A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  When I opened the back door Polly said: ‘I thought you’d gone to sleep up there.’

  ‘It was quite a drop,’ I told her, as we went through the kitchen, which smelled of dampness and old cornflakes. ‘Is there any brandy in the place?’ I found some in the living-room cupboard, and we drank a good slug of it. I put my arm around her, feeling lecherous at the noise of rain dinning against the window. ‘Did you shut the skylight?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Please go and make sure, love.’

  I hobbled up to the attic, found an aluminium ladder, and clamped the window into place. The bed was already patched with wet. I picked up a double-barrelled high-powered fowling piece and playfully aimed it through the skylight at the piss-filled clouds. The victory at getting in, and the fact that I would soon be entangled in the warm limbs of sweet Polly, must have turned my head, for in a moment of panache I pulled both triggers. A double explosion thumped my shoulder and threw me on the floor, and the shots brought down a shower of glass and splinters, so that slits of blood joined up with marks of rain and sweat.

  Polly stood in the doorway: ‘For God’s sake, what have you done?’

  ‘I’m wounded. Don’t just stand there, help me up. Whoever could have left a gun loaded without murder in his heart?’

  ‘You’re not wounded,’ she said accusingly.

  ‘We’d better move the bed, and put a bucket under the hole, otherwise your house will get senile decay.’ I hobbled around and looked busy clearing up, while Polly said she’d never known anyone to sprain their ankle simply by firing a shotgun. I couldn’t convince her that I’d done it getting in, and that she just hadn’t noticed it before.

  We had a shower, warm water soaking our skins back to life and sensitivity. She held me by the roots while I latched on to her breasts and soaped her between the legs, until she suddenly jerked and fetched forward as she came. Without waiting to get into the bedroom we lay on the towels and bathmats and shocked off together, wet and raw and flushed after the difficulties of getting in. We pulled each other into the bedroom. She put on a nightdress, then opened a drawer and took out one of her father’s linen shirts. ‘Put this on.’

  ‘I’m not cold.’

  Her dark eyes were on fire, and I don’t think she could see me at all: ‘Still, put it on.’ It meant nothing to me, so I did, and it was so big it was like a nightshirt, pin-striped and without a collar. She lay down, her head on the pillow and hair spread like feathers. My handle grew up, and pushed out the shirt, which she lifted till she got to it, and then I slapped her around and fucked her as hard as I could, while she moaned and whimpered about never having had it like this before, which I didn’t believe, though I couldn’t think of anything as my prick cut into the shrine of her and shot my life at her womb.

  There was nothing to eat in the place, that was the only trouble. We found a box of matzos in the larder, and some cheese that I had to lop the rot from, so we lived on this and black sweet tea till the following morning, though we didn’t need too much time to eat. Nor did we benefit from the fresh country air. Polly told me the story of her life, of how she was brought up at Moggerhanger Hall, and the adolescent shock she got when she caught on to her father’s profession. She’d always been his darling, and still was, and he lost no opportunity in reminding her of that and the many times as a child when she’d said that when she grew up he was the only one she’d consider marrying. She asked me about my life, and I told her all I knew of it, and of my adventures as a gold-smuggler, on which she asked all sorts of questions about the Jack Leningrad Organization. I told her about William being caught in Beirut, and that because of this the man in the iron lung might be on the move to a new hideout.

  ‘All this is worth nothing,’ I said, while we lounged on the bed, me in her father’s shirt which by this time had a bit of rank stiffening in it. ‘The moon is worth nothing. The world is worth nothing. The rain can piss itself to death. All that’s worth anything are your kisses.’ She almost fainted into my arms at this, and my hand went down as her soft breasts flattened against me, and her eyes closed. ‘We’ll have lots of honeymoons, and if life tries to waylay and grab us we’ll kick it in the teeth. There’s only us, not life.’ Her tongue and fingers were in my mouth, as if wanting me to pour out more such words, but I was half gone, then all gone as I went into her again, and got the piston of the two-stroke cycle at a regular knock. It amazed me how much spunk a man had in him, and I wondered how many times he shot in a lifetime and how many plastic buckets this would add up to, how many furrows it would irrigate, how many babies drown. These off-side thoughts kept me going, and I played her on her belly and back and side and from behind, till finally when she was spreadeagled under me and facing me, and had come at last, and I felt her velvet gobble beginning again, I calculated it was time to let go, and did, and she pulled me by the arse till I felt her fingernails must be full of either shit or blood. She cried out as if I were trying to kill her, which I swear I wasn’t, and I felt a roar come out of me without knowing much about it.

  As we went sadly towards the car I hoped our simple brick cottage would melt under the rain and banish back into the soil because I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone ever going into it and spoiling the thick atmosphere that we had created and left there. Even to dynamite it would be better than that. I drove like a pilot towards London, neither of us saying much. There wasn’t even a traffic jam in Tonbridge, and two hours later we were crossing the bridge and steaming through the mist and mire into Ealing. The thick slosh of reality was getting back at me, and I felt nervous as I drove the mudstained Bentley up the drive of Moggerhanger Court.

  I took the remaining cigars out of the glove-box and said goodbye, wondering if she expected me to match her with the tears she looked like shedding.

  ‘Phone me,’ she said.

  ‘I will’ – solid in my intention.

  ‘Father has other places we can go to. They’re all over the place.’

  ‘We’ll go to every one,’ I said.

  On the mat was a telegram and a letter. I opened the telegram first, and it read: PROCEED ROME TOMORROW STOP AWAIT PHONE CALL = JACK LENINGRAD. I took a bottle of beer from the fridge and put some sausages under the grill, so that the whole flat smelt like home. Whereas the telegram bucked me up and made me feel better, the sight of Bridgitte’s bulky letter irritated me, though I hadn’t yet opened it, because I looked forward to getting back to work with no distraction. I read a couple of old newspaper stories about foot and mouth disease, then noted that England’s currency reserves were running low, and how gold was getting scarcer. Time and a pot of tea went by on this, but soon I was forced to open the letter.

  ‘Dear Michael,’ Bridgitte wrote, ‘such terrible things have happened to me that I don’t know where to begin.’ I nearly threw it in the fire, but was compelled, like a dear reader, to read on.

  ‘I’m so distressed that I weep all the time. You see, Donald, my husband, came back the morning after you left, and Adelida met him at the door while I was still in bed. She’d just returned from taking dear Smog to school, and must have told Donald that you had been in the bed with me, because the first thing I knew was the clothes pulled back and his wild hands smacking me. I screamed, but I was black and blue before he stopped. Then he stood there calling me all the rotten English names, such terrible things I can’t tell you.

  ‘He made me get dressed, then pushed me all down the stairs to the front door, and threw me out of it. By this time he was crying himself, but as the tears came to his own face his knocks and kicks at me got worse. As I went sobbing down the path I heard him raving at Adelida and telling her to pack and get out as well. He’s a psychologist and a doctor, and he’s supposed to be a man of wisdom and understanding, but he acted like a beast to me. He’s never been anything but a beast.

  ‘I had only a few shillings in my pocket so I went by Underground and bus to your flat. Nobody was in. I sat for an hour on the stairs,
still not really awake, and hungry because the Beast had thrown me out with no breakfast. I went to see a Dutch friend of mine who lives in Chelsea with a student, and she gave me cheese and tea, but was too poor to put me up.

  ‘I decided that the only sensible thing was to go back to my husband, and when I got there he wasn’t in. The door was open and I caught Adelida putting my clothes into her own suitcase. I said that if she didn’t take them out I’d phone the police, but she said I was a whore and could phone who I liked. When I started to dial the phone she threw my stuff over the floor and ran away from the house. So I packed my case properly and found my money purse with pounds in it. If the worst came to the terrible it was enough to get me to Holland, but I didn’t want to go there because my family, who had always hated my husband, would only have said I told you so and sent me away.

  ‘I sat on my case in the living-room surrounded by chairs, and didn’t know what to do. I was stunned, and it was all my fault. And then I thought: “Why didn’t I think of it before? Michael’s gone to his home in Nottinghamshire.” A ray of joy spread over me. Also I remembered the address, Ranton Grange, so I called a taxi and went straight to the station, where I got a ticket to Nottingham.

  ‘It was a wonderful journey, because as soon as the train got to countryside my tears dried and troubles went, and I had a cheap lunch in the dining-wagon. The only strange incident that happened, on the train anyway, was when I was on my way back to the carriage. I was passing a first-class compartment and inside was a little old woman, who took off a fur coat and tried to push it through the window out of the train. The space was small and the coat was big, so she had a hard job to get it out. She pulled it down and rolled it up longways, to make it easier, and she was mumbling and crying all the time. I went in and talked to her, so that after a while she forgot about throwing her coat off the train, and started to tell me her life story. But it was all very quick and I didn’t understand anything, thinking she was just another of your mad people in England.

  ‘Then I went back to my own seat in third class, because the ticket man came and said I had to. Nottingham was nice and different from London, all open and good to look at, full of busy and smiling people, and I said to myself this is just the town that Michael would come from. I asked a station man how I would get to Ranton, and he told me to walk down to the bus place, so that in an hour I got there. What beautiful country! But I had to walk a long way down a lane to get to your house at the Grange. By this time I was a little bit tired, but hoped your mother would not be angry for me calling on you.

  ‘The gate was locked, and I pressed a bell button, and down the drive came a man who I thought must be the brother you’d told me about. He looked kind, but suspicious, and asked me what I wanted. I said I had come to see Michael, and he said you weren’t at home, that you were in London. This was a big blow, and I was beginning to think that it was a really bad day. “Are you his brother?” I asked. He nodded, and looked at me, hard. He was about ten years older than you, and good-looking, though his eyes were steely, and he had a small ginger moustache. “He told me a lot about you,” I said. He took my case and asked me to come to the house for a cup of tea, said he couldn’t possibly let me go since I had come so far. He apologized for you and said you didn’t often make mistakes like this, and that you ought to be more careful where a young lady was concerned. I said I hoped I wouldn’t disturb his mother, and he said, “Oh, don’t worry about her. I’m afraid she recently died,” and I thought it strange that you hadn’t told me, but I just said how sorry I was.

  ‘A servant took my case and we went into the house, a big mansion with paintings of dead soldiers on all the staircases, and I thought how lucky Michael is to have a childhood here. Your brother gave me lunch, and he ordered a bottle of wine to be sent up, and then another, and the more I ate and drank the better I felt about my disappointment at not seeing you. Then I felt dizzy, and your brother asked his housekeeper to show me a room where I could rest for half an hour. He then said that afterwards he would drive me to the station. So I followed this old woman into a room that looked over the loveliest green park. I stood by the window to see it all. Then I lay down on the bed, feeling small in the middle of it. I was exhausted from the events of the day that was not much more than half gone, and I fell asleep in no time.

  ‘When I opened my eyes, your brother (I mean that devil) was standing by the bed and looking down at me. “Is it time to go?” I said. He started to undress, and I ran to the door, but it was locked. “It’s even soundproof,” he laughed at me. “Let me go,” I cried, “I’ll miss my train.” “They run every day,” he said. “I’ll tell Michael,” I said. “Who the devil’s that?” he said, naked but for his shirt. “Your brother,” I told him. “I don’t have a brother. Only a sister, and she’s in South America, I hope.” I ran back to the bed. “Don’t be a silly girl,” he said, pulling his shirt off, “enjoy yourself.”

  ‘“Who are you?” I cried.

  ‘“I’m Lady Chatterley’s son.” Somehow he didn’t frighten me any more, and when he kissed me I couldn’t do anything about it. I realized by now that I must have remembered the wrong address, but a few days later Clifford told me that there was no one by your name in the whole county, and he knew all the good families in it. So you are the most terrible liar, and I shall never forgive you, even though I still love you. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be writing this letter.

  ‘Clifford put me on the train in Nottingham and begged me to visit him again some time. Back in London I went to my husband, thinking that we could be together again. But when he wanted to know who I’d spent my time with I wouldn’t tell him. He’d been to your flat looking for you, to push your face in, he said, but he hadn’t found you. We had lunch together at the house (he already had another housekeeper looking after him) and I thought things were going to be all right, because afterwards we went to bed, but then he asked me to tell him again where I’d been for the last few days, and when I still wouldn’t he said he just had time to smash up the house and get rid of me before going off to Harley Street to see some patients. He threw all the vases into the fireplace, ripped the pictures off the walls, and smashed a window. Then he hit me and kicked me. He is uncivilized and savage, and I thought there’d be no end to it if I stayed with him. He kicked his wife, that’s why she left him. He kicks poor Smog, and he kicked me. I told myself I’d never live with a psychoanalyst again, as I went crying down the path with my suitcase. I’ve got a place to live and a job. My room is in Camden Town, and I work as a shop assistant. I hate it, because I don’t have any freedom, and I’m unhappy because I’ve been phoning you and don’t get any reply. So please, please come to see me, or be in when I phone, because my life is smashed and ruined and I am so unhappy, Michael. I love you and want to go away with you. Even though you betrayed me by your lies, I still want you.’

  She went on in this way for a few pages more, but I crumpled the letter up and threw it in the slop bin. What a crazy girl she was, I thought, going up to Nottingham to look for me. How can you trust someone who believes everything you say? As for the stately home she’d ended up in, it must have been the one I’d described so knowingly in my lies, the one I’d cycled by and admired so often as a youth. Some swine had taken advantage of her innocence, and now she was a serving girl behind a shop counter. What a comedown for an au pair girl from milk-and-butter land.

  It was already afternoon, the livid sky filled with water, which made me feel even more sorry for her. But I had to go out in it, for the cupboard was empty and the fridge was bare, so with raincoat and umbrella I slipped down the stairs to a little man’s shop on the main road, whose window was filled with orange drinks and tinned peas. I got Splendour Loaf and meatlets, choc-cake, and Tiger-eye frozen fish toes, the fifth-rate grub that dulls the brains of every Englishman. Big drops of rain dragged themselves out of the sky in an effort to wet me on the way back, but I reached the comfort of my flat in safety.

  I tried
on the phone to get Bill’s mother and tell her the fate of her son, but the hotel manager said she’d gone back to Worksop some days ago – which was one problem less to bother me as I lay down the receiver. Only at this moment did it occur to me that she’d been seen on the train by Bridgitte, though I tried not to be dead certain of it. I put on the kettle again for tea. There was a framed photograph of Bill’s mother on the sideboard, and her look went right into my heart when I took up courage and stared at her. She asked what the hell Bill was doing in London instead of earning an able living in Worksop. Come to that, she asked what I was doing here as well, but I looked at her and said nothing, thinking she ought to stick to Bill and leave me alone. Bill no doubt was guzzling typhoid sherbet in a far-off nick, so he certainly needed worrying about, far more than I did, and that was a fact.