A Start in Life (34 page)

They were glad to see the back of us, though not of William, because he left a ten-bob note for a tip. ‘You're more trouble than a bloody baby,' he said, and, after we'd been to the hat-shop, ‘Now who's that coming towards yourself in that mirror over there?'

‘Where?' I said. ‘Where?' – looking straight into it, at this smart young fellow I didn't for a moment recognize. I tipped my hat to him, and wondered what the hell would happen next.

The following morning Mr Hay went on a trip to Beirut, and I was left again to wander the town. But I had been given instructions as to what I should do, each daily walk marked on a map in different-coloured pencil. William stipulated that I must carry my briefcase, which he had already filled with short lengths of lead so that it felt on lifting like a twenty-pound weight hanging from my arm. What's more, he had taken the key so that I couldn't throw any of it out. There was, of course, no reason why I should have carried the briefcase at all, but because this was an important part of my training I didn't want to spoil any chance of getting into their racket simply by being idle and unable to carry the right weight when it came to a test. The first day took me to the middle of town and back, and I don't know whether it was part of a laugh on William's part, but it so happened from the map that I was to turn around at the Old Bailey.

The idea that I was to take this weight, and wear my hat, and walk in a casual way as if I had little more than a copy of that morning's newspaper in my briefcase was, as I found after the first hundred yards, easier said than done. In the middle of Battersea Bridge I wanted to put it down and sit on it because I was sweating like a dog. When I picked it up again I wanted to sling it in the river. But I carried on, recalling as I walked how my Irish ancestors (one of them anyway) had survived the Famine created by the callous English in order to come over and build the railways for them, digging out their navigating guts as they linked up one place to another. So bearing this picture, I struggled through Chelsea, hoping I didn't look too much like a coalman about to deliver his last load of the day.

By the time I got back to the flat my arms felt a foot longer, but the second day was worse because though by then I'd got used to carrying the actual weight, I had been specially requested to put on the expression of nonchalance. If it was impossible to do this on setting out, it was even more difficult by the time I was on the return leg. The walks had been planned so that they got longer each time, and when I was putting the key into the flat door I cursed myself for a fool and swore I'd clear out as soon as I got my clothes together. It had drizzled and rained much of the day, what's more, and this only increased my exhaustion and despondency.

After a bath and a few mugs of tea I began to lose my rage. From the height of the flat I could look out, and see that the rain had stopped. The sun was shining somewhere, and softened the light, giving a rich and vivid colour to the air. It made me think of the marvellous and narrow life I'd left behind in Nottingham, though it didn't inspire me to go back there. Then I had a vision of all I could do in this soft and beautiful world if I had money, and that since I might be put in the way of getting plenty if I followed William's advice, I might as well persist in this short stretch of training he had set for me during his absence. It would be weak and foolish to give up now, and I had never considered myself either weak or foolish. I put on a record, and fell asleep before the first side ended, not waking up until the following morning, when the treadmill began all over again.

I had broken through, picked up that briefcase like an old friend, as if we'd already done a full year of days together. With a newspaper under the other arm I whistled along, even saying a cheery good morning to a copper on the bridge – knowing old Hay would approve of that. This was the longest trudge of all, but I knew I could make it. I walked from Battersea to the middle of Hampstead, changing the briefcase over now and again, but only as if to give the other hand the privilege of holding it. On the map there was a blue circle around the Tube station at Hampstead, which meant I was to have lunch there, and I made it a good one, dawdling so long at the Pimpernel that it was almost three o'clock before I left.

The day was fine, except for a bit of wind which nearly blew my hat off a time or two, and I actually enjoyed the walk, the weight no longer so oppressive that I couldn't look around me and take things in. My route led down through the streets towards Finchley Road, and I was passing a row of large houses which were used as private schools. Boys came out wearing fancy caps with tassels, and the girls with grey bowlers, accompanied by maids or parents. There was a queue of glossy cars waiting by the kerb, and a lot of honking from some that wanted to turn round and get out of the cul-de-sac. It was amusing to pick my way through, and assume the easiness of a father going there casually from the office (after a hard day since eleven o'clock) to pick up his Crispin and Felicity. But I stopped to watch a little boy with a briefcase stand outside a door at the top of some steps. He wore his cap at such an extremely cocky angle that it was about to slide off. The heavy black glasses were so big over his eyes that they almost covered his face. Compared with the rest of the kids swarming down the steps he was very small indeed, yet through this disguise of posh-school clobber I would have known him anywhere.

He jumped up on the concrete wall, which sloped steeply towards the gate-post, put his briefcase on it, and slid at a great rate to the bottom, falling off so that his cap went one way and his glasses the other. The school door opened, and Bridgitte ran down the steps, picked him up, smacked his face, and collected his things together. ‘You shouldn't hit a kid like that,' I said. ‘It's just high spirits.'

She glared at me without recognition. ‘Mind your own business. I'm his mother.'

‘Are you? I must be his father, then. Don't you know me, darling?'

She looked again, but Smog cried: ‘It's Uncle Mike! Have you come to take me away?'

‘You!' she said. ‘What do you want?'

‘Thanks for the welcome. I thought we were old friends – until you vanished out of my life.'

‘I'm Mrs Anderson now,' she said, ‘thanks to you. And the mother of this.'

‘It's not possible,' I laughed, taking it bravely.

‘It is, let me tell you.' Smog snuggled up to my legs. Then he danced around me. He tried to pick up my briefcase, but stopped when his face turned purple. He kicked it, and stubbed his toe, came close to tears. Then he laughed and grabbed me again. ‘Still the same old Smog,' I said, pulling his cap off and putting it in my pocket.

‘He's not,' she said, ‘he's worse. I took him to Holland last month and he wrecked my father's farm. He laid it waste singlehanded, and my father won't see me again.'

I was mystified at the fact that, as she said, she was now Mrs Anderson, and I tried to cover my wound by banter. ‘Anyway,' she said, ‘we don't call him Smog any more. It's forbidden. It's very bad for him.'

‘It can't make him much worse than he is, can it, Smog?'

He looked up: ‘No, it can't actually. Will you buy us some cakes?'

‘You'd better ask your mother.'

‘She's not my mother. My mother went away, and divorced Daddy because she found him in bed with Bridgitte.'

‘Is that so?' I said. ‘You can't trust anybody these days, can you? Never tell anybody that you love them. That's my motto from now on.'

‘Poor you,' she said.

‘Let's find a place to have some tea,' I said, taking Smog's hand and offering my arm to Bridgitte. We walked down the hill, looking as united a group as ever was.

‘You set the whole thing off,' she said, as if wishing I never had, which made me see a glimmer of hope over the opposite rooftops. ‘You remember,' she went on, after we'd found a corner table in a respectable place near Swiss Cottage, ‘when we last met, and I told you that Donald – that's my husband's name – had been trying to make up to me – I mean make me, as you say – and you said I should slip some lipstick in his bed so that his wife would find it, and throw him out? Well, I was putting it in there, very neatly, when he was out, or so I thought, but he was in, and standing watching me. He saw me take the lipstick from my pocket and pull back the bedclothes, then bend over to set it under the pillows. When I'd done this he asked me what I thought I was doing, and I was so confused that he jumped on me and pulled my clothes off. I don't know why, but I couldn't fight him. I was shouting for help, and calling your name, but then I saw that it was no use, and he did everything to me, as well as beating me, because he saw I'd been trying to do him some harm with the lipstick.

‘Then – I'm sorry Michael – but there was nothing I could do about it. I forgot everything. He did, too, because he's told me so since, and while we were there, his wife came in and saw us. She's tall and thin and has nearly no breasts, though she's very good-looking at the face. She shouted it was the last straw, packed her things, and went in a taxi. The next day she came with a vehicle and took half the furniture. I was surprised she didn't take Smog, but she didn't because Donald told me she was going to live with her own lover who wouldn't have put up with him for a single minute. Then I found out that they were divorced already, had been for a year! So we got married because he said he loved me, and we were still living together, anyway. I liked him, just a little bit, you know.'

‘I phoned you,' I said bitterly, ‘night after night, and I called at the flat as well.'

‘We went to Scotland for a fortnight, and then we gave up the flat. We live in Hampstead now in a house.'

‘Things happen too fast to me. I'm still in love with you.' It was the truth. She was no longer dressed like the gorgeous au pair girl of old, but had put on a few years of maturity with the clothes of a London wife, not to mention her added responsibilities.

‘I can't say anything,' she nudged me. ‘You understand?' – a glance at Smog who now had all three cups in front of him and was filling them with the remains of the tea, water, milk, and sugar, as well as the stinking contents of the ashtray.

‘At least give me your telephone number so that we can have a secret word together now and again. There'll be no harm in that.'

‘I hope not,' she said, smiling as she wrote it out for me. She stood up to go. ‘Come on, Smog.'

‘I haven't finished my chemical experiments.'

‘Smog, don't be a little bastard. Come on.'

He stood up and put on his cap, backwards. ‘I'm not a little bastard. I want to go with Michael.'

‘You can't,' I said, ‘not yet.' As I shook hands for the farewell she said: ‘You look more prosperous.'

‘Changed my job. I work for the Bank of England. Just been to see a client who has an overdraft. If we can get him to settle it, England's balance of payments will be OK – for this month anyway. I get all sorts of special missions like this. Mother pulled a few strings to get me the job. I don't mind using her if I'm in an especially tight corner.'

‘I don't believe you,' she laughed. ‘But we won't go into that.'

I smiled, as if I thought she was being facetious, not trusting me on such a trifle: ‘That's all right. So we'll be in touch?' I put an end to it rather coolly, though I feel we parted with mutual twelve per cent interest in each other.

I was too occupied in the next few weeks even to talk to anybody on the telephone. The day arrived when William, who claimed he'd put in an excellent word for me, said that the man in the iron lung would like to make my acquaintance. Before this came we went on the longest walk of all – to Highgate and back – after which I felt as fit and lean as a tiger, for the continual weight I carried was turning me into a savage, though in my face I had to show no emotion at all, unless it was that of a man mulling over some mild assignment that may possibly be fatal for others but in no way for himself.

We went to an immense block of old-fashioned flats near the Albert Hall, and William was greeted at the entrance by the doorman as if he himself had been a millionaire tenant there for twenty years. He took us up in the lift and rang the bell so that neither William nor I need take off our gloves. We were shown into the richest flat I had ever seen, a hall with pictures and vases that my fingers itched to latch upon. Then I remembered my newly opening prospects in life, and in any case they were things I couldn't properly hide on me. A butler took us into a smaller room, which had a few simple chairs around the walls and a table in the middle. There were copies of
Country Life
and
The Connoisseur
on the table, though neither of us read, but sat there without talking.

I felt my heart trying to push its way through to fresh air, and I wanted to light a cigarette, but sensed that William would have disapproved, and in any case there were no ashtrays. So I calmed myself by saying I was man enough not to get upset at this ordinary happening of being forced to wait. The last few weeks were beginning to show me that emotion must always be kept in the negative, must never be developed into a picture for the rest of the world to see. A man who shows nothing of his inner turmoil is always more formidable than one who can't help but do so and who doesn't even realize what a fool he makes of himself when he does. At the same time you have to be careful not to let this façade of calmness destroy the actual feelings inside, because that would be cutting off your nose to spite your face, as they say. I was mulling on the fact while we waited, that thought and self-examination, more than anything else, was what kept you looking as if nothing could ever break in from the outside world.

We were shown in by a tall young man with dark hair, and a soft, half-smiling face. The room was so long that the ceiling seemed lower than the one outside. There were no carpets on the floor, but a black and white design in soft lino tiles. It was less furnished in every respect, except for a few maps that had been framed, and hung in odd places along the walls. At the other end of the room a large relief map of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, had been fixed to the ceiling. Red string connected various places on it, so that it looked like the sales map of some large export firm, except for its peculiar position.