A Start in Life (24 page)

I was beginning to feel that Bridgitte must be a bit mentally deficient because she believed everything I said, until it occurred to me that perhaps I was a good liar. But I was only a good liar to her, and maybe this meant that we had fallen just a little in love for them to be so effective. It was that feeling of trust we had in each other that made the lies I told so unimportant.

I went to the club every day, but got more time off the longer I worked there, and this bettering of my conditions made me less keen to give the job up, though I was still determined to. The other bouncer was Kenny Dukes, who'd been a middleweight boxer in his younger days. But now he was gone to fat and viciousness, with pink skin and half-bald fair hair, smelling of scent and immaculately dressed. The girls who worked there were afraid of him, though he had an air of gentleness, almost tenderness, about him. I could imagine he kept canaries, reared them with great love, but only for the pleasure of breaking their necks when he was in a temper about something he thought the world was trying to do to him. Then he could have a good cry and feel a new man after it. June said he was afraid of nobody but Claud Moggerhanger, but then, she added, everyone was afraid of
him
, though she personally didn't know why because he was always charming and courteous as far as she was concerned.

‘He was the man who tried to run my car into the wall when I was coming into London,' I said. We sat in a pub when some of our time-off coincided, both of us with a brandy.

She laughed. ‘I know. I knew it then, but didn't say anything. He was only trying to run you off the road as a bit of a joke because he saw me in the car.'

‘Christ,' I gasped, ‘what's he to you?'

‘He's my boyfriend.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘I'm not afraid of him, I'll tell you that. If I see him on the road again and I'm in a good-sized car I'll try to do the same to him.'

‘It was his idea of a bit of fun,' she said. ‘Honestly. Anyway, he's the man you're working for now. He's a good person, even though he has got a bit of a name in this area.' Since he was her boyfriend I couldn't say much more against him, so I shut my trap on that topic.

‘You remember Bill Straw?' she asked. I nodded. ‘Well, when we left you a broken man at Hendon, he came to the Tube with me, and insisted on seeing me back to my flat in Camden Town. I told him not to, but he wouldn't take no as a warning, and when we got there, Claud was already waiting, sitting inside. Bill tried to kiss me at the door, and when I told him not to be so stupid he pushed his way in. Claud stood up and came towards him. Bill's face turned into a whited sepulchre when he recognized him. He stood gaping, still holding my valise that he'd kindly carried for me. Claud took out a couple of half-crowns and gave them to him as if he was a porter, then pushed him gently through the door so that he fell on his back. I haven't seen him since.'

I couldn't help but reflect that it served that Bill Straw bastard right, after he had so gleefully left me in the lurch with my ruined car. ‘I expect he'll turn up,' I said. ‘He was hoping to lay his hands on a few thousands in ready cash when he got here.'

‘I hope he doesn't show his eyes when Claud's around,' she said. ‘He's very possessive. He might even get upset if he saw me in here with you, but not so much because he knows about me getting that lift in your car. He doesn't like me to have any other boyfriends, though he doesn't care how many girlfriends I have. In fact I think he actually gets a kick out of it, the bloody Turk!'

Talk of the devil, and a few days later Claud Moggerhanger came into the club to see that all was going well. He saw me standing at the door, and recognized me, I'm sure, from the hard stare he gave. I met it, and sent it back. Ten minutes later the manager tapped me on the elbow to say that Mr Moggerhanger wanted to see me. ‘What for?' I asked, sharp of voice.

‘I don't know,' he said on the way down: ‘Maybe he's got work for you.'

‘I've already got some.'

‘You'd better be on your best behaviour,' he said, so pale and serious that I laughed.

Moggerhanger filled the cubby-office, and you could tell he owned it. ‘I remember you, Michael. Do you remember me?'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘I got a good look at you.'

‘Well, Michael, we'd better get our relationship all correct and right from the very beginning. I think I can trust you. At least Mr Dent tells me I should be able to. Also, as I already know, you're a good hand at driving a car. I'm going to let you into something personal: my doctor says that my ulcer is playing up, and though I enjoy driving, he advises me to get a chauffeur. I'm offering you that job – providing you've got a licence and haven't any convictions.'

I was going to tell him he needn't worry about that, but he lifted a hand full of rings and said: ‘Shut up and listen to me. First of all, you call me sir. OK? Then you have a room at my house in Ealing. Right? Then you get the same pay as you're getting here. Agreed?' I'd had no time to say anything, but I did get a brief nod in now and again. ‘If you consider this in the nature of a promotion,' he said, ‘we'll get on fine. I don't ask much, except superlative driving and absolute loyalty. That means no talking. See all, hear all, and say nowt. A loose lip means a cut lip. I only let the silent sort of chap close to me. Understand?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Good,' he nodded. ‘A lad like you might go a long way.' And that was that. I'd become the personal chauffeur to the biggest and richest racketeer in town.

Mr Moggerhanger fixed me up with an attic room at his big house in Ealing. My quarters, as he called them, were a room with a sloping ceiling against which I continually bumped my head, unless I went around doubled up like a collier. There were a few oddments and throwouts of furniture spaced about, which were enough for me. The floor was bare boards, covered with jagged splashes of white paint where some maniac had decorated the walls and let flip with it everywhere.

As soon as I got there Moggerhanger told me to take out the Bentley and drive it around for an hour to get the feel of it. It was like driving somebody's living-room. You could almost stand up inside it, and touch it along at over a hundred miles an hour when you dare. I had no other thought in my head when I'd lifted off except to keep it unscratched and in one piece. My main aim was to have it out on the A4 and into the country, because I didn't want to run it against too much traffic on my first hand-in. I acted gingerly, until I found that its acceleration and speed, not to mention its presence, overawed most other drivers. All I had to do was flash straight for a souped-up sales rep in his new Cortina as if I were intent on smashing him to bits, and he'd get out of the way sooner or later. Sometimes it was later, but he slid from my path nevertheless. The only danger was those people with foreign cars, owner-occupiers who were so convinced of their superiority over anything English that they were insane or fanatic enough not to get clear under any circumstances, and in that case I had to pull back. But I didn't hate them for this, for in many ways they were right not to give in just because I drove a Bentley, which was after all somebody else's.

When Moggerhanger sat in the front with me, he made remarks as if he were at the wheel himself. ‘Go on,' he'd say, ‘step on it and you'll get across before the lights change. Overtake that Cooper. You can see the bastard thinks he's God Almighty. If you keep on, you can flatten him as you turn the next corner, get him up against the kerb.' At night, when we were coming back from his ranch in Berkshire he'd say, ‘That nut should dip his headlamps. Flash him, Michael. Do a swerve and shake the shit out of him. Scrape him like a box of matches, so that he goes up in flames. I'll foot the bill for a tin of new paint on our car.'

‘Yes, Mr Moggerhanger,' I'd say, doing none of these devilish things to other road-users, unless they were absolutely in the wrong and I could teach them a lesson with no danger to myself. But Moggerhanger enjoyed talking like this, and that's all that mattered. If I'd followed him to the letter I'd have been out on my arse in no time, of that I'm sure, and so I just gazed straight ahead with the poker-face I was developing fast, and said nothing except yes, Mr Moggerhanger and no, Mr Moggerhanger.

The trouble was that he belched all the time, and it stank rotten in the car. I wasn't allowed to smile, so had to put up with it. He seemed a bit apologetic about it at first, because he said once or twice: ‘I'm only healthy when I'm belching, Michael. It's the breath of life to me.' He didn't even laugh when he said it. Mostly he sat in the back with a briefcase on his knee, and a bundle of newspapers. Whenever I had to wait an hour outside the lawyers' office I'd get stuck in and read these, every morning paper you could find, so that I caught up on the news and scandal as part of my job.

On long drives, Moggerhanger might break into a long bout of talking: ‘The only luxury in life,' he said, ‘is to have more than one place to live. Nothing else matters. You can eat bread and oil, wear a sack, but if you've got a few places scattered around, plus half a dozen passports, nobody can touch you. The trouble is, I can't wear a sack because people wouldn't be impressed by me, and I have to eat four-course lunches otherwise they'd think I was dying and about to lose my grip. And I can't walk everywhere or take buses because then I'd never have time to get anything done. But at least I have a flat in town, a place in Berks, a bungalow in Cornwall, and a chalet in Majorca – not to mention the abode in Ealing and a little place in Kent. That's property, Michael, that is. And there'a a car at each place. I could live off that for the rest of my life in a quiet sort of way if anything went wrong, fundamentally wrong I mean. Of course my wife wouldn't like it, and my spoiled daughter would gripe even more, but I do have a bit of cupro-nickel stashed away in Switzerland to stop their mouths if that should ever come about. I've got it all weighed up, except the weight of my fist. Only others can tell me about that, and they never do because they'd get knocked for six. Not that I think that's the only way to deal with people, Mikey-boy, because it ain't. I'm not inhuman. Violence never got anyone anywhere, at least not all violence, and not everywhere. I used to lean a bit too much that way, but then I saw that most of it wasn't necessary. The reputation of being rough was all I needed to get me what I wanted. I had to punch or slash some poor bastard once in a while whether he deserved it or not, just to show my kidneys were still hard. I gradually got better with the quick lip and the flash look, and nowadays I hardly ever have to prove even to myself that I'm as tough as I once was. Life's like that. If I say it's funny I'll spit blood. If I say it's hard I'll swallow my teeth. I don't say anything except talk about the way it is. The war made me, or helped to. I was nearly thirty then, with such a criminal life behind me that even the Army turned up its nose. It came at the right time as far as I was concerned, though I wished it never had come when it finished and I saw what it did to so many in Europe. I never bargained for that, Mikey. None of us did. But what else could I do but take advantage of it? I was made that way, by myself and by others. I wasn't unpatriotic. Don't get me wrong. I'm as English to the bone as the next man – though not to the marrow perhaps. I just helped to channel certain food supplies in the right direction, and to organize exotic entertainments that might not otherwise have been available. All much of a muchness. Property was dirt cheap, and I snapped up a few big places. Went from worse to bad and bad to better, and when I find it hard to get to sleep at night I keep telling myself over and over again how much money I'm worth, in round figures, of course. Believe it or not, it actually soothes me. It's a great big cushion I float on to. I think I'd turn queer if it weren't for all this money! It's all right, Mikey-moo, I shan't, so don't shift over. In the prime of my fifty-year-old life I'm beginning to get an ulcer, and it's hard to say what's giving it. All my life I've only needed to glance at a person to tell whether I can deal with him or not. But this spot-on ability is what built up my ulcer – over the years. So it's my ulcer now that tells me whether or not I can treat with someone. I feel it jump, not much, sometimes more – than others, but it jumps, and I can feel it. If I look at a person and my ulcer's quiet, then he's OK. If it jumps, then I put on the big stuff to help me to get what I want. A perfect ulcerometer, Michael. I must patent it. Maybe everyone should have one in their guts. You've got to turn everything to your own advantage, especially the bad things, because if the good things help other people it's the bad things you've got that help yourself. Not that I'm having everything out of life. Far from it. In the first place I don't even know what I want. I only know what I haven't got, which might sound like the same thing but isn't at all. One thing I haven't yet got is a son. I don't drink my spinal fluid over it, but it bites me now and again. I've got plenty of daughters, but only one by my own wife. I've never had a son, though they do say it takes a real man to go on making daughters. I've had so many here, there and everywhere that I always know a child is mine, just because it's a daughter. If one of my women had a son I'd know she'd been treacherous. I'd slash her till she looked like a circus tent after a stormy night, not to mention what I'd do to the real ponce-headed daddy. But it's all talk, Michael. I don't do much more than talk these days, I can tell you, but it's enough, and if it wasn't I'd soon turn to a little blunt persuasion.'

Not long afterwards he tried some of this, and was arrested on a charge of extortion. At first I was glad that the great Moggerhanger had come crashing down at last, even though I'd listened to his talk with a lot of admiration. And I thought goddammit here goes my job, but suddenly he pours into the house from a taxi, having got out on five thousand pounds bail. And then I was pleased to see him. His wife clung to him as if he'd already done twenty years in prison. ‘I wish you'd retire, Claud,' she said, ‘and not get mixed up in things like this any more.' She seemed to have the idea that he was the managing director of a straight factory who'd got taken in by dishonest underlings.