A Start in Life (23 page)

But my cogitations broke at the touch of a boot, because during the next performance a man sitting two seats to my left started shouting the show was a cheat and he wanted his money back. ‘They're whores,' he bawled, about June and her companions, standing up as if to charge on to the tiny stage. ‘They do these things better in Manchester, anyway.'

The manager got to him before I did, and was knocked through the curtained doorway like a shot skittle. I pulled the heckler from behind, gripped him in a half-nelson, but even so I was almost hauled like a flag up the mast of his back, could feel my arm giving and my feet trying to lift off. But I held, and gripped, and whispered in his big left ear that he should calm down or it would be the worst for him because they had Jack the Ripper on their payroll who would sell him to Pastrycooks Incorporated for making into meat pies when he'd done with him. I let go, and his whole body slumped. By this time another bouncer, borrowed maybe from the joint next door, came running down the steps. The manager was with him. What had happened to the girls behind the drawn curtain I did not know, and was just beginning to wonder when the huge man from Manchester straightened in one sudden movement.

‘You bastard!' he cried, so that everybody heard it, and shattered me with a body blow as well.

At the sound of that cruel word my heart and stomach stayed intact for a vindictive comeback, and I slammed him so that his whole bulk dropped away and tripped on a chair. He spun like a tombstone against the manager and his bouncer friend, falling on top and putting them out till they could heave him off and get free. When he did, I remembered his insult, hit him again so that he was knocked out cold. They screwed twenty quid damages from his wallet when he came round, otherwise they'd get him to the copshop, the manager said – a tall, thin old-school-tie bloke with the right accent. Then he came back and thanked me. ‘Nothing,' I said. ‘I thought the drunken bastard was going to get at the girls, that's all.'

He brought me a drink, while the show went on: ‘Do you want a job? All you do is stand around the place. Twenty pounds a week. We've been short of a man since we opened. You'll have to be okayed by Mr Moggerhanger, but you'll pass, on my recommendation.'

I gagged at the name, but asked in a cool way: ‘Do you get many fights?'

‘A few,' he said, very reticent. ‘But it's not too exciting on the whole.'

I wondered why not. ‘When do I start?'

‘You've started,' he laughed. ‘If that was your audition you passed with flying colours.'

June congratulated me: ‘You'll be all right working here.'

‘I'd better take the job, then,' I laughed. ‘It'll be somewhere to leave my parcel.'

‘I wondered whose it was,' she said.

‘It's my luggage. I've got to find a room by tonight.'

She gave me her address: ‘If you can't find one, you can at least sleep on the floor – under the gas stove in the kitchen it'll have to be.'

‘You're very kind,' I said, not too keen on such accommodation. I'd never been brought as low as that before.

‘One good turn deserves another,' she said, biting me in half. The manager's name was Paul Dent, and I told him I'd start at two the next day if that was all right by him. He said it was, so after hanging around another half-hour, I got out on the street, feeling a free man because I'd left my parcel down in the club. All the same, I didn't like the idea of having to work for a living, because that wasn't what I'd come to London for, though there seemed nothing else for it at the moment. Almanack Jack wasn't the only one who believed in fucking up the system. He might have been right down in it as far as his neck, but I intended to earn a living out of it as well if I could. In his confused brain he was still so chuffed at having made the bloody and ragged break from his former life (and who could say that it wasn't a pack of lies he'd told me?) that he couldn't see like I could that all he'd succeeded in doing was cutting his own throat, so that he was already more than halfway back there.

I met my delicious Bridgitte at the place and time of our telephone choice. We sat in the pub, she at tomato juice and me with a brown ale, and I saw that tears were about to drip from those luscious blue eyes that shone with a prick-stiffening mixture of depravity and innocence. ‘You
must
tell me,' I said, when she didn't want to. ‘After all, I've confided in you entirely. All the intimate secrets and scandals of my family. If Mother knew, she'd go pig-crazy. But she doesn't,' I laughed. ‘So drink up, my butter-love, and have another dose of that intoxicating fomentation.'

‘It's nothing, really.' She smiled. ‘The doctor's wife went away for a couple of days, and last night Smog came into my bed. He sometimes does, for warmth, and when he's asleep I put him back in his own. But before I could do so, the doctor walked into my room, and pulled the clothes right back off me. He thought I was alone, and I don't know exactly what he wanted to do. But he got a shock to see Smog curled up against me with his thumb in his mouth. He was full of anger, and dragged Smog up in the air like an animal and carried him to his own bed. Smog was screaming all night, but I couldn't go out to him because I know the doctor would have got me, so I had to stay behind my locked door with Smog crying and the doctor playing his bongo music. I think he is more insane than his patients. This morning at breakfast he told me if I didn't mend my ways I would have to leave. So I think I must start to look for another job. But I will see if anything happens tonight. If it does I shall go from there.'

‘When's his wife coming back?'

‘I don't know. Maybe she left him.'

‘Is he going out tonight?'

‘I don't think so. Otherwise I would have stayed in. He's writing in his study.'

‘I'll go back with you, and get into the flat. I'll stay in your room and protect you. I know that sort of person. You can't trust him. He'll rape you and cut you up. You're in England now. There's a long tradition of that sort of thing. You remember I told you about my brother Alf? Well, he had a psychiatrist at one time who used to come to the Hall. Got quite friendly with the family in fact, and was liked by everyone, especially my mother, so that he became almost a resident headshrinker. One night he made a vicious attack on a sixteen-year-old cousin who'd come to stay with us. Fortunately, the gamekeeper saw him and raised the alarm. But it was a close call for her. You've got to expect it. They've all got a touch of the Rasputin in them. Otherwise they're nice people. I've got nothing against them at all. You've just got to be on your guard if you're a simple girl staying in their house. So it'd be best if I stayed with you.'

‘Yes.' She nodded. ‘It may be that his wife will be back tomorrow, and then there will be no more danger. But if you get in all right, how will you get out?'

‘We'll cross that barbed wire when we come to it. The main thing is to see you right. Nothing else matters. I was supposed to see Mother later on, but it's not too important. She'll be at the solicitors' till quite late because they're old friends, but I needn't be there if I don't want to be. In fact I think she'd rather I wasn't, but she was too polite to say so. The trouble with her is that she's shouting fiercely at me one day, and the next she's so tactful and considerate. It's difficult, but I suppose we all have others' foibles to put up with.'

She touched my wrist: ‘I love you.'

‘That makes me very happy,' I said. ‘Let's go for a walk.'

At half past ten we went up in the lift to the flat. I took off my shoes, and followed her inside. She walked along the corridor to her room. All the lights were on, and I highstepped after her. She closed the door. We'd made it. The excitement of getting secretly in with the doctor only a few doors away in his study made us turn spontaneously to each other with relief, and we made love there and then on her single but firm bed, a bit of a bang that got us both into a sweat, even though we stripped to our ribs. I lay back smoking while Bridgitte went to let Dr Anderson know she was in, her intention being to cover a large food tray for us in the kitchen, and bring it back. I lay with my knees drawn up, a Dutch newspaper opened on them like a lectern, trying to read the swaddled and complicated words. Even backwards they didn't make sense, so I took a pencil and fiddled with anagrams, till I'd worn out three fags and realized that my sweetheart had been gone too long for my good, and possibly for hers. So I slipped on shoes and opened the door, seeing the lighted corridor and nobody in it. There were pictures along the wall, of a Scottish castle wrapped in a muffler of mist, then one of a tall façade of Glasgow slums on washday, then a picture of an English cottage. At the front door I bumped into a hat-stand and made such a clatter that in two flips I was back at Bridgitte's room. ‘What do you want?' said a little voice I knew so well.

‘Don't you ever sleep, you little bleeder?'

‘I don't bleed,' Smog said. A door snapped open, so I pulled him inside. ‘I want a cigarette as well,' he said, scratching himself.

‘You can't smoke. You're not seven yet.'

‘What are you doing here?'

‘Waiting for Bridgitte.'

‘I expect she's sitting on Daddy's knee,' he said, innocently.

‘Does she often do that?'

‘Only when he pulls her on.'

‘Oh,' I said, relieved, ‘does he pull her on often?'

‘Only when Mummy isn't here. She doesn't like it. That's why she's gone away. I think she's gone into hospital to get a divorce.'

‘Is there anything you don't hear and see?'

‘Not much,' he said.

‘You know, Smog, I think I like you.'

‘I like you,' he said.

‘So will you go to bed now? Bridgitte will be cross if she finds you here.'

‘Are you going to dance tonight?'

‘Your daddy wouldn't like it.'

‘That's because he can't dance.'

‘Nevertheless,' said I, ‘give us a kiss and go back to your room.'

He sat beside me on the bed. ‘It's so boring there. I like to smell smoke. But not cigars. They make me choke.'

‘Go and see where Bridgitte is.'

‘No,' he said, ‘Daddy will see me. He said he'd destroy me if he saw me out of bed, but he was only being funny.'

‘Wait here till I come back then. Don't move an inch.'

I went out along the corridor, looking into every open door. Bridgitte stood by the kitchen stove waiting for coffee to boil. I went by without her seeing me. The next room was lined with books, and a man sat writing at a desk. He had a round, pale, irritable face, with a bald head and a small moustache. Wearing a bow-tie and no jacket, he looked sober and studious, as if set for an all-night stint. By his arm was a tray with teapot and cup on it. I was about to move when he looked up and saw me: ‘Who the hell are you?'

‘Just passing by.'

‘Well bloody-well pass out or I'll call the police.'

‘I'm Bridgitte's boyfriend.'

‘Oh, are you? Well I suppose that's different. You'd better say goodnight then and be on your way.'

‘Is it in order,' I said, ‘if I finish my cup of coffee in the kitchen?'

‘Do what the hell you like. Only close my door. I'm busy.'

I shut it, and went back to Bridgitte's room. ‘You shouldn't wander around,' she said. ‘The doctor might see you.'

‘Never. I walk too quietly.' There was salami and cheese, pickles and jam, black bread and coffee, as well as a cigar she'd brought out of the living-room. Smog joined us in the feast: ‘Are you going to get married?'

‘We are married,' I said. Bridgitte blushed, as she might always have done in front of Smog, but didn't.

‘You aren't,' he said. ‘But you make babies, though.'

I lit my cigar. ‘Let me know when you've finished, then we can tuck you up nicely in a coal scuttle. Not this one, either. Go on, get down.' He grumbled, so I sat him on my knee till Bridgitte had done with her supper.

She came back from putting him to sleep: ‘I don't think there's going to be any big peril from the doctor tonight, so you can go to your mother if you wish.' This wasn't much to my liking, for it meant kipping down in June's flat under a perfumed gas stove.

‘No. I'll stay. You never know. I took a peep at him just now, and he seemed in a very agitated state. Unless of course you don't mind taking a chance on being all alone with that brain butcher.'

‘Oh, no,' she said. ‘Please! You can stay.'

Paul Dent was right. Life at the stripperama wasn't all whisky and kickshins. I went at two in the afternoon, and left about one the next morning, with a couple of hours off about tea-time. There was no saying how long I'd stick it, possibly as long as I didn't get used to it. There was an occasional punch-up, which was the part I liked least. Not that I was afraid, though any sane person might have been. I just didn't fancy ploughing like a charge of lightning into some stupid bastard who was either so insane or drunk that he could also get fleeced for ten quid because of non-existent damages. Yet that's what some of them wanted when they came into the place, a punch in the gob, a knee in the groin, and then the added jolt of paying actual money for the underground pleasure they'd gone through. In that way they didn't lose on the deal. Their next move after leaving the club was to go to a prostitute and have the job finished off. I made up my mind to quit as soon as something equally aimless came along.

After a while I stayed with Bridgitte all night again, and told her the sort of work I was doing. The doctor had gone out, to see his mistress, and Smog was sleeping soundly after an exhausting day at school, and five tantrums since teatime. ‘I parted company with my mother today,' I said, lighting up a Havana, ‘and I feel good about it. I've given up everything, my fortune and all connexion with the family. She wanted me to sign papers but I flung them in her face. I couldn't ponce on the working class for ever, live off land and property. For, my one and only heart, it just wouldn't do. Of course, Mother was furious, because it went against everything she stood for. It was unprecedented. No one had ever done it so blithely before. Even poor Alfred had gone mad rather than do a thing like that. She threw that in my face as well. It was hell while it lasted, but I stood my ground. The upshot of all this is that I'm suddenly without a roof over my head, without money. But luckily I got work this afternoon helping out at an entertainment club that an old friend of mine is running. It isn't much, and it's long hours, but I'll be able to keep my independence and that's all that matters to me now. In actual fact I know I could get a couple of thousand a year off Mother whenever I liked, with no strings attached what-so-absolutely, but even that I don't want to dirty myself with.'