A Start in Life (11 page)

‘Suit yourself. You walked out on me.'

She stood up and faced me: ‘And can you wonder at it, Michael-rotten-Cullen? Look at the way you're living. Lounging in bed all day stinking with sleep. No job. No prospects even. What a deadbeat tramp you are. I can see there's no hope for me with you, even though I am having your baby. Oh, it's terrible. I feel awful. I'll do myself in. I shall. That's the only thing to do.'

‘If you're serious about it,' I said, ‘I'll give you a couple of bob for the gas, and a cushion to put your head on.'

‘I really beliève you would,' she said quietly, stunned at my response to her unnatural threat.

‘You bet I would, if that's the way you feel. I love you so much I'd do anything for you.'

‘You don't imagine I can feel very good, do you?'

‘No, but don't come here palming a baby off on me when you've been going with Alfie Bottesford for the last month. I don't know what your game is, but I'm not falling for that one.'

‘I thought you loved me,' she said, ‘but all that went on between us meant nothing to you. As long as you got what you wanted. Alfie Bottesford's never in all his life done anything to me. He hasn't laid a finger on me, ever. And that's the stone truth, I'm telling you.'

I knew she wasn't lying – almost. The memory of Miss Bolsover's ripe body went out through my big toe, and I looked at the one tear of anguish and vinegar that came to Claudine's pale cheek. ‘Won't Alfie marry you? You've only got to get him to bed once and he won't know the difference.'

She sat down, with both hands over her face, and I began to feel sorry for her, till she burst out: ‘Oh, you're so rotten. I can't believe it. I don't know what to do. I'm afraid to tell Mam and Dad, and hoped you'd come home with me so that we could both do it.'

‘You ditched me,' I shouted, ‘didn't you? And now you want to take up with me again! I was bitter about you going off that day, I admit it. You walked out just because I'd lost my job. Do you call that love? And now that you and Alfie Bottesford have been rubbing up together so that he's got you loaded, you come moaning back to me. I'd like to know what for.'

She leapt up as if to knife me, but before she could say anything I took hold and kissed her: ‘I love you. I'm going mad with love for you, Claudine. I'll do anything for you. Just tell me and I'll do it.' She kissed me back, and in a few minutes was more relaxed.

We stood in front of the mantelshelf mirror smoothing each other's cheeks with our lips: ‘I came because it's your baby,' she said. ‘I want you to come home tonight, and see my parents. We can tell them we're engaged, and that it would be best if we got married in a month or so.'

‘All right,' I said, ‘but I can't come up tonight. Make it tomorrow. One day more or less wain't mek much difference.'

‘Why not tonight? It's as good as any other.'

‘My car wants something doing to the engine,' I said, ‘and a pal of mine who works at a garage can only do it tonight.'

She jumped away: ‘Your car? What car?'

I told her I'd bought it out of my savings. ‘Savings?' she yelled. ‘You mean you had all this money in the bank while you were going with me, and you didn't tell me?'

‘That's right.'

She broke down at this: ‘How can I ever trust you?'

‘Easy. You'll just have to believe me, then you can. I thought you'd be pleased to hear I'd got a car, but no. You look at me as if I've taken to crime. Every good thing I tell you turns out to be the end of the world. I suppose if I tell you something bad you'll think it's marvellous. Listen, you know when I said that my old man had been killed in the war, and that's why I hadn't got a father?' I couldn't stop myself even though I wanted to, though I'm not sure that I did. She looked at me, waiting for something special. ‘Well, I never had a father, at least not one that I'd know. My mother didn't get married, and I was born from one of her affairs during the war – out of wedlock, as they say, or, to put it in blunt talk, I'm a bastard, a real no-good, genuine twenty-two-carat bastard in every sense of the word, so if ever you call me one again you'll at least be speaking the truth for the only time in your life, because I don't believe that you've never had hearthrug pie with Alfie Bottesford. The only thing I can't understand is why you come to me now that he's knocked you up.'

She roared and cried: ‘I've got no one else to turn to, that's why.'

‘I can't understand, you're courting Alfie, aren't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you come to me when you're pregnant. All right, if you want thirty quid to get rid of it I'll give it to you.' One of the men at the office had done it for his girlfriend, and putting the same proposition to Claudine made me feel big.

A bottle smashed over my head, a small compact square sauce bottle she snatched from the table. I grabbed her and slapped into her face. She cried out, and I thought that if this free-for-all went on much longer we'd have the neighbours in to part us. ‘I came here because it's yours,' she said. ‘That's all.'

A thin red line trickled over my nose, and I knelt down to wipe it with a corner of the tablecloth. ‘If that's the way you feel,' I said, ‘I'll be at your house at half past six tomorrow night.'

‘Tonight,' she demanded.

‘Tomorrow. I must get my car fixed. It's the only chance I've got. He goes to Mablethorpe first thing in the morning to see his aunt. So it'll just have to be tomorrow. I promise.'

‘If you aren't there,' she said, ‘I'll come with my father and mother. I will, and I mean it.'

‘You won't have to,' I said, with my best honest smile. I love you. I really do. I've never loved anyone else. I'm already beginning to see how nice it'll be to live in a married way with you.' She sat on my knee, and my old passion came back for her: ‘Let's go upstairs,' I said. After a little more persuading she agreed. We lay in bed till four o'clock, and then she left, thinking that all was well again. I went back and dozed in the marvellous rumpled sheets until it was time to drive to Miss Bolsover's.

‘How long can it last?' Gwen wanted to know.

‘Years,' I said. ‘Why?'

‘I always ask myself that, and it's a bad sign.'

‘If I love someone it's for ever – unless I'm ditched. Then it's not my fault. But you don't need to ask it with me.' We lay on the rug in front of her electric fire.

‘I ask it with everyone,' she said, ‘then I can't blame it on the fact that I asked it – if it goes wrong. But I ask it. I can't help it.'

‘If that's the way you like it,' I said, ‘but as far as I'm concerned I love you, and that's that.'

‘Oh Michael – you're so strong and simple. You're so direct. That's what I love most about you. I can understand you, and I've never had that feeling before.' It was hard to take this as a compliment, though I saw that in one way she was right. I'd felt for a long time that I couldn't do anything at all unless I was simple, so in order not to be paralysed I fought to keep that simplicity. And Miss Bolsover's approbation of it was flattering in this respect, but if I loved her for saying it, it was only because she had said something at all.

She made a short meal of meat, chips and salad, and served us both on a small table in the living-room. She had a huge bathgown over her, and I wore her brother Andrew's smoking-jacket. I stroked her hand at each mouthful, which made me feel like a husband, and also as if I owned the house – both new sensations for me. Afterwards I smoked a Whiff, and talked her into a few puffs of it. Then we went to bed, not at midnight like grown-ups, but at eight o'clock, driven there by a pure and marvellous lust to get back to the centre of things.

But as usual lust did not mean force, because Claudine had blunted me, so we romped for an hour, though Gwen (if I could by now be permitted to call her that?) tried to pull me on immediately, and when she saw it wasn't possible started to mother me. I cured her of this by a few slaps on her fat behind, which she didn't object to, and then our loving continued through a couple of deep and meaty encounters. When I began to get dressed, she asked what was the matter. ‘I love you,' I said, ‘but I must go. I have an appointment to meet a client early in the morning. I was late yesterday (for the most wonderful reason in the world) but if I don't get in at the right time tomorrow, it'll look bad.'

She embraced me, her warm naked body against my shirt and trousers, or rather she grasped me, and turned her full lips for a big kiss, which I gave with my heart bursting. ‘Tomorrow night?' she said.

‘Yes,' I answered. ‘I'll be here. You can bet. You've got me for ever, you know.'

‘I don't want you for ever,' she said. ‘I only want you for now. Always is not good for anybody.'

‘Don't worry,' I told her, ‘we'll be together in that rough old spring again. It's a sidereal mantrap that gets us all, you as well as me.'

I was weeping in tune to her creaking heart when I got into my car, but I cheered up as I drove home in the moonless night. I made my tunnel through the black dark, fumigating my cluttered mind so that by the time I pulled up at the kerb it was obvious what I should do. It was necessary to act in haste, so that one never had cause to repent, because if you act in haste there can't be anything to blame yourself for, and that is a state of mind I relished. I had been acting like the Caliph of Baghdad in the last few weeks, and now the time had come to stop all that, to reform and go my own ways. Perhaps I had a sense of sin after all, for I wanted now and again to be pure so as to boost my self-esteem for when the time came around to sin again.

It was one in the morning when I looked at my gold watch in the dim bedroom light. I took the suitcase from my wardrobe, and lay it open on my bed, which still had the perfume smell of Claudine on it. I buried my face there for a second or two. But there was no time to be lost. I put on a clean shirt and my best suit, and packed my other clothes neatly in. Looking around, there was nothing else but a line of books along the washstand, and they would have to stay. It surprised me that I owned so little, though at a time like this it was a pleasant discovery to make. After all, I did have a car and a watch, as well as a hundred pounds. What more could anybody want? There was also a small transistor radio and I saw myself speeding along the main road with it lying on the seat beside me, thumping, out some great symphony. It was small, but powerful, and Mam had liked the tone very much when I first showed it to her.

I was careful to make no noise in case I woke her up, but the door suddenly opened and there she was. ‘You're off, are you?'

I put in two pairs of pyjamas, one clean and one dirty. ‘Yes.'

‘Where to?'

‘North, east, south, and west.'

‘That really does sound as if you know what you're doing, I must say.'

‘I'll let you know where I am,' I said, botched at the throat, and all the way down into my bottom gut.

‘That's something, anyway.' I was going to give her half my money, but didn't because it spared her the dignity and embarrassment of telling me to keep it. I was sure to need it more than she would, and in any case her wages were sufficient for all her wants. ‘All I ask from you,' she said, ‘is that you take care of yourself. That's all I'd like you to do for me.'

I tried to smile, but could only lie: ‘I'm not going for good.'

‘Don't lie to me,' she said.

‘I'm not lying – that's all I can say.'

‘It doesn't matter,' she said. ‘Only don't be cheeky, and get going if you're going to. I'll go back to bed. If you're around in the morning I'll make breakfast. If you're not, I'll get it on my own.'

I kissed her. ‘You'll hear from me.'

‘Don't be so bleddy sloppy,' she said, breaking free and going to her own room.

I set the alarm for six and lay down in my clothes. It seemed only a second later that it jangled my ears, and then I remembered what I was up to, so jumped out of bed and went downstairs with my case. I left my transistor radio on the table with a note saying I wouldn't need it while I was away. Then I made tea and lingered for an hour, until I heard her moving upstairs, getting dressed for work. I went out, quietly closing the door behind me.

The streets were empty, I noted, getting into my black all-enveloping travel-bug car. It wouldn't start. The night had been wet, but now the clouds were shifting, and I lifted the bonnet and dried the contacts with my handkerchief. Not being mechanically minded, and lacking motorized experience, I knew nothing about cars, and I was swearing in case it should let me down at such a critical laughable time. It would be unjust, because I had no plans for it to waylay and spoil. I was acting without any plan whatsoever, and that was enough to make me innocent in the eyes of prankish worn-out motorcars. Still, I cranked it up, in case conciliation was necessary from a trickster like me, and when I sat in it once more and twitched on the ignition I felt the sweet shake of life under me, and after a few parting roars to the empty street and the benighted morning, I was off, slowly at first up the cobblestones, and then swiftly along Lenton Boulevard, skirting the city centre, by the valley of the Leen that took me under the heights of the Castle.

It was still dark, and only my own lights and the roadlights led me away. There was no heater in the car, and my greatcoat was wrapped around me, a scarf muffling my neck and chin. Because I was still so tired from the last few days, my brain was clear. I remember it well, a familiar feeling. At the same time I didn't think ahead, or tell myself where I was going. I knew, but I didn't tell myself. It didn't even occur to me not to tell myself. I was in that balance of knowing, but not wanting to know, and maybe I was helped to maintain it by the disturbing physical action of driving the car.