A Start in Life (55 page)

‘We'd better get in, or I'll be too late.'

I felt as if I'd been cast among a nest of madmen, instead of a bunch of cool and persevering smugglers out to beat the British Government's paid servants of Customs and Excise. To wonder what I would do with fifty thousand pounds' worth of gold when I finally sat cackling over it by the shadow of Sugar Loaf Mountain no longer seemed to concern me, for my only thought was to act in good faith, as if I were still set on carrying it to the specified place for Jack Leningrad Limited who were known throughout the city as a business firm of the highest integrity.

I walked across the hall towards the iron lung. ‘Good morning, Mr Leningrad.'

He was listening to a record of Chaliapin singing one of his Russian songs, but he turned it down so that it almost faded away. ‘It's afternoon,' he said, ‘It's past two o'clock.' I must have been out of focus, for he swivelled his mirrors and periscopes, then smiled and asked if I was ready.

‘You know me,' I said. ‘I hope I get a gold watch at the end of twenty years' faithful service.'

I heard his dry laugh; ‘We'll put it before the committee. In the meantime you'll be a bit closer to it if you start loading up.' Stacked on the purple cloth of a nearby table were fifty slender bars of the best gold, the fortune of my life that would set me up with a vast ranch in Brazil or the Argentine and make me king of all I surveyed. I held my coat open, and feeling Stanley slot the first bar's definite weight and warmth in one of its pockets, it seemed as if during some past time my guts had been pulled slowly out of true by the worries of life, and that now, one by one, they were being stuffed neatly back again. The second bar went in. Stanley, like a skilled craftsman-packer, always started from the top so that no tell-tale wrinkles would be left in the coat when he had finished, and the whole weight was in. I regretted that Smog, Bridgitte and myself weren't travelling together to South America by boat, for then Smog could while away the long hours by playing with these golden bars on the cabin floor, making his own squares and pyramids, triangles and palisades, his eyes glittering over it all. I was smiling at such a pleasant picture, which vanished when I noticed Leningrad looking at me, his fat face and beady eyes behind that battery of equipment surrounding his iron life-saving lung.

Stanley slotted in the third bar, when the telephone rang. As he picked it up, the man in the iron lung lifted his extension at the same time. ‘When?' Stanley cried. ‘Oh, my God!'

I didn't like the shocked tone of this, but thought I might as well go on with the loading while Stanley and Leningrad continued their business conversation at the phone. ‘Don't touch it,' a voice screamed at me.

The phones were down, and Stanley's face was dusty with horror as if I were part of a bad dream he'd been having all through his life that had suddenly turned into reality. ‘What's wrong then?' I demanded, as superciliously as I could, looking from one to the other.

‘Cottapilly and Pindarry have been caught,' Stanley said.

‘That's their hard luck. What's it got to do with me?'

‘I'll kill you,' Leningrad screamed.

‘You're lying,' I said. ‘You told me they were off already.'

There were tears in Stanley's eyes. He was crying with rage. ‘They were fetched from the plane when it was already taxiing to the runway.'

‘We'd better get on with the loading,' I said. ‘If they've caught those two they won't be looking for me. I'll be as safe as houses.' A gun was beamed on me, and I knew that Stanley had another ready under his coat. I had the terrible and empty feeling that I was going to have my light put out, and all I could do was go on talking, get in as many words as I could before blackness came, as if under those guns and at the end of it all words were the only thing left.

‘You informed on them,' said that thin voice, cracking out of speakers all over the room.

‘What's in it for me?' I said. ‘They must have given themselves away, somehow or other, so keep your accusations to yourself.'

Stanley's eyes were almost out of his head. ‘Who else then?'

‘You,' I said, ‘That's who else. Load me up and let me go, or I'll tell Mr Leningrad all I know about you, or maybe we'd all better get ourselves out of here in case Cottapilly and Pindarry talk. And they will, those two, don't you worry,' I added, as if I was dead certain of it, traducing all and sundry so that I'd go blue in the face and stamp out my guilty look. ‘I've never seen such double-crossers. None of us are safe, so we've got to stick together and trust each other. That's our only hope. If we don't, we're done for. It's certainly a lousy world I've landed in when as soon as trouble comes it's dog eat dog. Worse than a jungle. I'm the best man you ever had, and you're throwing my faithful service away as if it was an old banana skin. Even if I do do this trip and get away with it, I'm finished with the likes of you lot. There's not even honour among thieves any more. I'm disgusted to my marrow.'

I was overflowing with honest irrepressible indignation, but this time it wasn't working. Leningrad turned a knob that increased the volume of every loudspeaker in the room, so that he drowned me out. ‘You scum, liar, traitor. You've double-crossed us. Tell me who it was to, or I'll kill you on the spot.'

I was going to tell him the truth, I swear I was, when the door snapped open, and a revolver shot spattered across the room. I felt it sizzle past my head, a lurch of hot wind that sent a scorching breath at my ear. It must have disconnected some line of the iron lung's communications system, because the man inside was shouting, and no sounds came out.

Claud Moggerhanger stood at the closed door, while Kenny Dukes, gripping a huge cosh, and Slasher with hands in pockets obviously holding down some threatening weapon, rushed across to the iron lung. Slasher took whatever it was from his pocket and tackled Stanley, who was struggling with a gun. They went down at my feet, and I stepped back so that they wouldn't dirty my boots or crease my trousers. They fought like lions and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Stanley had a lot of strength and courage in him. They rolled over, blood spurting between them, because Slasher had his blade out and was managing to weave it from time to time.

The table capsized, and forty-seven bars of gold slewed across the floor. Kenny Dukes was getting to work on the equipment of the iron lung, and a loudspeaker had come on again because Leningrad was waving his arms about inside, yelling at him to stop. But Kenny worked like an expert demolition man wanting to prove to a new employer how efficient he was at smashing iron lungs. Under the tangle of splintered equipment Jack Leningrad was firing a revolver across the room at Moggerhanger, and Claud was dodging about the floor with the agility of a man in his prime.

Screams and shots were pitching all over the place, and Stanley who seemed to be bleeding in several places at once was pleading for mercy from Slasher, but just as it seemed that Slasher was seriously thinking about it Stanley got in a kick that sent him flying across the room. Windows that had been painted over with thick black lacquer were shattered by bullets, and the whole tangle of iron lung was on the floor with the man buried in it, and Kenny Dukes still bashing away at the wreckage from above.

I lay on the floor, watching the gold, waiting my chance, and while the chaos was sweeping round me I stuffed another couple of bars in my pouches. Moggerhanger's hand jabbed into the air when one of Leningrad's last bullets clipped him, and for a moment he was too dazed to guard the door. With all the jack-rabbit strength in my legs I leapt out of the room, leaving yells of murder, and the heartening sound of more breaking glass behind me. My briefcase was in the vestibule and I grabbed it in a last inspired frenzy of possessiveness – before getting clear of the place for the last time.

Rather than fumble with the lift, I ran down the stairs, calming myself before reaching the exit. I walked into the street, buttoning my coat as I went up by Harrod's and on to Brompton Road. People passed me, noticing nothing unusual, but I was bewildered, not knowing to which point of the compass I should flee. I had a vision of Upper Mayhem station, of William Hay with his boots off mashing tea in the booking office, then with his feet propped up and a novel bent back in his hands. But to go there would betray him, for I knew they'd trace me soon enough. The wild woods and open fields didn't appeal to me, either, and neither did I care to head for Nottingham because that would bring trouble on my mother. The one person who could help was my grandmother. She'd defend me against all the gangsters of heaven and hell, never let them get near me. But my grandmother was dead, so no help could be expected from that quarter. The fine day had turned to drizzle and low cloud. At last I got a taxi and sat inside.

‘Where to?'

‘London airport,' I said, not thinking about it. My instinct took over, though by now I was beginning to hate its guts. I felt cut off from the roots of my intuition, and that being the case, because it definitely seemed so, I sensed a sort of resurgence coming out of the shock and panic, a hope that once more my organism would reform and provide me with the ability to grapple at the unexpected. I didn't want to think. If you think, I told myself as the taxi made a fair lick west along Cromwell Road, you cut yourself off from luck and the benefit of action.

There was still time to get the Geneva plane, and I had the ticket in my pocket, as well as five bars of gold that would see me right for a year or two. I was already planning my future. I'd sell the gold, open an account with the money in Zurich, buy a few old clothes and a rucksack, call myself a student of languages, then hole up in some quiet town and wait for what came my way. I'd grow a moustache and a beard, and as long as I paid my bills and lived an uneventful life no one would bother me. With only five bars of gold Brazil was out, for a bit of travel there would eat up most of it. In any case I'd feel safer not too far from Moggerhanger's claws than I would if I were to drop myself conspicuously in some such exotic place. Later I'd get in touch with Bridgitte, though not for a while. As for Polly, it seemed as if she was out of my life for ever.

I sat back calmly as we reached a bit of green on the edge of London, smoked a cigar, and checked my ticket. It was real. My brain settled itself into accepting this new and unexpected future. I certainly hated Moggerhanger's guts, and couldn't wait to get a good distance between us. The last information I'd passed on had set him working so hastily to get Pindarry and Cottapilly cooked that he'd nearly caused a bullet to be put through my own head. His sense of loyalty was even worse than mine, so we should never have met, and all I could want in my eternal hopefulness was that he'd now be glad to see the back of me.

I dropped a fiver to the taxi man and hurried in to have my ticket checked. There was exactly enough time. It was a quiet day in the Airline Transit Camp, and I walked calmly into the departure hall with ticket and passport ready. The idea of saying goodbye to the island for a long time boosted my spirit because the morass would be behind me and emptiness in front, just as it had been when I'd set out from Nottingham and tried my luck down the Great North Road. Perhaps someone like me needed this shot-launch into the wide-open spaces every few years.

My ticket was clipped, and I walked across the space to show my passport with a smile. The customs man was watching me, but I went by him without trouble into the waiting-room. A sudden great hunger scooped a hollow in my stomach, and I stood looking at the cafeteria counter, wondering, whether to knock down a couple of double brandies and a few cream cakes before my number was called, or whether to sit calmly and contemplate the last of England from the plate-glass windows beyond which a misty rain smoked across the runways. I felt a pang at leaving Polly, though I couldn't believe I'd absolutely seen the last of her, hoping that at some future time kind Fate would enable us to meet again. Then there was Bridgitte and Smog, who in some ways I thought more softly on, and I wondered how the three of us would ever meet. I saw matronly Bridgitte in ten years' time travelling with a sixteen-year-old youth through a north Italian town, the pair of them getting off a bus in some sunny and dusty piazza. I would be lazily painting at an easel on which a few pigeons rested. I'd go over to them, and Smog would be very protective to Bridgitte and wonder who the hell I thought I was, trying to get off with her, but Bridgitte would recognize me, and I'd invite them back to my simple room, by which time Smog would have remembered me perfectly and with great affection.

I asked for a cup of coffee, when a hand rested on my shoulder. The long pale face of a customs man said: ‘Will you come with me, sir?'

No one was to call me that again for a long time. We went back to the passport counter. He asked, now with two more customs men looking on, how much money I was taking out of the country. I told him, and was asked to open my wallet. With the legal amount of currency I had nothing to fear. I stepped out of my existence so as to watch myself being calm, smile, open my briefcase. I expected to be released, as William had been on one of his former forays, and was already congratulating myself on the fact that this little interview did not matter because I wouldn't be coming through here again.

‘Would you follow me, please?'

I walked into another room, out of the gaze of honest or lucky people who were asked no questions at all. Two policemen were waiting, as well as a lamp-post of a plain-clothes detective whom I recognized as none other than Chief Inspector Lantorn. ‘Take off your overcoat.'

I knew that it was all finished. Lantorn himself lifted out the five bars of gold, and I was cautioned that anything I said might be used as evidence against me, while the customs men outlined the laws under which I was charged.