A Start in Life (47 page)

On St Pancras Station I bought a newspaper to pass my time on the Underground, and when I unfolded it I saw a headline which made me feel uneasy, not to say queasy.
HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN RIVER
.
POLICE LAUNCH SEARCH ON PUTNEY REACH
.
HUSBAND GASSED
. I read it several times. Her head had been discovered in the mud, and my friend on the plane from sunny Portugal had done it after all, in spite of that loving reunion I'd witnessed at London airport. The gory gossip was given, and all the office girls were reading it up. I chopped my vomit back and saw his face before me, mad and vivid in its details, when even on the plane during his spiel I hadn't got a good look at it, and so could never have known what was really behind those amiable, intelligent, grotesque eyes.

His story had fixed me, there's no doubt of that, because who isn't still gripped by tales of medieval jealousy, mother-love, and spite, even though it can be seen as rockingly funny? But I couldn't see that far behind his eyes and believe he'd really meant what he said. I decided that from now on I'd accept what people said as being part of their true interiors. They are incapable of lying when they are desperate, and in any case your intuition has to tell you when they were in this state. If I had taken the pains to see, which wouldn't have been that far beyond me, to the deepest recesses behind his eyes in which that picture lurked in black and grey and red, of his wife's head tilted in the mud and staring at some innocent barge going by in the moonlight, I might have saved her, and him. But I didn't, because somehow my feet were no longer plugged into the earth, and my aerial was withered in its contact with heaven. It seemed I had been living underwater not to have known the truth of what was so obvious, and been able to do something about it. I saw everything sharp and clear with the bare eye, but a lazy idleness inside kept a permanent cloth-bound foot on the deeper perceptions that blinded me from action. Some explosion was necessary in my consciousness and I didn't know how to bring it about before something happened due to this inadequacy that would be fatal to me.

The train rumbled under the earth of London. I was packed in with office workers, my eyes uncontrollably reading all the inane advertisements that even such thoughts as I was having could not blot out. I took my eyes away and set them on someone's blank back.

I was relieved on reaching the flat to find a letter from the estate agents saying that my offer of eleven hundred for Upper Mayhem station and house had been accepted. I was asked to instruct my solicitors to proceed as quickly as possible with a view to exchanging contracts. I didn't want telling twice, so in the morning called up Smut and Bunt asking them to get a move on in case someone should now come and pip me by a bigger offer. The man from Putney was out of the running, but as far as I knew there might be others, and in view of my precarious situation I was now more set in my heart than ever at, getting that bit of property.

I dialled headquarters to see if a trip was lined up for me. Stanley was in an expansive mood. ‘No,' he said, ‘not for a couple of days, Michael. We've got Arthur Ramage going to Zurich in the morning and he's so good he can do two men's share. So stand by the day after tomorrow.' Before I could say Arthur Ramage ought not to be such a graballing bastard, he hung up. Ramage was a legend in the smuggling trade, king of the job. William had called him champion, held him in awe because he'd been on it for years without getting caught and had exported more gold than Cunard – making himself so rich by his earnings that he owned a prosperous farm in Norfolk. He got good prices for all his jobs because they were the trickiest, and William said that if he wrote a book about it it would be a bestseller except that he'd get three hundred years in jail for endangering Britain's economy. Every time the Prime Minister got up in Parliament to try and talk his way out of a financial crisis you could bet Arthur Ramage had been in action. Whenever Britain got its neck saved by a massive loan from overseas to reinforce its gold stocks, Arthur Ramage set to work again (with the connivance of the Jack Leningrad Organization) to wittle them away. In fact if you took all such talk seriously you might honestly begin to believe that those who made the massive loan were the ones who got the gold back again via Jack Leningrad in order to keep the pot boiling and their commission and profits piling up. It was all so dirty I could only laugh at it, because if I took it seriously and wept I might not have earned the money to buy my station.

I went out to have a meal in Soho. Before going in I phoned Polly, and by the breath of luck she picked it up herself. There was a tone of gladness in her voice at hearing from me. ‘Are you working tomorrow? If not, why don't you come and see me?'

A bloke outside hugged a girl to him and waited to come in. ‘I was on in the morning,' I said, ‘but somebody else is going to Lisbon for a change.'

‘As long as it's not you, love,' she said softly. ‘I
have
missed you. What unlucky man is taking your place?'

‘Oh, a bloke called Ramage will be doing it for the next two weeks, on the same day. You don't know him, though. I've only seen him once myself. A champion.'

She broke in, as if I might go on boring her for half an hour over it. ‘The house should be clear by ten. Phone me, and then come over. You can help me pick roses.'

‘As long as I don't get pricked.' She laughed, and hung up. I did likewise, pushed my way roughly by the bloke and girl struggling to get in.

The head waiter bowed as he'd previously done to William, and I didn't like the omen of it, though just the same I was pleased because when I couldn't think of what to order he'd pamper me with the dish of the day, or suggest something special that might tempt me in my jaded mood. So in order to bring my fragmented mind to heel I treated myself to a good feed and washed it down with half a bottle of champagne. My dreamprint for the future, in so far as I hoped it would work, was to leave my gold-smuggling profession, put a certain proposition to Polly Moggerhanger, and retire with her to a life of bliss at my railway station. Yet none of this seemed real or possible, because I knew that no matter how fondly I mused on the future, it was all worked out for me, in spite of my wants and hopes. Still, this part of reality didn't suggest itself strongly enough to douse my appetite. I looked around the room for a girl who might interest me, but it was an off-night, for not many people were there.

I walked in the rain down Charing Cross Road, on my way towards Hungerford footbridge, meaning to wend home along the south bank. Near midnight I met Almanack Jack, with a sheet of plastic over himself, holding two carrier bags. ‘What's in there, Jack?' I asked. ‘You've done another job?'

He told me to eff-off, and shambled on.

‘It's me,' I said.

‘Who's me?' he growled.

‘Michael, of bacon-sandwich fame. Remember?'

A breeze sent drops of rain from him, and his breath was tainted with decay, and pure steam-alcohol he'd been floating down himself. ‘I'm grovelling,' he said, coming close. People passing thought he was tapping me for a bob or two, so hurried on in case he should turn to them, though they made it seem as if they were merely trying to get on out of the rain. ‘Grovelling,' he said, ‘can't you tell?'

‘Is it like that, Jack? I can't see it though. You've never done that.' A vivid picture came to me of my grandmother dying and I didn't know where to turn my head, wanting to get away from him like those people and buses going down Whitehall. ‘I can't escape it,' he said, ‘and that's the truth. A hundred million people are standing on the moon holding up the Earth, and they're going to throw it on my belly. They want me to burst. It's the world's end, the only way it can end.'

I lit a fag but didn't offer one, wanting him to ask so that I could see he was coming back to his right mind. Maybe he's in it already, I thought, and has spent most of his life trying to get there. ‘They won't be able to lift it,' I said, ‘so you'll be safe enough.'

He laughed: ‘They will, don't you worry. I sleep under a bridge. Even then, I try to keep awake. But I sleep. Can't help it. When they throw it the bridge will break. Bound to if you think of the weight of the world. Straight through and on to me.'

‘You can't live without hope,' I said, as much for myself as him, wishing I hadn't bumped into him, because I didn't feel as safe and callous as I'd always thought I was.

‘You'll never do it,' he said, out of nothing. ‘No, you'll never do it.'

I tried to laugh, but my throat cracked: ‘Do what?'

‘Never,' he said.

‘Do what, Jack?' He stared at me, grey eyes through grey beard. ‘Do what?' I asked. ‘You're cracked, you stupid get. You've had too much plonk down you.' I wanted to go, but hung on to him like an old friend, as if he were the last person in the world I knew in London. ‘None of us will do it,' he said, leaning against the wall. ‘We haven't got the stomach. Too much heart and not enough stomach. No brain either. The world is an apple with a maggot inside, so even half a man could hold it and put his foot on it.'

I could stand here listening all night, but he wouldn't know who I was. He was too far back in the attics of his own mind. ‘What is it you want then, Jack?'

‘Eh? Who are you?'

‘I'm asking you what you want most in the world,' I said, feeling the rain eating its way through to my shirt collar despite an overcoat.

‘Bread and jam,' he said. ‘Slices of bread and butter, spread with jam. And tea. Tea. Hot.' He clutched his carrier bags: ‘You can't have my almanacks, though, so don't try it.'

‘I don't want them,' I said, taking a few pound notes out of my wallet. ‘Has anybody been bothering you? I'll break their heads.'

‘Rotten fruit,' he said. ‘They'll bury me in rotten fruit.'

‘Bollocks,' I said, ‘take this money and have a binge on bread and jam. It'll make you feel better.'

He stared at the notes. ‘Take it,' I said, then had to dodge, because with great strength and cunning he swung both heavy bags of almanacks at me, one of them catching me sharply on the hip. He screamed, and kept swinging, and both bags burst so that almanacks went flying all over the pavement and into the wet road, blown open by the wind. He rushed at me, kicking so that I had to fly for my life from his madman's strength. I didn't run far, turned, and saw him leaning against a wall, his face pressed to it. I walked back and he went away, but I caught him up and touched his elbow. It was impossible to leave him, not only for his good, but mine as well. ‘Jack,' I said, ‘it's me, Michael.'

He stopped and looked hard: ‘Oh, it's you,' he said, calmly, but with great weariness.

‘Where are you going?'

‘To hell,' he said, ‘unless somebody gives me a couple of bob.'

‘Hang on Jack. Here's three quid. In a month or two I'll be getting a house in the country, and if you want to, you can live there. It'll be quiet, and you'll like it, an old railway station neat Huntingborough.'

‘You can say that again.'

‘I mean it,' I said, giving him the money.

‘I'm down on my luck, but I'll pay you back.'

‘Don't worry about that. I'm earning it at the moment.' I found a five-pound note in my wallet, and gave him that, too. ‘Take care of it.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I will. Eight pounds. It's years since I had that much.' I left him, hoping he'd survive the next month or so, then I'd let him come to the station till he got his strength back. Plans altered as you made them, though to make plans was the only way to get anywhere.

After languishing with Polly in various beds of the Moggerhanger household, and in the cottage hideaway in Kent, I knew what I wanted at last, and though it seemed crazy and catastrophic for someone like me to marry her, yet that is exactly what I set my heart on. I told her about my railway station, embroidering on its beauty and solitude, until it seemed the most romantic retreat in the world for two people as much in love as we were.

Driving back from the country, she said that even though she was in tune with all my proposals regarding Upper Mayhem, she didn't really want to make too violent a break with her father, whom she loved, and whom she wanted to reconcile to our elopement sooner or later. She would abide by her own passionate wish to stay with me for ever (she was an even more eloquent talker than I was, at times, it was beginning to seem) but I would have to be patient and help her to make the break at the right time.

This plea delighted me, being definite proof of how seriously she took our planned departure. At the same time passionate and sensible, she made her way to the deepest part of my heart, and the least I could do was help her to make the break at the time of her choosing, because whether I stayed another few months with Jack Leningrad made no difference to me when a whole future of bliss was involved.

She was the first person I'd ever been completely open with. My natural bent to tell lies became submerged, and if I did feel the fever of fantasy coming on me I meshed it into a story so ridiculous that there was no chance or danger of her believing it had any connexion with the truth. I thus discovered that love makes people honest, but the only trouble was that in the subterfuge world of smuggling, such honesty might be a disadvantage, a race against time between Polly coming to Mayhem with me, and me giving myself away in one of my passages through London airport or Gatwick. She knew of all my techniques as a bona-fide traveller burdened by impossible loads, for I told her when I was going on a trip and where, and who as far as I knew would be going that evening or the following day. Confiding so easily helped me to carry on the work till she decided it was time for the lovers' flit. And doing it longer than I'd contemplated didn't faze me because with every journey I was piling more money into the bank.