A Start in Life (10 page)

‘I'm not that young,' I objected, ‘Miss Bolsover. In fact I feel a lot more than twenty-one at times, I can tell you.' In one sharp turn she fell against me, soft arms and apologies, then asked me where I was working now, and I told her I was fixed up at Steke and Scull's, the biggest agents in the city, but that for the moment I was at their Loughborough branch. This seemed like a rise indeed, and she congratulated me on it ‘How wonderful for you.'

‘It is,' I said, driving with one hand and taking out a Whiff with the other. I offered her one: ‘Smoke these?'

Her laugh was loud, head thrown back: ‘Oh goodness, no. Not yet, anyway.'

I lit up: ‘You know, Weekley gave me the sack, but it was all due to a misunderstanding. I tried to do the firm a favour, and he thought I was, going it for myself.'

‘All I know,' she said, ‘is that he thought you had done something that wasn't ethical.'

‘Whatever that means,' I said. ‘Maybe he just wanted an excuse to get rid of me.'

‘I don't think so, Michael. He always spoke highly of you.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘he should have realized I was young enough to make mistakes, and not thrown me out like that.'

‘It was a pity,' she said. ‘I didn't realize you felt so bad about it.'

‘I did, and do.' The fact was that if I'd stayed I could have made a lot more money doing exactly what I'd done with Clegg, but I'd have used my brains and not got found out so easily. To be able to do it, however, one had to work for an estate agent as a cover, and so as to get the necessary information. ‘It was a great shock for me to get thrown out, Miss Bolsover,' I went on, passing Radford station. ‘Mostly, and I don't see why I shouldn't admit it, because I hated losing contact with you. It was the greatest treat in my life, waking up every morning and knowing that when I got to the office I'd be able to see you. Don't ask me why I'm telling you this. It's all too late now.' I looked straight ahead at the road: ‘The reason I tried so hard to bring off that little bit of business for the firm was because I might be given more responsibility, and then you'd perhaps have thought a little better of me, because it seemed that in spite of my feelings you hardly knew I existed.' The words just tumbled out, without me knowing that they would. I was so controlled by them that I was slightly scared, but took a split-second goz at Miss Bolsover to see if there was any effect.

She looked in front, nose and mouth set to some thought that I wasn't party to, as if engrossed by other things entirely. But she was blushing faintly, so I couldn't be sure of this. In order to make it worse for her I said I was sorry, that I shouldn't have spoken, but that my heart was so full I hadn't had much say in the matter.

‘You're a strange boy, Michael.'

‘Normal,' I answered. ‘I can't imagine anyone not liking you. But it's more than that with me.'

I said nothing else because no words came. She gave directions to reach her house, a small bungalow off a by-road near Wollaton. I let her get out by herself, and she stood with the door open. Play at being good-mannered too early on and you'll never get anywhere. ‘Would you like to come in? We'll have a cup of tea,' she said. ‘You've been so good, to drive me home.'

It was windy, and she was standing in it getting red cheeks, so I had to make up my mind. ‘If it's a quick one,' I said, ‘because I promised to take Mother to that symphony concert at the Albert Hall.' The lie was innocent, but I made it to put Miss Bolsover at her ease, knowing she was partial to that form of entertainment.

‘I tried to get tickets for it, but couldn't,' she said as I switched off.

‘You can have mine, if you like.'

‘Oh, no, you can't let your mother down.'

‘I can't really,' I said, slamming the door. ‘She loves Beethoven. She'd never forgive me.'

Everybody loves a liar, I thought, but telling myself to stop it from that point on. I picked up a bottle of milk and followed her into the mock-Tudor pebble-dash matchbox bungalow, met by a smell of stale tea and damp upholstery. She asked me to sit on a deep plush sofa while she fussed in the kitchen, but I feasted my eyes on her from the doorway now that she had her coat off, as I often had in the office. It was marvellous, the way you had to get the sack before people would look at you.

She came back with a large silver tray, loaded with tea and a plate of fancy biscuits. ‘I don't take milk' she said, ‘but lemon.'

‘Where's your family?'

‘I only have my brother, and he went to Austria yesterday for three weeks, by car. He's a keen skier. Not that I see much of him when he's here.'

‘A lonely existence,' I said.

‘It
is
, Michael, but I'm very fond of it. I go a fair amount to the theatre, or concerts. Or I stay in and read, write letters, watch television. I think life is beautiful and fascinating.'

‘So do I,' I said. ‘I read a good deal too. Books are my favourite pastime. Girls as well, but my girlfriend packed me in because I lost my job.'

‘Really? Sugar?'

‘Yes, six.'

‘I don't take it myself. But why? You got a better job. Didn't that please her?'

‘She didn't wait for me to get another. She was very headstrong. But it's no use regretting it.'

‘You're lucky to be able to take it so lightly.'

‘I didn't. It broke my heart. But what's done is done. I can't live like that for the rest of my life.'

Miss Bolsover laughed: ‘I hardly think you'll have to. But I know what you mean.'

There was a pause, and I took the opportunity to drink off half my tea. It was too weak, but I let that pass. ‘Has it happened to you, then?'

She broke a biscuit in half and put it into her small mouth: ‘At my age it's bound to have done. I'm thirty-four.'

‘You talk as if you think that's old,' I said. ‘My girlfriend was thirty-eight. She was like you in one way because she only looked about twenty-five. Not that she
was
like you, she was a bit too common if you know what I mean, and she'd been married before, but she had the same wonderful figure, the sort that I've always admired. When I was in London last week on business I had a couple of hours to spare, so I went into a gallery and saw some wonderful paintings with that sort of figure. I don't think anything else can be called a figure at all.'

She sat in an armchair opposite, blushing and smiling at the same time but not, she said, because she was in any way embarrassed at my frankness, which she thought was attractive in me, but because I took some interest in culture. This was true, and when I went on to talk about a few of the books I'd read she became convinced that there was more to me than had ever been apparent at the office.

Looking across the few feet of plush carpet between us I was swollen with the bile of lechery, and wanted to get her in my arms. She wore a thin woollen jumper, large tits shifting as she talked full of serious concern about the world and how good it was to be alive in spite of its ills and all the bad people in it. I agreed, till it occurred to me that too much agreement might not be a good thing. But I had no control over it, and was carried along by the sweet sin of listening and only opening my lips to say that she spoke the truth. Her eyes glittered, as if half a tear were buried in each of them, telling me that this was what she wanted to hear. Not that I doubted her intelligence, for under that soft exterior with the touch of sentimentality no doubt corroding it, she had a fine streak of rational perception. I leaned across and squeezed one of her hands warmly. She pressed mine, in recognition of the common ground we had found between us. Then she realized that I was pulling, as well as squeezing, and with a sudden shift she came over and sat by me on the sofa. ‘Do I
have
to tell you that I love you?' I said wearily. My lips against hers pressed straight through to her teeth, because she opened her mouth as I went forward. Then her arms came around me.

After a few minutes we looked at each other, me with what I hoped to be a gaze of honesty, and adoration, she with what seemed to be puzzled embarrassment and an excitement of wanting it that changed the curves of her face so that she hardly seemed the same person I'd known at the office. ‘I love you,' I said, ‘more than I've ever loved anyone. I'd like to marry you.'

She pressed me into her wonderful breasts. ‘Oh Michael, don't say it. Please don't.' I decided not to, in case she started to cry, though that would be no bad match for the passion I felt in her. Nevertheless I said it again, and held her so tight that she couldn't respond to it. ‘It would be marvellous,' I murmured into her shoulder. ‘Marvellous.'

She shuddered at the touch of my fingers, then broke away: ‘We really ought not to spoil it.'

‘I love you,' I said, ‘so it's the last thing I want to do' – which set off another round. This time she forgot to tell me not to spoil it, or perhaps she couldn't say anything at all, as my hand had found the warmest part of her.

We went into her bedroom at six o'clock, and didn't come out till eight the next morning, when she had to get ready for work. The whole night seemed no longer than five minutes, though I don't know how many times we worked up to the apple-and-pivot and cried out in the moonlit darkness. I shook like a jelly-baby while driving her to work, afraid of every vehicle that came close: ‘I'll come and see you tonight,' I said.

‘Please. I'll wait for you.'

‘And I'll ask you to marry me again.'

‘Oh, Michael, I don't know what to say.'

‘Just say yes,' I said.

‘You're wonderful.'

I set her down a hundred yards from the office, then drove home. The house was empty, and I undressed to get into bed. Unable to sleep, because I ached in every last limb, I wondered what I had done in tacking on to Miss Bolsover. Naturally, I wanted it to go on and on, never having tasted such loving before. Perhaps the fact that I had actually stayed all night in bed with her had something to do with it, though not entirely. There was really nothing to think about, but simply to lie there and regret that she wasn't still with me, only to hope that time would speed along before tonight, and that I would be able to get some rest before setting out again. I drifted into half-sleep, wonderful as only sleep can be when you know that daylight is pushing behind drawn curtains, and that the whole town is going full tilt at hard and boring work.

I don't know how long I'd been in bed, but I became aware of a battering-ram breaking through to my sweetest dreams. There was no rest for the Devil in heaven, so I put on some trousers and stomped downstairs with half-closed eyes, wondering who the hell it could be at this time of the day. At the back door, which we usually used, no one was there, and just as I was thankfully up on my way to bed the knocking came this time from the front. Any such sound at the door always pushed my heart off course, jacked-up its noise in the veins of my ears. We weren't used to people rapping at our doors. If a neighbour came to see us she usually called out my mother's name and walked straight in. A knock meant either a tally man, the police, or a telegram, and since my mother had never bought anything on credit, and neither of us had been in trouble with the police, and no one we knew ever felt in such an urgent frame of mind as to send a telegram, you can imagine that such formal visitations at the door were few and far between. When one did come, and I happened to be in on my own, the effect was of such intensity that it almost had me scared.

Claudine tried to smile, but ended up with a distressful saccharine expression that fixed me in speech and movement to the spot. ‘Come in,' I said, after a while, and at my brisk tone she gave a normal worried look and followed me through to the kitchen. ‘It's good to see you.'

She came back sharply: ‘Is it?'

‘Course it is, love. Take your coat off and sit down. I'll make you a cup of tea. I could do with breakfast, myself.'

‘Breakfast? Do you know what time it is? It's just gone twelve o'clock.'

‘We'll call it brunch, then,' I said from the kitchen stove. I cracked eggs into the pan, and layed enough bacon on the grill for two of us.

‘You must be going to pieces,' she said, ‘staying in bed so late. It's terrible. I always knew there was something funny about you.'

‘The sun will never rise on me, and that's a fact.'

I spread a cloth and put out knives and forks, turned on the radio, gave her a fag, and pushed another lump of coal into the fire, not even wondering why she had come to see me, keeping so busy that I wouldn't be able to, while she went on and on about how useless I was. ‘Still,' she said, watching me closely, ‘you are a bit more domesticated than I ever thought.'

‘I've often had to look after myself when Mam's been away, that's why.'

We pulled up our seats, but she didn't tuck in as heartily as I'd hoped. ‘It's good to see you,' I said, ‘but what's on your mind?'

‘A lot that you ought to know,' she answered.

I thought I'd be funny: ‘You're pregnant?' I said brightly.

‘You bastard,' she cried, standing up. ‘How did you know?'

I choked on a piece of bacon rind, ran over to the mirror and yanked it out like a tapeworm. ‘I didn't. It was a joke.'

‘It's no joke to me,' she said, eating a bit faster, now that she'd told me in this back-handed fashion.

‘How's Alfie Bottesford?' I asked.

‘What do you mean? What are you getting at?'

I stood by the mantelshelf, riled that she could go on eating at a time like this, till I remembered that she had two mouths to feed. ‘I'm getting at nothing. But you and Alfie are back together, aren't you?'

‘I won't talk about it,' she wept, eating her egg.