A Start in Life (63 page)

‘He wasn't upset. He's a novelist, don't forget. He was just dying with chagrin, but he wasn't by any means upset. If he got upset he wouldn't be able to describe the situation in a novel. He's far too canny to get so upset that he couldn't write about it.'

Bill looked worried. ‘I hope he doesn't write about me if he catches me hiding in his flat.'

I squashed a bug on the table. Bill dropped one in his vodka and it died immediately. ‘He may write about the situation in ten years. But he won't know you're there. He's got the top flat these days, and there's an attic he never goes to. With a bed and a pisspot, you can hide there for as long as you like.'

He gripped my elbow as though to break it. ‘Michael, I know that some poor Jews had to hide like that in the war from the Germans, but I couldn't take it.' He pointed to his temple. ‘I've seen that house in Amsterdam where Anne Frank lived. I'm not that strong. I'd go ga-ga after half an hour.'

‘All right,' I said. ‘Die. I suppose I'll be sorry if you do, but I'll have done my best, so you won't be on my conscience when I read about them fishing ossobuco from Battersea pond, Peking duck from Putney Reach, and searching vainly for the plain roast beef.' I stood up to go. ‘I know Blaskin's loft isn't Claridge's, but at least it's central and you can almost stand up in it. Try it for a few days. What have you got to lose?'

I was bored with the situation and wanted to get back to Upper Mayhem to see if there was any sign of Bridgitte and the children. I was missing my pall of misery, because I thought, in my superstitious fashion, that being steeped in agony for lack of her might bring her back quicker than if I stayed to have a good time in Soho.

He squashed another bug, then pulled me back into my chair. ‘All right. I'll do it. And I appreciate it. But I've got a request to make, and I hope you'll say yes.'

‘The answer's no.'

‘You haven't heard it yet.'

‘You've got several score of the most ruthless mobsters in London after you, and you're making conditions.'

‘No,' he said, ‘I'm finding you a job. I heard a couple of blokes say yesterday that Moggerhanger wanted another chauffeur. Why don't you apply for the post? He's good to his employees. You worked for him before, didn't you? No, don't take it like that. Sit down, old son.'

I did, before I fell. ‘That was ten years ago, and I ended up in prison.'

‘Didn't we all? You got mixed up with Jack Leningrad. And you shagged Moggerhanger's daughter. I don't know which was worse in his eyes. But Polly's married now, and Jack Leningrad's moved to Lichtenstein.'

My head spun, yet I was tempted to work again for Moggerhanger because I would get behind the wheel of a Rolls-Royce. Secondly, I would earn some money, and thirdly, I might have another go at Polly, married or not.

‘What's in it for you?'

‘The reason is,' he said, ‘that if you're working for Moggerhanger – who as well as the Green Toe Gang is after my guts – you might pick up bits of information as to whether or not he's on my trail. I'll have a friend in the enemy camp, and feel safer with my own intelligence and security system.'

I was silent for a while. So was he. I didn't mind thinking myself at the turning-point of a long life, because I sometimes imagined it as much as twenty times a day, but what sent shivers up my backbone was to have Bill think it as well. I was horrified at having no say in whether things happened to me or not, so gave him my view on the matter as gently as I could. ‘Drop dead. Get cut to bits. Count me out.'

‘I can't fathom it,' he said after a minute or two. ‘Here I am, telling you that if I'm alive six weeks from now I promise on the sacred memory of my dead mother to share with you – and to share equally – the hundred thousand pounds I've got stashed away. If that's not making it worth your while, nothing is. I know loyalty and friendship are precious commodities, Michael, but even they should have a price. I'm nothing if not realistic and generous.'

I was as greedy as the next man, and thought of all I could do with fifty thousand pounds. Corn in Egypt and the Promised Land rolled into one. I would turn the railway station into a fitted carpet palace. I'd repave the platforms, repair the footbridge, lay ornamental gardens on my stretch of line, as well as put in a new stove for Bridgitte and buy her a vacuum cleaner. I'd also give a flashing-light chess set to Smog, and if he failed to get into Oxford or Cambridge I'd buy him a degree from an American university, so that if he wanted a job he could become a secret member of the communist party and join the Foreign Office. Then, in our old age, after he'd become a colonel in the Red Army, we could spend our holidays in his nice cosy flat in Samarkand – or even Moscow, in the summer. Oh, the best laid plans of mice and men.

He grinned. ‘Is it on?'

‘You superannuated clapped-out Sherwood Forester,' I said, ‘I suppose so.'

‘You leave my old regiment alone. Sometimes I quite like your gift of the gab, but not when you insult the Sherwood Foresters. Best regiment in the British Army. We had four battalions wiped out on the Somme, and God knows how many in the last lot.'

I apologised. What else could I do? ‘I don't stand a chance of getting a job with Moggerhanger.'

‘Who knows? He's allus got a soft spot for a reformed rake. Nothing's guaranteed in this life, but you might just land it. You allus was game, I will say that for you. You don't get anything in this life unless you try.'

I was irritated by him. ‘I'll just be able to stand you for as long as it takes to install you at my old man's flat. Let's get out of here.'

‘Don't forget your umbrella,' he said when we were halfway up the stairs, and daylight struck my eyes like ball-bearings from a catapult. ‘It might start raining.'

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A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight

Not many of the “Angry Young Men” (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.

So, like all his schoolmates, he left school at fourteen and went to work in a local factory. Alan never presented himself as a misunderstood sensitive being, and always insisted that he had a wonderful time chasing girls and going with workmates to the lively Nottingham pubs. He also joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) where he absorbed information so quickly that by the age of seventeen he was working as an air traffic controller at a nearby airfield. World War II was still being fought, and his ambition was to become a pilot and go to the Far East, but before that could be realized it was VE Day. As soon as possible he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. It was too late to become a pilot or a navigator, but he got as far as Malaya, where as a radio operator he spent long nights in a hut at the edge of the jungle.

The Morse code he learned during this time stayed with Alan all his life; he loved listening to transmissions from liners and cargo ships (although he never transmitted himself), and whenever invited to speak, he always took his Morse key along. Before beginning his talk, he would make a grand performance of setting it up on the table in front of him and then announce that if anyone in the audience could decipher the message he was about to transmit, he would give that person a signed copy of one of his books. As far as I remember, this never happened.

In Malaya, Alan caught tuberculosis—only discovered during the final physical examination before demobilization. He spent the next eighteen months in a military sanatorium, and was awarded a 100 percent disability pension. By then Alan was twenty-three years old, and it was not long until we met. We fell in love and soon decided to leave the country, going first to France and then to Mallorca, and stayed away from England for more than six years. That pension was our only reliable income until, after several rejections, the manuscript of
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
was accepted for publication. Afterward, Alan would say that during those apprentice years he had been kept by a very kind woman: the Queen of England.

It is said that an artist must choose between life and art; sometimes Alan would tell whomever questioned him that after his first book was published and he became a recognized writer, he stopped living—there was not enough time to do both. I hope that was not entirely true. But writing was his main activity: He would spend ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, reading or answering letters when he needed a break from working on his current novel. And there were poems, essays, reviews—and scripts for the films of his first two books,
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
and
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
, and later others. He was extremely productive. But certainly he also enjoyed social life with our friends and going to concerts or the theatre. This was the heyday of the young British dramatists at the Royal Court Theatre.

Now, in the 1960s, there was enough money for what we enjoyed most: travel, and although in the first few years our son was still a baby, we would spend up to six months of the year away from England. Alan's books were translated into many languages, which meant that he was invited to many other countries, frequently to literary festivals, or sometimes offered the use of a villa or grand apartment for generous periods of time. I remember a stay at a castle in then-Czechoslovakia, where we were awoken every morning by a scream from our son, who had managed to get his head or hand caught in some part of the rickety crib that had been put in our room for him. We also spent months in Mallorca, in a house generously lent by Robert Graves. During our four years on the island we had become good friends with him and the Graves family.

Time passed … the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties.… Every year or two a new book, a trip to another part of the world. Japan, India, the United States, Mexico, and Latin America: the range extended. I usually went with him, and as by then I also was having work published, sometimes the invitation was to me, and he would assume the role of consort.

Looking back, I realize what a wonderful life we had then. But a year or two before his eightieth birthday, Alan told me he was not feeling well. It was always hard to persuade him to see the doctor; this time he suggested it himself. There were many hospital appointments for investigations and tests—the National Health Service was as excellent and thorough as ever—and a few weeks later the diagnosis came: There was a cancer at the base of his tongue. His suspicions were confirmed. Although he had continued to smoke his pipe (and the occasional cigar), now he stopped at once. The tragic program of treatments started, and the inevitable oscillations between hope and despair. Twice it seemed that he was cured; then it all began again. In April 2010, not long after his eighty-second birthday, Alan died. We had hoped he could die at home, but he needed the facilities of a good hospital. Months later, on a cupboard shelf in his study, I found the manuscript of
Moggerhanger
.

Sillitoe in Butterworth, Malaya, during his time in the RAF.