A Start in Life (32 page)

I decided to move on, though not at midnight, because it was always better to look for a bed in, the morning, when the memory of one was still with you. Another thing was that I needed a room of my own, an absolutely set pad where I could come and go of my quick will. I'd dallied long enough at Blaskin's for Moggerhanger to have given me up as lost, if he'd even bothered to miss me or imagine I could ever be found, which I was beginning to doubt now that my hope and initiative were coming back, blinding me to all caution. Another fact was that Blaskin had given me no money, when he'd solemnly promised fifty bob a week. I'd reminded him of it in good terms a time or two, but like all people who are ultra-sensitive in everything, and don't miss a splinter of what goes on anywhere, it went over his head completely – or at least he acted as if it did.

When I considered that all were asleep I crept out of my room and found his coat hanging up in the hall. I removed two five-pound notes, which I thought to be honest payment for all the work I'd done on his novel. There were sixty pounds in the wallet altogether, and I could have lifted all of it, but I knew in my heart that Blaskin would call the police without hesitation if he thought I'd robbed him unjustly, for he was one of those people who loved the world as long as the people in it interested him. After that, it was back to the jungle for all concerned.

I had to get out of the flat while he and Pearl were still asleep, and to save time packed my case the night before. I stood with the light off and my curtains open, watching the opposite buildings. A woman leaned in white underwear, and a man's arms pulled her to him, out of my sight. Then the blind went down. A huge dog, as big as a man and with a head twice the size, pressed at one window, and seemed to be barking, though I couldn't hear it, pawing the glass as if it were locked in and there was no escape. I wished someone would pull that beast away so that I couldn't see it any more. I turned my head to another range of windows. In some, there was washing, because most of the rooms seemed to be kitchens. Light bulbs were often bare, a few were shaded. A shadow moved across a window now and again, too quick to see whether it was man or woman. I wondered how many of them had to get up in the morning and go to work. I felt hatred of those who didn't, as if I was the only person in the world with the right to be idle. Just as I could never feel sympathy for anyone unless they were without food, so I would never go to work unless I were starving. But as I looked at those massed windows covering the whole sky, I felt this sentiment crumbling. It just wasn't worthwhile. It cut me off too much, from all those people in the world I most wanted to know. It was as if I had to break my own bones in order to join them, that was the only trouble. The longer it went on like this, the harder it would be, though at the same time I devoutly wondered whether I'd have the brains to stay away from their terrible anonymity without falling as low as Almanack Jack. To join them, all I had to do was switch on my own bedroom light, and stand there, imprisoned in the oblong of window so that they on the other side could then see that I was a prisoner like the rest of them. But I got into bed in the dark.

A few hours later, with something lurking at my window that looked like morning, I was awake, croaking for a pot of liquid to drink but knowing I'd have to wait till I got clear and found a café. I dressed in two minutes and, taking one last glimpse around the flat, made for the door with my case attached to my hand. I shivered, as if I'd made too many departures in the last few months, and wasn't sure that I wanted to go. I wasn't even getting kicked out, but that didn't seem to matter, for I was moving, and, at this time of the morning, that was that.

A man standing by the door, about to press the bell, got as big a shock as I did. He was tall, well built, had thinning hair, and wore a pale short mackintosh. I tried to keep my voice down: ‘What do you want?'

He lisped: ‘Mog wants his flash back.'

I didn't know what he meant. ‘You've got the wrong house.'

‘Moggerhanger sent me. He wants his lighter back.'

‘I haven't got it any more.'

‘He wants 'is flash back.'

‘I ain't got the thing,' and shut the door behind me: ‘Shift out of the way. I'm going down.'

He bumped me so hard that I dropped my case: ‘Mr Moggerhanger wants 'is flash.' He took a cut-throat razor from his pocket, opened it, and grinned: ‘He told me to make the sign of the cross if you don't hand it over.'

I saw that glint, and took the hint, and bent down to snap open my case, scrabbling under a heap of shirts and dirty underwear. ‘I was going to call in and bring it back today,' I said, pushing it into his hand. He pressed the fuse, saw the flame, looked at it as if he thought it a pretty sight that he could gaze on all day. After a final grin at its beauty, he blew it out and put it in his pocket, the razor held all the time in his other hand.

‘That all right?' I said, trying to stay calm and smile. He lifted the razor and drew it across my face, without touching flesh. I cried out, but he laughed, kicked my case down the stairs, and walked through the mess.

I picked up the bits and put them back. On his progress he'd trodden on a tube of toothpaste and squashed it flat, so that a white jet of it had shot across the carpeted stair. A cold sweat was all over me, and my hand trembled so that I could hardly put a necktie back into the case. I knelt to do my work, and thought of going into the flat, to fall asleep and tell myself afterwards, when I got up to a good breakfast and decided to stay, that this had been a mere bad dream. But the door was locked and I had no key, and in any case I would not have done it.

The longer I sat the better I felt, and I suddenly urged myself to close the case and stand up. In my pocket were cigarettes and matches, and when I found that my feet weren't yet ready for me, I smoked casually as if resting before my long journey down to the street. It was eight o'clock by my watch, and apart from feeling sick I wanted some breakfast, so with a good heave I was standing at last, ready to descend.

The air smelled good, smoky and full of petrol, the very stuff of life, as Gilbert Blaskin might have said. People were already going to work, and I wished them luck and a long run as I walked my case towards King's Road. I found an eating place and stuffed myself back to health and strength on bacon and pancakes and coffee, soon feeling cocky again after my fright from Moggerhanger's one-man execution squad. Opening my street map I wondered where I was going to live, what four walls, if any, I'd inhabit before the day was out. With two hundred and fifty pounds in the bank I was the king of kings – though not for ever. I thought of walking into a hotel, but would only do that at the last moment, if I couldn't get anything but a slice of pavement before darkfall. With so few possessions my case wasn't heavy as I walked towards Victoria, but I didn't like being seen dragging it around. A man with a case looks like a traveller, or a thief, or someone too innocent to be out on the street. You can't swagger and feel good with a suitcase. Even if it weighs nothing you're marked off from the rest of the people into which you should be able to melt for cover if you feel like it.

So I dropped it in the left-luggage at the station and strode on through streets that hadn't yet lost their freshness and interest. The market in Soho was out, an abundance of barrows lining the streets, now packed with mid-morning shoppers. I bought a Spanish newspaper, which I couldn't read, and sat in an Italian place for a cup of black coffee, sipping it down between puffs at a cigar. Whenever I did a bunk or otherwise left anywhere, I always wore my best suit. Why, I don't know, but it made me feel good when I had nowhere to go. And because it bolstered my spirit at such a time, it was also plain to me that I wasn't feeling easy in such a state of homelessness, and that I had to get out of it quick. The sensible thing, in view of Moggerhanger's hostility (I had no way of knowing whether this morning's threat was only the beginning of it) would be to get out of town for a few weeks, so as to avoid being seen in the area where he owned half the clubs.

Yet I couldn't tear myself away, and I'm glad I didn't, because when I went into an Italian place for lunch (I was hungrier than usual when on the loose) I sat down and saw the back of a head farther up the room belonging to somebody who'd taken a small table all to himself, and it was of a shape that caught a snipe of recognition in me. I waited for him to turn, but he casually faced the other way as if not caring to show his face too openly. Sometimes he seemed on the point of doing so, out of boredom at looking at the wall, which was the only thing in front of him. For a second I saw a little to the side of his face, and his way of moving convinced me that I had seen that turnip-head before. All through the minestrone I plugged my mind in every place to bring back some memory with the label of a name stuck to it I searched all over the place, even going through every film I'd seen in the last ten years in the hope that some far-off face in one might lead me to the actual face I was trying to remember.

Thinking he'd never turn, I picked up my knife and dropped it, but too many other people were talking and eating around me, and he didn't hear a thing. There was a rack by his side, on which hung a good-quality light overcoat, a hat, and a cashmere scarf. I looked down to eat when my veal came, but noted that he was ahead in his meal, and that the waiter was taking his coffee. Cigar smoke drifted above his head, which was now bent at the table as if he were reading a newspaper. He called for his bill, and the waiter treated him like a regular client who left good tips. I tried to catch some words, but they were lost. He stood for the waiter to help him on with his coat, and as soon as he half turned my heart jumped at the sight of him.

When I called his name, not too loud but only so that he would hear me, he looked in my direction as if I'd sworn at him. It was Bill Straw, the knowledgeable glutton who'd come down to London with me from the North. He wore a light grey suit, a silk shirt, and a small-knotted dark tie, and still had the cigar in his teeth. I remembered his face as having been prison-pale and unshaven, but now it was lean and tanned, and full of vigour so that he looked ten years younger. But there was no mistaking old Bill Straw, my erstwhile friend from back on the road.

He came closer, looked at me with his grey eyes, and smiled: ‘Well, my old flower, I thought you'd been swallowed up. It seems that long ago to me.'

‘Centuries,' I said, shaking the offered hand. ‘Sit down and have some more coffee.'

‘I will,' he answered, ‘If you'll have a brandy – on me.'

‘You don't look the same any more.'

‘I'll never be like that again,' he told me. Even his way of speaking had changed. A far-off look came into his eyes: ‘No, you'll never see me as I was when you picked me up on the Great North Road.'

‘Not old Bill Straw,' I said, too jocularly by half, because he flinched from it.

‘You want a bit of smoothing down,' he said. ‘You're too rough. And by the way I'm not Bill Straw, so do me a favour and forget that. I'm known as William Hay – to all my acquaintances and to my employers. It's also written in my passport. I'm a company director by profession. This is just to get the record straight, though don't think I'm not still a human being, because I am. I've succeeded in doing away with the life I had before coming to London this time. But I don't forget you, because you helped me. I say,' he said suddenly, with a bit of old mateyness, ‘you haven't seen that June on your wanderings, have you?'

Over a couple of brandies I told him honestly all that had happened since we parted at Hendon on our way in. He was impressed at hearing that I'd actually succeeded in getting on the wrong side of Moggerhanger. ‘I know blokes who have nightmares about that,' he said. ‘He's dangerous, so don't tangle further with him. You'd better take a few hints from me.'

‘You've done so well by the look of it,' I said, ‘that it might not be a bad idea.'

He looked deadpan at this: ‘You are a bit green. Right from when you gave me that lift, and let me con you out of so much grub on the way down. I don't know how you've survived this long. More by luck than experience, from what you've told me. But I suppose it's about time you were taken in hand. You'd better bunk up at my place for a while. I kicked my umpteenth girlfriend out last night, so you can stay there till I get another one. I've got a flat over in Battersea. Small and quiet, but it's convenient. You remember I told you on the A1 that I had a few thousand to collect from a job I'd done bird for? Thought I was lying, didn't you?'

He laughed, and lit another Havana. ‘I wasn't I've often told the truth to people who think that with a face like mine I can't help but lie. An old trick. Well, it was stashed away safely for me, and what's more it had been piling up interest the years I was in prison. A tidy sum of five thousand three hundred! Couldn't believe such loyalty from the others. But I'd stood by them, you see, right through everything, and they knew it. So it's still getting interest for me. Invested in good old British industry by a broker I was put on to, curling in as much as eight per cent. The fact was, I hardly needed to touch it, just three hundred to fit myself out, because I was put on to some very profitable work, just the stuff for the likes of me, because it takes me off the island, to the hot spots of the mainland, and a bit beyond at times. I won't say too much yet, but I didn't get this tan potholing in the Pennines. Still, I don't forget somebody who helped me when I was down and out. Not me, not the new man nor the old. When you picked me up, I don't know whether you knew it or not, but I was ready to die. I was done for and finished, inside and out, stomach and heart. I felt I was trudging towards the end of the world in that rain, with cars and lorries splashing me up as they went by, the cold eating into me so that I was snatched and perished.'