A Start in Life (20 page)

‘It's always better to act. Never stifle what you feel to be a fundamental impulse. If it causes chaos, so much the better, because maybe the right sort of order and happiness will arise from it. It can never come out of anything else, and that's a fact, my friend. You look young and inexperienced enough to believe all I'm saying and maybe to benefit by it At least you deserve to, because I'm enjoying this coffee, even the mud at the bottom. Will you be in here to eat tomorrow night? If you are I'll buy you a meal.'

‘God knows where I'll be. I've got to start looking for a room in the morning.' I felt at the bottom of a pit, dying from lack of sleep, so I paid my bill and trudged back to the hotel.

I must have got to sleep because it was suddenly morning, and when I looked at the fine-faced ticker-watch nicked from Clegg, it was nine o'clock. I dressed, dragged a razor over me, and went downstairs for breakfast.

It was a good meal, and I stuffed everything into me within reach, so as to get my money's worth, and to save buying much for a midday meal. I shared a table with a melancholic blond Scandinavian from a town called Swedenborg who said he was writing articles on London vice dens. He had no appetite, so it was double toast and butter for me. He grumbled at not being able to work, because at each vice den he succumbed to much that was offered, which meant that he didn't get back till dawn and had no time to crank up his typewriter and compose his piece. I couldn't spend much sympathy with him, but wished him better luck, lit up a Whiff, and went out.

It was a raw morning, and though it was foul I liked it because it was in London. At the nearest newsagent's I bought a street atlas and a copy of the local paper, two pieces of literature to see me through the day. It felt good to have my legs working again, and I was determined to walk them back into shape, for they'd grown soft in the glorious weeks of having a car. At Russell Square the ache was so sharp at my calves that I considered jumping a Tube to Soho, but gritted my toes and traipsed on, pausing now and again for a flip at the map. The girls looked lovely in their muffed-up coats, and fine sharp noses turned in the air. My eyes said good morning to each one passing, but a frosty nip was darted back as if even their cunts were cold.

The smell of the city was like Brilliantine and smoke, chicken and iron filings, and I fed on it as I walked along, even smiling at the curses of a taxi driver when I nipped too sharply on to a pedestrian crossing. You couldn't take your rights too much for granted here, I thought, and was even glad of such cold comfort, for my backbone was made of optimism. Two million people were in their factories, shops, and offices, all endowed with the heavenly privilege of work, as Almanack Jack might have put it, and here was I for the moment at least cast in the mould of idleness that only their massive labour made possible. The very idea of it made me want to stop at the nearest bar for a cup of coffee, but what I wanted most was a piss due to the monstrous amount of tea I had put back at breakfast. I didn't know a soul in London, and that as much as anything made me love it. With so much money I felt like a prince. I'd saved up to squander it in just this way, and to worry about it seemed more unnecessary than ever as I found a place on Tottenham Court Road to unload those pots of tea in.

That first day I walked and re-walked the whole middle area of London, and by the end of it, when I headed back in the direction of the hotel, I knew that it wasn't as big as I'd always heard it was. The next day I did the City, and for a fortnight, till my money was near enough done for, I got familiar with most of the sprawl. At first the far-off places were known only from the Tube scheme. If I was at Bond Street and wanted to go to Hampstead I looked at the underground map and said to myself: ‘I'll get on the Central Line to Tottenham Court Road, then turn left on the Northern Line, and go up until I see Hampstead on the station label.' Often I'd fiddle my way down by bus until, eventually, if some foreigner (or even Londoner) stopped me in the street and asked where a certain place was I'd be able to tell them in five cases out of ten. This made me feel good, and was all very well but, as the dough ran low, it didn't tell me how I'd latch on to any more. Not that I was obsessed by this, because I felt if it came to the worst I'd be able to do something like Almanack Jack, or get a job for a week or two, until something more money-like came along. What it would be I had no idea, and didn't much care, because exploring this gigantic and continuous prairie of buildings during the day, and wandering around the West End like the Phantom of the Opera until late at night, didn't leave much time or energy for serious speculation. In other words I was living the full life because I felt no real connexion to what went on around me. If I had, or began to, I should become buried in it and wouldn't be able to see anything at all. Which was why I clung as long as possible to my arduous free wandering.

Opening my map one day near Leicester Square I saw a good-looking blonde girl coming down the street. As if puzzled and halfway lost I spoke when she drew level, asking if she could kindly direct me to Adam Street. ‘Unfortunately not,' she said. ‘I'm not familiar too much with London because I come from Holland.'

‘Sorry,' I replied, ‘but I thought you might have been able to tell me. You look like a typical London girl to me. I'm a stranger here as well, because I'm from Nottingham. I'm studying there at the university, doing English Literature. Watch out, or that car will take your arse off. Pardon me, it's only a colloquial expression. I'll explain it to you if you come and have a cup of coffee. I'm down here for a few weeks, staying at a hotel, but my mother is coming to see me tomorrow to make sure I'm not getting into mischief. It's going to be a bore showing her around, but she insists on keeping me under her thumb, so what can I do?' Just when she was beginning to find my gamut had a bit of a hook to it, she noticed that we were standing outside a strip club with framed photos hung up of bare women whose faces you couldn't see for their breasts. From the pious distaste on her face she might have thought I'd try to drag her inside, drug her, and rumble her off to a miners' club in Sheffield. So I put on an honest, half-bewildered expression, folded my map, and took her by the elbow.

A few minutes later we were sitting in the Swiss Centre having cakes and coffee. ‘You a student, then?' I asked. She wore a nice white blouse with a brooch at the neck, looked icy and demure, the last person it seemed possible to go to bed with, so why the hell had I picked her? She blushed, though I didn't know why, and said: ‘I'm working in this London, as an au pair girl. But I'm also studying to make my English fluent.'

‘That's hardly necessary,' I told her. ‘Your vocabulary dazzles me. It scintillates.' My only chance of maintaining hold of her was to keep the talkpot boiling with words that she understood but hardly knew the meaning of. If it was English she wanted, English she would get, and since I was born talking the lingo, who could give it to her better than old Jack Spice? I said how perfectly good her English was, while at the same time using words in such a way that she thought she'd never heard them before. ‘My family dwell in a mansion-hall near Nottingham,' I went on, ‘a place my mother had me in, with its own hallelujah-garden where an old monk chapel once stood, and where we used to see silent films as kids. A private tutor taught me, up to the year of twelve, and then I was sent to a boarding college, though I kicked up the hot dust of hell because I didn't want to be pitched out like that. But our family is bound by the steelropes of tradition. That's England all over, and also what's wrong with it. There was no gainsaying them. Yet it had its advantages, because me and my three brothers, as we came of age at fourteen, were taught to drive in a dual-controlled Rolls-Royce in the private grounds, which was a useful experience. That training Rolls has been in our family for generations.

‘The more you know me the more you'll hear about my family, because families are like iron in this country, very important, worse luck. I've been wanting to kick mine off like a salty boot for as long as I started to dream, but it's no use. In any case what's the point? When I'm twenty-one in three months' time I'm going to get a quarter of a million in sterling cash, and a tax-free income of fifteen thousand pounds a year. So it's hard to let that slip out of my hands. Not that it would worry me if I never got it, because I'm quite capable of being independent and earning my own living. In fact I'm seriously considering giving my money, when it's due to me, to the Charitable Organization Inching Towards Unspeakable Suffering – otherwise known by its initials as – well, anyway, it's such a scorching brain problem with me, my dear, that its intensity sometimes threatens to trouble my studies. However, I imagine people do have worse worries, though I can't visualize what they are, because this certainly seems real enough to me.'

I spoke such as this, and more, not in a swift, manic, lynx-eyed way, but slowly and mellowly, as if throwing it off in a familiar drift, casually, blowing out nasal cigarette smoke and sipping my coffee. I told her my name was Richard Arbuthnot Thompson, but that I was called Michael by my friends, when they hadn't cause to use my initials, but within an hour she was tearful and wringing her hands over my dreadful dilemma of whether or not I should accept my share of the family fortune and be imprisoned within it for life, or whether I should be poor, independent, and territorially unsung. I knew which side she'd come down on in the end, if we knew each other that long, but I let her get all deliciously upset over my nonexistent problem because it drew us together like liquid dynamite. In two hours, and a different café, we were gazing into each other's eyes while our cigarettes burned low and our vile coffee got cold. I said that in case I did repudiate the family coffers I was already practising the holy art of self-abnegation, and though I'd be delighted if she'd eat with me, it had to be in Joe Lyons at no more than five bob a head.

So we had lunch, and I told her how much it meant to me, having found someone who actually had the greatness of mind to understand my problem and not laugh at it. Then we went into the National Gallery (free) so that I could show her what pictures were fakes, because the real ones existed in the northern wing of Nondescript Hall, which was the name of my family and ancestral home. The more I posed at being noble, the more noble I felt, and it occurred to me that you are what you tell yourself you are, not what other people tell you that you are. You've only got to insist loud enough, and the clouds open to let in the sort of sunshine you've always been looking for.

Later that afternoon my new-found girlfriend, whose name I made out to be Bridgitte Appledore, said she had to go to the house she was working at because a night of baby-sitting had been arranged. Such had been my all-day gabble that she'd told me nothing about herself, but I hoped that would come later when I'd got more of a toe-hold into her confidence.

She worked for a doctor and his wife, who lived in a big place near the BBC. When they'd gone out she came down and let me in, and up I went by lift to the fourth floor.

I'd not been into such a flat before. It was so rich it didn't even smell rich, but was full of good furniture and paintings, books and carpets. Bridgitte told me to sit in the living-room while she put a few finishing touches to the little boy of six who still crowed from his bed. I poured a cut of the doctor's whisky and relaxed on the long deep settee, half listening to the inane story being read to the kid, who interrupted every phrase. I spied a box of Romeo and Juliet Havanas, and lit one – a far cry from a common Whiff – with a heavy effective lighter which had a solid base of pure silver. I was tempted to put it in my pocket, but for the time being resisted it, not knowing Bridgitte well enough to betray her. She might give me away if I nicked something so early on. But I was boasting to myself in even entertaining the idea of making off with such a thing, because I wouldn't know where to sell it without getting caught. In any case I never had been and never would be a thief because I considered that there were better methods of making your way in the world than stooping to that. I just contented myself by taking half a dozen more cigars.

She came in from the kid's room, hot-fer-dommering in Dutch that little Crispin had jumped out of bed and shat on the floor just to annoy her. He did it almost every night and she'd found no way to stop him. She'd told the doctor and his wife but they'd laughed and said it was only his cute little way and that he'd grow out of it soon. Meanwhile she had to be patient with him. There wasn't much else she could do because the job was easy, the pay high, and the flat in the middle of London. She came back from the kitchen with a bowl of water and a bundle of cloths, a cigarette in her mouth to stop herself being sick at the mess. ‘Is he still awake?' I asked.

‘Oh, yes. He likes to look at me cleaning it up.'

‘Let him wait,' I said, ‘for a few minutes. Sit down and finish your smoke. Let him go to sleep before you clean it up. If he misses the show he might not bother again.'

‘You're so clever, Mr Thompson,' she said, but halfway through her cigarette Crispin called: ‘Come to me, Bridgitte. My room smells awfully. I can't go to sleep until it's clean.'

‘Ignore him,' I said, pouring her some whisky.

‘I don't drink,'

‘Try it. It's good for wiping that up.'

‘Perhaps you are right.' She took a little, but made a painface over it. Then she swallowed more, and finished off the glass. I poured her another.

‘Come in here,' Crispin shouted. ‘If you don't wipe my
shit
up, I'll do it again.'

‘Go to sleep, you little—' I shouted.

‘If you don't come and clean it I'll tell Mummy and Daddy there's a man in the flat, then they'll send you away, Bridgitte.'