A Start in Life (50 page)

As if full of grief and rage, because that was my only chance of not being killed as I walked through that door, I knocked Stanley aside and barged into Jack Leningrad's pad with as much violence as I could muster. Cottapilly and Pindarry, two men I hardly knew were standing by the iron lung, but I rushed the whole length of the floor screaming that Ramage had been sold down the river, that Leningrad himself had done it, had picked up the phone to make an anonymous call to London airport because he thought Ramage had gotten too big for his elastic-sided boots and had wanted to split the organization so that he could take charge of part of it with the idea of one day snapping up the lot. So he'd gone the way of all flesh, just the same as William Hay, who Jack Leningrad had also framed.

‘It'll be my turn next,' I ranted on, ‘I can feel it coming. I'm working for a nest of vipers. You're hand in glove with the customs men yourself and you can do what you like with us. Cottapilly and you, Pindarry, you'll go after me, don't worry, and that fat pasty-faced paralytic slug knows it. We're puppets to him, wax figures that he'll throw into the deepest jail as soon as he sees fit or gets frightened enough. He's paranoid. We're loyal, but he thinks we're all set on doing the dirty on him. And if it's not that, he now and again gets a spiteful little fit of sadism and thinks to pass the time on and gratify himself by getting a few of us caught. And when this happens he makes sure that the one he's going to have pulled in has three-quarters of his load in false gold.'

I was on my knees, screaming all the preposterous things I could think up, then on the floor, then standing up against the wall only ten yards away from him, sobbing, keeping him in good view all the time. His pale face grew yellow, and I could see a twitch at the temples under the border of black sleek hair that went thinly over his head. Out of the speakers came his raging voice, from every side of the room in stereo. ‘Stop it, you lying vandal. It's not true.' He held a heavy revolver and pointed it at me.

‘I've been loyal,' I said, calming down, ‘I've worked hard, Mr Leningrad. You can rely on me to do my utmost. Maybe I said too much just now, but the news went through me like a knife. It's terrible. I'm blinded by it. I can't go on.'

He actually smiled: ‘You have to, Mr Cullen. We're in a tight spot. We've got a rush job on, urgent. If you're loyal, as you say, you must stay with us.'

I stood by his lung: ‘If I do I've got to have four hundred a trip. I can't do it for less because I've bought a house, and my overheads are appalling.'

His eyes narrowed. He hated my guts, but wouldn't at the moment say so: ‘You're not getting married, by any chance?'

‘Never. But I've got to have a quiet place I can go to between trips, if I'm not to have a crack-up.'

‘Where is it?'

‘Berkshire,' I told him. ‘A cottage, but it cost the earth – and a bit of the sky.'

He chuckled and put down his gun. ‘All right. Four hundred. But you're off to Athens in the morning.'

My only thought on the way out was to hope the plane to Greece crashed with me on it so that all my troubles would come to an end. Because was I in trouble? I knew who'd arranged for Arthur Ramage to be caught. It was Claud Moggerhanger, either by an anonymous phone call to London airport, or because he wanted to give his old friend Inspector Lantorn an easy job to do, in the hope that Lantorn would keep his claws off the Moggerhanger operations for a week or two. And who had told Moggerhanger that Ramage went to Lisbon every Friday laced-up with gold? His darling daughter. And which unthinking love-crazed flaptrap had told Polly? Me, not imagining that she'd even take it in, never mind relay it so accurately and with such deadly intent. And why had he done it? Not only to play havoc with Jack Leningrad, because that seemed rather an obvious thing to do, but precisely to warn me to go in head and bollocks with the Moggerhanger conspiracy-takeover, or vanish the same way as Arthur Ramage. It was as plain as the dismal day, that the great intriguer of the age had been caught in a vast and sticky web, with a murdering spider ready to come from each corner and scoop out his guts. All this went through my mind when Stanley broke the news, and I knew that the man in the iron lung would have it in for me as being the only person who could have published Arthur Ramage's itinerary. Maybe he would kill me on the spot, such was his ugly mood, and for that reason I threw my medieval fit and ranted for a higher wage. It had worked, for the moment. He was almost bound to have me followed or watched from now on. I had to take care even of the air I breathed, and that was no sort of life for me.

But to abandon everything would mean slipping into oblivion, and that was not part of me. I had come too far through the keyhole of myself to do that. I wanted Polly, in spite of her absolute and rotten treachery. She had been set on to me from the first, and of that I could only be certain. But I wanted Polly more than ever, even because of her treachery, for by that alone I felt we were made for each other, that she had more depth and dimension than I'd ever dreamed of. I had fucked her countless times, and she had now monumentally fucked me, so that while I had made us one flesh, she had made us one spirit, an element of fatal cooperation I had never encountered in anyone else nor was likely to. She seemed so much larger now that I couldn't have noticed her before, but I knew I was as far from having her – or her having me – as I'd ever been, because even if I threw in everything and worked for Moggerhanger, it would mean little in the end. I thought I was fit enough to live in a jungle, but now I was certainly beginning to doubt my ability to survive in this little corner of it. How could I go off with an easy heart to Athens when I expected any minute that Moggerhanger would think to pick up the phone and stop me?

I went. And I came back. I could only assume he was giving me more time than I'd expected or even hoped for. The one consolation of this cat-and-mouse game was that my bank balance continued to grow. I paid the cash for Upper Mayhem station, then took the bundle of deeds and a spare set of keys to Nottingham, where I stowed them in my grandmother's chest. Whatever happened, they would be safely hidden there. Work had slackened off. Maybe there was no more gold left on the island, though this would not stop the Jack Leningrad machinery dead in its oils because they also
imported
it. As fast as I took it out, others brought it back. Profits were made both ways, and everyone was happy.

So I had a few days in Nottingham. My mother wouldn't take time off work, but I was quite happy going around on my own. On a cold windy day I was muffled up in my overcoat, and warmed by a cigar as I walked along Wollaton Road. I'd been away a long time, but none of it was foreign to me. I was born here, and it swam in my blood. All other places were a swamp I had to stop myself sinking into, but here my feet were on solid ground – even though the pavements were uneven and there were often potholes in the roads. With a place like this I didn't need a mother or father. Say what you like, the place where you were born and brought up is bread and butter for the rest of your life, no matter where you go or what you do. If you deny it, you stamp on your own feelings. If you don't have it, you can't see other places with the freshest of eyes. I speak from hindsight, and I speak from youth, and I speak from myth, and the trio will always meet when you're feeling low and desolate. At such times, if you're far away you know you can't go back there, and don't even want to, but to think of that solid indestructible land soothes your eyes for a few hours.

I walked along, my thoughts spinning as if in a milk-churn making cheese. Up the hill from the weighing house and Horse Trough and White Horse pub was the railway bridge, and Radford station whose booking hall we used to raid as kids for a handful of timetables to push through letterboxes or scatter in the streets as if they announced the coming of bloody revolution. We'd hide in the timber traps of the goods yard and run from the railwayman who didn't give a damn whether we got away or not. If I hadn't been a long time in London I don't suppose I'd have had all these memories flopping up into my brain like wet fish. Beyond the station was the tobacco warehouse on one side, and the Midland pub on the other, then newer houses and the Crown pub on the corner of Western Boulevard. We used to swim in the old canal on hot days, and once I remember a boy of five falling off the lock gate and hitting the concrete edge fifteen feet below which stopped him going into the water and getting drowned but didn't prevent him from getting a savage dose of concussion that sent him running after skylarks for the next few years, though he eventually recovered so well that he went to grammar school. And when I was fifteen I remember a mate and I went up the canal one dark night with Connie Ford who sat between us on a lock gate and wanked us till we shot into the moonless dark. I laughed through my cigar smoke. This was the only place where I could feel free of all the Moggerhangers and Leningrads of the world, where sentimentality was realistic, and memory meant safety, and familiarity strength. I coined my happy phrases, not taking much notice as to where I was going but knowing that all these thoughts were false and not worth a farthing.

I turned up Nuthall Road, and smelt the first undying smell of evening mist coming down from the collieries and Pennines. I caught it so strongly in the nostrils of my heart that it even warmed my penis and made it half stand up. I'd got something very bad, but it didn't frighten me at all, just made me know I was still prone to it and therefore still alive.

It softened my soul for when I saw Claudine coming out of the supermarket and putting a basket of groceries on top of a baby sleeping in the pram. She saw me first, but even so I wouldn't have backed away if I'd been the one to spot her. Her face turned pale, as I'm sure mine did as well. I looked at the baby, about a year old, pink, fat, and peaceful. ‘You might well stare,' she said, ‘you rotten bastard.'

I smiled: ‘He looks as if he'll thrive.'

‘It's a she.'

I took another look: ‘Are you pleased with her?'

‘Of course I am. Alfie is as well.'

My mouth dropped: ‘Alfie?'

‘It's his. We got married over it. Just in time as well.'

‘That lets me out, then. I was on my way to ask you to marry me. I've earned a lot of money in London, and I've spent the last three months fixing up a house for us both near Huntingborough, a marvellous place in the country that I paid cash for. It's got a marvellous garden, full of flowers, just the sort I thought you'd like. I even got a job there, as manager of a car-hire firm. But nothing goes right with me. My life's in ruins. Always was, and always damn-well will be.'

‘I hope so,' she said. ‘You swine. I sincerely hope so. You're rotten with lies. I hate your guts. Alfie's worth fifty of you, and I'm glad it's him I ended up with. At least he loves me and doesn't only think of himself. As for you, I don't care how well you're doing in London, but you're heading for a fall, and that's a fact. I should think even that place will get too hot for you before long, if it isn't already. I expect you've only come back here to get out of trouble there, if I know you. Or have you just come out of prison? You can stop looking at her, even if it is your baby. I only hope she'll grow up with none of your rottenness in her, though thank God I'm pregnant again, and by Alfie this time.'

I lowered my head, tried to look affectionate: ‘I'm sorry you feel that way. I didn't mean to make you bitter. I just thought we might be able to get together again. That's what I came up specially for. I've always been in love with you, you know that, and still am, even though you've gone and done the dirty on me by getting married to Alfie. It wasn't my fault if you couldn't wait.'

‘Oh,' she wailed, ‘how rotten can anybody get?' She shouted, and women coming by laden with fish-fingers and Miracle Bread stared at us.

‘I can get a lot rottener,' I said, ‘to someone who's betrayed me.' I hated saying all this, but couldn't stop myself, wasn't even enjoying it, didn't know why I was doing it, at least not then. She went away sobbing, and even the kid began kicking up a row from under the basket of groceries.

I walked backwards, watching her go, grieved at what I had done to myself more than to her, because even though I knew how lousy I'd been, and regretted it to my core, she at least had a daughter and her husband. My gall felt as if about to burst. I was sweating, and walked with the wind behind me.

When Mother came home from work she told me to cheer up. ‘You're always full of troubles and worries. Can't you store up that experience till later on in life?'

I split my face into a smile: ‘Maybe I want to get it over with now.'

‘Don't hurry it. There's plenty of time.'

‘I'm worn out.'

‘At your age? Stop feeling sorry for yourself, that's all I can say.'

‘I'm not bloody-well feeling sorry for myself,' I snapped.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I'm glad you're showing a bit of spirit at last. Eat your steak and chips before it gets cold.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Sorry? That's new, coming from you. Still it's a start. A thin one though.'

‘It's all I can do at the moment,' I said with my mouth full. She was reading the newspaper, and I went on eating.

Albert was working late, couldn't come out with us, so we got on a thirty-nine and went down town to sit a few hours in Yate's wine lodge. I put her on to port, while I stuck to brandy. ‘Are you and Albert really going to get married?'

She laughed: ‘Are you jealous?'

‘No, I'm not. I've got enough of that on my plate. It's just that life's so long.'

‘A good job it is,' she said, ‘or we'd all be dead.' She looked young enough for any devil's work, with her perm that had come out well, and her lipstick that drew your eyes to it and away from the few wrinkles at the corners of her temples. ‘I'm not even too old to have another kid,' she grinned, ‘if I put my mind to it.'