Alfie

by Bill Naughton

  ‘Just a minute, mate,’ I said, ‘don’t you think you should see the job through – considering how much you’ve been paid?’

  He looked at me and for the first time I saw a genuine look or something come to his face: ‘I was afraid that manner would come out before I left,’ he said. He looked quite human.

  ‘What manner?’ I said.

  ‘They almost go down on their knees when I arrive,’ he said, ‘pleading they’ll commit suicide if I don’t help them. In nine cases out of ten they find they’re short of money. But when I’ve done my job, and I’m ready to leave, they change very suddenly.’

  Know what, I almost felt sorry for the poor geezer. Of course I didn’t let him see it. Same as I say, never let anybody see you’re sorry – it puts you even more in the wrong. ‘Do it surprise you?’ I said.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ he said. ‘Nothing surprises me any more. Two if she sweats.’

  He opened the door and slipped away dead silently. He’s unhappy, I thought. He’s one of those who love money, but don’t like themselves for loving it. I heard a little sigh, and to my surprise there was Lily, hobbling in through the door, her hands in the dressing-gown pockets.

  ‘What are you doing of?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got to keep on the move,’ she said.

  ‘How you feeling, gal?’ I said.

  She went round the room without saying anything. I went and made the tea. While I was waiting for it to brew I handed her the tablets: ‘He said for you to take two of these if your temperature rises. If you feel very hot or sweating.’

  I poured her a cup of tea out and put plenty of sugar and milk in. I gave it to her and she took one big greedy gulp at it, as though she were thirsty. Her face seemed to have come over white and waxy.

  ‘Blimey, you do look old, gal,’ I said to her. You’ve got to show a bit of sympathy. And she seemed to have put years on. She never said anything to that. ‘He got his money easy,’ I said.

  ‘I owe you five pounds,’ she said, going to her bag.

  ‘You owe me nothing,’ I said.

  ‘I’d rather pay you,’ she said.

  ‘If you insist,’ I said, ‘I’ll take it. But to be quite frank, I’d rather you didn’t.’ I put her bag down.

  She must have had other things on her mind, because she didn’t bother one way or another, and I was glad she didn’t. She did look ropey. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ I said. She didn’t answer. She put her cup down and I filled it again. ‘I’d hate for anything to happen here,’ I said. I was thinking about the seven years he’d said was the sentence. I know it sounds a rotten thing to think, but it was uppermost in my mind.

  Suddenly she let out a loud moan of pain. It scared me. It was that long and deep it seemed not to come from her mouth but from right away inside her.

  ‘Sh, sh,’ I said, ‘not so loud, Lily.’

  We sat there a bit longer, then she got to her feet and began to hobble about, bending now and again. I thought: I’ve got to get myself out of here. There was nothing I could do. I know it sounds bad, but it’s different when they’re there beside you, in pain, and there’s nothing you can do. She let out another moan, a real loud one.

  ‘Quiet, gal,’ I whispered. I didn’t want anybody to hear.

  She turned on me: ‘I can’t help it – you fool,’ she cried out at me. ‘Don’t you understand – I’m in pain – I’m in pain – and I can’t help it.’

  I thought I’ve got to do it now or it’ll be too late. So I felt myself draw my hand back and give her a good hard slap across the cheek. Not too hard, but it was harder than I’d intended. It made a loud slapping sound, and she went dead quiet.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ I said in a loud whisper. ‘I didn’t want to do it, but I had to. You were getting hysterical. You sounded like a wild animal. The bloke from down below might have dropped in, or one of the neighbours. And what do you think would have happened? – you’d have had the police here, and the ambulance, and they would have carted you off. Then all this that you’ve gone through would have been for nothing. You’d have been found out.’ The shock of the slap was wearing off and she was feeling the pain. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ I said.

  I’d gone very calm, but I could feel she’d have me hysterical if I was to stay around any longer. I went and got my jacket and put it on.

  She looked at me. ‘You’re not going,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to leave me, Alfie.’ She even got hold of my sleeve.

  ‘You’ll be better on your own,’ I said. ‘It’s one of them things where nobody can help you – and you’ve got to suffer it out on your own. Let go, Lily, and don’t look at me like that, as if I wasn’t human. I could flannel you, but where would it get us? If the pain comes on hard – stick a pillow in your mouth. That’ll drown the sound.’

  She wasn’t for letting me go, and though I didn’t fancy playing my last card I had to: ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘think of old Harry – of Harry and the kids.’ When I said that she let go of me. I crept quietly out of the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I went out into the Sunday street. Two kids were going about with red plastic buckets and sponges. ‘Wash your car, mister?’ said one.

  ‘Some other time,’ I said.

  ‘There might be no other time,’ said one of them. The things they come out with. I got into the car and drove off.

  That’s one good thing you can say about a car – you can go out on the roads amongst people but nobody can get at you in any way. You’re shielded off. The most they can do is honk their horn, which you can ignore, or they might give you a look but you don’t have to see that look if you don’t want to. In fact, the secret of driving in London is never to catch any other driver’s eye. Whatever you do, never look at him when one of you has to give way – especially if he’s a cab-driver. Pretend you’re dead ignorant. Then they have to give way. You take a dead stupid nit of a woman driver, crossing one way with her blinker going the other – they all get out of her way.

  But to get back to what I was saying – your contact is all over and done with in a couple of seconds when you’re in your own car, and you’ve got these windscreens and things in between you. But you go out walking and everybody you pass can have a good gander at you. For that one reason, if for no other, the car manufacturers can’t go wrong in the future. Who wants to meet people if they can possibly avoid it? If you know a car-owner, ask him how long it is since he went on a bus or had a good walk round a town.

  I could have gone and had a beer up at a duff sort of Sunday lunchtime strip club I know, but I’m not that sort of bloke. I can’t bear to be in the company of blokes who go for strippers and all that schoolboy stuff. And the last thing I want when I’m feeling real sad is to go and get drunk. I like to think my way through things or feel them or something of the sort, until I come to the cheery part. I mean the only experience that doesn’t do you any good is the one you learn nothing from.

  Now I didn’t know where I was going, and you’re a nuisance on the roads when you’re like that. So where do I find myself but over in Battersea Park along by the little miniature railway there. You get a few deer hanging about there behind the railings. It’s all around where I used to take Malcolm on Sunday mornings. So I parked the car and I get out to have a walk round.

  Somehow I didn’t fancy going over the same ground again, I mean the old ground, so I went along by the embankment towpath towards Albert Bridge, just beside the Pleasure Gardens. The wind was blowing from the west so that you didn’t get the smoke from Battersea Power Station – washed smoke they call it, but have you ever tasted it? – so I did a few of my deep breathing exercises along the way. Oh, but what a horrible idea of those who ever thought of them as pleasure gardens. It’s all a take-on. You wouldn’t get me going in there. I must say you get a real bunch of nits going there. I mean if I ever hear of anybody going there or to Madame Tussaud’s it makes me feel dead uncomfortable.

>   I kept thinking of little Lily. It’s funny what women have to go through in this life. There were lots of people strolling along, but none of my sort. I was the odd man out. You get a different kind of person troops about in each different part of London. You get people in Green Park have never set foot in Battersea Park and vice versa. It’s a funny thing, but on Sundays in St James’s Park you seem to get lots of people from the East End. I suppose the Tubes have a lot to do with it. You get Londoners going to Kensington Gardens would never dream of crossing the Serpentine bridge and going into Hyde Park. Now in Hyde Park you get a very cosmopolitan lot – Irish, Italians, Bubbles – a real mixed bunch. As for Regent’s Park, they’re mostly all one lot who go there from Golders Green way, but that’s around the tea-house and the Queen Mary rose garden. If you go up towards the playing fields south of the Zoo you’ll get people from Camden Town and other parts. It’s all very well ordered by the people themselves. They do keep themselves apart, I will say that for them.

  Now I’m the sort of bloke who gets a terribly lonely feeling, in which I can’t bear to see anybody, and I’ve got to be alone, when suddenly it wears itself out, and I find I’m longing for a bit of company. I mean an hour of myself when I’m like that and I’ve had enough of my own company. Now the first thing I did think of is of slipping into the car and nipping across to see Ruby. Only five minutes away across Chelsea Bridge and down there along by the Embankment. Or across Albert Bridge for that matter. But I had told her I was going out to see Harry at the sanatorium, and I didn’t want to drop in on her too early. Not only that, but it’s a funny time to call on a bird – about two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon – I mean if you’ve had no dinner. After all, what do you do? And I didn’t feel hungry.

  It suddenly struck me I could do worse than ring Daphne, this chiropodist woman from Dr Brown’s. She was a very settling sort of woman in many ways. And she made a handsome cup of tea. I always say, Spinsters for tea – it means more to them, see. On top of which I had a little corn needed attention, and my toenails needed a good trim. I’d only visited her once since I came out of the sanatorium but she was always glad to see me. And she’d bring out her tin of Ormskirk gingerbreads, and a stale bit of a Lyons’s Swiss Roll. But same as I say, people like that can make them things taste good – or nearly. It’ll kill two birds with one stone, I thought. I mean if there was none of the other coming old Daphne would settle for a cuddle and a few old jokes. To be quite frank, I didn’t feel like knocking myself out with old Rube just at that exact moment.

  So I go to a telephone kiosk and I ring her up and right enough she answered. So I chat her up with one or two jokes before she has the sense to tell me she has her sister with her who’ll be staying for tea. But it would be fine if I called round about six o’clock. Those clots of spinsters can waste a bloke’s time. In fact, whether she had her sister there or not I wouldn’t know, but I can’t see why she would want to tell me a lie. You know what you can do with your sister, I thought. And yourself, too, come to that. So I cut the chat dead short.

  Now just as I’ve put the receiver down, and I’m giving my hair a comb before going out into the world, I look through the window of the kiosk, and for a second or two I think I’m seeing a mirage or something. There’s this kid going by who’s the dead spit of little Malcolm. He’s older, of course, and bigger, but he runs just like him and he looks just like him. Christ, it is Malcolm! I go all flurried inside when I see him. Now when he’s gone past I get this impulse to push the door open and hurry out and look after him, but lucky I don’t. Because the next thing a bloke and a woman go tripping by. She’s carrying this little baby, see, all wrapped up in christening shawls and that. I saw the face as it went by – I mean the woman’s face. It wasn’t looking in my direction, in fact it wasn’t looking in any direction. It was mostly looking down on this child in its arms. It took a full second to strike home who it was – it was little Gilda.

  She hadn’t half suffered a sea change. She looked real respectable. To be quite frank, she looked as though in a year or two she might turn out dumpified. She had the look of a woman who’s getting everything regular – I don’t mean just the one thing. Meals, money, new gas stoves – and some of the other. Though she could be going short-weight if anything on that. But that’s not to say it’s troubling her at this moment. Her mind is full of this new baby and the christening. In tow with her she has this geezer Humphrey. He won’t mind her going dumpy. In fact some men prefer that kind of woman. That’s what keeps the world going – each man fancies a different bird. There’s hope for every woman unless she loses heart. And they only do that when they’re full of themselves. Don’t let ‘em kid you.

  Humphrey’s all decked out in his best charcoal-grey suit (they’ve gone completely out of fashion, but he’s not to know that), and he’s walking along like a man who’s found a dream come true. Behind them is this couple, who might have been his brother and wife or something of the sort. They all look dead close to each other. ‘You won’t never leave us, Alfie,’ she had said. ‘I’ll make it up to you.’ She made it up all right. Still, you can’t blame ’em – they’ve got to think of themselves first. But they shouldn’t make out to be any different.

  They went by. I stood there for a minute to get over it. They must have been married about three months when he popped her one in the oven, I thought, well, you know how you work these dates out. Then I went out of the kiosk and watched after them. I could see there was no chance of them spotting me. They wouldn’t have noticed me if I’d been standing there in my pelt. They had eyes only for themselves, for the new baby and for what they were doing. I wanted to get another glimpse of Malcolm. I saw Humphrey hold his hand out and Malcolm took hold of it. Funny, I wasn’t jealous. I was glad. If you actually love someone you don’t want harm or suffering come to them. I suppose on that score you could say that child was the only person I’d love for himself. I saw them go into the churchyard and into the church.

  I walked off in the opposite direction. I thought I’d better be getting back to Lily, see how she’s getting on. What was it he said to me – never is a long time. He was right. Then when I got near the bridge on my way back I kept thinking how I’d like to have another look at little Malcolm. There was no reason why I couldn’t go and have a look at him. So I went back. After all he was my child. My child – what does that mean? One bloke told me – I think it was Sharpey – that either he saw it on television or he read it in a newspaper, that there’s about five million seeds spurt out of a man at one good go, and any one of that lot could be his child. So what does it boil down to? I don’t know what it boils down to. Facts are facts and feelings are feelings, I suppose.

  Now the hardest part was to screw up enough courage to go into the church. But I needn’t have worried, there was nobody about. They don’t seem to flock into those places no more. I don’t believe they even go to bed no more on Sunday afternoons. They all watch television. It was quite a lovely little church. I mean it had an air of peace about it. I should say it was a bit High Church from the looks of things. It’s got lighted candles and that. So I creep in and I stand there at the back, out of the way behind a pillar, and I see they’re all gathered in a little group round what you call a font or something. There’s this priest or minister or somebody, he’s putting water and stuff on the kid’s head and saying prayers over it – something about how he’s got to renounce the devil and all that sort of thing. And these other two behind, what they call the Godparents, have to speak up for him on the side of God. I quite liked that little bit about the devil and God. I think the sooner you get all that into a kid’s head the sooner he’ll know where he stands. After all, each one of us, we need somebody to turn to in this life. I mean it’s not so much whether you do right or wrong, in my opinion, but that you know the difference between them. I do detest it when there’s somebody around who don’t know one thing from the other. It seems to cut them off from you.

  Anyway, I’ve go
t my eye on little Malcolm as he is watching on. I couldn’t believe how he had grown. And yet I expected him to be taller. Then he decides to have a nosey round the place. Same as I say, I was standing behind this pillar, and I thought I’d better get out of his way. Then I can see he’s spotted there’s somebody there – so I stick to my ground. He comes along and he looks up at me. This parson bloke is still going on about the devil. I kind of smile at him, not like I used to do, I put more of a grin on my face and give him a wink. I was afraid he might shout out ‘Daddy’ or something. That would have made a stir. But his face didn’t change. I mean the expression. He looked at me the way a rich kid will mostly look at you – never a smile, not even a blink, just a dead cool stare.

  Know what, that child didn’t know me from Adam!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I kept thinking now and again about Lily. Well, not what you could call thinking, more like little thoughts of her would keep crossing my mind. I sometimes think if only thoughts would leave me alone my life could be happy. But I felt I didn’t want to go back there just yet. The fact was, I had more need of some comfort myself just then than of handing it out. Anyway, I do drive back and turn down the street. Same as I told myself, duty is duty. I was half expecting to see an ambulance there, and people gathered about the door, and perhaps the law with a notebook. But as it happened it was all peaceful and quiet. I thought to myself – you’d never think walking along a street what can be happening behind those doors and windows.

  Anyway, I kept the wheels turning. She’s either gone or she’s still there, I thought, but in any case what can I do? I knew it looked bad, but then you don’t mind how bad a thing looks providing you’re the only one who knows about it. After all, he’s a poor bloke who can’t find an excuse for himself. And another thing – what don’t look bad when you get close up against it? Ever heard anybody in Court answer a solicitor about exactly what they did in a certain situation? You could be an innocent man, yet when you go into details he’ll make you sound like a real villain. Course it’s his job. Still, I’ll admit it didn’t look nice to drive past.