A Start in Life (14 page)

‘I told him that I'd accidently stepped on it in passing, but he didn't believe me, pulled the bell and went on roaring for the others. He threatened to sack everybody if he didn't get to the bottom of it, but Audrey Beacon, as cool as a stone at the bottom of a stream, told him all she had seen. So I was ordered off the premises, Percy holding his pet dog, tears in his pot-eyes that didn't look at me at all. I showed him the teeth marks on my leg and the rip in my trousers, but it made no difference. I walked from the place with four pounds in my pocket, on the lookout for something else to do.

‘I picked yesterday's newspaper out of a litterbox and noticed that the war had started. It didn't take me long to get a job. Luckily my driving licence came in handy because I got van work taking bread from a bakery to shops in the town. My family never wanted for it, because I dropped three or four prime loaves there every morning on my way by. The trouble was that I didn't think. It still is, but my experience of the last few years has taught me a lot. The world's got no use for people who don't think. If you can't think, then you can never be like they want you to be, and that's no good, either for you or them. Maybe I'll be able to steer a course between the two, and if I can do that, there might be no object to what I can get out of my life – in spite of myself.'

The sun warmed us. While he talked we smoked through my supply of fags. It was like listening to the radio, which I didn't have because I'd left it with my mother. The car cruised at about forty, and Stamford was right behind. The morning was getting to its hind legs, and I was well and truly on my way, snapping the strings and ribbons one by one. I was glad they stretched such a long distance out with me, because as they broke each strand flew right back, giving the impression of being severed for ever. During the break in Bill Straw's story, when he seemed to be gathering himself to tell more of it, which would no doubt increase the lines of his worried face because he was nearer to the end, I brooded on Claudine and how I still loved her. After all, she was going to have my child, and I decided to write a long and passionate letter when I got to London. I smiled at the thought that everything was going according to plan, the only trouble being I didn't know whose plan it was, and I got brooding on this when suddenly the radiator blew up.

‘Pull in,' Bill Straw shouted. I did so but, jumping out before him, lifted the bonnet to see how my lady did. ‘You've got no water,' he said. ‘Burned up. Not a drop. Don't you know the first thing about cars?'

‘She was full a couple of days ago,' I said.

He had a hand clasped to his face: ‘Something's wrong, then.'

‘Why don't you ever tell me a bit of good news?'

‘I will when I've got some. You walk down the road for some water, and I'll wait here,' he said. ‘Just give me a fag to keep me company.' I gave him the last out of my packet and set off.

After about a quarter of a mile a lorry passed me, and Bill Straw was waving and laughing from the cab. Then it was out of sight. That's the last of him, I thought. Now I shan't hear the end of his story. He'll be in London soon, at that rate. Easy come, easy go. I suppose that's what life is like on the road.

There was neither house nor filling station for another half-hour. I walked quickly, and the least exertion made me sweat, which was why I'd never taken to hard work, because I didn't like to sweat. Not only did it smell, but it made me afraid that some vital part of me might melt away, if it ran too freely. But after a while walking became pleasant. I relaxed and slowed my pace, in spite of traffic pounding a few feet from my right elbow. Between such noise I heard birds and smelled the whiff of fields, and knew how free one might feel if there was no car to anchor your heart to its engine.

In the distance I saw someone walking towards me, and I would ask him where I could get water for my car. The face was familiar as he came close, and then I saw that it was Bill Straw carrying a jerrycan of water. ‘I thought you needed a walk,' he said. ‘It's no use sitting cramped up in that driving position for six or seven hours without stretching your legs. Makes you safer at the wheel. And it's good for the liver. Come on, let's water our horsepower.'

We walked back together. ‘I suppose you thought I'd left you?' he said with a laugh, holding up twenty Player's. ‘Here, have a fag to keep you company! I took them from the counter when his eyes were elsewhere. Don't feel bad about it. You can pay him for 'em when we pass. I promised to take the can back, anyway. A very obliging bloke. If you need petrol we ought to buy a few gallons off him, just to show willing.'

‘You have everything buttoned up.'

‘Not yet,' he said, alluding to something in his own mind, ‘but I shall have soon.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Ask me in three months.'

‘Christ,' I said, ‘where do you suppose we'll be in three months?'

‘Down among the tadpoles, for all I know. Where do you expect to be?'

‘I don't know. I'm on my own.'

‘I thought you said you was an insurance bloke,' he said. ‘Not that I believed you, with a car like that.'

‘I'll tell you all about it,' I said, ‘when you've finished your story.'

‘I'll soon do that, when we get to that bloody car. Still, I'll see it through, though it's cutting hours off my life.'

I poured water into the radiator, screwed back the cap, and started up. Steam rose from the front, but I thought this was the residue of the previous heat, though Bill in his way of facing the truth with the eye-teeth of reality said that this wasn't possible, because it could have cooled twenty times over while we'd gone for the water. By the time we reached the garage the radiator was empty again. Discouragement came easy to me, and I could have wept as I looked at it, wondering whether I shouldn't abandon the car and tramp to the nearest railway station. I could be back home in a few hours. ‘You can if you like,' said Bill Straw when I mentioned it. ‘But what's the point? It's such a tiny setback.'

‘How bloody tiny is it though?'

He held out his hand: ‘Give me five bob – no, make it ten – and I'll settle everything.' I'd taken to him, bonded by his story, and the look of self-assurance that came on to his face whenever there was an emergency – which was beginning to mean all the time. Yet also, in my black and superstitious way, I couldn't help wondering whether there'd be an emergency at all if he weren't with me. But I gave him ten bob. ‘See what you can do then.'

He left me leaning against the car with the caution not to press too hard in case I fell through it. He came back with the jerrycan full of water, which he'd bought from the proprietor, as well as a roll of sticky tape, and a packet of chewing-gum. This last we masticated rapidly, its foul mint taking away the fag-smoke and fresh-air taste patiently built up since leaving home. ‘Give it all to me,' he said, which I was glad to do. He squelched it into a plaster, then got down to the radiator, plugging the hole and reinforcing it with tape. ‘That'll hold for a while,' he said, standing up to fill the radiator. ‘Meanwhile, we'll be living on a diet of chewing-gum till we hit London. It's good for the digestion, anyway, if you treat us to a dinner in half an hour.'

‘I'll be sure to,' I said, and we set out once more.

He lit two fags and passed one over, before going on with his story: ‘One day I stopped my bread van near a park and fed half of my load to the birds and ducks. I wasn't as stupid as you imagine, because I'd already taken my daily quota home, and enough for the next few days, as well, if my mother wrapped most of it in tea towels as I'd asked her to do. Then I drove back to the office and told them I was packing the job in. When the manager said he'd fetch the police I laughed in his face. He thought I was a bit cracked, so gave me my wages less a quid for the loaves I'd fed to the birds and fishes. It was an awful winter, snow and ice piled everywhere, and I can't see anything starve.

‘I went from one job to another, till I was called up into the Army. This wasn't as bad as I'd expected, after the training, because I was posted to be a driver at a camp in Yorkshire. Much of my two bob a day went to my mother as a sort of pension, but I begrudged it a bit now because I needed more to smoke. I had a night shift for a week, then a day shift, for my job was taking a lorry-load of rations to a special signals camp a few miles from the main base. It was regular, and it was easy. One day I was thumbed for a lift by a corporal, who asked me to take him on to the signals depot. He was short and fat, and had wavy hair spreading from a parting down the middle of his head. He'd been a wireless operator in the Merchant Navy, but had left it and joined the Army because he was fed up with the cruel sea. He asked if I'd like to earn ten quid, by picking up a load one night and driving it ten miles to the nearest town. It was a good chance, and I took it. The family was having a hard time, because Peter, who'd been next on the list for work at fourteen, had managed to get to a grammar school and needed cash for his clothes and books.

‘On the night in question, having delivered the rations, I was flagged down beyond the camp gates by this corporal, and we went on to the signals school. “Now stop,” he said, while the road was still in the middle of nowhere, though I soon saw that it was only ten yards from a lonely part of the camp fence. A gang of swaddies were staggering through the gap, and began loading my lorry up with two hundred typewriters – though I didn't know what they were till afterwards. I drove the corporal to town, and the goods, shall I say, were unloaded. Money was put into my hand, and I got back to my hut without anyone being much the wiser.

‘The only time you are in heaven and don't know it is those few days between doing something wrong and catching the first glimpse of the police coming to ask you questions which are going to start the long slide down on your arse to prison. You walk lighter on your feet, breathe sweeter and better air – so it seemed after the lead weight had just fallen. Life is marvellous, and you are not only good-natured with everyone, but they are also friendly to you. You don't even think of the past that was no good, or wish to live for ever because you feel so wonderful. Nothing matters but the exact minute, which you ignore anyway. It's a state of grace, and the strength that you get from it is the easiest sort to carry. I know about this, because it's happened to me a few times, which made life worth living more than anything else. But that was a long time ago, and I hope I've got over the need of it now.

‘Half the signals school must have been involved in that great typewriter grab, and a dozen of them got sent down, including me for eighteen months, for I was said to be the key man in it, the lynchpin of the whole operation. It passed the time on, and taught me a thing or two. The war was a little bit more on its way towards peace, though not far enough, for when I got out I was dragged back into the Army, and ended up in Normandy, with too much battle for my sort of stomach.

‘I got the Military Medal for driving a load of ammunition to some blokes who had been cut off by the Germans. I didn't know I was doing it, you can bet. Normally I was shit-scared when a bomb went off five miles away, and skulked around at base so that I wouldn't get any dangerous jobs, but this one time I forgot to hide, and was sent to a village that nobody told me was almost behind the bloody lines. I thought as I drove along: what's that whizzing and whistling noise? The wheels shook, and when soil fell over the windscreen I must have been miles away in my woolly brain because I just put on the windscreen wipers, which naturally made knock-all difference. In any case the lorry was off the road, skirting the lip of a crater, but I kept the wheel steady. Shells were croaking like great frogs all over the place, but I got back to the road.

‘When I reached the village I wondered why the butcher was working in the open air. Then I cottoned on. It was a shambles, and the twenty or so blokes still alive and unwounded were ready to lynch me. One of them pointed a Sten, but the others didn't want to carry things that far. All hell had been blasting for hours, but I'd reached them during a lull, so called, when the Germans hadn't seemed too keen on the fight either. Our blokes had been short of ammunition, and the officers had been pooped off, so they'd decided to surrender and get taken prisoner. Then when I showed up with ammunition it meant they'd have to go on fighting to the last man, as it were, and that's what made them just about ready to do me in. You should have heard the curses! The flower of the British Army. Some of the poor boggers were in tears. I sulked, and offered to drive them back in my lorry, which was the least I could do. A sergeant got on the radio to company headquarters and asked for permission to pull out, and back the answer came from a solid dug-out: “Fight on, you idle bastards,” and he was ready to put his boot through that piece of machinery. We had a meeting, and formed a plan. He asked HQ to arrange an air attack on the outskirts of the village because German tanks were moving up. They agreed, and said it would arrive in five minutes. At this, we threw off the arms and clambered on the lorry ourselves, packing it tight. At the first sound of planes I drove like a madman away from that village, shot at from all sides. Behind us the planes did their job so well, as we'd known they would, that the whole place went up in smoke and flame. “That was the end of us,” the sergeant beside me in the cab shouted.

‘We got back safe, telling how the Germans had attacked in such numbers that we couldn't help but piss off out of it. Three of us got a medal for that brave job, but I kept a long way from exploding shells for the rest of the war. Even the pilots who blasted the village got a pat on the back for wiping out attacking Germans who were nowhere to be seen. My brain swims when I think of it, which I don't, any more. I was twenty-three at the time, but felt fifteen because, after all, it was a childish throwback sort of game, playing at war, a fact which everybody realized at the time, though nobody said as much.