A Start in Life (51 page)

This remark gave me a funny feeling which, if it came about, and I couldn't believe it would, showed me with a little brother playing uncle to any newborn bastard I might have of my own. ‘Life's not only long,' I said, ‘it's a stew.'

‘As long as it's tasty, and doesn't get cold on the hearth. I don't know, Michael, you're a funny one. Sometimes I think you're just like your father – when I remember him.'

I poured my brandy down, but it tasted like soda water: ‘You told me I never had a father,' regretting such a stupid phrase when she replied: ‘Who do you think you are, Jesus Christ? I'll get a cross for you from Littlewoods if you like, or maybe I'll rent one for three days.'

‘Stop joking, can't you?'

‘I'm in that sort of mood. Get me another port, duck.'

I called the waiter, couldn't speak till he'd brought the drinks and I'd annihilated my brandy and asked for another. ‘You'll go corky inside,' she said. ‘He used to knock them back like that. And he used to buy me port. Funny. The cheeky bastard said he thought all working-class women liked port, and he was right, because
I
did, anyway. We even came to this place, when there was any booze, and staggered away in the blackout at closing-time. Maybe port's good for the memory. He was younger than me, though I was young enough, God knows. A young sergeant, though he spoke like an officer. Oh, we had a good time, till he got posted somewhere else. He even wrote me a letter or two, then they stopped after I'd told him I was pregnant. I was so mad I burnt the letters and a photo.'

I felt white and avid: ‘Why didn't you ever tell me this before?'

‘Didn't think to, I suppose. You know me: memory like a sieve. He wasn't what you'd call good-looking, but he was lively, and had an educated way of talking – though he used the most terrible language – awful, mixed it with everything he said.'

‘Go on. Go on.'

‘Let me get my breath, then. I don't often talk about old times.'

‘You're telling me,' I said. ‘Once every twenty years, I suppose.'

‘Don't get like that with me, or I'll throw this drink up your nose.'

‘All right, Ma. Let's have a good time. It's a long while since I got drunk.'

‘You're not very like him, though. There's too much of me in your face. He had the funniest shape of head, and even though he was only twenty he was already going bald. But what a marvellous man he was, because in spite of his flash talk he was very gentle at times, almost shy, and maybe that's what I liked most about him. He practically lived with me for a month, thought it a great thrill to be in a house like ours, but he'd always come with a bottle of whisky to make himself really at home. We had some good times between us. I could earn good money because of the war, and it was easy to wangle a house of my own, especially with Gilbert's help. He forged anything. Used to get a bus from his camp and make straight for the house. Sometimes he'd wait for me outside the factory, and I remember how happy this made me, though I never told him so. He'd laugh and say I was sentimental, rubbing it into my face like broken glass, so that I'd get into a paddy and throw pots around if he didn't stop. He often liked that sort of thing, and just sat there goading me. He was a real devil when he got started, though I was as bad. But we had some times together. It seemed to go on for ages, and now it seems like no time at all. I can't always remember it, even. He didn't get drunk, he just got dangerous, though at the sound of a cup smashing he'd smile and be happy again.

‘I always missed when I threw things, but he liked the sound. Some people
are
funny. I used to call him Blasted Blaskin, and this would make him laugh more than anything. I can't tell you all the things we got up to, you being my son. What are you looking so white for? I thought you could take your drink?'

I felt the slab of concrete in my stomach lifting up, as if it were suddenly trying to get out of my mouth. ‘I've got to get into the air,' I said, standing. ‘It's killing in here.'

‘You do look bloody pale,' she said, taking my arm. ‘What's got into you?'

The concrete flagstone lifted: ‘Come on, let's go.'

‘Oh, all bloody right then.'

We went down the stairs and the fresh air pulled me round a bit. She was flummoxed, as if I might be going odd in the head and she had no idea what was expected of her, no cups or glasses being handy to throw at me.

We walked into Slab Square, the illuminated front of the town hall looking so tall I hoped it was about to fall flat on its face and bury us. That cock-headed tripehound seemed not to have altered in all his waking life, still on a mad career from one dripping slit to another. He threw up his women left and right and centre, and just as quickly others came back to him, flocking towards the same unwholesome fate. He was a bastard right enough, a real travelling trickster if ever there was one, and if my mother's memory served her right, this sky-licker, this grub who rubbed his prick along the bare earth so that wheat and sunflowers shot up in abundance and gave him a great and lazy life, was my one and only unsuspecting father.

We made for the Eight Bells, and managed to get a seat: ‘Look,' I said, ‘I know this bloke you've told me about, and from your description of him he hasn't altered a bit.'

‘Oh, dear,' she said. ‘Don't go on about it or I shall begin to get upset. It's so long ago, but now you've brought it all back I'm getting sentimental. You make me feel as though I'm still in love with him, the rotten swine. I was, for years and years. When I was with another chap I used to make believe he was Gilbert, to try and bring him back to me. Not that it was much good, but it was a game that helped me to bear it. Ah, well, it's more than twenty years, but it's only a minute when you lost somebody you thought a lot of. I told myself he'd been sent to Egypt and got killed. I lived with that, till the war was over and I forgot him. But you never forget. For a woman to lose a man she loves is only one bit less than losing a kid.'

I was almost in tears, not only from shock and brandy, but from realizing what a hard life she'd had, all because of Gilbert Blaskin, and of having me without being married, a fact that didn't let her forget the man who gave me to her, and at the same time made if difficult if not impossible for her to get somebody else. I thought how the world was a million times harder on women than men. Blaskin had gone his own sweet screwing way, though from what I knew he'd been miserable, except that he hadn't really suffered in the way my mother had because he'd never had the honour and torment to really fall in love. To bring her back to life I told her a little of what I knew about him, just to give him reality and, if possible, rob him a little in her mind of the sentimental glory she attached to him. ‘I know it was only a dream,' she said, ‘and that if we'd had much more time together we'd have started to drive each other round the bend and halfway up the bloody zig-zags.'

‘Still,' I said, taking her hand, ‘you had your dream.'

She drew it away, as if I were Blaskin: ‘You
can
say that, I suppose.'

‘You should see him now. He don't look up to much.'

‘Neither do I,' she said.

‘You do,' I told her.

She got angry: ‘Pack it in. When are you going back?'

‘Tomorrow,' I said. ‘I'd go tonight, but the last train's gone.

‘When are you marrying Albert?'

‘In six weeks,' she said, as if I'd changed the subject.

‘Don't you think you ought to marry Gilbert Blaskin instead?' I asked, and she laughed so long and loud that people in the pub began looking at her and wondering what was going on between us, as if we'd cracked some dirty joke about them all.

I took a lunchtime train that punched its way south through the steel fallopian tube of Trent Bridge. Cows stood in fields under the sousing rain, stock-still as if they were actually made of rain and wanted to grow bigger from it. I'd had no breakfast so went to the dining-car for a meal, shaken so much to bits on the way that I was almost not hungry by the time I got there.

I thought of the worry and trouble waiting for me when I got to London, but when food started to slide in, no worry seemed too difficult to sort out, and my chopfallen state soon left me. The train was so fast it seemed to gallop, swaying soup over the lip of the plate, so that it was difficult holding a newspaper at the same time. I looked to see if anyone of my name had died or got married, or was to be remembered in gratitude for having given their glorious lives in any of the world wars, or whether any he or she was getting engaged or had had a nice new legitimate baby between them. But there was no sign, so I stared at the houses or motorcars for sale, and saw nothing to suit my exigent tastes.

When I smoked a cigar no one stared at me and thought I shouldn't be smoking it, as they might a couple of years ago, and when I paid my bill the cashier wasn't surprised at the five-bob tip I left for the waiter. Then I looked at the news part of the paper to see if Ron Cottapilly or Paul Pindarry, those ganglions of Jack Leningrad Limited, had been nabbed at the customs in the last twenty-four hours. They had not, though if I had my way it wouldn't be long now, because as soon as I got to St Pancras I went into a box and got through to Moggerhanger.

‘
Who
is it?' he said. I told him I'd thought over his proposition. He laughed: ‘I knew you wouldn't come up in a hurry, Michael, for which I always admire a man, but when you left it so late I thought you'd had an accident, like getting caught or something. It struck me as unlikely, but you never know in your sort of game. I hear they did have rather a nasty jolt in your firm, didn't they? Man called Ramage. Fate strikes pretty hefty blows from time to time, I must say. It was all I could do not to send a message of condolence to the Iron Lung. But I never do anything in bad taste. I'm not that sort of person. What have you decided, then?'

I'd worked myself to a sweat of rage while listening to his two-faced banter: ‘I'm joining you,' I said, ‘and that's straight. I'll go on working for Leningrad, and I'll phone you any time I've got information. Or I'll phone Polly, it's just the same, I realize. In any case I'm only doing it for our future happiness. Do you understand?'

His voice sounded right in my ear, as if he was no farther than the next telephone box. I looked nervously that way, but it was empty. ‘If you're to work for me,' he said, ‘you'll have to alter that tone of voice. I'm old-fashioned, I am. If you talk in that voice it's obvious who you're working for, and since we don't want anybody to know, you'll have to moderate it a bit, won't you, Michael? I expect you to understand that, just as I'm to understand that you're doing it for Polly's future happiness – as well as your own. Are we on the same wavelength, or not? Tell me that, and the deal's on.'

‘It's on,' I said, trying not to breathe hard or curse. ‘I phone you. You don't phone me. It'll work best that way.'

‘I'll tell you how we'll do it, Michael,' he said, as if I hadn't spoken, ‘phone me whenever you know anything. I'll never try to contact you – unless you find a note under your plate at that Italian restaurant where you eat. Old Tonio's in my good books there, and I sometimes let him help me.'

‘That sounds all right.' I was going to say goodbye, but the line went dead, meaning he'd hung up on me. Moggerhanger never said goodbye in case it brought him bad luck. He looked upon it as an unnecessary waste of breath.

My next move was to call on Blaskin with the idea of getting him to marry my mother before she could throw herself away on that worthless Albert. I didn't care whether I stayed a bastard or not – I'd be one of those till my left foot was tipped into a soily grave – but I wanted Blaskin to make an honest woman of my mother. He'd had his own runner-bean way too long, and it was time one of his sins came home to roost, namely me, because I was beginning to see how serious it was that he'd rampaged through the world, and God knows how many innocent women, without anybody having lifted a finger against him. I took the Underground to Sloane Square, then walked a couple of corners to the block of flats where he lived. It was his divine luck that he wasn't in, so after ten minutes' ruminative smoke outside his door, I walked over the river and home.

I saw William sitting on the settee when I went into the living-room, listlessly thumbing through the
Evening Standard
. Beside him were two suitcases. ‘Get away from me, you treacherous bleeder,' he said, when I went up with a big smile of welcome to shake his hand.

‘What?' I yelled back.

He stood up, half a grin. ‘Don't take it so bad. It'll happen to you some day. Not by me, though. Never by me.'

‘What sort of a swamp am I in?' I said, pouring two drinks. ‘I've never betrayed anyone. You were hooked by working for Moggerhanger. The Leningrad group of British Industries found out, and you got pulled in.'

He took the whisky: ‘I've been all this time with the corsairs, boy, in a Moslem slave-hole, and I'm out of the habit of taking raw booze.' But he drank it as if it were Jaffa Juice: ‘If what you say is true, and you may be right, then they'll be on to you next, because I recruited you.'

I was sweating again. ‘You got pulled in because the Beirut cops wanted Moggerhanger's ransom,' I said, fishing for any old explanation.

He laughed bitterly. ‘You can take your pick, that's all I'm saying. But I'm back now, thanks to Claud. I've called for my things. I'm off, Michael, on the run again. The Leningrad lot don't know I'm back. When they do they'll nail me. I know they will. To tell you the truth I don't know where to go. They'll get Cottapilly and Pindarry on to me, and they're like Dobermann Pinschers. They'll tear me to pieces. Moggerhanger won't hide me. He laughed on the phone just now when I reported in, and told me to steer clear. I've got a taxi coming in twenty minutes to get me to a railway station. Don't even know which one yet.'