He stopped by a shop window and worked a battery operated Braun shaver over his jaws, which gave as much of a grooming as could be got from the sharpest of cutthroat razors. A short comb from his lapel pocket smoothed his hair, and a shine came onto his toecaps by a few rubs up and down the back of his trousers. He came to me at the kerb, a fair improvement to the old crock at the ticket machine an hour ago. “How’s that, then?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“So let’s go!” he bawled, like the sergeant he claimed to have been: “Chin up, chest out, back straight, and the best foot forward!”
“Shut up, you daft prick,” I said when a couple of City men turned to stare.
“Ah, Michael, you don’t realise what a smart soldier I was, though I often had a scab on my lip, as befitted one of the footloose and fancy free.” He walked along, head angled towards the skyline, sharply swinging this way and that, till I asked what he was looking out for.
“It’s my instinct for self-preservation clicking in,” he said. “All those high windows and rooftops might have a sniper with a telescopic rifle waiting to pick me off, and if I spot him first I’ll know which way to jump.”
“You’re mad,” I said.
“These days? I’m as sane as a plum pudding at Christmas. A man with my expertise wouldn’t like to get picked off.”
“Every second’s high noon with you,” I said, “but your gait gives you away.” It was all I could do to keep up.
“You’ve got to look out for number one,” he said, along London Wall, “so if I was you I’d take the Tube straight to Ealing Broadway. Not that I dislike a route march, but if we go on much longer like this it’ll be time for lunch.”
“There’s a place in Covent Garden.” I wanted to get rid of him. “It’s called Breadline, a vegetarian establishment that serves grit-cake, nut rissoles and nettle tea. You’ll love it.”
He took hold of my arm. “I know I’m strong, and going to live forever, but don’t say things like that. My heart won’t stand it. You can live off grass at your country place if you like, but I’m a meat man. If you’re still alive and present at my funeral just tell everybody I died with a chop in my mouth. What a Steven Meagrim you are, suggesting a vegetarian trough-house. I can only think that the reason we’ve stuck together all these years is your sense of humour.”
“I might as well jump on the train at St Paul’s and make westing,” I said. “Get my meeting with Moggerhanger over with. You can always contact me there. Or at Blaskin’s, if Mogg doesn’t put me up in the garage flat.”
He drew me close, chin jutting at my ear. “Michael, old lad, put in a good word for me with Lord Moggerhanger. He won’t like to know I’m on my uppers. Tell him I can do anything—driving, extortion, violence—you name it and it’s in my blood.”
“I thought you liked the down and out life? You seem to be thriving on it.”
He drew away. “All right, don’t ask him then. You’ll want me to do you a favour one day. Think of all the help I’ve given you in the past.”
I slipped him a tenner, and we shook hands. “There’s nothing else I’ll do for you except any favour I can think of.”
“Go to it, then,” he called after me. “Never accept a third match when the fags are passed around!”
I stood behind a young brunette on the escalator, a mass of hair bouncing almost to her bum. Unluckily she went in the eastern direction before I could get a look at her face, though it was my experience that such luxurious homegrown thatch too often meant mediocre features. As if to make up for my disappointment a girl walked up and down kissing a large white teddy bear. She was slim and neat, a short pony tail swaying as she went along the platform. “Excuse me, miss,” I said, “that’s a very handsome teddy. What do you call him?”
“Freddy,” she said with a smile, a sufficiently upper class accent for me to hear more from her. “Now fuck off, or I’ll call the police.”
Here I was, far off from forty, six feet odd and well dressed, and being treated like a dirty old man. “Call the cops then, if you like, but I grew up with a teddy bear like yours. His name was Jack, and he came from Russia, a real ruffian he was, but lovable. My sister used to push us up and down the street in a big pram, and Jack was a terror, always tipping his cushions over the pavement, while I was well behaved, calmly observing the outside world with disdain.”
I thought she was going to say I should be in the loony bin but: “What happened to Jack?” The train came, and I walked in. She followed, and sat by me. “I asked a question.”
“I don’t want to make you cry,” I said.
“I want to know, don’t I?”
“I feel awful, on thinking about it.” The lapel handkerchief went to my left eye. “Our father was Gilbert Blaskin the famous novelist. He had us down for Eton, but I was the only one to take advantage of it. Jack had a fatal accident. To cut a long story short, he ran after a young girl with a pony tail and lovely grey eyes—straight into the path of a fifty-ton lorry. Death was instantaneous. I called out to stop him, but it was too late. It nearly finished my father.” I blew my nose. “He only recovered because he wrote a story for children called The Death of Poor Jack. Did you ever read it?”
“I don’t think I’d want to.”
“Nor did I, but I found it moving when I did. He dedicated the book to Jack.” In the opposite window at Chancery Lane her mouth opened in wonder, or maybe disbelief. “The lorry driver sobbed his socks off in court. It wasn’t his fault, but he got sent down for two years. The beak said he had a teddy bear as well, that he loved it with all his heart, and that the slaughter of them on the roads was a disgrace. He hoped they’d be made a protected species one day, because the wellbeing of the country depended on them.”
She hugged Freddie to her nicely shaped bosom, in case the train jolted it to the floor and a passenger trod on him. “At least you know how to tell good lies.”
“That’s something I never do. I had a very pious upbringing. What’s your name?”
“Sybil, for all the good it’ll do you.”
“I’m Michael. Where do you work?” She named one of Moggerhanger’s strip clubs in Soho. “I’ll call there for a drink one day.” Should he give me a job as a bouncer again I’d have free entry to all his dives. “I’ll tell you about how Jack met your Freddie and they picked up a couple of girl teddy bears in Hampstead. You’d be surprised what they got up to.”
“I wouldn’t. But what a funny chap you are.” She got out at Tottenham Court Road. “I like your stories, though.”
Mabel had a finger to her lips as she opened the door. “Take care not to antagonise him, Mr Cullen. Your father is in a very friable state today.”
I pushed by. “He always is.”
He looked up from the coffee table, a tear in his left eye. “I had a demand from the income tax this morning for fifteen thousand pounds, and I thought you were them, coming for their cash. I don’t mind paying tax, but it’s as if I’ve lost a libel case.”
“You’ll find the money somehow,” Mabel warbled, always at her best when the great man was in trouble, though how she dodged the well aimed hand I’ll never know. He appealed to both of us: “What’s worse, to feel as sick as a dog or as sick as a parrot? All I know is that sick as a Blaskin is worse. Or it was till I pushed my head under the cold tap this morning. I must write a novel in ten days and get fifteen thousand pounds, or I’ll be sitting on the floor of an empty flat with the typewriter on my knees.”
“I’m sorry things are going badly,” was the least I could say.
“So am I, therefore join me in a vodka.” He poured half a glass, neat. “And tell me what it is you want this time.”
He could be quite considerate when at bay, so I told him about Kenny Dukes who had read every one of his Sidney Bloods, and wanted to meet the great author. Would it be all right if I brought him al
ong some time?
“Michael, I’d say that if it was a delightful young girl you could bring her right now.”
“I know, and would have done, but Kenneth Dukes is one of Moggerhanger’s blokes, who worships the name of Sidney Blood. I’ve never known anything like it. He thinks you’re a genius.”
He lay back under such praise. “Ah, genius! What a clever chap he must be to see it. Genius is energy, if nothing else.” He reached for a pad, and vigorously scratched out a comma which had not, after all, done him any harm. After a particularly long winded fart he threw the pad aside. “I’m bored. Do you fancy a drink at Jollop’s? We could go to Molar’s later for a bite or two.”
“I must report to Moggerhanger.”
“That gangster? No good will come of it.”
How prescient he was. “He’s my only hope of employment.”
“Be idle, like me. I never work. I only write. Perhaps you could help by doing a Sidney Blood for me some time, like now.”
“As soon as I get a couple of days off I will. But when can I bring Kenneth Dukes to see you?”
“Can’t you introduce him to Ronald Delphick? He once did a couple of Sidney Bloods.”
“Kenny wants to meet the real thing. And if he saw somebody like Delphick he might end up kicking him to death. I don’t want blood on my hands.”
“We’ve had a bottle of vodka between us,” he said to Mabel dusting the glass-topped coffee table, “and we don’t feel any different. You’ve been watering it again.”
She smirked from the doorway. “I wondered when you’d tumble to it. I’ve been doing it for months.”
“So that’s why I’m still alive.”
“Unfortunately, I suppose it is. What worries me is that I’ll never know why I did it.”
“You mean you put poison in as well.”
“I’ve nothing against Mr Cullen, have I? As for you, I want you to live forever so that you’ll suffer more.”
“And it’s not working, is it, you wicked old bitch? A publisher has asked me to write A Short History of the Smile, and if you don’t behave I shan’t put you in it.” He turned to me. “Do you know, Michael, the smile came to this country from Italy in the sixteenth century. They invented it there. It hadn’t been known in England before, and even after several hundred years the English still haven’t got it off like the gay and friendly Italians. Our countrymen and women can laugh at other peoples’ misfortunes, but a plain good humoured sympathetic smile of humane amusement is still beyond them. I only hope that after I do the book they’ll start giving it a try. Certainly I’ll smile if its sales release me from the clutches of the tax gatherers. I’ll be going out soon,” he said to Mabel, “so you’ll have a few hours to practice the smile.” He stood, only to sit down again. “I don’t know whether to go back to bed with a good book, or get myself a rocket polishing in the upstairs room of the Black Crikey. Trouble is, it’s a very expensive club. You have to order three bottles of champagne at seventy pounds each before they let you sit down.”
“None of Moggerhanger’s places come cheap,” I said, as Mabel huffed herself off into the kitchen. “When would it be convenient for Kenny Dukes to come and see you?”
“Any time, dear boy, but phone first, say in a fortnight.”
Satisfied with that, and having had a bellyful of their company, I left him trying to teach Mabel how to smile.
Kenny Dukes opened the gate of Moggerhanger’s establishment a second after I’d pressed the buzzer, as if he’d looked through the spyhole and seen me coming up the avenue. “I thought you were in the furniture factory?” I said.
“Was.” He clicked the gate into place with his shoe, too dim after twenty years to know it shut by itself. “I had a message to get back to headquarters, didn’t I?” He gripped my arm, beamed his bloodshot grey eyes onto my face. “Have you seen him?”
“Who do you mean?”
“Mr Blood, you daft fucker.”
I pushed him away. “Look, dunghead, don’t fucker me. If you use such language in front of Sidney Blood he’ll chiv your face so much that when it goes back to normal nobody will know you anymore.”
“I know how to behave. I was in St. Onan’s choir as a lad. Sang like an angel, to please my mum.”
“Give her my best regards when you see her,” I said, to calm him. “She must be proud of you.”
“Oh, she is. I take her flowers and chocs every week, so I’ll tell her what you said. But did you see him?”
“On my way here. I told him you were his greatest fan. I’ve never seen him so pleased. He said I was to phone him in two weeks, and he would be delighted to see you. The thing is, though, his name’s Gilbert Blaskin. So many people want to cut his throat for what he’s said about them in his books, that he uses that name instead of Sidney Blood. He’s already got a long scar down the middle of his head where somebody went for him with a chopper.”
Kenny frothed with rage. “I’ll kill the cunts who hurt him. Don’t he have minders?”
“He doesn’t need them. Won’t have any. He’s as hard as nails, tough as his left boot, which he uses to kick the arses of whoever he doesn’t like. He can take care of himself, so don’t go rubbing him up the wrong way.”
“Oh, I won’t,” he grinned. “I only want to meet him and shake his hand. But I’d better let Lord Moggerhanger know you’ve come.”
He passed me on to Toffee Bottle, who led me through the kitchen and along the corridor. Moggerhanger stood up from a writing desk covered in papers, looking healthier than when I’d last seen him, tall, well built, eyes hard to meet—though I did—a meaty hand extended, my pressure not quite as firm as his.
He wore a suit, white shirt with heavy gold cufflinks, a waistcoat with watch chain and Masonic trinkets dangling. His tie of black and red stripes could have been from an old school, though as far as I knew he’d never been to any, or only for long enough to get reading and writing into his big head of thinning hair. His nose looked as if it had been knocked about in boxing. “Michael, I’m glad to see you. Three years, isn’t it? I’ve often wondered when we were going to meet again.”
“I sometimes thought of coming to see you for a friendly chat,” I said, “but I didn’t know whether you hadn’t changed your address.”
“Not me. It’s a life sentence, having this place. In any case my address is my name. And I’m in the book. Those whom the gods wish to drive mad they first make ex-directory.”
“I hoped you were well, and thriving.”
“I’m glad you did. And I am as well. As long as your shit mill’s in order, that’s all that matters. But sit down, then we can talk at our ease.” He passed a box of the best. “Have a cigar.”
I didn’t like the way things were going. He was far too affable. But I took the smoke, and sat. A forty-litre bottle of whisky with a spigot near the bottom rested on its trolley behind me. It was a magnificent monument of prime booze glistening in the light, a symbol of Moggerhanger’s status as the richest and most powerful racketeer in London. I had always thought that his grip on the world wouldn’t be broken till such a fancy container was smashed and the last trickle drained. I didn’t suppose I would ever live to see it but, if I did, it would be the day of my life.
I hoped he’d offer me a swig, and if not prayed that one of the wheels would get a puncture. I had no idea what he wanted to see me for, already realising it would take him a long time to make his meaning clear. He was the trickiest person I knew, and I had been acquainted with more than a few in my time. I took out Clegg’s watch, for a wind up it didn’t need.
“Be careful,” he said, “or you’ll break the mainspring. They’re not easy to get mended these days. All the old trades are fading away. People buy a watch for a fiver that loses a second in a hundred years, and when they go wrong they throw them away and buy another. I must say, though, you’re looking sma
rt, but then, you always did. You know I set great store by a man’s turnout.”
He was big headed enough to think I’d togged up specially for him. I put the watch back, and puffed on the cigar, which I suppose he thought completed my appearance of confidence and prosperity.
“The thing is,” he went on, “I know you to be a very good driver. Oh yes, there are plenty of them, to hear them talk, but you’re different. You’re intelligent, resourceful, persistent and quick thinking.”
He could say what he liked, but I wasn’t a young fool anymore. No more purblind zig-zagging into criminality for his benefit. I’d done a few jobs for him once upon a time, but never again. I knew better than to heed his flattery and blandishments.
“Another thing is,” he said, “that when you’re behind a wheel you have a map in your head, while the rest of them don’t know what a map means. You’re useful to me for that reason, because whenever I need to get out of London in a hurry a petrol bowser has overturned and exploded at Henleys Corner, a water main’s burst in Croydon, a Second World War bomb has been found in the East End, there’s a multiple pile-up on the road to London Airport, and a line of roadworks at Kew with a tailback to Hammersmith Roundabout. Throw in a women’s sitdown to save a hospital or get a Belisha beacon set up somewhere, and I’ve no hope of getting away by any road. Even if I want to leave by chopper the Battersea Pad is buried in fog or snow. But I know I can rely on you to read a map and find parallel routes. It gets so bad I sometimes feel I’m under siege in London. I like to think there’s always a possibility of getting into the countryside or down to Dover when the need arises. It’s not the same as when I was a lad, when there was only one rule of the road for me.”
“What was that, Lord Moggerhanger?”
He gave his usual graveyard laugh. “No car in front, and no car behind! Now there’s so much riff-raff pottering around in their little tin motors that all one’s mottoes go for nothing. Age does terrible things to you. But I’m sure you’re still a good wheelworker, Michael.”
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