A Start in Life (33 page)

He called for more brandy, as if these recollections threatened to swamp his new-found heart. ‘I didn't do much,' I said. ‘I just felt sorry to see this bloke, and stopped my rotten old car that I was so proud to be in.'

‘You did well though, helping William Hay. That part of me has snuffed it. For ever, I hope.'

‘Here's to you, then,' I said, sipping the best brandy.

‘I've got a good job now, Michael. Travelling. I've become an experienced traveller in the last few months. I've been to the Middle East. I've been over the North Pole. I've been all over Europe. Mind you, I earn every penny of it. I'll tell you that for a start. Every bloody penny that gets stashed into my bank is earned by the sweat of my brow. That's why I have to eat two or three big meals a day. I've got to stay strong and full of energy for the work I do, otherwise I might break down, and that'd be no good at all, because then I'd lose my job, and worse. It's not an easy life, even though I do look well and prosperous. In fact, in some ways it's the hardest bloody job I've ever done, but it pays well.' He cackled: ‘It pays well, I will say that for it.'

I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but I was all avidity to find out. The place was emptying, and he suggested that we go for a stroll. He had to walk five miles every day when he wasn't working, to keep himself trim for when he was. ‘I have to eat a lot and walk a lot,' he laughed, as we went out through the door, bowed at by the manager after William had insisted on paying my bill.

‘You're not a bad walker yourself,' said William, when we had reached the inner circle of Regent's Park, as if he were putting me through some kind of test. ‘I'll take it on trust that you're a good eater.' I felt we'd come too far already, and didn't exactly see the point of planing one's feet off in this way. I wasn't hungry for praise about my standards of endurance either, so began to think of cutting back to town. ‘What we'll do,' he said, ‘is veer towards Baker Street, and go down through Victoria to Battersea, then you can pick up your case before we cross the river.'

‘You do this every day?' I said. Though he kept up a killing rate he didn't seem the least bit tired or ruffled, could have looked to any passer-by as if he'd just stepped out of a taxi, and was only walking a few hundred yards before getting where he wanted to be.

‘You have to look like a gentleman,' he said, ‘yet be very tough in your fibres. That was dinned into me, during training.'

‘What training?' I asked, a faint regret now at the different standards of our appearance.

‘Training. The first week they thought they'd never get me out of my old life. But after that I caught on so quickly that the man in the iron lung was amazed. I always was a slow starter, but that's what makes me good in the end. There's many of those chaps (and women, mind you) who've latched on with beautiful speed, but often they're the first to crack. That's what the Lung says, and I quite believe him. He's got many a tale to tell, has that pasty-faced bastard.'

‘It all sounds Swahili to me. Besides, I'm hungry. We must have done four miles already. Let's go into the next place for something to eat.'

He stopped and bent down, lifting the bottom of his left trouser-leg and unclipping his suspenders so that he could roll his sock. Attached to the inside of his ankle was a multi-coloured watchface, a pedometer, I supposed, after he'd spoken. ‘Three and a quarter,' he said, doing himself up coolly, and carrying on the walk. ‘I wear this just to see that I don't cheat myself.'

‘I don't care,' I said, ‘I'm bloody famished. I could still do with an ox-eye on toast.'

‘Ah!' he laughed. ‘Your belly's groaning for grub already. If you aren't careful we'll take you on. There's allus room for a new hand. But I can't go into this crummy bar. Let's find a more decent place lower down. That's part of my job, too. A gentleman can't be seen in a pig-bin like that.'

‘I'd like to know what you're up to.'

‘I can't even light a cigar as I walk along. But it's all good discipline, and that's healthy for any man, being made to do something that your system kicks against. You're able to see a lot in life, and what more can you want than that? You might think I'm talking a bit overmuch, but that's also part of the training. You have to be able to embark on a sea of diverting and intelligible talk at the drop of a hat, because a man who talks is always less suspicious that one who can only look dumb and stand with his trap shut. You've got to say the right thing, and say it with confidence. No stammer or foot-shifting, or they're on to you right away. Those airport bastards don't think twice about tipping your pockets up if your left eyelid seems a bit out of place.'

We went into a respectable fodder bar on Wigmore Street, and sat down for a few choice dishes. ‘So you're a smuggler?' A plum-coloured flush went down his cheek. ‘You're worse than the man I took you for.'

‘We never use that word where I come from. I'm a company director, a travelling gentleman involved in the export trade.'

‘Sorry, William.'

‘You'll have to curb your big mouth, that's the first thing. Until you do that you'll get nowhere.'

‘Christ,' I said, making a cut so that the yellow middle of the egg ran all over my toast, ‘everybody I meet makes it his job to teach me something.'

William forked into his cake. ‘You were born lucky, in that case. Make sure you take 'em up on it. Otherwise you're throwing your luck away. I'm no fool, Michael, though I have been, so listen to me, and learn all you can from everybody. You didn't learn much at school, I suppose. That means you were bright. You were too full of understanding to bother with what they had to tell you. But all that's behind you now. You got through it without too much bother. They didn't succeed in training you either for a prison or a factory. But now you've got to listen to people who try to teach you something, because they aren't teachers. They do it out of the goodness of their hearts, as one human to another, and they get nothing out of it. That's like gold, so for God's sake don't scoff at it.'

I'd never known him so serious. ‘All right, but I still have to pick and choose about what I want to learn.'

‘Admitted, but only after you've taken it in. Come on, eat up. We've got our walk to finish. I know you eat fairly quickly, but you'll have to do better than that. A slow eater is a slow thinker, and slow thinking wouldn't be much good to me. Above all, you have to look calm and think quick, otherwise your goose is cooked, whether it's Christmas or not.'

His flat was quiet and out of the way, more in Clapham than Battersea, and I was there a few weeks before being introduced to the man in the iron lung. Out of gratitude and friendship (I didn't consider I'd earned it, though William, who had an exaggerated conscience in some things, thought that I had) he gave me the run of the place. This meant spending much time on my own, because every few days he went away on a trip.

But in between these goings away I would accompany him on long walks. Sometimes we'd go to a gymnasium or a swimming bath because he insisted on us keeping fit. As a result of this I became slightly leaner, firmer in the muscles. He also told me to use less stodge, and whenever possible we ate thick steaks and drank red wine. This treatment suited me fine, but I knew it couldn't all be free, and wanted to know the reason for it, though I realized that nothing would be told me, till William was good and ready, so I didn't lose face by asking questions which would not be answered. That also was part of the training.

In his looser moments William hinted that I would become wealthy enough if I was taken on, that my standard of life would leap should I succeed in the first three trips. The only difficulty was to get me taken on, but this might not be impossible providing his own recommendations were firmly given. Fortunately, I was tall enough, and had a good face and figure for the work, which, with a bit of coaching and, later, actual training, would be quite acceptable. He himself had been so successful in the first months of initial forays that if he put up a candidate they would most likely listen to him. The fact was, also, that beginners were always in great demand, not because they fell by the wayside (though some did, of course), but because of that perpetual and reliable quality known as beginner's luck.

After one successful trip a beginner was in most cases no longer used, and he had to be content with the first handsome hand-out, and then retire to the life from which he had come. The man in the iron lung, as he lay and looked at them, was such an expert reader of faces (and handwriting, because on every occasion he would get them to copy five lines and then judge them by it), that he could tell not only whether a man had presence, courage, and nerve for the job but, above all, whether he was lucky. Like Napoleon with his generals he had to know if the candidates for smuggling gold out of the country had a built-in streak of luck that would last them for more than one trip. William, much to his own surprise, had passed this test, and now seemed to be on the permanent staff of the organization, which gave him the confidence to assume that he could get me into it for one trip at least which, if all went well, would net me two or even three hundred pounds on my return.

As soon as these definite terms and possibilities were mentioned I began to feel the stony cravings of ambition harden in my stomach. Some would call it foolish greed and they'd be wrong, because I not only wanted money but also the experience and prestige that would go with it. I saw it as a way of breaking out of a fixed imprisoning period of my life, and though there was some risk (that William played down) I was anxious to get taken on and go through with it. When I was in town, or sitting alone in William's flat listening to the foreign records he'd brought back from his expeditions, I got the black sweats because I wondered whether I'd have the backbone to succeed in something like this. I put it to William, but he laughed and said he'd gone through exactly the same doubts, and what's more it was good to have them because you were no good if you didn't. Those who didn't feel this never got through the training. They didn't even begin it because the man in the iron lung had only to see their handwriting to know that they were too brittle to have doubts about themselves, in which case he wouldn't waste time and effort training them. Of course, William said, he didn't want to push me too hard in this because, after all, I had to make up my own mind. I might be thrown out on first appearance as being totally unsuitable, but he didn't think so, and in any case the decision to make this first appearance before the man in the iron lung had to be taken finally by me and me alone.

The cunning bastard knew that by this time I was too intrigued to draw back, but I still had my doubts about how suitable I was because, as I'd always known, there's a certain idleness in me, an inability to think to the end of everything that starts for no other reason than that I can't be bothered. I think: what's the point? and the flashlight of a bright idea soon gets lost in the fog.

I started to grow a moustache, because William said it would improve my appearance, and thus my chances of being accepted. Fortunately, I looked at least twenty-five, which was also good, because no one looking too much like a youth would ever be used. I never of course imagined this might be some kind of game or trick on his part because I had the evidence of his rise to affluence before me, and I thought that if I could get on to the same railroad, then all well and good. He wondered whether I ought to start smoking a pipe, because that always creates a good impression, he said, especially if it's full but unlit when you're on the way through and they sense the opportunity to do a small kindness in the midst of their restrictive work by asking few questions so that you can get quickly to the other side and then light up. I gave it a try, but even with the weakest tobacco I almost vomited after every puff. It wasn't the strength of the weed so much as the way it hit the back of the mouth and ricocheted down the throat as soon as it came in. So he told me to go on smoking Whiffs, but that while filing through the customs, it might be better to smoke nothing at all.

Life was dull during these weeks, but I didn't mind that, because I found it interesting – as it were. In my idleness I sensed that my appearance was changing to the world, while my attitudes to the world weren't altering at all. The world saw a different man, while I saw the same world, though at the same time I saw the world seeing a different man. That made me feel good, because I became bigger to myself. Thinking I was short on cash William bought me a best-quality electric shaver for eleven pounds. ‘Pay me from your first lump sum,' he said, as we came out of the shop.

‘What if I never get it?' – not so stone-sure as he was.

‘In that case, you've got something for nothing. But from now on get used to having it with you, so's you can shave at least twice a day. Treat it as a natural extension of your graballing hand.'

‘Shall I get a bowler hat as well?'

‘They'd tumble to you in a flash. For a face like yours you'll need a hat like mine. We'll go up Regent Street and buy one now. Then you can wear it every time you go out.'

The grooming was on in earnest, because on our way to the hatters I was steered into Simpsons for a haircut. Cunning old William had phoned from the flat and made an appointment, so that we went through the doors dead on time in spite of what seemed like casual and aimless progress there. He told the barber exactly what to do, how my hair should be short on top and someway down the neck at the back, with longish sideburns. I protested, but he told me to shut up, and I was on my way to his throat when the scissors scraped along the inside of my ear and the barber screamed and jumped back, thinking I was about to go berserk. ‘Get on with it then,' I shouted. ‘Only do it quick or I'll cut my own throat without waiting for you to do it.'