A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘You’ll never do it,’ he said, out of nothing. ‘No, you’ll never do it.’

  I tried to laugh, but my throat cracked: ‘Do what?’

  ‘Never,’ he said.

  ‘Do what, Jack?’ He stared at me, grey eyes through grey beard. ‘Do what?’ I asked. ‘You’re cracked, you stupid get. You’ve had too much plonk down you.’ I wanted to go, but hung on to him like an old friend, as if he were the last person in the world I knew in London. ‘None of us will do it,’ he said, leaning against the wall. ‘We haven’t got the stomach. Too much heart and not enough stomach. No brain either. The world is an apple with a maggot inside, so even half a man could hold it and put his foot on it.’

  I could stand here listening all night, but he wouldn’t know who I was. He was too far back in the attics of his own mind. ‘What is it you want then, Jack?’

  ‘Eh? Who are you?’

  ‘I’m asking you what you want most in the world,’ I said, feeling the rain eating its way through to my shirt collar despite an overcoat.

  ‘Bread and jam,’ he said. ‘Slices of bread and butter, spread with jam. And tea. Tea. Hot.’ He clutched his carrier bags: ‘You can’t have my almanacks, though, so don’t try it.’

  ‘I don’t want them,’ I said, taking a few pound notes out of my wallet. ‘Has anybody been bothering you? I’ll break their heads.’

  ‘Rotten fruit,’ he said. ‘They’ll bury me in rotten fruit.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ I said, ‘take this money and have a binge on bread and jam. It’ll make you feel better.’

  He stared at the notes. ‘Take it,’ I said, then had to dodge, because with great strength and cunning he swung both heavy bags of almanacks at me, one of them catching me sharply on the hip. He screamed, and kept swinging, and both bags burst so that almanacks went flying all over the pavement and into the wet road, blown open by the wind. He rushed at me, kicking so that I had to fly for my life from his madman’s strength. I didn’t run far, turned, and saw him leaning against a wall, his face pressed to it. I walked back and he went away, but I caught him up and touched his elbow. It was impossible to leave him, not only for his good, but mine as well. ‘Jack,’ I said, ‘it’s me, Michael.’

  He stopped and looked hard: ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, calmly, but with great weariness.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To hell,’ he said, ‘unless somebody gives me a couple of bob.’

  ‘Hang on Jack. Here’s three quid. In a month or two I’ll be getting a house in the country, and if you want to, you can live there. It’ll be quiet, and you’ll like it, an old railway station neat Huntingborough.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘I mean it,’ I said, giving him the money.

  ‘I’m down on my luck, but I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’m earning it at the moment.’ I found a five-pound note in my wallet, and gave him that, too. ‘Take care of it.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will. Eight pounds. It’s years since I had that much.’ I left him, hoping he’d survive the next month or so, then I’d let him come to the station till he got his strength back. Plans altered as you made them, though to make plans was the only way to get anywhere.

  After languishing with Polly in various beds of the Moggerhanger household, and in the cottage hideaway in Kent, I knew what I wanted at last, and though it seemed crazy and catastrophic for someone like me to marry her, yet that is exactly what I set my heart on. I told her about my railway station, embroidering on its beauty and solitude, until it seemed the most romantic retreat in the world for two people as much in love as we were.

  Driving back from the country, she said that even though she was in tune with all my proposals regarding Upper Mayhem, she didn’t really want to make too violent a break with her father, whom she loved, and whom she wanted to reconcile to our elopement sooner or later. She would abide by her own passionate wish to stay with me for ever (she was an even more eloquent talker than I was, at times, it was beginning to seem) but I would have to be patient and help her to make the break at the right time.

  This plea delighted me, being definite proof of how seriously she took our planned departure. At the same time passionate and sensible, she made her way to the deepest part of my heart, and the least I could do was help her to make the break at the time of her choosing, because whether I stayed another few months with Jack Leningrad made no difference to me when a whole future of bliss was involved.

  She was the first person I’d ever been completely open with. My natural bent to tell lies became submerged, and if I did feel the fever of fantasy coming on me I meshed it into a story so ridiculous that there was no chance or danger of her believing it had any connexion with the truth. I thus discovered that love makes people honest, but the only trouble was that in the subterfuge world of smuggling, such honesty might be a disadvantage, a race against time between Polly coming to Mayhem with me, and me giving myself away in one of my passages through London airport or Gatwick. She knew of all my techniques as a bona-fide traveller burdened by impossible loads, for I told her when I was going on a trip and where, and who as far as I knew would be going that evening or the following day. Confiding so easily helped me to carry on the work till she decided it was time for the lovers’ flit. And doing it longer than I’d contemplated didn’t faze me because with every journey I was piling more money into the bank.

  I asked Polly to come with me on one of my trips to Paris, but her parents were going to Bournemouth for a few days and wanted her to go with them. There was nothing she’d like more than to stay with me in Paris, she said. ‘I’ll tell my parents to go to hell. It isn’t right that I’m forced to spend three deadly dull days in Bournemouth when we could be in Paris together. You mean more to me than my parents, so I’ll come, even though it might mean the break taking place sooner than I’d thought.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s all right. Let’s wait. We might not spend a few days in Paris now, but we’ll have all the time we want later on, and we won’t need to disturb anyone about it either.’ When I talked her out of doing anything so rash as making a break now, she had tears in her eyes at my solicitude. I said I didn’t want to be responsible for such a thing, in case she found it hard to forgive me later. In any case I hoped that after we’d eloped, and set up house at Upper Mayhem, her father would see his way to forgiving us and letting me once more into his protection and confidence.

  It always came back in the end to care and cunning and patience and nerve, so that at last I was beginning to get the pattern of my life, and the feeling of these qualities became so intense that my strength increased to a height wherein I had to watch it so that I didn’t become slipshod. I sensed myself acquiring the confidence that could ruin me, but because I saw it, I thought that was sufficient protection against it. A man did not stop being a fool merely by knowing he was one. This was even less likely than being clever by simply realizing that one was clever. If anything, the knowledge that I was a bastard had stopped the appropriate distillation of bitterness entering my view of things. If I’d been like everyone else with a married mother and father, the iron in the soul might have bitten into me sooner and given me that extra veneer of protection against the world.

  But Polly was my brilliant star, my beautiful heavy-breasted love whose sweet cunt turned into a morass as soon as I touched her. In the cottage bedroom we turned on Moggerhanger’s high-powered radio and danced naked to Arab music. Sometimes she brought a few hash cigarettes that put us into such a high trance that we could dance and fuck all night.

  One evening I took her to my favourite eating-place. We hadn’t met for three days, and our hands, mine warm and hers cool, joined over the table, glasses of Valpolicella not yet touched. ‘Let’s drink to our departure,’ I said. ‘All you have to do is say the word. I’m ready. Contracts have been exchanged for my country seat, and in a couple of weeks I’ll actually have the deeds. Michael Cullen
will be a property owner!’

  She looked anxious, worn by some inside trouble: ‘Do we just run away?’

  ‘Isn’t that what we agreed on?’

  She took her hand back and lifted her glass a little higher: ‘Let’s drink, then, to when we are together, properly.’

  The wine went into my stomach like sour ice: ‘Not well warmed.’

  ‘Oh, Michael, I hope you won’t think I’m stupid at what I’m going to say.’ The temperature of my stomach dropped, and met the chill of the wine. ‘What is it, love? I could never think such a thing about you.’ The waiter asked what we wanted to eat. ‘Let me order,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘I like it when you take charge.’ I asked for smoked eels to start with, followed by ravioli, brought up by escalope, then sweetened by zabaglione. The waiter floated away and she took my hand again: ‘You know we’re a close-knit family at home, don’t you, Michael? I couldn’t do anything to make my parents too unhappy.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to,’ I said, not caring about them one way or another, until after we were married: ‘It’s good that you don’t want to hurt them. I like you even more for it, if that’s possible.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, and I expected the worst, ‘I’ve told them about us.’

  I held myself from keeling over. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They took it very well. Father knows you, of course, and Mother remembers you, but they want to meet you again. They’d like you to come to dinner on Friday, if you aren’t working.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I was very nervous, but I couldn’t help telling them because we’ve never had secrets from each other. Not for long, anyway. And just going off to live with you would upset them terribly. I just wouldn’t have been able to do it when the time came.’

  ‘That’s all right, love.’ I looked to see if any of Moggerhanger’s hoods were keeping me under watch and key.

  ‘I said how much in love we were. Father was very kind about it, and told me I wasn’t to worry.’

  I regretted ordering such a big meal, but when the food did come I began filling up. I would have liked to trust in God at that moment, except that my optimism had been strangled at birth. I was afraid that Moggerhanger would now get his claws into me, either to do me in without more ado, or make my life so miserable that I’d have to flee even beyond England to keep breath in my body, out of sight and mind both of Polly and my railway station. Yet I ate so much that fear seemed to have a peculiar hunger of its own.

  ‘It’s a lovely meal,’ she said, noticing my appetite, and stroking my wrist while we waited for the second course. ‘It’ll be all right, Michael. I know Father and Mother will take to you.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I said bravely. ‘I can be charming when I like, you know that! Being in love stops me being nervous.’

  She touched my arm and gave a luminous loving smile: ‘Wait!’

  It didn’t get through to me: ‘Most of what you wait for never comes.

  ‘You waited for me tonight,’ she said. ‘We can call at your flat on the way home.’

  I was certainly nervous at going to the Moggerhangers’ for dinner. I felt I had need to be. It was a simple physical fear of being set on, because Moggerhanger was no fool. From his point of view I intended robbing him of a daughter. Of course, at the same time he would gain a son, let us not forget it (I said to myself in town, as I bought a large expensive lot of flowers for the household, knowing that there was nothing he liked more than to see the right thing done), though this seemed unlikely to console a man in Moggerhanger’s shoes who saw sons as being available at ten a penny. So I considered myself a big enough threat to set him into back-handed action. Nevertheless I still saw the position as hopeful, and had a feeling that perhaps after all things would turn out well for Polly and myself. I respected Moggerhanger for the way he’d got on in the world, but I didn’t have much human sympathy for him. It’s no use saying I wanted him to perish, because I did, but I knew also there was no hope of this, and neither did I think the bunch of flowers would do any good, though I carried them just the same.

  José opened the door and took my raincoat. Mrs Moggerhanger came into the hall: ‘I’m so glad you could come, Mr Cullen. My husband and daughter are out strolling in the garden. Do join us. It’s such a pleasant evening.’

  We walked through the living-room and made an exit by the french windows. She was taller and thinner than Polly, but dark-haired, and must have been even more good-looking, though at forty-five I still wouldn’t have said no to her. There was a soft pink light over the lawn, meshing with green, and in the distance by the lilac bushes Polly was talking to her father, a hand on his forearm. I should have been happy at meeting my future in-laws, but there was something I didn’t like about this evening.

  ‘Hello, Michael, I’m glad to meet you again,’ he said, and sounded so friendly that for a moment I thought his remark was genuine. I very much wanted to tell myself that he did mean it, but a protective manifestation of my scurvy spirit prevented me from doing so, and this troublesome nagging caution stayed with me most of the evening. Moggerhanger said he’d like to show me the garden.

  ‘I’m interested in horticulture,’ I said, ‘because I like flowers, especially roses, but I don’t know much about them, though I suppose I should because Harry Wheatcroft comes from up my way.’ Polly smiled, as if to say I was doing very well indeed.

  ‘They’re a man’s best friend,’ said Moggerhanger. ‘I only say that because I could never stand dogs.’

  ‘I’ll have to study a few gardening books,’ I said, ‘since I have a few acres with my country place near Huntingborough. It’ll take a bit of getting in order.’

  ‘I taught Claud all he knows,’ his wife said, with a touch of homely pride.

  He left Polly’s arm, and took hers. ‘She did, Michael, that’s quite true. It’s saved us a few arguments, this garden. Whatever house I buy I always make sure it’s got a good piece of ground that I can turn into a riot of colour. I don’t get much spare time in my sort of work, but I’m never bored when I do. We’ve got a penthouse in Brighton, and there’s a beautiful roof-garden we’ve created there. We are a bit naughty when we go abroad, aren’t we, Agnes?’ he chuckled. ‘We can’t resist smuggling a few plants back into the country. We get them by the customs all right. Not that those chaps bother me. I suppose they know what’s going on, really, but I tip them the wink. A few fivers in the benevolent fund goes a long way.’

  Agnes laughed: ‘Now then, Claud, you know you’ve never done such a thing.’

  His voice turned a shade sterner. ‘Not as far as you know, Mother.’

  ‘It’s getting chilly,’ she said, ‘I don’t want Polly to catch cold. Do we, dear?’

  ‘Oh, don’t fuss,’ she exclaimed, while giving me a wide and loving smile in front of them.

  I sank into a deep armchair. It was too low and soft. My feeling was to get up again and stand at my own height by the mantelshelf where I could be seen to greater advantage. But I sat, and accepted a heavy cut glass nearly half filled with whisky. ‘What kind of work do you do now?’ Mrs Moggerhanger asked with a smile.

  I told her the same old lie, but it went down well, for I embellished it concerning some upgrading I was in for because the firm was opening new branches in Europe, even as far afield as Turkey, and I was coordinating this new scheme at the moment so that while extending operations I was making it possible for us to economize at the same time. ‘I don’t want to bore you with it, though. I’m likely to talk all night if you don’t stop me.’

  In any tight spot about my job I threatened to go on for hours rather than be reticent, so that any listener was only too glad to drop it. Moggerhanger cut in: ‘Well, we don’t want to spoil your inspiration, and that’s a fact. I often find it doesn’t pay to talk too much about your work. It waters down your ideas without your noticing it. If I’m taking a man on, I decide whether he’s much of a talker, and if he is he don’t stand a chanc
e.’

  I swigged his plonk: ‘I can talk for hours, but I never give anything away, and neither does it dilute my ideas, if that’s what you mean.’

  He laughed. ‘You know, Michael, I think I believe you.’

  Seeing that she had set us going, his wife went to check the dinner. ‘Polly tells me you’re in love,’ he said, at which Polly stood up and said she was going to see if there was anything she could do in the kitchen. He had pronounced the phrase in love as if I’d been caught by him trying to blow a safe in such a clumsy fashion that I wouldn’t even have buckled the hinges. I stood up.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  I walked to the mantelshelf, and finished off my whisky, refusing to sit when that bastard told me, even if he was Polly’s old man, and one of the richest men in London – or Ealing. ‘I am in love with her,’ I said, ‘and have been from the moment I saw her.’

  He smiled: ‘You don’t have to spit the words out like rusty tacks. I wanted to hear it from your own lips, that’s all. But you’ve been going about things like an elephant trying to be cunning. I’ve always admired tact, and don’t particularly like somebody who’s sly and devious from his toenails up. I believe you when you say you’re in love with Polly and want to marry her, but at the same time I love her as well – and never you forget it – so I don’t want her to get into the hands of the wrong person. The fact that we both love her gives us something in common. Don’t let that go to your head, though.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I spoke too sharply,’ I said, ‘but you can be sure I’ll do my best to make her happy.’

  He got up and went to the whisky pot. ‘Another drink?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t think you’re in much of a position to make a bargain,’ he said, hovering over me. ‘Not yet, at least. I know you’re a sharp person, so I’d like a few words with you after dinner. We’ll go to my study and let the ladies go about their own business. In the meantine. let’s drink this. I’m not supposed to, but I will for once.’