A Start in Life (15 page)

‘Later on, I was out of it, and my medal went over the side of the boat coming back to Southampton. At home I found I had one brother in the Army, another at work, my sister in the family way, and my mother in a mental hospital. Within a few weeks I was back in prison, and feeling as if I'd been born there. Those months were so black in my mind that I don't even remember what I got sent down for. I was haunted by the looney-bin look on my mother's face; which it seemed she had always had, but I hadn't noticed it before. I never want to be twenty-five again, that's all I can say. I breathed a sigh of relief when I was twenty-six, determined that from then on my life would take a turn for the better. To make sure this happened I did two things which made sure it never could: I got a job, and I got married.

‘We met in a pub, Jane Shane and me. Her middle name was Audrey, which she favoured most, Tawdry Audrey from Tibshelf, who got off the bus one Saturday night in Worksop market place. During an hour of comfortable drinking I saw she had smoky short black hair and diamond eyes, pale cheeks and thinnish lips, a real beauty until she opened her raucous chops. She'd had a baby by another man, but I wasn't to know this until after we were married, and in those days I thought an agreement with a woman was something you couldn't break no matter what the other party had done. After a quiet wedding at the registry office, she brought her kid to live at our house. My mother, now out of the looney-bin, went absolutely soft over the little boy, so that he soon loved her far more than his own mother who, in fact, totally ignored him except to kick and shout whenever he unluckily crossed her path.

‘Getting married seemed a good thing to do, but it wasn't long before I got to Cuckold's Cross, so one day I didn't go to work but took a train to London instead. There were plenty of odd and casual jobs there, but they didn't pay very much. One day I met a man who asked if I'd knock a car off for him, and take it to a certain garage in Bermondsey. There'd be a good load of money in it for me, but on delivery, he said. I asked what sort he wanted. We stood side by side in an arcade pumping tanners into a slot machine. He laughed because I'd given him a choice: “Get me a Jaguar.”

‘“I suppose you want it for a job?”

‘“Shut your mouth,” he answered.

‘“I'll deliver it late tonight, then. Tell them to expect me.”

‘Back in my room at St Pancras I put on my best clothes. Then I bought a couple of window-cloths from a bucket shop, and put myself on the Northern Tube. It was a rainy day, spring, so I had my mac on and walked the streets and lanes of Hampstead with eyes wide open. I spotted two or three likely ones, but waited at a corner till I saw a well-dressed bloke get out of a flash Jag, a real beauty, and walk to a block of flats down the road. With a bunch of flowers and a parcel, he looked set for a long visit, or so I hoped. I started cleaning the windows of his car with my new orange cloths. A side window was half an inch open, so I took the newspaper from my pocket, smoothed it as flat as a board, and by sliding it through and then down was able to press the button that released the latch. I could get in whenever I liked, but showed no hurry. Even if the owner came back I could say I was down on my luck and only wanted to earn a bob or two by polishing his glass. Who could object to that?

‘But the time came to act, so I lifted the bonnet and started the engine. I snapped it down, got in, and was off, moving from the kerb and turning for the opposite direction to the one I'd seen its last owner vanish in. Like a newborn fool I'd left the dusters on the bonnet, just under the windscreen, and when I stopped the car to get them in, the engine stalled. Sweat roped off me, but I fixed it again, tightening the wires and burning my fingers. This time I was definitely away, taking the ring road and getting into Bermondsey from the south.

‘When the garage door closed behind me Claud Moggerhanger came out of a cubby-hole office and tapped the car at certain vital places. “Last year's. I'll give you fifty quid for it.”

‘I didn't like the face of him because he looked not only all brawn but all brain as well, middle-aged, half-bald, a man who'd had enough prison and so much good living in his life that he'd kill you rather than argue. “It must have cost fifteen hundred quid,” I said.

‘“Take off the purchase tax, wear and tear, and the fact that it ain't yours, and you're lucky to get forty.”

‘My blood was up: “You just said fifty!”

“Its value goes down by the minute,” he smiled, while the three other blokes behind him laughed. “Thirty now.”

‘I gave in: “Fifty, then, and I'll clear out.” He nodded, and I looked at the fivers to check on the silver thread, and make sure the head wasn't upside down, or that the ink was dry. Even then I wasn't sure. A couple of experts were unscrewing the number plates and dragging out spraying equipment, as if they really had a rush job on. Moggerhanger glared at me for hanging around, so I went away, spitting and cursing.

‘I got work with a group of blokes washing cars in St James's Square, which in good weather drew in about twelve quid a week. I didn't tell a soul about my fifty quid, but stitched the whole of it into my jacket to save till I was in need and no one could wonder where I'd got so much money. One day I was washing an Austin, and the rough Geordie who was more or less in charge told me to go to the other side of the Square and scrub down the Daimler that had just come in, a rush job for a regular and generous customer. It was a warm day so I took off my jacket and laid it on the car next to the Austin, then went over right away to do the Daimler. When I came back, an hour later, it was gone. I looked at the empty spot and a black wave floated over my eyes, going away just as quickly. I leaned against the car, then jumped into a frantic search in case I'd moved it at the last moment and forgotten where. I found Geordie, and asked if he'd seen my jacket. “No,” he said. “I've got one.”

“‘I left it by the Austin.”

‘He laughed: “I hope you haven't seen the last of it. Ask Johnny Spode.” Johnny had vanished, and never came back. I found my coat stuffed under a bush, the money ripped out, so that I was practically penniless once more. If I had suddenly been able to get my hands on the thieving bastard I'd have choked the shit out of him. It's all right robbing the rich, but when one working bloke robs another it makes high treason look like a parking offence. I was reduced to washing up in cafés, which kept me so broke that a fortnight later I went to the garage in Bermondsey to see if they needed another car. I'd have sold them a Rolls-Royce for twenty quid if they'd said yes, but the place was derelict and boarded up, so I'd only wasted my bus fare.

‘To deaden the long drag back I bought a newspaper, sat up front on the top deck to get the feel of being on my own while I read it. At one piece of news my head rattled. I pulled the paper on to my knee before I could fix it firm enough for reading, not knowing whether to laugh or get off the bus and run for my life in case the coppers had already got the hint to come after me. Johnny Spode had been charged with trying to pass false fivers at a pub in the East End, and I knew of course they could only be those Claud Moggerhanger had given me for the stolen Jaguar, and that I'd stitched into a secret pocket of my working jacket, and that Johnny had nicked from me. He'd been remanded in custody, which meant they were trying to make him squeal where he'd got them, I hoped it was the last of the bunch they'd found him with, for then he might argue his way out of it by saying some toff whose name he couldn't remember and whose face was covered with smallpox had given it him for cleaning his car. In which case it could be I was in no danger at all.

‘I didn't believe it, not on your life. It was better to be on the safe side, and flee. I got to my room and packed my small case, then spent my last few bob on a packet of fags and a bus ride to the south-west. This only took me twelve miles but soon I got a lift in a car going to Salisbury, which was lucky for it was starting to rain. My exhaustion, my downhearted ruin seemed certain and complete. My only need was sleep, but the chap driving wanted to know why I was heading for Salisbury.

‘“Going to see the Cathedral?” he asked, “or have you got friends there? Myself, I'm off to Dorchester, to look at a house I'm hoping to buy. What's your work?”

‘I told him I was a gardener who'd heard there was work at Salisbury, and so I was on my way to find it. I didn't spin any hard-luck yarn, though when he set me down in the middle of the town he opened his wallet and gave me ten bob. My thanks were never more sincere, at that time, and maybe it was an omen of good luck, because I stayed two years in Salisbury. Nobody bothered me during all that while, and I was known by a few people well, and many people slightly, and they saw me only as a quiet person who'd come down from the North. I gave out that I had worked as a miner since I was fourteen but that now, nearly twenty years later, having been menaced by a soot-kiss of silicosis, I had to get out of such drudgery. What's more, my widowed mother had died, and being the only child of an only child, there was nothing in the line of duty to keep me in the North Pole of Nottinghamshire.

‘I worked as a van driver and odd-job man for a market gardener, so that I was soon seen to be getting my health back, much to everyone's touching concern. I lodged with a widow who had a moonshine face, and who (so it was said to me later in the pub) had been married for a fortnight fifteen years ago to a man gone into the Merchant Navy at the beginning of the war. Before the end of it he had just vanished, so after a while I shared her bed at night because, believe me, there was still a lovely amount of juice in her.

‘But one morning, for no other reason than waking up with a headache (or it may have been stomach ache, I forget, and in any case, it doesn't matter which it was) I kissed her goodbye as I always did on going to work, and came back an hour later when I knew she'd be out shopping. I had forty quid put by, as well as a watch and a small radio, and with my suitcase and overcoat I walked to the station and took the mile-a-minute train to London. I wondered whether I hadn't done the wrong thing when I saw the desert of Surbiton out of the window, but stepping from the train at Waterloo, I walked along the Thames to Hungerford Bridge through the air of summer dust and smoke that made me shout with happiness. I crossed the footbridge, sweating over my case, though it wasn't that heavy, and stood looking at the green water oiling its way against the supports below, and passenger boats loaded with people setting off downstream for Greenwich. The line of the shore pressed itself into me, and I was disturbed from looking at it by the whole bridge shuddering as a train punched out of Charing Cross. I was so happy I dropped a shilling in an old man's cap who was playing a tin whistle. The city seemed made for me, a land of treasure I'd never felt so close to before.

‘When you feel like this on coming to town there's only one sort of life you can lead, and that is a life of crime. I own up to it Knocking around Soho I heard of a garage that took stolen cars, and I lost no time in selling a few I found by the roadside – usually cars of the medium-expensive kind – and this time I got a better price for them, I might tell you. As is only right and proper, one thing led to another, and I began to help in robberies, usually as the driver of a getaway car. In this I was expert because I'd studied the map and was familiar with much of London. I could do a zig-zag course with such speed and skill that I'd throw anybody off the scent. To bring my story right up to press I was one of the four who did a job that netted eight thousand pounds. The trouble was that I got caught, while the others didn't. We were getting away, but the cops were closing in because we had a radio with their wave length on it and could hear them yapping to each other. So I let the others out, and set off towards Croydon on my own. I was nabbed, and the beak gave me five years. I've just finished four of them, and got out yesterday, heading for London now so that I can claim my two thousand pounds. Don't tell me it's hopeless and that I won't find it, because I know I will. I could have got off with a lot less than five years if I'd given the other three away and put the police on the trail of the loot, but I didn't. I held out and said I'd done nothing except steal sixty-two cars, and finally that was all they could get me for.'

The end of Bill Straw's story brought us north of Biggies wade. Rain was coming through the roof, and the South wasn't living up to its promise. With so much damage done to the car, I was driving on borrowed time. Both of us felt it. The engine was coughing like a man in the last stages of TB and it was Bill Straw's opinion that, as the car seemed to need not only a new body but also a new engine, I might be wise after all to abandon ship and leave it by the roadside to rot. ‘It doesn't sound good,' he said, ‘so you might as well cut your losses. Anyway, let's have our dinner and give it time to cool down. A bag of damp hay might encourage it. Do it the world of good, and we'd benefit by something to eat as well – at least I would. Can't seem to live on fags like you do.'

‘You're always on about food,' I told him, ‘when you're not running down my car, or boasting about your past exploits.'

‘You should feel privileged,' he said, ‘to be driving me to London. I'll be a rich man when I get there, and then I'll pay you back tenfold for all you might still spend on me.' I had a strange feeling when he said this, not at all distrustful of him, as if he really might turn up in the future and demonstrate some blinding shaft of truth out of all the lies he'd been telling.

I parked as far as I could from the lorries, and followed Bill in. He stood at the counter, eyes turned up to the menu as if it was the light from heaven. ‘What'll you have?'

‘I've already decided,' he said. ‘It don't take me long to make up my mind when it comes to food.'