. I didn’t expect you to be at Alfie’s. It was a very pleasant surprise.’

  ‘You didn’t act very nice, either.’

  ‘Don’t get back to that, Claudine. I didn’t know what I was doing. I can be polite – but not all the time. It’s all right for Alfie, because he was brought up on bread and treacle, and iodine tea.’

  She laughed: ‘Was he? He never told me that.’

  ‘I’ve known him since we was in nappies together.’

  ‘What happened to his father, then?’

  ‘He was killed in the war, like mine.’

  ‘I was beginning to think he’d never had one,’ she said. ‘I’d never go with anybody like that.’

  ‘Why didn’t he tell you straight?’ I said, riled at having to stick up for him like this. ‘His old man was drowned off the coast of Norway. Mine was bombed in Egypt. Same thing.’

  ‘That makes a big difference,’ she said. ‘He died for his country.’

  ‘Lots did. It didn’t do them much good, though. Have another tea?’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I’m late already. I was supposed to do some shopping.’

  ‘It’s Sunday tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Meet me after dinner and we’ll go for a walk.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ she pouted with those dangerous red lips. When she smiled she showed her teeth, and I liked that.

  ‘Bring Alfie if you like. We’ll all go for a walk. He might like that.’ She agreed to this when I put her on the bus, and I was in such confused and happy fettle that I went back to the bookshop and saw four titles straight away that interested me. Next day Claudine turned up alone, as I had hoped she would.

  If there’s anything better than reading books, it’s going out with a young girl. A book takes you into another world, but a girl stamps you into the soil. Or, rather, you stamp her into the soil, or try to when you’re on top of her behind some bushes and you’re dying to go on that longest journey into the sweetest night of all. One time I would plead, the next I would bully, then I’d be silent and try pressing my own way onwards like a bull, but for months I never got anywhere. We lay between the trees in Shaws Plantation, away from everyone in the summer silence. I lit a cigarette, and passed it to her, then did one for myself. She was ruffled a bit, in her wine-dark velvet dress, and was glad of the soothing smoke.

  ‘Alfie’s had it often enough off you,’ I complained, ‘so I don’t know why you’re holding out.’

  ‘Alfie and I are going steady, and that makes all the difference.’

  ‘We can go steady if you like.’

  ‘You only say that to get what you want,’ she answered sharply, fastening the top button of her blouse which had come undone in the scrabble.

  ‘So does Alfie, I expect.’

  ‘He doesn’t. He really means it when he says we’re going steady.’

  ‘Me too,’ I protested, so thwarted I could have paralysed her, thinking that if I heard that mincing phrase about ‘going steady’ once more I’d kill whoever said it and lob myself off Castle Rock.

  The kisses came soft and fulsome, but they weren’t what I wanted unless they paved the footpath to the end which I had in view. She moaned and hugged and bit my ear but whenever my hand strayed close, her eyes opened wide with the stony lift of common-sense and she froze away from me. I was baffled, and didn’t know how to go on,
and more than once I left her late at night, feeling full of rage at the rice pudding down my leg. She worked in the City Combine offices, and scorned me for the fact that I was an errand boy. She could never love me because she didn’t respect me, yet I wasn’t the sort to show myself at her beck and call by trying to ‘get on’. What kept her interested in me was my ancient friendship with Alfie, as well as my mysterious ability to read books that she could hardly understand. But I kept on and on at her in the hope that tomorrow or next week our love-life would take the great leap forward. I hung on like a drunken man at a one-armed bandit, always hoping for the jackpot. It occurred to me in my frustrated misery that maybe she was taking it out on me to keep herself going nice and lovely with Alfie. The only way I could get it was by straightforward rape, and though I was strong I didn’t feel strong enough for that. Alfie didn’t know about our weekly meetings, and at first, when I had hopes, I didn’t want him to get to know, whereas in those early days Claudine wouldn’t have minded if he had found out, because I think in some way she wanted to get her own back on him for having supposedly spilled the beans to me about their love-life. But as time went on, meaning weeks, but they seemed like years, I began to see that there might be some advantage in letting him know what was happening, or at least telling Claudine that this was in my mind. I was slowly brought to this, seeing that, as time still went on, the idea of Alfie getting to know appealed less and less to her, because of the precautions she began to take when arranging to meet me. Not having it while I was in full blood sharpened my wits and understanding, which is something to be said for it.

  We sat in a coffee bar on Parliament Street, where both of us had met straight out of work. We had a cake to hold back the gnawing starvoes, and I was trying to persuade her to come up Strelley where we could fan out into the fields and woods. But, though it was dry and still daylight I couldn’t make much headway. ‘I don’t feel like it,’ she said. ‘It’s too much bother, going all that way. You can see me home, though.’

  ‘Are you meeting Alfie?’ I asked, a sudden suspicion.