A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘You’re the only person who’s ever cared about me,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t help it. What else can I do if I love you? We’ve already been to bed together, and I’m bound to love somebody I’ve been to bed with, aren’t I?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not asking you,’ I told her. We went upstairs, but I was disturbed because she could not stop weeping, as if she didn’t know who she was or where she belonged. I couldn’t do any more than lie down and hold her close. ‘Did you tell your parents about it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Yes. I wrote a letter yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday? A letter? Why didn’t you phone?’ I stood up and lit two cigarettes. ‘Or send a telegram?’

  She smiled, as if pleasantly astonished at her own thoughtlessness. ‘I don’t know. Really I don’t.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, weeping again.

  I held her. ‘You’re not. But stop it.’

  ‘I don’t like my parents.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘I came to England to get away from them.’

  We made love, and she clung to me as if I were a tree and there was a gale trying to blow her away. When she came it was as if an electric shock had gone through her, and she nearly snapped my old man off. It was one o’clock, so we got dressed and went to see Smog.

  He was lying with his eyes open. ‘I heard you,’ he said. ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘We were lying on the bed,’ I said, ‘loving each other.’

  ‘Was it nice?’

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I sat him on my knee: ‘Bridgitte’s getting you some more breakfast.’

  ‘That earwig’s gone,’ he said. ‘The bell doesn’t ring any more.’

  ‘We’ll give you some egg then, otherwise he’ll wake and get up to his tricks again.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he said. So we fed him, and he ate well. Afterwards I read one of his books, then another, and he didn’t want to go to sleep, but eventually he did.

  I walked alone for an hour over the Heath, up to my ankles in mud and rotten leaves. It started to rain, so I hurried towards the Tube station, and wandered around till I found a bookshop to browse in. I saw an old copy of a Gilbert Blaskin book marked at two bob but I thought it was expensive so didn’t buy it. Nothing interested me. Smog seemed to be getting back into himself, so I was worrying about tomorrow.

  Kids were coming out of school, and I made my way back. I didn’t seem to be connected to anything solid. I floated. The present bore no relationship to what was about to happen. This made me think that the world was going to end soon, or that something big was coming to pass. I felt an impulse to cut and run. My instinct told me how to cut and where to run to, so there was no excuse for not obeying it. And because I knew I hadn’t an earthly chance of doing what it said, I felt that something even bigger than my instinct had me in its power. It was having a game with me. I felt an impulse to get away from the rain which was covering the trees and bushes of the Heath in mist.

  I got Smog down to the living-room for tea, and he sat near the window, joyfully watching the rain painting its glass. His eyes had grown larger since morning. His skin was fragile, as if made of porcelain; until it moved when he smiled or turned to ask for more food. I told him I would be going away for a few days, that I had to go because it was to do with earning my living. ‘Why don’t you just go to the bank?’ he said.

  ‘That’s not how you get money. You’ve got to earn it first.’

  ‘But I’ll make you some,’ he said, jam all over his mouth. Full of energy, he ran to look for felt-pens. I cut paper into small pieces, and he covered each one with designs, but he sensed that something was wrong and made me cut more shapes. Then he asked me for a five-pound note, which he wanted to copy. When he’d done, he wouldn’t give me the note back. So I let him borrow it, but said he must give it to me when I came home at the weekend, adding that if he was a good boy and ate all his meals, I’d take him to Hamley’s, where he could spend it on toys. He went to sleep happy.

  I said to Bridgitte that I would see her soon, telling her to look after Smog first, and then herself, which she promised to do. ‘I don’t like people to travel by aeroplane,’ she said. ‘They crash.’

  ‘Not with me on it. I’m not worried about that. I have faith in those marvellous pieces of machinery.’ Her black clothes were thrown off, and she lay on the bed in a flowered dressing-gown, while I had nothing on. A small bedlight glowed at us. I got dressed, saying I had to go. But I was afraid something might happen to her and Smog, as if only I could look after them, as if without me they were at the mercy of I didn’t know what. I knew it was a stupid fear, which only came because I thought I was more powerful than I was, and that they were weaker than they were. Bridgitte was perfectly strong and competent. Yet I was also scared of what might happen to me after I left, and it had nothing to do with any plane taking a nosedive.

  The rain had stopped, and stars were out, gaps between the clouds blown out of shape by a strong wind. At the bottom of the steps I hesitated, and wanted to go back. But I walked away, my footsteps sounding as if they carried someone in a hurry. If they did, I didn’t know what for, because I felt frightened for the first time in my life. I imagined ambushes as I walked along by the Heath, so that I was glad to reach the Tube station and traffic lights, and make my way down Haverstock Hill. I intended walking home through the middle of town, not willing yet to try my hand at sleep. Even a passing car gave me comfort, and eventually the exhaustion I felt put me into a more hopeful mood, and I knew that I would not feel nervous in the morning.

  It was a fine cold day, and I started it with a bath and a shave both to freshen me up and to get me clean for Polly when I met her in Geneva that afternoon. I boiled an egg, then phoned Bridgitte to say that I loved her and Smog, and that they were to wait for me at the weekend. When she promised I could almost feel her hot breath going into my ear. Smog was well, she added, and had eaten a lot for breakfast. Right now he was playing in the garden with a neighbour’s boy, the son of an architect whose wife had just left him. He was already talking, she said, of what he would buy with the five pounds when I took him to Hamley’s. That made me happy, at any rate, and I put down the receiver.

  I stood looking along the rooftops and backs of the blocks of flats, and I didn’t want to go out, a desire I put down to idleness. But soon I thought of the good lunch I would treat myself to before going to the Jack Leningrad depot for the ritual of loading up, so got my coat and hat on, picked up my briefcase packed with overnight things, took one last look at the den, and departed for a walk into Soho. The river flowed green and oily at the bridge, and I looked into it for a message. I found none, yet felt satisfied by the patterns and movement there.

  Tonio greeted me like a compatriot when I went into his dining-room for lunch. I no longer liked him since Moggerhanger had mentioned that Tonio kept in touch regarding the activities of his customers. But I smiled and asked how he was, kept my lips to their accustomed style of action. When he went to give my order I thought (and only knew later how right I was) that he had gone to phone Moggerhanger about my movements. I would have stopped eating there, except that the food was good, though if I had done so Moggerhanger would have become suspicious of me, and in any case when things got complicated I preferred to do what I wanted to do in the first place, because usually it made no difference. On top of having my own way, I got a good meal as well, which I was going to need for the long trip before me, which was none other than to Brazil.

  When the Jack Leningrad outfit loaded me up with gold I would sell a bar of it in Geneva, and then make connexions as fast as possible to Rio de Janeiro with the rest. From what Moggerhanger had said I didn’t expect Polly to meet me at the airport, so I would be in and out before she thought to contact me. My plans were in as shaky a condition as I could expect if I hoped for them to succeed. I would send for Pol
ly when I got to Brazil, and imagined in the present euphoric state of my intentions that shed be delighted to come, but if it turned out that she played hard to get, or was too much under Moggerhanger’s thumb to slip away, then I’d make a similar proposal to Bridgitte and Smog, and I was sure they’d take up the idea like a shot. Everything was in a fluid condition except hope, and that’s all I needed, because hope and luck usually went together with me.

  Halfway through my zabaglione Almanack Jack came in, one of the few people I didn’t want to see at that moment. I pushed my sweet away quickly, so that I wouldn’t have to offer him anything to eat, and lit a cigar. Tonio came to ask whether I wanted coffee, but really to grab Jack by the beard and collar and frog-boot him out of it. ‘Leave him alone,’ I snapped, ‘or the pair of us will get hold of you.’

  He looked at me as if wondering whether I’d gone mad, then went to get the boiled dandelion root that he called coffee at two bob a thimbleful. ‘What’s the score then?’ I asked Jack. ‘You might as well sit down. I won’t be coming here again.’

  The grey coiling beard grew around and under his coat, but he looked fairly clean and didn’t smell too bad. ‘The score’s ten to them and none to me, but I’m not complaining. I’m off the plonk. I’m not even hungry. Young people give me money now because I’m part of the scene. It’s changed. I don’t ask them, but they want to be generous, especially if they’re poor. Some of ’em look worse off than I am, but they push a penny or sometimes as much as a few coppers into my hand.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘You were in the front line.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘but I want to pull out and go into a rest area for a month or two. If I can manage that I’ll get enough strength to go on till I’m ninety.’

  His grey eyes were turning yellow, and the skin visible through his beard was like painted asbestos. ‘I know a nice quiet country place less than a hundred miles from London,’ I said. ‘Might do you a lot of good. It’s that railway station I mentioned.’ Tonio put our coffee down, then looked at us from the doorway to the kitchen. In case he could hear us, or the table was bugged, I wrote the address for Jack, and told him that somebody was there already, but mentioned no names. Then I scribbled a few words to William. I didn’t imagine they’d get on well together, but asked him to give Almanack Jack the waiting-room, where he could fend for himself. ‘I’ll be up myself in a few days,’ I said, ‘just to see that things are functioning. Do you need money to get there?’

  ‘I’d like a quid if you’ve got it.’ I gave him two, then said I had to run because I was going to work. When I paid the bill I didn’t leave anything at all for a tip, which was something else Tonio could tell Moggerhanger, if ever he felt like it. Seeing nothing by the plate he didn’t come forward to help with my coat, and so I buttoned up and went outside. A taxi stopped to let someone out. I jumped in.

  It was a treacherous day, the sky high over the town, with small clouds in it, and a cold wind when I opened the slit in the taxi window, a very good day that sharpened the brain and woke you up before you wanted to be out of bed. But I was on my way, feeling optimistic and full of perception, captain of my own rotten rowing-boat.

  Stanley hung my own coat on a hanger and put it into a cupboard where it would stay till I got back. ‘Cottapilly and Pindarry off?’ I asked casually, getting into the tailor-made over-mac.

  ‘Without a hitch.’

  ‘They’re good men,’ I said. ‘Very handy people.’

  He looked overworked, stooped a little as he went in before me to the big hall. ‘The ticket to Geneva,’ he said, pushing a plastic wallet into my hand. ‘Return.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I laughed. ‘Never play that trick on me.’

  He stopped, and turned. ‘Listen, I’m sick of your jokes.’

  ‘Don’t the others ever chaff you?’

  ‘Never,’ he said. ‘So don’t you.’

  ‘No wonder they got caught, then, if they haven’t got that much sense of humour.’

  He was sweating. ‘Who were you thinking of?’

  ‘Ramage,’ I told him. ‘Who else?’

  ‘Who indeed?’

  ‘We’d better get in, or I’ll be too late.’

  I felt as if I’d been cast among a nest of madmen, instead of a bunch of cool and persevering smugglers out to beat the British Government’s paid servants of Customs and Excise. To wonder what I would do with fifty thousand pounds’ worth of gold when I finally sat cackling over it by the shadow of Sugar Loaf Mountain no longer seemed to concern me, for my only thought was to act in good faith, as if I were still set on carrying it to the specified place for Jack Leningrad Limited who were known throughout the city as a business firm of the highest integrity.

  I walked across the hall towards the iron lung. ‘Good morning, Mr Leningrad.’

  He was listening to a record of Chaliapin singing one of his Russian songs, but he turned it down so that it almost faded away. ‘It’s afternoon,’ he said, ‘It’s past two o’clock.’ I must have been out of focus, for he swivelled his mirrors and periscopes, then smiled and asked if I was ready.

  ‘You know me,’ I said. ‘I hope I get a gold watch at the end of twenty years’ faithful service.’

  I heard his dry laugh; ‘We’ll put it before the committee. In the meantime you’ll be a bit closer to it if you start loading up.’ Stacked on the purple cloth of a nearby table were fifty slender bars of the best gold, the fortune of my life that would set me up with a vast ranch in Brazil or the Argentine and make me king of all I surveyed. I held my coat open, and feeling Stanley slot the first bar’s definite weight and warmth in one of its pockets, it seemed as if during some past time my guts had been pulled slowly out of true by the worries of life, and that now, one by one, they were being stuffed neatly back again. The second bar went in. Stanley, like a skilled craftsman-packer, always started from the top so that no tell-tale wrinkles would be left in the coat when he had finished, and the whole weight was in. I regretted that Smog, Bridgitte and myself weren’t travelling together to South America by boat, for then Smog could while away the long hours by playing with these golden bars on the cabin floor, making his own squares and pyramids, triangles and palisades, his eyes glittering over it all. I was smiling at such a pleasant picture, which vanished when I noticed Leningrad looking at me, his fat face and beady eyes behind that battery of equipment surrounding his iron life-saving lung.

  Stanley slotted in the third bar, when the telephone rang. As he picked it up, the man in the iron lung lifted his extension at the same time. ‘When?’ Stanley cried. ‘Oh, my God!’

  I didn’t like the shocked tone of this, but thought I might as well go on with the loading while Stanley and Leningrad continued their business conversation at the phone. ‘Don’t touch it,’ a voice screamed at me.

  The phones were down, and Stanley’s face was dusty with horror as if I were part of a bad dream he’d been having all through his life that had suddenly turned into reality. ‘What’s wrong then?’ I demanded, as superciliously as I could, looking from one to the other.

  ‘Cottapilly and Pindarry have been caught,’ Stanley said.

  ‘That’s their hard luck. What’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ Leningrad screamed.

  ‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘You told me they were off already.’

  There were tears in Stanley’s eyes. He was crying with rage. ‘They were fetched from the plane when it was already taxiing to the runway.’

  ‘We’d better get on with the loading,’ I said. ‘If they’ve caught those two they won’t be looking for me. I’ll be as safe as houses.’ A gun was beamed on me, and I knew that Stanley had another ready under his coat. I had the terrible and empty feeling that I was going to have my light put out, and all I could do was go on talking, get in as many words as I could before blackness came, as if under those guns and at the end of it all words were the only thing left.

  ‘You informed on them,’
said that thin voice, cracking out of speakers all over the room.

  ‘What’s in it for me?’ I said. ‘They must have given themselves away, somehow or other, so keep your accusations to yourself.’

  Stanley’s eyes were almost out of his head. ‘Who else then?’

  ‘You,’ I said, ‘That’s who else. Load me up and let me go, or I’ll tell Mr Leningrad all I know about you, or maybe we’d all better get ourselves out of here in case Cottapilly and Pindarry talk. And they will, those two, don’t you worry,’ I added, as if I was dead certain of it, traducing all and sundry so that I’d go blue in the face and stamp out my guilty look. ‘I’ve never seen such double-crossers. None of us are safe, so we’ve got to stick together and trust each other. That’s our only hope. If we don’t, we’re done for. It’s certainly a lousy world I’ve landed in when as soon as trouble comes it’s dog eat dog. Worse than a jungle. I’m the best man you ever had, and you’re throwing my faithful service away as if it was an old banana skin. Even if I do do this trip and get away with it, I’m finished with the likes of you lot. There’s not even honour among thieves any more. I’m disgusted to my marrow.’

  I was overflowing with honest irrepressible indignation, but this time it wasn’t working. Leningrad turned a knob that increased the volume of every loudspeaker in the room, so that he drowned me out. ‘You scum, liar, traitor. You’ve double-crossed us. Tell me who it was to, or I’ll kill you on the spot.’