A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  He settled himself in his seat. ‘It’s a very nice occupation. The more responsible members of our family have done it for generations. It began when a great-uncle of mine worked at Tishbite Hall as a page boy. He was a bit of a dogsbody in those days. Whenever he made the slightest mistake in laying the table the butler kicked him up the arse and booted him out of the room. So my great-uncle soon learned to be good at the jobs he had to do. That kind of treatment went on even when he got to the age of twenty, but he had to put up with it because there was nowhere else for him to go. Then he fell in love with one of the kitchen maids, and decided he would marry her. That meant he had to give up his job, because at such houses only the butler was allowed to be married.

  ‘So he wrote out his notice, and put on it that he was leaving because he wanted to emigrate to Canada. Now the butler already knew he was leaving to get married, and told Lord Tishbite. In those days that was a good job for my great-uncle to have. His father lived in a village ten miles away, and every so often he would get the word that he should go over to Tishbite Hall. So the father set off over the fields by footpaths, carrying a sackbag folded under his arm. When he got to Tishbite Hall he was given legs of lamb, pheasants and rabbits and all kinds of game, so much that he could just about carry it away. It was stuff that had been thrown out of the larders to be given to the pigs. So the father struggled home with it, and after taking out all that his family could possibly eat for the next few days he handed the rest to the poor of the village. There was certainly no need to starve if you had somebody in service at a place like Tishbite Hall.

  ‘Anyway, when Lord Tishbite heard from the butler that my great-uncle had handed in his notice because he wanted to get married instead of emigrate he got him on the carpet. Lying was the worst thing you could do, in them days. It was almost as bad as murder. Well, my great-uncle, bless him, was trembling in his boots, because he thought this was the end. He wouldn’t be able to get a reference, and it would be impossible to find another job. He might be able to get married, but he’d damn well starve. That was the days before the dole, remember.

  ‘But Lord Tishbite, after rating him for a bit, told him he’d been such a good worker during his eight years in service that he wanted to do something for him. Maybe he’d taken a shine to him. I don’t know. But he asked him if he would like to live in London, and the upshot was that he got him a post as a Queen’s Messenger, in Whitehall. He was so outstanding at this that he eventually got his sons into the business, though he always put them in service first to make sure they had a good grounding in discipline and smartness. My early days, for instance, were spent working at a big house, mostly polishing boots. I could tell you a thing or two about shining boots! But I kept my eyes and ears open, and it certainly put the polish on me. Boning boots was the first step towards me becoming a gentleman’s gentleman which was, after service in the army, from which I retired as a sergeant, to lead me to the post I have now. The old great-uncle insisted that none of us should get the job easily. After serving Queen Victoria he eventually became a messenger for Edward VII, and then King George V.’

  ‘A very interesting tale,’ I had to admit. ‘If ever we meet again I must tell you mine. You’ve obviously rumbled the fact that I wasn’t telling the truth when I said I had no job.’

  He took a miniature make-up case from his top pocket and extracted tiny tweezers, with which he began fishing about for a hair which he thought might be protruding from his nose, though I could see no such thing and knew that if he went on probing in so blind a fashion he would end up doing himself an injury. He took the telepathic hint, which somewhat increased my estimation of his abilities, and put the thing back into its box.

  In prison you shared a cell with someone in a certain trade, and he talked so much about it that on getting out you could pretend to be in the same line of work. He couldn’t fool me. I ran through the list of prisons and wondered which he had been discharged from that morning. I knew the names, populations, locations and reputations, but none seemed to fit. I’d been in one, but my information was so out of date that I decided to rummage at the next station bookstall through the current issue of the Good Nick Guide. There were more people inside in England, per head of population, than in any other country in Europe, so maybe somebody had published one. They would sell over forty thousand copies right away. It was a captive market.

  ‘It’s been very interesting talking to you.’ He held out his carefully manicured hand as the train drew into Liverpool Street. I noticed a wad of yellow cotton wool in his left ear. ‘I find it pleasant travelling by train these days. Can’t think where that ticket collector’s got to with your change, though.’

  His hand felt like five baby cobras nestling in my palm, so I shook it free and jumped out of the carriage, zigzagging through the crowd before he could catch me up to ask the loan of ten quid for a cup of tea. I won’t see that lying swine again, I thought. How wrong I was.

  Two

  Making my way into the underground with a 10p ticket for a 40p journey I passed a gaudy and shocking poster of four hefty policemen using their truncheons on a man against a wall, with the caption underneath saying: ‘Is it worth it for cheating on your fare?’

  While waiting on the platform I noticed in the personal column of The Times a cryptic message meant only for me. ‘You can’t make hay out of straw when the cat is out. Bill.’ This indicated that I had been tracked by persons known or unknown since leaving home that morning, and that the first to put tabs on me was that so-called Queen’s Messenger. If Bill had got himself in trouble with Moggerhanger, or Lord Moggerhanger since the New Year’s Honours List, then I would soon be in the shit as well. Tangle with Claud Moggerhanger, and the razors came out, and when they came out they went in – into your flesh. Or you landed in the nick on some framed-up charge, after buying a second-hand car from one of Moggerhanger’s innumerable outlets, and driving off with a different number plate back and front so that the cyclops picked you up three corners away and had the laugh of their lives.

  At Leicester Square I threw my ticket at the collector at the top of the crowded escalator and was through the barrier before he could pick it up. A fattish man in a shabby suit with wide trousers and a nicky hat rested his umbrella while browsing at a girlie-mag bookstall, and in passing I took the brolly and walked out into the open air, suitably equipped for my reappearance in the Metropolis. The London brolly was the equivalent of the Amsterdam bike, to be picked up without the stigma of stealing and dropped later on so that someone else could use it.

  Rain splashed on dead beatniks, snow eaters and pavement artists. I felt sorry for a raving looney who stood by stills of big tits and fat arses outside a cinema shouting that they wouldn’t get him, he’d beat them all, because he knew a thing or two, in fact he would get them first, yes he would, because they’d never get him, ha, ha, ha! Japanese holidaymakers took photographs of the AA offices. A split-skirted woman walked up and down with a magnificent Borzoi hound that pulled something unmentionable, even to me, out of a dustbin and walked off with it trailing like a Union Jack. Traffic wardens, in fear of their lives but wearing flak jackets underneath their overcoats, patrolled up and down in twos.

  I made my way to The Platinum Hedgehog on Barber Street, and stood in line at the cafeteria. Upstairs was a sitdown restaurant, and downstairs a standup stripclub. Next door was a gambling den, and on the other side was the head office of the Flagellation Book Club in a cupboard, all owned by Moggerhanger, proving (if proof were needed) that buggers can’t be choosers.

  The man in front, who was certainly thin enough, took three apple pies, three custards and a cup of tea from the counter. Only Bill Straw could be so sweet-greedy, and I recognised him at once. ‘The pies are full of sugared turnip,’ I said, ‘and the custards are made out of mustard and brothel-come, and as for the tea, piss would be positively safe by comparison.’

  He turned. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down. But thank God you’re her
e. Do you know, Michael, you are staring at the most stupid bleeder on God’s earth?’

  ‘When you sit down you can tell me why.’

  He reached back for another custard and then lunged forward for a second cup of tea, so that his tray looked like a model of the centre of Calcutta. I was afraid to be seen with him. The last trouble had started after we had struck up an acquaintance on the Great North Road when Bill, straight out of prison, had begged a lift in my gradually collapsing car.

  Instinct told me to put back the cellophane-packed sandwich from my coat pocket and run as far from the place as I could get in what time was left of my life. But I didn’t, due to the sight of Bill’s old-time face, plus a dose of curiosity, and a sense of boredom that hadn’t left since Bridgitte had hopped off to Holland with the kids.

  We sat at a table near the door. ‘Just in case,’ he said, looking round every few seconds as if he owned the place and was anxious to see how good or bad trade was.

  ‘Keep your head still,’ I said, ‘because if anybody comes in looking for you they won’t need an identikit picture to pick you out. They’ll just look for the bottle of machine-oil on the table.’

  He smiled like a dead man hoping to come back to life. The only time he was really unconscious was while slopping custard pies into his mouth. It was certainly a come-down for the smart man of the world and gold smuggler I had once known, the man in fact who had trained me at the trade. He was, however, well dressed in a smart suit, good shirt, tie, gold cufflinks and polished shoes, with a fleck of hanky at the top pocket, a briefcase of real leather by his feet, and a Burberry not made in Taiwan over the chair back. Only his manner had momentarily deteriorated. He still had a short back and sides, which was no longer the same with me.

  ‘Your hair’s a bit long, Michael. Get it cut,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t look good. You’re a middle-aged man now, or bloody close.’

  I thanked him for the compliment.

  He stared at a young man with hair down to his shoulders, who was demolishing a Sweeny Todd meat pie a few feet away. ‘I can’t stand all these hefty young lads with Veronica Lake hairstyles. They want a sergeant-major to sort ’em out. I sometimes walk behind one and don’t know if it’s a man or a woman. No good for blokes at my age.’

  ‘If you have short hair these days you’re a suspicious character.’

  He didn’t have that total confidence he once had. ‘You think so?’

  ‘You’d better stick to the business in hand.’

  Having finished his breakfast he took out a cigarette case and lit up a fag, blowing smoke rings in the direction of two young women at the next table. ‘They’re lovely, aren’t they? I wouldn’t mind one for supper. Two, in fact. Do you know, Michael, I’m fifty-six, but I still like a feed now and then.’ His lean features, suntanned and clean-shaven, wrinkled into anxiety when he saw my umbrella hooked onto the chair. ‘Where did you get that gamp?’

  ‘Oh, I just picked it up.’

  The sight of it worried him. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘You can lump it, then. It’s mine, and I’m very fond of it. I’ll love it till my dying day. Uncle Randolph used to go to Ascot with it before the War.’

  ‘Nicked it, eh? Looks fishy to me. Anyway, do you want to hear my story or don’t you? I know you do, and it’s good of you to answer my call so quickly. Michael will always stand by a friend in need, I said. He’s a good six-footer who not only looks after himself in a tight corner, but never lets an old pal down. I didn’t have firmer friends in the Sherwood Foresters. I don’t like the look of that umbrella, though. Where did you get it from?’

  I told him.

  ‘That’s hardly calculated to set my mind at rest. It looks very suspicious.’ He scraped the last stains of custard from all three dishes. ‘Times have changed, Michael. You can’t be too careful these days. Ten years ago things were comparatively civilised. If you strayed from the straight and narrow all you might end up with was a nasty scar on the lee side of your clock, but nowadays you might get chopped into bits and sprinkled over a Thames bridge from a plastic bag. You vanish without trace. The seagulls gulp every morsel. London pigeons are starting to eat flesh. A few months ago I happened to be the unwilling witness of a fight between the Green Toe Gang and Moggerhanger’s Angels, and as a set-to it made the Battle of Bosworth Field look like a pub brawl at the Elephant and Castle. Things have altered, right enough.’

  He plucked the small feather out of his hatband and put it into his mouth. ‘You’ve been away, so you don’t know how things are. How could you?’ He spat the bedraggled feather onto a plastic pie plate. ‘Well, it’s not too bad, either, because otherwise I wouldn’t have asked you to come down here and see me, would I?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? Listen, I’ll go right off my bonce if you don’t tell me why you asked me to leave my cosily furnished railway station on such a foul day.’

  Raindrops were running down the window. They broke out in separate places and made a dash for it, as I should have done, increasing in force and strength, born from stationary globules on the way down, like a crowd gathering on the way to a riot. Sometimes they travelled horizontally, lonely figures going a long way, till thwarted by the end of the glass.

  ‘I’ll tell you why I’m here, Michael, and why you’re here. I want your advice and support. A few months ago I was at a loose end. My girlfriend had left me, my mother had died, and I was running out of cash. I’d earned fifty thousand pounds bringing back a consignment of don’t-ask-what from Kashmir. I carried it in the false bottom of a butterfly collection, and got through the customs a treat. I had a beard (grey, unfortunately), little pebbledash glasses and a bush hat. I looked so theatrical they never thought I could be putting on an act. My false passport, fixed up by the Green Toe Gang, said I was a lepidopterist. I even had forged documents from the British Museum of Natural History. When those lads of the Green Toe Gang do something, they do it properly. No flies on them, Michael. No flies, no files, as they say. There aren’t any marks where they’ve been, either, not like on the rest of us.

  ‘It was the best job I ever pulled. Remember when we was smuggling gold ten years ago for Jack Leningrad Limited? Not a patch on that racket. At least this stuff doesn’t weigh a ton. I brought in a hundredweight, all nicely hidden. In the East a column of porters carried it, and at London Airport they provide them nice squeaky trolleys for you to zig-zag your stuff through the Nothing to Declare gates. A word of advice, though: always get the squeakiest trolley. It’s made for you these days. No rough stuff, or straining your muscles with three hundredweight of gold packed in your waistcoat pockets. No sweating with fear, either, as long as you act your part and keep a straight face, which we’re always able to do, eh? Get me another cup o’ tea and a custard, there’s a good lad.’

  ‘Fetch it yourself.’

  ‘I was brought up in poverty,’ he said, ‘at Number Two Slaughterhouse Yard. If I don’t stay at luxury hotels I feel deprived and underprivileged. You understand what I’m trying to say, don’t you, Michael?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then get me another cup of tea, then, and two custard pies, the ones with the pastry a bit burnt.’

  His face had a pallor, and his eyes a shine, that suggested he was about to die. ‘What’s up, for God’s sake?’

  He wiped a salt tear from his face. ‘I’m in danger. I can’t tell you – though I will. I’ll come to it. I’m not afraid of dying, not me, not after going through the war with the Sherwood Foresters. That Normandy campaign was very rough. I nearly got killed once or twice.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before.’ I’d never seen him so frightened. ‘Pull yourself together.’

  He smiled. ‘Another custard and a cup of tea will see me right.’

  I came back with his supplies, and watched him devour them. ‘Get on with your rigmarole.’

  He wiped his lips. ‘That little courier job brought me fifty thousand quid, but money doesn’t stick to me, Michael. I like
it too much to have it long. I give with my left hand, and grasp tight with my right, which means I get rid of it sooner than if I was just plain generous. I’m jittery with so much wadding in my pockets. I like to go round the clubs and have a good time. Shove fifty quid in a tart’s hand and not even go to bed with her, then give another woman a good pasting because she won’t let me have a feel. What’s life for if you can’t fix yourself up with an orgy now and again? Ever had three women in bed with you? You ain’t lived.

  ‘Anyway, I was broke, and then, providentially as I thought, I get this offer from the Green Toe Gang to be the driver of the third getaway car in a robbery. Now it ain’t a bank or post office or a wages snatch, but the flat of a former member of the gang who had half-inched a hundred thousand of their money, and now they wanted it back, meaning to deal with him later. The Green Toe Gangers had been told he was on holiday in St Trop, and had left his loot in a suitcase under his bed. You still get people like that, though to do him justice he thought it was just as safe where it was than in a bank with people like him and the Green Toe Gang around.

  ‘You can imagine how they trusted me absolutely? I’m a fool, Michael, always have been. You see, a few days before The Day one of Moggerhanger’s men, Kenny Dukes, that bastard whose arms are so long he ought to be in a circus, and who used to be chief bouncer at one of Lord Claud’s lesbian clubs, said Moggerhanger would like to see me. Well, I thought, I’ve nothing to lose, and let myself be taken to his big house at Ealing, and over a whisky and soda he persuaded me to drive the getaway car straight up north to a bungalow in Lincolnshire called Smilin’ Thru’ on the outskirts of Back Enderby, and deliver the cash there. Instead of me getting five per cent, which was what the Green Toe Gang had promised, he would give me half. Well, I ask you! Fifty thousand instead of five is quite a whack, and by the fifth whisky I’d agreed. I must have been stoned, pissed, and just plain crackers. Claud was in his element. He knew what he was doing. He must have had someone placed right in the middle of the Green Toe Gang to know their plans in such detail.