Life Goes On

by Alan Sillitoe

  It would not be tactically sound to depart from the place in daylight. I would pander to sense to that extent. I came in darkness, and I would go in darkness, like the thief in the night I was being made to feel. I would stay in the car and give Dismal more time to get used to me.

  It rained, and he looked forlornly in. When he could no longer stand being wet he sheltered as much of his body as possible under the rotting porch by the door. Whenever I went into the house to make tea I was always careful to give him a dish, which he lapped dry. I spread the blankets in the back of the car, but would not let him get in till the time came. I was so bored waiting that I read halfway through the Good Food and Hotel Guide, trying to find out which establishment accepted overnight guests with dogs. There was a place called The Golden Fleece in an old fortress-and-market-town which had only survived from the Middle Ages because the Germans hadn’t bombed it flat. It had plastic coffin baths in the bathrooms and four-poster plastic beds with flock mattresses that you disappeared into, which gave proof of its antiquity. There was, I felt sure, a King Arthur Bar and a Friar Tuck Dining Room, where a thug in Lincoln green stood by with a bow and arrow to pin you to the wall if they found out that your stolen credit card was counterfeit. The waitresses were called wenches and they all but served their own beautiful dumplings as they slopped frozen this and microwaved that onto your vast oval wooden platter, a look of horror on their faces at the fact that you actually wanted to eat it. The manager acted the grand swell and called you ‘Squire’ because he was charging forty pounds a night and getting away with it.

  An Englishman would rather die than expose himself by complaining. ‘These are jolly good turds. Aren’t they wonderful turds, darling?’

  ‘Eh? What? Turds? Oh, yes, excellent. Haven’t had such good turds since I was in India. Quite delicious. We ought to compliment the cook. As I was saying about Rupert’s school …’

  ‘They’re quite superior. You can’t find good turds like this everywhere.’

  ‘You could at one time, though. Now everything’s plastic and ersatz. Convenience food, nothing else. What? Well, as I was saying about Rupert’s report …’

  When I’d played that one out, I perused a chapter of The Crimson Tub by Sidney Blood. Then I listened to my radio, fearful of using the one in the Roller because I had a horror of switching on the engine at zero hour and finding the battery dead. Acting senselessly did not mean that I could take chances like that.

  Half an hour after lighting-up time I started the engine, and opened a door. Dismal climbed in as if used to such luxurious transport. The smooth movement over gravel and dead twigs onto the lane, all lights beaming, made me feel I was coming back to life. I only hoped I was right. My troubles at having lost half Moggerhanger’s precious cargo may have been just beginning, but I was mobile, and nothing else mattered. If I had failed in my duty it was through no fault of my own. I switched off most of the car lights as Dismal and I travelled like two outlaws up the lane and back onto public roads.

  Eleven

  Whenever I put the radio on, Dismal slept. When I switched it off he sat up and looked over my shoulder at the road. Being almost human, he was fair company. When I got out for a piss, so did he. When I ate a biscuit, likewise. He even lapped up half a slab of chocolate and when I said it would ruin his teeth, he bit me. Life was perfect, except that the police and Moggerhanger were out for my guts.

  The direct route to London was through Hereford and Cheltenham, but I set off for Shrewsbury and the A5, making easterly across the country to slide unobtrusively into London via the Great North Road, the highway I had come out on when heading for Goole – full of mindless optimism – a few days ago. I was so tense that life seemed real.

  I drove carefully, meaning not too fast in the darkness, along winding roads. When headlights frizzled behind me I slowed down to indicate that the driver could overtake. Mostly they were youngsters in souped-up bangers going from one pub to another. Forty miles out of Peppercorn Cottage I began to relax. Because of my previous care with navigation I found my way onto the Shrewsbury road with ease. ‘Dismal, I think we’ve got clean away.’

  The car radio was an elaborate set, with extra wavelengths on which Moggerhanger could tune in to the police. I heard plenty of gabble about road accidents, abandoned cars, pub brawls and suspected break-ins, but nothing concerning a six-foot con-man and a kidnapped tracker-dog in a maroon Roller last seen heading towards the Severn.

  Sooner or later I would get picked up, so I had to have sanctuary, and one place I reasonably expected to find it was at Moggerhanger’s homebase. If I got caught, so would he. It wasn’t my fault that the operation had gone wrong. If I got into London before anyone spotted me, Claud Moggerhanger, who was only human after all, would be obliged to keep me out of harm’s way. Such an assumption cheered me up. I had always been an optimist, even if only in order to survive, believing that any action was better than no action, and any thought more comforting than none.

  On the outskirts of Shrewsbury I spotted a fish and chip shop and parked halfway on the pavement with hazard lights going. The Chinese bloke gave me a funny look when I ordered fish, chips, roe, peas, sausages and pie twice, plus two bottles of lemonade. Hugging the parcels, I went back to the car and tucked in, to the noise of Dismal’s disgraceful gobbling of his generous portions on the floor behind. I had brought a tin dish from the cottage, and poured out a bottle of lemonade so that he wouldn’t get thirsty. He lapped that up, and belched into the back of my neck for the next ten miles. When we stopped at a traffic light I returned an even riper series of eructations, but he didn’t take the hint.

  After my stint at Peppercorn Cottage and my encounter with the police, I felt as if I had spent a fortnight going back and forth on an assault course at a very expensive health farm, and craved a wash and brush up. A public lavatory was still open, but there were no lights. Sinks were hanging from the walls, lavatory pans smashed, doors in matchwood, and the divisions in the urinal had, I assumed, been battered down with a sledgehammer. What they’d done with the attendant, I didn’t dare think about. Maybe they were part of an adventure training school, which sent kids out suitably equipped, with score cards and umpires, to see how many toilets they could vandalise in one day without being caught. It looked as if this particular class had got inside with a fieldgun. I propped my torch on a ledge, turned on a tap, had a wash and put on a clean shirt. Back in the car I combed my hair and buffed up my boots with Dismal’s tail. All spick and span, I could face the world again.

  Huge raindrops thrashed at the windscreen. Dismal began to howl as if he’d never seen rain before. Or maybe the regularity of the wipers frightened him. I shouted for him to belt up. After passing Telford I was afraid of drifting into the never-never land from which you only wake up in death – or a very disagreeable fire. The clock glowed ten, and I fancied somewhere to bed down for a couple of hours. People would be coming out of the pubs and I’d need all my wits to avoid their antics, though I knew from experience that the worst time on country roads was before the pubs opened, when everyone was rushing to get their first drink. After closing time, when they were blind drunk, they at least tried to be careful.

  Dismal was dozing, which didn’t help matters. I drifted through space. The yearning to fall asleep came and went. I fought off the worst attacks by reliving the sojourn at Peppercorn Cottage, from which place my troubles stemmed. I should have known that the rats would bring no luck. The two jokers who had taken half my stock in their canoe must have been hired by Moggerhanger from a school of actors. I envied the skill with which they had made the collection. Clockwork wasn’t in it. By now they had probably landed the stuff at some secluded bank of the Severn. The car that had picked it up was in London, and they were boozing with their girlfriends in some clip-joint roadhouse. Or they had transferred their cargo to a hired canal barge on the upper reaches of the Thames and were holidaying their slow way to Hammersmith – while I was driving east in Moggerhang
er’s car with a police tracker dog in the back.

  Things could be worse. When I pulled up at an all-night café, I should have left Dismal locked inside, but he leapt over the seat, and though I tried with all my strength to pick him up and heave him back, he insisted on following me in case he missed something to eat. He had a collar, but no lead, and at the door he cleverly pulled the handle down with his teeth so that I could walk in.

  Half a dozen black-leathered bikers were eating toasted sandwiches and drinking tea when the best trained dog in the police force rushed in. The laugh on a tall blond biker’s face faded as Dismal sniffed forward and fastened his teeth onto the youth’s trouser pocket, whining a signal that it was time for the back-up force to do its work and take the drugs off him.

  The biker eased away from the juke box. ‘I say, get this damned pooch out of here.’ The other youths laughed. The only method of calling Dismal to heel would be to get a whistle out of my pocket and blow it.

  ‘Jonas, you idiot, we told you not to bring that stuff back from school,’ one of the bikers called.

  ‘He’s only a cuddly brown Labrador,’ I said, taking a lump of sugar from the table and leading him to the corner of the room where I thought he would be safe. The bikers, donning their gear to leave, looked strangely at me, and made obscene comments about Dismal, to the effect that what did it feel like living off its immoral earnings? I wondered how I could get rid of him, because if the police who raided Peppercorn Cottage assumed I had taken him away I was a marked man. Riding in a Rolls-Royce down the Great North Road with such a conspicuous dog sitting in the back as if I was his lord and master would be too rash for safety.

  ‘I don’t allow dogs in here,’ the proprietor called from behind his counter. ‘Especially a big swine like that. He’ll frighten my customers.’

  ‘We only want some tea and cakes.’ I put my fiver on the counter and pulled Dismal’s ear to make him be quiet. ‘I’d like a bowl for him to drink his tea from, if you don’t mind. He hasn’t learned to use a mug yet.’

  The man, too exhausted to care, slid the goods across. ‘Dogs are a damned nuisance, urinating and breaking wind everywhere, and bothering my customers.’

  ‘Dismal!’ I shouted in my best police sergeant voice, ‘let’s go, otherwise we’ll never get to Glasgow.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ the proprietor said. ‘Nobody’s got a minute to spare. This is the worst kind of job to tell a story in. While I still had my factory and I told a story, people would listen. That was because it was in my time and not theirs. I was paying them to listen and they didn’t mind at all. That was what ruined my business and brought me here, but having a café on a main road, nobody will listen because it’s their time that’s taken up. They run in, order their food, eat with a blank stare, then pay up and get out. It’s no wonder the quality of life is deteriorating. They just want to get going on their journey, back to their homes, wives, children and’ – a disapproving glance at Dismal, who took it well – ‘to their dogs. Or back to their work, or businesses which in these times no amount of energy and good old British precision will save from going under the hammer.

  ‘We live in times of change right enough. My factory manufactured doors, all kinds and sizes of door, but not so many doors were needed all of a sudden, or my doors were no longer competitive, or I hit a rough patch on the production line, or I didn’t keep up with the times, or I didn’t advertise, or the designs were no good. The order books were suddenly empty. The salesmen took too many days off. They came in late. They sat at home watching television when they should have been out on the road. When I spoke to one of them about it he said he was earning enough already thank you very much so why should he try to bump up his income when the tax man would take the extra money? He’d got a spare time job serving cream teas at the local stately home, and his wife did bed and breakfast in the summer, and they got paid in cash so that they didn’t declare what they earned. So the order books were empty and I called the receiver in. My fault, if you think about it. Then my father died. He had a few shares in South African gold mines and when I sold ’em I bought this café.’

  Though his story seemed banal, his complaints might have been justified. Dismal and I stayed by the counter. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I have to go.’

  When he rolled up his sleeve I actually thought he was going to start work. But he lit a cigarette. ‘Why can’t you be like Charlie over there? He’s never in a hurry.’

  ‘That’s because I’m on the dole.’ Charlie was a fair-haired blue-eyed relaxed sort of chap in his middle thirties. ‘Been on the dole seven years.’

  I sympathised. ‘It must be awful.’

  He looked up from his tea. ‘It’s a lot better than getting up at six every morning and going out into the rain and cold five days a week, month in and month out. I pushed loaded cartons from one department of the warehouse to another, but then they got fork-lift trucks and six of us got the push. I thought the end of the world had come when I couldn’t get another job, but I also saw that it was marvellous not having to go to work. I could do bits and bobs around the house, talk to my mates, go out on my bike, or sit in the public library reading dirty books. The dole’s a lovely system. If we got a few more quid a week we’d be in heaven. I often help here in the café and earn a few quid, and I don’t mind that because it don’t seem like work. And I vote Tory now, instead of Labour.’

  I was aghast. ‘Tory?’

  He laughed. ‘Sure. Think what the Tories have done for the unemployed. Got millions of us on the dole. All you hear them Labour bleeders go on about is getting us back to work. Back to work! They want us building motorways, I expect, though I’m sure that lot wouldn’t want to dirty their lily-white hands. If they ever did any work it was so long ago they don’t remember what it was like.’

  He amazed me so much, I bought him a cup of tea and six cakes. ‘You’re a bit of a philosopher.’

  That pleased him. ‘I never would have been if I hadn’t got on the dole. I’ve had time to think. Labour don’t want you to think. They think that if you do, you’ll vote Tory, and how right they are. Thinking’s always been the prerogative of the idle rich, but now it’s within reach of everyone, and it’s no thanks to Labour. The only time you’ll catch me voting Labour is when they promise to double the dole money and stop talking about getting us back to work. I only wish the Tories would give us more money, but I expect they will as soon as they can afford it.’

  The light in his blue eyes changed intensity, an increase in candlepower that almost turned them grey. ‘I was thinking the other day what a nice place it would be if the whole world was on the dole. That’s the sort of future we ought to aim for. Work is the cause of all evil, and it’ll be heaven on earth when there’s no such thing. Universal unemployment is what we want, and England will be the envy of the world when we’ve brought it about.’

  Weary as I was, I did my best to point out his errors. Most people were driven mad by being out of work, I told him, apart from the fact that they had to live in poverty. They lost their self-respect, and the respect of their children. They lost the respect of their wives. They became prematurely old. They sat at home wrapped in self-hatred, a feeling of uselessness paralysing them body and soul. They deteriorated physically, and in a year became unrecognisable to what they had been. The houses they lived in fell to pieces around them. Their wives left them and their kids were taken into care by social workers who’d been hovering around rubbing their hands for just such a thing.

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ he said, when I could say no more, ‘but my mates don’t think like that. As soon as they get the push they’re like Robinson Crusoe who’s just landed on that island after his shipwreck. They’re a bit dazed, but they start picking up the pieces and learning to live with what they’ve got. In no time at all, they’re happy, like me.’

  A trio of white-faced young lorry drivers came in, and Dismal made a run for one in his capacity as a sniffer dog, but when threatened
by a cowboy boot with glinting spurs, he ran after me to the door, changing his mind about whatever he knew to be in the man’s pockets. He was learning fast, and I sincerely hoped I would break him of such habits before getting to London.

  ‘Fucking dog,’ one driver shouted. ‘I’ll have it on fucking toast if it shows its fucking snout in here again.’ Such a crew must have cheered the place up no end, though I didn’t suppose bone-idle Charlie buttonholed them with his nirvana of unemployment as they shared their joints with him.

  I only felt safe in the car. We steamed along the great dual carriageways of the A5, under streams of orange or white sodiums, with occasional traffic lights to break the monotony. To the south lay the Black Country, a desolate sprawl of industrial ruination and high-rise hencoops. Traffic multiplied, mostly private cars, though a fair number of HGVs were pushing on in both directions. I sometimes thought that most of the lorries and pantechnicons were empty – Potemkin pantechnicons in fact, whose drivers were paid to steam up and down the main roads to persuade visiting Japanese industrialists that the country was in better nick than it was.

  I was doing sixty on the inside lane when an armoured juggernaut overtook me at ninety, Mad Jack from Doncaster blasting ten horns as he did so. I watched him for miles weaving in and out of the traffic with a degree of manoeuvrability that could only be done by an artist at the game. He was laughing his head off, I supposed, open shirt showing a tea-stained vest, glorying in his fancy footwork as he told his younger mate to watch how it was done. ‘All you’ve got to do is keep your eyes glued to the rear mirror for a jam sandwich.’