A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘I tried to get tickets for it, but couldn’t,’ she said as I switched off.

  ‘You can have mine, if you like.’

  ‘Oh, no, you can’t let your mother down.’

  ‘I can’t really,’ I said, slamming the door. ‘She loves Beethoven. She’d never forgive me.’

  Everybody loves a liar, I thought, but telling myself to stop it from that point on. I picked up a bottle of milk and followed her into the mock-Tudor pebble-dash matchbox bungalow, met by a smell of stale tea and damp upholstery. She asked me to sit on a deep plush sofa while she fussed in the kitchen, but I feasted my eyes on her from the doorway now that she had her coat off, as I often had in the office. It was marvellous, the way you had to get the sack before people would look at you.

  She came back with a large silver tray, loaded with tea and a plate of fancy biscuits. ‘I don’t take milk’ she said, ‘but lemon.’

  ‘Where’s your family?’

  ‘I only have my brother, and he went to Austria yesterday for three weeks, by car. He’s a keen skier. Not that I see much of him when he’s here.’

  ‘A lonely existence,’ I said.

  ‘It is, Michael, but I’m very fond of it. I go a fair amount to the theatre, or concerts. Or I stay in and read, write letters, watch television. I think life is beautiful and fascinating.’

  ‘So do I,’ I said. ‘I read a good deal too. Books are my favourite pastime. Girls as well, but my girlfriend packed me in because I lost my job.’

  ‘Really? Sugar?’

  ‘Yes, six.’

  ‘I don’t take it myself. But why? You got a better job. Didn’t that please her?’

  ‘She didn’t wait for me to get another. She was very headstrong. But it’s no use regretting it.’

  ‘You’re lucky to be able to take it so lightly.’

  ‘I didn’t. It broke my heart. But what’s done is done. I can’t live like that for the rest of my life.’

  Miss Bolsover laughed: ‘I hardly think you’ll have to. But I know what you mean.’

  There was a pause, and I took the opportunity to drink off half my tea. It was too weak, but I let that pass. ‘Has it happened to you, then?’

  She broke a biscuit in half and put it into her small mouth: ‘At my age it’s bound to have done. I’m thirty-four.’

  ‘You talk as if you think that’s old,’ I said. ‘My girlfriend was thirty-eight. She was like you in one way because she only looked about twenty-five. Not that she was like you, she was a bit too common if you know what I mean, and she’d been married before, but she had the same wonderful figure, the sort that I’ve always admired. When I was in London last week on business I had a couple of hours to spare, so I went into a gallery and saw some wonderful paintings with that sort of figure. I don’t think anything else can be called a figure at all.’

  She sat in an armchair opposite, blushing and smiling at the same time but not, she said, because she was in any way embarrassed at my frankness, which she thought was attractive in me, but because I took some interest in culture. This was true, and when I went on to talk about a few of the books I’d read she became convinced that there was more to me than had ever been apparent at the office.

  Looking across the few feet of plush carpet between us I was swollen with the bile of lechery, and wanted to get her in my arms. She wore a thin woollen jumper, large tits shifting as she talked full of serious concern about the world and how good it was to be alive in spite of its ills and all the bad people in it. I agreed, till it occurred to me that too much agreement might not be a good thing. But I had no control over it, and was carried along by the sweet sin of listening and only opening my lips to say that she spoke the truth. Her eyes glittered, as if half a tear were buried in each of them, telling me that this was what she wanted to hear. Not that I doubted her intelligence, for under that soft exterior with the touch of sentimentality no doubt corroding it, she had a fine streak of rational perception. I leaned across and squeezed one of her hands warmly. She pressed mine, in recognition of the common ground we had found between us. Then she realized that I was pulling, as well as squeezing, and with a sudden shift she came over and sat by me on the sofa. ‘Do I have to tell you that I love you?’ I said wearily. My lips against hers pressed straight through to her teeth, because she opened her mouth as I went forward. Then her arms came around me.

  After a few minutes we looked at each other, me with what I hoped to be a gaze of honesty, and adoration, she with what seemed to be puzzled embarrassment and an excitement of wanting it that changed the curves of her face so that she hardly seemed the same person I’d known at the office. ‘I love you,’ I said, ‘more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I’d like to marry you.’

  She pressed me into her wonderful breasts. ‘Oh Michael, don’t say it. Please don’t.’ I decided not to, in case she started to cry, though that would be no bad match for the passion I felt in her. Nevertheless I said it again, and held her so tight that she couldn’t respond to it. ‘It would be marvellous,’ I murmured into her shoulder. ‘Marvellous.’

  She shuddered at the touch of my fingers, then broke away: ‘We really ought not to spoil it.’

  ‘I love you,’ I said, ‘so it’s the last thing I want to do’ – which set off another round. This time she forgot to tell me not to spoil it, or perhaps she couldn’t say anything at all, as my hand had found the warmest part of her.

  We went into her bedroom at six o’clock, and didn’t come out till eight the next morning, when she had to get ready for work. The whole night seemed no longer than five minutes, though I don’t know how many times we worked up to the apple-and-pivot and cried out in the moonlit darkness. I shook like a jelly-baby while driving her to work, afraid of every vehicle that came close: ‘I’ll come and see you tonight,’ I said.

  ‘Please. I’ll wait for you.’

  ‘And I’ll ask you to marry me again.’

  ‘Oh, Michael, I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Just say yes,’ I said.

  ‘You’re wonderful.’

  I set her down a hundred yards from the office, then drove home. The house was empty, and I undressed to get into bed. Unable to sleep, because I ached in every last limb, I wondered what I had done in tacking on to Miss Bolsover. Naturally, I wanted it to go on and on, never having tasted such loving before. Perhaps the fact that I had actually stayed all night in bed with her had something to do with it, though not entirely. There was really nothing to think about, but simply to lie there and regret that she wasn’t still with me, only to hope that time would speed along before tonight, and that I would be able to get some rest before setting out again. I drifted into half-sleep, wonderful as only sleep can be when you know that daylight is pushing behind drawn curtains, and that the whole town is going full tilt at hard and boring work.

  I don’t know how long I’d been in bed, but I became aware of a battering-ram breaking through to my sweetest dreams. There was no rest for the Devil in heaven, so I put on some trousers and stomped downstairs with half-closed eyes, wondering who the hell it could be at this time of the day. At the back door, which we usually used, no one was there, and just as I was thankfully up on my way to bed the knocking came this time from the front. Any such sound at the door always pushed my heart off course, jacked-up its noise in the veins of my ears. We weren’t used to people rapping at our doors. If a neighbour came to see us she usually called out my mother’s name and walked straight in. A knock meant either a tally man, the police, or a telegram, and since my mother had never bought anything on credit, and neither of us had been in trouble with the police, and no one we knew ever felt in such an urgent frame of mind as to send a telegram, you can imagine that such formal visitations at the door were few and far between. When one did come, and I happened to be in on my own, the effect was of such intensity that it almost had me scared.

  Claudine tried to smile, but ended up with a distressful saccharine expression that fixed me in speech and m
ovement to the spot. ‘Come in,’ I said, after a while, and at my brisk tone she gave a normal worried look and followed me through to the kitchen. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  She came back sharply: ‘Is it?’

  ‘Course it is, love. Take your coat off and sit down. I’ll make you a cup of tea. I could do with breakfast, myself.’

  ‘Breakfast? Do you know what time it is? It’s just gone twelve o’clock.’

  ‘We’ll call it brunch, then,’ I said from the kitchen stove. I cracked eggs into the pan, and layed enough bacon on the grill for two of us.

  ‘You must be going to pieces,’ she said, ‘staying in bed so late. It’s terrible. I always knew there was something funny about you.’

  ‘The sun will never rise on me, and that’s a fact.’

  I spread a cloth and put out knives and forks, turned on the radio, gave her a fag, and pushed another lump of coal into the fire, not even wondering why she had come to see me, keeping so busy that I wouldn’t be able to, while she went on and on about how useless I was. ‘Still,’ she said, watching me closely, ‘you are a bit more domesticated than I ever thought.’

  ‘I’ve often had to look after myself when Mam’s been away, that’s why.’

  We pulled up our seats, but she didn’t tuck in as heartily as I’d hoped. ‘It’s good to see you,’ I said, ‘but what’s on your mind?’

  ‘A lot that you ought to know,’ she answered.

  I thought I’d be funny: ‘You’re pregnant?’ I said brightly.

  ‘You bastard,’ she cried, standing up. ‘How did you know?’

  I choked on a piece of bacon rind, ran over to the mirror and yanked it out like a tapeworm. ‘I didn’t. It was a joke.’

  ‘It’s no joke to me,’ she said, eating a bit faster, now that she’d told me in this back-handed fashion.

  ‘How’s Alfie Bottesford?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you mean? What are you getting at?’

  I stood by the mantelshelf, riled that she could go on eating at a time like this, till I remembered that she had two mouths to feed. ‘I’m getting at nothing. But you and Alfie are back together, aren’t you?’

  ‘I won’t talk about it,’ she wept, eating her egg.

  ‘Suit yourself. You walked out on me.’

  She stood up and faced me: ‘And can you wonder at it, Michael-rotten-Cullen? Look at the way you’re living. Lounging in bed all day stinking with sleep. No job. No prospects even. What a deadbeat tramp you are. I can see there’s no hope for me with you, even though I am having your baby. Oh, it’s terrible. I feel awful. I’ll do myself in. I shall. That’s the only thing to do.’

  ‘If you’re serious about it,’ I said, ‘I’ll give you a couple of bob for the gas, and a cushion to put your head on.’

  ‘I really beliève you would,’ she said quietly, stunned at my response to her unnatural threat.

  ‘You bet I would, if that’s the way you feel. I love you so much I’d do anything for you.’

  ‘You don’t imagine I can feel very good, do you?’

  ‘No, but don’t come here palming a baby off on me when you’ve been going with Alfie Bottesford for the last month. I don’t know what your game is, but I’m not falling for that one.’

  ‘I thought you loved me,’ she said, ‘but all that went on between us meant nothing to you. As long as you got what you wanted. Alfie Bottesford’s never in all his life done anything to me. He hasn’t laid a finger on me, ever. And that’s the stone truth, I’m telling you.’

  I knew she wasn’t lying – almost. The memory of Miss Bolsover’s ripe body went out through my big toe, and I looked at the one tear of anguish and vinegar that came to Claudine’s pale cheek. ‘Won’t Alfie marry you? You’ve only got to get him to bed once and he won’t know the difference.’

  She sat down, with both hands over her face, and I began to feel sorry for her, till she burst out: ‘Oh, you’re so rotten. I can’t believe it. I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid to tell Mam and Dad, and hoped you’d come home with me so that we could both do it.’

  ‘You ditched me,’ I shouted, ‘didn’t you? And now you want to take up with me again! I was bitter about you going off that day, I admit it. You walked out just because I’d lost my job. Do you call that love? And now that you and Alfie Bottesford have been rubbing up together so that he’s got you loaded, you come moaning back to me. I’d like to know what for.’

  She leapt up as if to knife me, but before she could say anything I took hold and kissed her: ‘I love you. I’m going mad with love for you, Claudine. I’ll do anything for you. Just tell me and I’ll do it.’ She kissed me back, and in a few minutes was more relaxed.

  We stood in front of the mantelshelf mirror smoothing each other’s cheeks with our lips: ‘I came because it’s your baby,’ she said. ‘I want you to come home tonight, and see my parents. We can tell them we’re engaged, and that it would be best if we got married in a month or so.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but I can’t come up tonight. Make it tomorrow. One day more or less wain’t mek much difference.’

  ‘Why not tonight? It’s as good as any other.’

  ‘My car wants something doing to the engine,’ I said, ‘and a pal of mine who works at a garage can only do it tonight.’

  She jumped away: ‘Your car? What car?’

  I told her I’d bought it out of my savings. ‘Savings?’ she yelled. ‘You mean you had all this money in the bank while you were going with me, and you didn’t tell me?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She broke down at this: ‘How can I ever trust you?’

  ‘Easy. You’ll just have to believe me, then you can. I thought you’d be pleased to hear I’d got a car, but no. You look at me as if I’ve taken to crime. Every good thing I tell you turns out to be the end of the world. I suppose if I tell you something bad you’ll think it’s marvellous. Listen, you know when I said that my old man had been killed in the war, and that’s why I hadn’t got a father?’ I couldn’t stop myself even though I wanted to, though I’m not sure that I did. She looked at me, waiting for something special. ‘Well, I never had a father, at least not one that I’d know. My mother didn’t get married, and I was born from one of her affairs during the war – out of wedlock, as they say, or, to put it in blunt talk, I’m a bastard, a real no-good, genuine twenty-two-carat bastard in every sense of the word, so if ever you call me one again you’ll at least be speaking the truth for the only time in your life, because I don’t believe that you’ve never had hearthrug pie with Alfie Bottesford. The only thing I can’t understand is why you come to me now that he’s knocked you up.’

  She roared and cried: ‘I’ve got no one else to turn to, that’s why.’

  ‘I can’t understand, you’re courting Alfie, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you come to me when you’re pregnant. All right, if you want thirty quid to get rid of it I’ll give it to you.’ One of the men at the office had done it for his girlfriend, and putting the same proposition to Claudine made me feel big.

  A bottle smashed over my head, a small compact square sauce bottle she snatched from the table. I grabbed her and slapped into her face. She cried out, and I thought that if this free-for-all went on much longer we’d have the neighbours in to part us. ‘I came here because it’s yours,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’

  A thin red line trickled over my nose, and I knelt down to wipe it with a corner of the tablecloth. ‘If that’s the way you feel,’ I said, ‘I’ll be at your house at half past six tomorrow night.’

  ‘Tonight,’ she demanded.

  ‘Tomorrow. I must get my car fixed. It’s the only chance I’ve got. He goes to Mablethorpe first thing in the morning to see his aunt. So it’ll just have to be tomorrow. I promise.’

  ‘If you aren’t there,’ she said, ‘I’ll come with my father and mother. I will, and I mean it.’

  ‘You won’t have to,’ I said, with my best ho
nest smile. I love you. I really do. I’ve never loved anyone else. I’m already beginning to see how nice it’ll be to live in a married way with you.’ She sat on my knee, and my old passion came back for her: ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ I said. After a little more persuading she agreed. We lay in bed till four o’clock, and then she left, thinking that all was well again. I went back and dozed in the marvellous rumpled sheets until it was time to drive to Miss Bolsover’s.

  ‘How long can it last?’ Gwen wanted to know.

  ‘Years,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I always ask myself that, and it’s a bad sign.’

  ‘If I love someone it’s for ever – unless I’m ditched. Then it’s not my fault. But you don’t need to ask it with me.’ We lay on the rug in front of her electric fire.

  ‘I ask it with everyone,’ she said, ‘then I can’t blame it on the fact that I asked it – if it goes wrong. But I ask it. I can’t help it.’

  ‘If that’s the way you like it,’ I said, ‘but as far as I’m concerned I love you, and that’s that.’

  ‘Oh Michael – you’re so strong and simple. You’re so direct. That’s what I love most about you. I can understand you, and I’ve never had that feeling before.’ It was hard to take this as a compliment, though I saw that in one way she was right. I’d felt for a long time that I couldn’t do anything at all unless I was simple, so in order not to be paralysed I fought to keep that simplicity. And Miss Bolsover’s approbation of it was flattering in this respect, but if I loved her for saying it, it was only because she had said something at all.

  She made a short meal of meat, chips and salad, and served us both on a small table in the living-room. She had a huge bathgown over her, and I wore her brother Andrew’s smoking-jacket. I stroked her hand at each mouthful, which made me feel like a husband, and also as if I owned the house – both new sensations for me. Afterwards I smoked a Whiff, and talked her into a few puffs of it. Then we went to bed, not at midnight like grown-ups, but at eight o’clock, driven there by a pure and marvellous lust to get back to the centre of things.