A Start in Life (42 page)

‘You're so funny,' she said, ‘have you read any good books lately?'

‘I thought it would come to this,' I laughed, taking her hand. ‘Ever since I told you I loved you.' We went through a traffic jam in Tonbridge with the windows down and the radio sending out Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. I forgot for a while the sort of car I was in, but realized it when I saw the other faces looking at me. ‘When do we get to this place in the country?'

She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth: ‘Don't lose patience. That would be even worse than losing your nerve. Another half-hour.

‘I feel like an unlucky pilgrim, caught in the trap of England's arterial lanes. We'll get a dose of arterial sclerosis if we're not careful. All those other screw drivers seem to have it already.' In my right mind I might have sung a song to them, but with Polly by my side an obsession kept twisting in my trousers, and the smell of summer grass didn't calm it beyond noticing. Where be ye, my love? She was by my side, but sitting apart and not sweetly under me, looking ahead at the green tunnel and tarmac track. ‘It's a change from the lake,' I said.

She guided me on to a minor road, then along an unpaved track. ‘Dad's never been here by Bentley. He usually comes in the Land Rover.'

The wheels sank into a rut. ‘It's understandable.' Grey clouds made it feel like rain through the open windows. The soil on the track had been churned by tractors, and when I went too fast on what seemed a level place I hit a water-filled rut and red slosh flew as high as the windscreen, while bushes on both sides scraped the windows and paintwork. ‘You should have told me,' I said, ‘and we could have left the car by the road.' Even Moggerhanger didn't deserve this done to his car, though it was too late now, as we went into another dip. ‘Much farther?'

‘Not much.' A tractor came round the bend, a man perched on top wearing a cap and khaki raincoat, and having the smallest possible stump of fag between his lips. I crushed in the brakes, waited for the small smash, the sort that hurts no one and does no damage, until you try to stand up, when you fall down before you've had time to realize that forty blood vessels are ruptured, or the car itself drops to pieces bit by bit in the weeks that follow and you never know what was the cause of it. But I slithered up to the tractor and stopped a few inches short. The man took off his cap, and smiled: ‘Hello, Miss Moggerhanger! Is your father coming today?'

‘I don't think so, Bill. Everything all right at the house?'

‘Well, it's still there,' he said, as I began to back away. He turned into a field and left the track free, so on I went, splashing over the humps and hollows till I came to an asphalted space in front of a plain two-storeyed brick cottage. The garden was fenced off with white palings, and had a bird bath in the middle of the lawn. At the front door Polly felt in her handbag for the key. It wouldn't fit in the lock. ‘Let me try,' I said, but it was soon plain that she had brought the wrong one. ‘Never mind,' I said, calmly, boiling with rage at such a mistake, ‘we'll get in somehow.'

‘Oh,' she cried, tearfully, ‘how stupid I am.'

‘Don't worry,' I said, my arm around her. ‘We'll find a hotel somewhere. Everything turns out all right, as long as you never think you've made a mistake.' She laughed at this piece of suicidal wisdom, and I tried to lift up the front windows.

‘I don't think it'll be much use. Dad always locks up when we leave, and he really knows how to do it.'

‘Even he can slip up. Let's go to the back.' It was raining again, and through the windows it looked very comfortable. A cat sat on a soaking mat by the back door, flanked by half a dozen empty milk bottles. It got up and rubbed itself against Polly's ankle, as if happy that somebody had come back at last to feed it. The door was locked and bolted from the inside, so I tried the windows. Unless I broke a pane, nothing would come of that. ‘There's a skylight window,' she called out.

‘Unfortunately,' I said, ‘I didn't bring my wings with me. However, I'll get up that drainpipe that leads to the apex of the roof, and slide down to it from the top. Do you dare me to try?'

The cat was cradled in her bosom, and I wanted to belt its earhole out of it. ‘No,' she said, ‘because I know you'll try.'

I went back to the car for a jack-knife, and opened it. ‘If I fall,' I said, putting it between my teeth, ‘I'll have no roof to my mouth.'

‘Nor your head. But please don't do it.'

‘I'm obsessed by it, I've got to do it now, but if I fall it'll be your fault. You'll have to push me in a wheelchair for the rest of our lives.'

‘Oh goody!' she said, as I went up a few notches. I needed to be drunk to do this well, but there was no booze in the car. It seemed as if I was a born steeplejack, because my arms had been so strengthened by William's briefcase training. The one spoiling item was rain spitting all over me that made the drainpipe and its supports more slippery than it need have been. I straddled the roof and shuffled myself along.

Polly shouted from below: ‘That window may be locked as well!' I suppose she wanted me to have a fit and fall, but I'd assumed it would be locked, anyway, which was why I had the jack-knife. The big danger was in sliding halfway down the slope of the wet roof to get to the window. I might lose control and plummet to my doom. It would have been better thatched, but Moggerhanger was always practical, preferred to see rain sliding plainly down his slates, rather than getting mushed up in thatch, where he couldn't keep an eye on it. That stretch of slate glistened, and I couldn't see much to grip on after I'd started the slide. Polly stood out in the back garden for a full view of me against the sky, and I could see her down in the weeds and rotten cabbages.

‘Can you get it open?' she called, seeing that I hadn't yet reached it. I lay flat on the roof, my shoes splayed outwards and arms full length. I could feel the rain on my neck, and I seemed stuck like this for ages, lacking the cool courage and trust to let go. My shoes began sliding, and I pressed them with all force so as to slow down. This helped, for I hit the sill of the skylight, went over it, and stopped.

I was safe, but only by my nails slotted between wood and wood. Cows were moaning from fields round about, a long low gut-stirring complaint saying that I shouldn't be where I was and that if I fell it would serve me right. I was in such a plight that I actually had time to wonder why I was there, and secondly how I'd ever get back to earth if I didn't succeed in breaking in through the window. The only way down was as a human bomb of flesh and blood, to bounce at the earth like a sack of apples and oranges. Be brave, I said, and imagine how cool you'd be if there was only a twelve-inch drop beyond that drainpipe. So I calmed myself, and, hanging with one hand took the clasp knife from my teeth and dug it in the crack of the skylight. To my relief, it was loose, and after some probing I yanked it up and let it fall on my fingers – which cracked them, but I gripped by both hands and drew myself to the ample opening. The skylight frame rested on my head, then my shoulders, till I was out of the rain and able to look into the attic room below. How, though, was I actually to get into it? My scalp itched, and sweat blended with the raindrops, but it was advisable to get in feet first. Luckily there was a bed underneath, with a mattress laid across the frame. I slithered on to it like a crocodile, rolling into a ball as I landed, but spraining my ankle as it hit the end of the bed. I spun about and cursed at the fiery ache, feeling alone in the world, forgetting everything but that torment. Yet I was inside, and stood to celebrate the fact. I held on to the bed and rolled my foot around, then walked to the door, noticing on my way that half a dozen expensive shotguns were laid along a rack by the far wall.

When I opened the back door Polly said: ‘I thought you'd gone to sleep up there.'

‘It was quite a drop,' I told her, as we went through the kitchen, which smelled of dampness and old cornflakes. ‘Is there any brandy in the place?' I found some in the living-room cupboard, and we drank a good slug of it. I put my arm around her, feeling lecherous at the noise of rain dinning against the window. ‘Did you shut the skylight?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Please go and make sure, love.'

I hobbled up to the attic, found an aluminium ladder, and clamped the window into place. The bed was already patched with wet. I picked up a double-barrelled high-powered fowling piece and playfully aimed it through the skylight at the piss-filled clouds. The victory at getting in, and the fact that I would soon be entangled in the warm limbs of sweet Polly, must have turned my head, for in a moment of panache I pulled both triggers. A double explosion thumped my shoulder and threw me on the floor, and the shots brought down a shower of glass and splinters, so that slits of blood joined up with marks of rain and sweat.

Polly stood in the doorway: ‘For God's sake, what have you done?'

‘I'm wounded. Don't just stand there, help me up. Whoever could have left a gun loaded without murder in his heart?'

‘You're not wounded,' she said accusingly.

‘We'd better move the bed, and put a bucket under the hole, otherwise your house will get senile decay.' I hobbled around and looked busy clearing up, while Polly said she'd never known anyone to sprain their ankle simply by firing a shotgun. I couldn't convince her that I'd done it getting in, and that she just hadn't noticed it before.

We had a shower, warm water soaking our skins back to life and sensitivity. She held me by the roots while I latched on to her breasts and soaped her between the legs, until she suddenly jerked and fetched forward as she came. Without waiting to get into the bedroom we lay on the towels and bathmats and shocked off together, wet and raw and flushed after the difficulties of getting in. We pulled each other into the bedroom. She put on a nightdress, then opened a drawer and took out one of her father's linen shirts. ‘Put this on.'

‘I'm not cold.'

Her dark eyes were on fire, and I don't think she could see me at all: ‘Still, put it on.' It meant nothing to me, so I did, and it was so big it was like a nightshirt, pin-striped and without a collar. She lay down, her head on the pillow and hair spread like feathers. My handle grew up, and pushed out the shirt, which she lifted till she got to it, and then I slapped her around and fucked her as hard as I could, while she moaned and whimpered about never having had it like this before, which I didn't believe, though I couldn't think of anything as my prick cut into the shrine of her and shot my life at her womb.

There was nothing to eat in the place, that was the only trouble. We found a box of matzos in the larder, and some cheese that I had to lop the rot from, so we lived on this and black sweet tea till the following morning, though we didn't need too much time to eat. Nor did we benefit from the fresh country air. Polly told me the story of her life, of how she was brought up at Moggerhanger Hall, and the adolescent shock she got when she caught on to her father's profession. She'd always been his darling, and still was, and he lost no opportunity in reminding her of that and the many times as a child when she'd said that when she grew up he was the only one she'd consider marrying. She asked me about my life, and I told her all I knew of it, and of my adventures as a gold-smuggler, on which she asked all sorts of questions about the Jack Leningrad Organization. I told her about William being caught in Beirut, and that because of this the man in the iron lung might be on the move to a new hideout.

‘All this is worth nothing,' I said, while we lounged on the bed, me in her father's shirt which by this time had a bit of rank stiffening in it. ‘The moon is worth nothing. The world is worth nothing. The rain can piss itself to death. All that's worth anything are your kisses.' She almost fainted into my arms at this, and my hand went down as her soft breasts flattened against me, and her eyes closed. ‘We'll have lots of honeymoons, and if life tries to waylay and grab us we'll kick it in the teeth. There's only us, not life.' Her tongue and fingers were in my mouth, as if wanting me to pour out more such words, but I was half gone, then all gone as I went into her again, and got the piston of the two-stroke cycle at a regular knock. It amazed me how much spunk a man had in him, and I wondered how many times he shot in a lifetime and how many plastic buckets this would add up to, how many furrows it would irrigate, how many babies drown. These off-side thoughts kept me going, and I played her on her belly and back and side and from behind, till finally when she was spreadeagled under me and facing me, and had come at last, and I felt her velvet gobble beginning again, I calculated it was time to let go, and did, and she pulled me by the arse till I felt her fingernails must be full of either shit or blood. She cried out as if I were trying to kill her, which I swear I wasn't, and I felt a roar come out of me without knowing much about it.

As we went sadly towards the car I hoped our simple brick cottage would melt under the rain and banish back into the soil because I couldn't bear the thought of anyone ever going into it and spoiling the thick atmosphere that we had created and left there. Even to dynamite it would be better than that. I drove like a pilot towards London, neither of us saying much. There wasn't even a traffic jam in Tonbridge, and two hours later we were crossing the bridge and steaming through the mist and mire into Ealing. The thick slosh of reality was getting back at me, and I felt nervous as I drove the mudstained Bentley up the drive of Moggerhanger Court.

I took the remaining cigars out of the glove-box and said goodbye, wondering if she expected me to match her with the tears she looked like shedding.

‘Phone me,' she said.

‘I will' – solid in my intention.

‘Father has other places we can go to. They're all over the place.'