A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  As soon as I got there Moggerhanger told me to take out the Bentley and drive it around for an hour to get the feel of it. It was like driving somebody’s living-room. You could almost stand up inside it, and touch it along at over a hundred miles an hour when you dare. I had no other thought in my head when I’d lifted off except to keep it unscratched and in one piece. My main aim was to have it out on the A4 and into the country, because I didn’t want to run it against too much traffic on my first hand-in. I acted gingerly, until I found that its acceleration and speed, not to mention its presence, overawed most other drivers. All I had to do was flash straight for a souped-up sales rep in his new Cortina as if I were intent on smashing him to bits, and he’d get out of the way sooner or later. Sometimes it was later, but he slid from my path nevertheless. The only danger was those people with foreign cars, owner-occupiers who were so convinced of their superiority over anything English that they were insane or fanatic enough not to get clear under any circumstances, and in that case I had to pull back. But I didn’t hate them for this, for in many ways they were right not to give in just because I drove a Bentley, which was after all somebody else’s.

  When Moggerhanger sat in the front with me, he made remarks as if he were at the wheel himself. ‘Go on,’ he’d say, ‘step on it and you’ll get across before the lights change. Overtake that Cooper. You can see the bastard thinks he’s God Almighty. If you keep on, you can flatten him as you turn the next corner, get him up against the kerb.’ At night, when we were coming back from his ranch in Berkshire he’d say, ‘That nut should dip his headlamps. Flash him, Michael. Do a swerve and shake the shit out of him. Scrape him like a box of matches, so that he goes up in flames. I’ll foot the bill for a tin of new paint on our car.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Moggerhanger,’ I’d say, doing none of these devilish things to other road-users, unless they were absolutely in the wrong and I could teach them a lesson with no danger to myself. But Moggerhanger enjoyed talking like this, and that’s all that mattered. If I’d followed him to the letter I’d have been out on my arse in no time, of that I’m sure, and so I just gazed straight ahead with the poker-face I was developing fast, and said nothing except yes, Mr Moggerhanger and no, Mr Moggerhanger.

  The trouble was that he belched all the time, and it stank rotten in the car. I wasn’t allowed to smile, so had to put up with it. He seemed a bit apologetic about it at first, because he said once or twice: ‘I’m only healthy when I’m belching, Michael. It’s the breath of life to me.’ He didn’t even laugh when he said it. Mostly he sat in the back with a briefcase on his knee, and a bundle of newspapers. Whenever I had to wait an hour outside the lawyers’ office I’d get stuck in and read these, every morning paper you could find, so that I caught up on the news and scandal as part of my job.

  On long drives, Moggerhanger might break into a long bout of talking: ‘The only luxury in life,’ he said, ‘is to have more than one place to live. Nothing else matters. You can eat bread and oil, wear a sack, but if you’ve got a few places scattered around, plus half a dozen passports, nobody can touch you. The trouble is, I can’t wear a sack because people wouldn’t be impressed by me, and I have to eat four-course lunches otherwise they’d think I was dying and about to lose my grip. And I can’t walk everywhere or take buses because then I’d never have time to get anything done. But at least I have a flat in town, a place in Berks, a bungalow in Cornwall, and a chalet in Majorca – not to mention the abode in Ealing and a little place in Kent. That’s property, Michael, that is. And there’a a car at each place. I could live off that for the rest of my life in a quiet sort of way if anything went wrong, fundamentally wrong I mean. Of course my wife wouldn’t like it, and my spoiled daughter would gripe even more, but I do have a bit of cupro-nickel stashed away in Switzerland to stop their mouths if that should ever come about. I’ve got it all weighed up, except the weight of my fist. Only others can tell me about that, and they never do because they’d get knocked for six. Not that I think that’s the only way to deal with people, Mikey-boy, because it ain’t. I’m not inhuman. Violence never got anyone anywhere, at least not all violence, and not everywhere. I used to lean a bit too much that way, but then I saw that most of it wasn’t necessary. The reputation of being rough was all I needed to get me what I wanted. I had to punch or slash some poor bastard once in a while whether he deserved it or not, just to show my kidneys were still hard. I gradually got better with the quick lip and the flash look, and nowadays I hardly ever have to prove even to myself that I’m as tough as I once was. Life’s like that. If I say it’s funny I’ll spit blood. If I say it’s hard I’ll swallow my teeth. I don’t say anything except talk about the way it is. The war made me, or helped to. I was nearly thirty then, with such a criminal life behind me that even the Army turned up its nose. It came at the right time as far as I was concerned, though I wished it never had come when it finished and I saw what it did to so many in Europe. I never bargained for that, Mikey. None of us did. But what else could I do but take advantage of it? I was made that way, by myself and by others. I wasn’t unpatriotic. Don’t get me wrong. I’m as English to the bone as the next man – though not to the marrow perhaps. I just helped to channel certain food supplies in the right direction, and to organize exotic entertainments that might not otherwise have been available. All much of a muchness. Property was dirt cheap, and I snapped up a few big places. Went from worse to bad and bad to better, and when I find it hard to get to sleep at night I keep telling myself over and over again how much money I’m worth, in round figures, of course. Believe it or not, it actually soothes me. It’s a great big cushion I float on to. I think I’d turn queer if it weren’t for all this money! It’s all right, Mikey-moo, I shan’t, so don’t shift over. In the prime of my fifty-year-old life I’m beginning to get an ulcer, and it’s hard to say what’s giving it. All my life I’ve only needed to glance at a person to tell whether I can deal with him or not. But this spot-on ability is what built up my ulcer – over the years. So it’s my ulcer now that tells me whether or not I can treat with someone. I feel it jump, not much, sometimes more – than others, but it jumps, and I can feel it. If I look at a person and my ulcer’s quiet, then he’s OK. If it jumps, then I put on the big stuff to help me to get what I want. A perfect ulcerometer, Michael. I must patent it. Maybe everyone should have one in their guts. You’ve got to turn everything to your own advantage, especially the bad things, because if the good things help other people it’s the bad things you’ve got that help yourself. Not that I’m having everything out of life. Far from it. In the first place I don’t even know what I want. I only know what I haven’t got, which might sound like the same thing but isn’t at all. One thing I haven’t yet got is a son. I don’t drink my spinal fluid over it, but it bites me now and again. I’ve got plenty of daughters, but only one by my own wife. I’ve never had a son, though they do say it takes a real man to go on making daughters. I’ve had so many here, there and everywhere that I always know a child is mine, just because it’s a daughter. If one of my women had a son I’d know she’d been treacherous. I’d slash her till she looked like a circus tent after a stormy night, not to mention what I’d do to the real ponce-headed daddy. But it’s all talk, Michael. I don’t do much more than talk these days, I can tell you, but it’s enough, and if it wasn’t I’d soon turn to a little blunt persuasion.’

  Not long afterwards he tried some of this, and was arrested on a charge of extortion. At first I was glad that the great Moggerhanger had come crashing down at last, even though I’d listened to his talk with a lot of admiration. And I thought goddammit here goes my job, but suddenly he pours into the house from a taxi, having got out on five thousand pounds bail. And then I was pleased to see him. His wife clung to him as if he’d already done twenty years in prison. ‘I wish you’d retire, Claud,’ she said, ‘and not get mixed up in things like this any more.’ She seemed to have the idea that he was the managing director of a straight factory who’d go
t taken in by dishonest underlings.

  He gave her that impression as well: ‘No, Agnes. Who’d run things without me? Everything would fall to pieces. There are too many relying on me. Don’t worry, love. It’ll all blow calm again. There’s nothing they can put on me, and they know it. They try a little frame-up now and again in the hope that it’ll stick. They haven’t got a chance. That Detective Inspector Lantorn just won’t be sensible and let go. He’s got to show willing now and again to Chief Inspector Jockstrap, otherwise he’s a decent enough bloke. In many ways I’ve got a lot to thank him for, but we won’t go into that now, especially a few years ago when …’

  He saw me listening, and though I’m sure he trusted me, some inborn caution told him not to go on. It was true that we had become quite friendly, though with a certain distance always between us. He talked to me as if I were himself, and though this sometimes made me feel as if I were no longer myself, it did make it the most interesting job I’d so far had. He had a certain flinty wisdom which I was too young to see myself as ever having. I won’t say I wanted to be like him, because I was too frightened of him for that, but I admired him nevertheless.

  There was a suite of kennels outside the house. Apart from a brace of Dobermann Pinschers which served as guard dogs to his property, Moggerhanger kept a couple of champion greyhounds. One was run under the name of Long Tom, while the other was called Abel Cain. He’d bought them six months ago, but already they’d won a few races and were high up in the lists. They would have turned any Nottingham collier green with envy, if such people still kept whippets, which I wasn’t sure of, because I’d never seen them doing so in my short life.

  The only blight on Moggerhanger’s arrest was that, as a condition of his bail, he was not supposed to leave town, and this came at the time when his sporting heart was set on letting Long Tom and Abel Cain race on a dogcourse in Devon. He not only stood to win fair money, but to increase the fame of his prime animals – which would jack up their price when they were worn out and he wanted to sell them. He fumed about this unreasonable confinement as I drove him from one to another of his clubs by day, and to a certain place in Knightsbridge at night outside which I had to wait in the car for several hours till he came wearily down, snappy with me, but pleased with himself. Cursing his ill-luck in this way was Moggerhanger’s method of clarifying his thoughts towards a certain plan. He proposed to invite Detective Inspector Lantern over to dinner, and I was sent to the appropriate police station at seven o’clock to bring him back to Ealing.

  He had a face that was distinguished by being utterly unrecognizable. He was as tall and thin as a ramrod. His look was thin and expressionless, and with the grey suit he was wearing and the glassy stare in his eyes he could perhaps more than in any other country have vanished like a fish in water, because if there were any features at all in his face I saw that they were getting uncomfortably close to those of a fish the more I got the opportunity of glancing at him.

  I sprang out and opened the back door for him as he came down the steps – as I’d been told to do. He got in and sat down without even a thank you. What went on at the dinner I shall never know. Walking the lawns outside, I certainly heard a lot of glass clinking and gruff matey laughter. I don’t suppose many people can claim to have been dined and swined at the Moggerhanger’s, but when I drove Lantorn back to his Wembley home that night he was singing Kemp Town Races all the way, even when I’d let him out and watched him go crump at his matchbox gate.

  Two days later I was called at six in the morning to drive them to the racecourse in Devon. For an hour neither Lantorn nor Moggerhanger spoke a word, but sat well back behind, arms folded into their overcoats, not even glimpsing out at the ominous fish-red dawn. Two sleek greyhounds sprawled on the upholstery at their feet, opening their scissor-jaws now and again for a yawn so wide that they seemed capable of swallowing the whole car. That’s the picture I got when I heard the sharp whine of it above the purr of the engine. The sky as I went south from Wembley was purple and red as if God had slit His own throat, and was spilling Himself over the whole world. It seemed a normal, raw, unkindly London dawn, and I was glad to turn my back on it when we swung on to the Great West Road at Heston.

  I cruised at fifty and sixty where I shouldn’t have done more than forty, but this was to see whether the big copper in the back would stir up and say anything. He didn’t, so I hoped a patrol car would tail us and pull us in to see why we were going so fast. Then I’d see an exchange of looks that might be interesting. There wasn’t much traffic on the way out, and I thought how good it would be to have a few hundred miles of road all to myself. If I were king I’d issue a proclamation saying that all subjects were to be off the road on such and such a day, and then I’d get into a souped-up Rolls with my prime minister, minister of war, and chief of police, and speed along freely wherever I wanted to go. As it was, any honest chauffeur making a living risked his life on England’s arterial lanes. It was good practice for my self-control, not being able to curse blind because of my passengers, as I went through town after town and there still seemed no end to getting out of London. But those at the back didn’t worry, and when Moggerhanger let out a reverberating belch Lantorn stirred and asked: ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Not a word,’ said Moggerhanger. Long Tom jumped on his knee at the sound of his voice, but he eased it off with the back of his hand. Moggerhanger was getting his own way and that’s all that mattered to him and his underworld. He’d asked Lantorn if he couldn’t waive his metropolitan regulations and let him go off for the day to race his favourite dogs in Devon. At first Lantorn refused just to show he had some weight to throw about, but then he relented on condition that he, James Lantorn, could go along too to keep an eye on him, and maybe win a bit of money into the bargain on these dogs Moggerhanger boasted about so much. Moggerhanger swore they were certain to win every race, and I for one knew him to be right. I was prepared to bet every pound on the dogs because they couldn’t help but win. I’d seen Claud put the dope and syringes into his small case before leaving that morning, which was something Lantorn might or might not know. But as I drove along I saw I was stupid in thinking he didn’t know, when it was obvious he knew very well, because it seemed to me that James Lantorn and Claud Moggerhanger were two of the biggest crooks in the world – as I opened up and went at sixty towards Basingstoke. If there was an angel in the car at the moment it must have been me, and I kept saying it to myself in case I should fall for the trap of being proud of it.

  Lantorn must have been awake because I heard him say, when a Jaguar overtook me: ‘That bastard’s doing above seventy. I’d pull him in if I was in a squad car.’

  ‘It’s terrible, the sort of people you get on the roads these days,’ said Claud. ‘If it was up to me every car would cost ten thousand pounds cash, and them that couldn’t afford it could walk, or take a bus. That’d keep the decks clear. It’s getting bad, and it’ll get worse.’ He took out a bottle of brandy and a silver cup, poured a round, and passed it to Lantorn, who silted it down without a word. ‘Cards?’ said Claud. There must-have been a nod in his direction, because I heard the case come open, and the crisp efficient shuffle of a deck. Cigar smoke filtered through, and the rattle of money. Small stakes, I thought, as laughter at some surprising hand or other dinned my neck. There were light-hearted curses, a slapping of thighs, and an occasional harsh: ‘Get down, you bastard,’ as one of the dogs tried to barge its long head in, or when they hadn’t even moved but Claud had lost and wanted somebody to take it out of.

  I stopped at a town traffic lights and half turned my head to see what was the score, and Moggerhanger rapped out: ‘Keep your eyes to the front, and your ears to the front. That’s what I pay you for. Not to drive. Any ragbag can drive.’ He laughed at this, and Lantorn joined in, but I shot forward on green so that the deck of cards moved. Surprisingly, Moggerhanger didn’t bury a razor in my neck or sack me on the spot. Apparently his bad hand had suddenly become a good
one, and it was Lantorn who laughed on the other side of his face when he couldn’t get things back to the way they’d been before. When we stopped for a sandwich Moggerhanger looked more like the copper to me, a real hardback if ever there was one. But we felt in a better mood after eating and a mug of tea. The dogs were brought out for a piss as well, to stretch their long and lovely legs that were set, when specially primed, to win us so much goo.

  At eleven o’clock, and not far from the course, I heard them packing the cards away. Moggerhanger was in a grumpy state of mind because he’d lost five quid. Being a millionaire he resented it more than a man whose last money had slipped away. ‘You’ll get it back on the way home,’ said Lantorn in a friendly manner, seeming to feel that this bad mood between them wasn’t worth such a measly sum.

  ‘I bloody-well will,’ said Moggerhanger, an unrealistic prophecy that seemed nevertheless to cheer him up. ‘Let’s see to the dogs, anyhow,’ he added. ‘Hold the buggers.’ I heard a couple of yelps, then a few slaps at the arse to get the stuff into circulation, so that both my passengers considered that all was right with the world.

  This turned out to be more or less correct. I was told to wait in the car park while they went in and did business. I asked Moggerhanger if he would stake ten of my own quid on Long Tom, since I couldn’t be at the race myself. He snatched it and said he’d do his best but that I’d no right to ruin myself getting into the gambling habit. I’d do much better, he said, sending it to my mother who no doubt could do more worthwhile things with it. The dogs, full of pep, pulled him away, otherwise the sermon might have gone on for an hour. Moggerhanger was still full of surprises to me, which may have been why I put up with so much from him.