A Start in Life (62 page)

It didn't surprise me but, true or not, Bill seemed relieved that the story was off his chest and that he had found someone to listen to whom the information would be as deadly to know about as it was to himself. To me he was like the plague, and always had been, a carrier of downfall and death. Everything that had gone wrong in my life had been due to him, yet why had I answered his summons to London? He was brother, uncle and childhood pal rolled into one, and with me till the end of my life. It is only fair to record that a lot of the good things that happened had been due to him as well. ‘I'm thinking,' I said, seeing the question on his lips.

‘You'd better be.'

‘I know you're in trouble. I believe it now, but don't you ever learn?'

‘Learn?' He almost jumped off his chair. ‘Learn?' he repeated, as if it was a new word he liked the sound of. ‘Michael, I learn all the time. Every minute of my life, I learn. I go to sleep at night asking: “What have I learned today?” And I wake up in the morning wondering: “What can I learn?” But the sad fact is that I'd need six lives to learn enough to do myself any good. I could learn everything there is to learn and still get stabbed in the fifth rib down by that little fact I've left out.'

‘But why someone like me, who can't help you in the least? The logic is absolutely beyond me.'

He drained his empty cup for the third time. ‘You may not believe this, but the reason is, I've got nobody else. Nobody I can trust, I mean.'

I almost wept with pity. ‘I've been out of circulation for ten years, living a domestic though far from peaceful life at my railway station, so I can't possibly be any help.'

He grasped my hands. ‘You can, you can, Michael.'

‘All I've done is wash up, play with kids, make do-it-yourself repairs on the waiting room, ticket office and station master's quarters now and again, and a bit of planting in the garden. I'm out of condition, as flabby as a baby seal.'

He put on his sulky look, knowing I was as fit as a flying pike. ‘If there's one thing I remember about you it was your quick thinking and the startling versatility of your ideas. Makes my blood run cold, some of the things you got up to – which is better than it not running at all, or spilling over the pavement out of control. Come on, Michael, put that thinking cap on and let's have some good advice.'

‘You know how to flatter me. But give me a minute.'

‘Two, if you like.' He looked as if his worries were over, though I could have told him that, having brought me back into his life, they were about to begin. I was in no mood to impart comforting advice too soon after he had made it obvious that perilous times were on the cards for me as well. ‘In view of the seriousness of your situation I believe the only game we can play is one of diplomacy. What I suggest is that you get into a taxi, drive straight to Lord Moggerhanger's residence and give yourself up. It's your only chance of survival.'

You'd have thought the National Anthem was about to be played, the way he stood up. I'd never seen him paler. ‘So that's what Moggerhanger told you to say? I can see it all now. As soon as I escaped from the hijack he got straight onto you, knowing I would contact you sooner or later. He offered you a good fat fee – half at the time and half on delivery – to meet me, listen to my woes, and then advise me to “drive straight to Lord Moggerhanger's residence and give yourself up”. Michael, I would have thought better of you than to try and pull a thing like that. I suppose this place is surrounded, is it?' He looked out of the window, then sat down. ‘Or maybe not. It ain't worth the expense, not when you can lead me there like a Mayfair poodle in a taxi. But it won't work. They'll never get me.' He tapped his pocket. ‘I pack a little thing in here to help me.' He stared at me, and stood up again. He was acting, but it was too early to guess what his game was. ‘I'm not such a fool as not to know that in the end I've only got myself to rely on.'

I did my best to look scornful, but I didn't move, which is perhaps what convinced him. ‘Listen, if all you've told me is true, then you're trapped.' I was also a dab hand at acting. ‘It's only a matter of time before you're caught, though nobody'll kill you, because they want the money back. That's what they all want. And they won't mind letting six months go by. They're patient. They'll only kill you after they've got their hands on the money. Now, if two gangs are out to get you (and they are, from what you tell me) then you've got to set them at each other's throats even more than they are at the moment. Of the two gangs, I think Moggerhanger's lot are the ones to deal with because both you and I know him from a long time ago. I don't see any other possibility.'

‘You're a lunatic,' he said.

I put on a bright smile. ‘Lunatics survive.'

‘Michael, I don't think you're born.'

I disputed his flippant assertion. ‘I was born so long ago I'm dead. Bridgitte left me last week, and took the kids.'

‘I'm sure it served you right. Even so, I don't see why you should want us both to commit suicide. The take-one-with-you attitude is all very well, but not among friends.'

‘I'm not suggesting you crawl to the Villa Moggerhanger and blurt out pointblank why you've come,' I told him. ‘Approach him on another pretext. Tell him you want to join up with his organisation. The Green Toe Gang got their hundred thousand back. It was in your suitcase. You didn't get your share, and you want your revenge. He'll understand that. Anyway, let's get out of here. I'm feeling like an alcoholic drink.'

‘I don't think I need tell you, Michael, that I find our meeting particularly discouraging. I really do. Moggerhanger would just trade me in for half the money. He doesn't mess about. During the transfer he would take the lot. Come on, then. Let's go to The Hair of the Dog. They'll be opening about now.'

He put on his coat, and took my umbrella – being in such a low state that I couldn't tell the light-fingered bastard to put it back. We headed up Charing Cross Road, Bill in front, neither of us saying anything because of traffic noise and the difficulty of walking side by side among so many people. A middle-aged man with a dog on a lead intended passing us on our right but the dog, wanting to go along the wall for a sniff or two, got entangled in Bill's legs.

Even Dr Anderson the demon psychologist would be hard put to it to find a reason as to why some people are born with an animus against our canine friends. Perhaps whoever hates dogs had a particularly hard life in his (or her) younger days, which of course was true of Bill. Such types resent dogs because they regard them as lower than human beings and don't see why they should have a better and more carefree time than they did. Other people who dislike dogs may well be mentally unstable, or stricken with some physical ailment which makes them irascible and intolerant. In any case I don't suppose they can stand the whining fawning bloody pests shitting all over the streets.

Not that Bill reacted violently when the dog tangled with his legs and sent a few squirts of amber piss against his trousers. He had his own troubles, and wanted to be on his way with the least fuss. But he prodded it quite gently, it seemed to me, who had by this time caught up with him, with the end of my umbrella.

The result was extraordinary, to say the least. The black dog, of medium size and uncertain breed, and no doubt a gentle and fetching creature as far as dogs go, gave a squeak and rolled on its back, shivered along the belly, shook all paws and howled.

Bill stepped over it, and so did I. Neither of us realised the seriousness of what had happened. The man bent to look at what was ailing his pet, not for the moment relating its peculiar condition to the seemingly light prod dealt by Bill. He may not even have noticed. We speeded up, to the tune of the man wailing that his dog was having a fit. Perhaps it was dead. As quick as that. It maybe wasn't as bad as he thought, though something had certainly gone wrong as a result of the playful tap from the umbrella.

Running away from trouble seemed undignified, and I thought here was an opportunity to act on my idea of being more honest and responsible. ‘Let's go back and see what's wrong.'

He grabbed my arm, the berserker tone in his voice taking on a quality that I hated but which my blood could not ignore: ‘Run! For fuck's sake, run!'

We trotted up the road, glad so many people were about. They always came out when the rain stopped. ‘Where did you get this umbrella, did you say?' he panted.

‘I told you. I found it.'

‘It must be poisoned.'

We darted across Cambridge Circus, then doubled back towards Long Acre. ‘I didn't know. But don't throw it away. It might come in handy. And keep it away from me. My ankles ache already, it's so close.'

The Hair of the Dog, like auntie's parlour, was tarted up rather than down. The flock wallpaper was deep crimson and reeked of Jamaican rum. The corner of a condom packet showed from under the pseudo-Axminster carpet. I'd have known one anywhere. I looked around the walls at the plastic gold-leafed light-brackets for a sign of the condom itself. There was a framed picture of a child with big tears in its eyes, the sort that should have a microphone behind it. ‘Why did we come here? Isn't it one of Moggerhanger's clubs?'

He looked as if the question was unnecessary. ‘What I don't like about you,' he said, ‘and I'm sorry to say there are some things I positively abhor, if you'll forgive my strong language, is that you are so simple, so, in other words, fucking crude. It's not even as if you're trying to hide something. There's virtue in concealment, when it's necessary, and even when it's not, providing you know what you're doing. But to show yourself as simple when you really are simple is inexcusable. The first sign of leaving it behind would be for you to know that you are simple and, being ashamed of it, learn how to keep your soupbox shut.' He leaned forward and held my hand. ‘Do me a favour and make a beginning, there's a good lad. Then we might not only get somewhere, but reach wherever it is we're going in one piece. Are you getting my drift?'

I now knew beyond doubt that the story he had spun was as false and fantastic as he was. Behind his deviousness there was just a great blank sea – but one in which I might well sink without trace. He was working for someone, either Moggerhanger or the Green Toe Gang or both, and he had been asked to recruit me for some project that needed the skill, expertise (or perhaps just plain simplicity), that I was supposed to have. I didn't like it at all, if only because the pay wouldn't be good enough. Yet I had passed the test of loyalty and, in my determination to prove that I was nowhere as simple as I looked, I used the excuse of curiosity rather than loyalty to stay on and find out what it was all about. ‘You're just a funny old windbag. Just tell me why you really got me out of my railway station.'

If I didn't like him it was only because he couldn't be straight with me, not through any moral fault or basic unfriendliness either on his part or on mine. On the other hand I did like him. I liked him very much. His thin jaws had flesh on them compared to a few years ago, but you could still see where the lines had been. The mark of hard times that had raddled his face for the first twenty-five years was sufficiently padded to give it a look of nonchalant ruthlessness, and that was what I didn't like.

‘You're a bit of a chump, Michael.' Judging by his smile, if the room had been above ground, and had a window or two, the sun would have shone on his face. ‘Untrustworthiness never got anybody anywhere.'

‘Let's call it caution,' I said. Never trust anybody, was what I had believed all my life, though for reasons I could never understand it hadn't stopped me trusting more people than was good for me.

‘That's different. If I thought you weren't cautious I wouldn't be talking to you, would I? Now me, I'm cautious. But I'm also careful. I think on two levels. All the time I've been talking to you I've been thinking. Do you know anybody else who can think and talk at the same time? About different things, I mean?'

‘Only an old school pal called Alfie Bottesford, and he went mad.'

He looked as if he'd like to kill me. If we'd been on a desert road fifty miles from anywhere, and he'd had a gun but I hadn't, he might have considered it. I told him.

‘Too fucking right.' He patted my hand amiably. ‘But seriously, Michael, let's make a plan of campaign.' After five minutes' silence he asked ruefully: ‘Where shall I hide? That's all I want to know.'

I told him, quick as a flash of lightning at a garden party. My best thoughts always came without thought. ‘We'll get a taxi to my father's flat in Knightsbridge. I can't think of a better place for you to hole up in for a while.'

‘Not so loud. Even walls have ears.'

‘Not this one. It's crawling with bugs.'

He snatched his hand away, as one bit the end of his finger. ‘Bloody hell, so it is.'

‘We'll hide you in Blaskin's flat, just behind Harrods. Very good for shopping. Their Chelsea buns are second to none. Not to mention the sausages. You can even buy a dressing gown if you want to go for a walk.'

He was impatient. ‘Will your old man mind?'

‘If he does though, you're made. He's an eminent novelist.'

‘I know. I've met him, though I don't suppose he'll remember the occasion. It was in the railway station at Upper Mayhem the first time he came to see you there. He nearly went mad with pleasure when he climbed the iron ladder to get at the railway signal. He set it to derail the London express because he thought his publisher was on it, then burst into tears when you told him the line had been closed two years. I've never heard such language about poor old Beeching. It was all your fault though that he was so upset. I don't think I've known anybody as callous as you. The things you've done.'