A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  I went over to a restaurant and got myself a plate of steak and mashed potatoes, cabbage and bread pudding. Travelling with such people there was no telling when I’d be able to eat again. They didn’t seem interested in food, with such dog flesh and high finance on their hands. Afterwards I sat in the car and heard music on the radio, read a newspaper, smoked, lay full out along the seat and slept for an hour, a far-off announcement of winners coming over from the stadium, with the tremor of cheering and noise now and again.

  It was four o’clock when Moggerhanger and Lantorn came out, flushed and half drunk both with booze and the success of their outing, regarding it as more or less over and done with. ‘All right, Michael, home we go,’ Moggerhanger said, bundling the deadbeat dogs inside like so much window-leather. ‘Step on the petrol,’ he crowed. ‘Sink the golden boot in. We cleared the decks, eh, Jimmy’ – nudging old Lantorn when they were seated. ‘By God we did. You should be of good cheer, Michael, because you’re a couple of hundred up on this little journey. Good, eh? He’s a lucky lad, ain’t he, Jimmy?’

  ‘I’d say so,’ said Lantorn with a chuckle.

  So we sailed away eastwards towards threatening clouds. We stopped at some Wiltshire market town called Pigminster and had tea at the hotel. The dogs, who had slept like two stones since leaving the course, woke up and followed us into the lounge, and the manager was so impressed by them, being a fervent greyhound man, that he let them lie like royalty beside our table. Moggerhanger took my saucer and his own and put them on the floor, full of tea. They lapped up pint after pint, and several pots were ordered because we were all thirsty. Neither Moggerhanger nor Lantorn were sober, and their laughter gunned around the large and otherwise empty lounge. Moggerhanger threw whole cucumber sandwiches across at the dogs, whose huge jaws snapped over them like crocodiles. By their eyes, and the way their ribs trembled as the food came flying, they looked as if they needed that sustenance, to stop them caving in altogether.

  It pepped me up too, and I drove on across the Plain. Moggerhanger got his friend back on to the cards, but the game had lost its spirit now that they’d made so much at the races. I tried to speculate on the amount, but didn’t get very far. If I’d won two hundred they must have made ten times as much. This thought was cut off when raindrops poxed up the windscreen, and I reached for the wipers. Grey clouds rolled low across the countryside, but the road was fairly empty and I bowled along near to seventy miles an hour, which wasn’t bad on such a narrow and rotten road.

  The dogs stood together and scratched at the carpets. ‘They want to piss,’ said Claud, scooping up a few pounds he’d won. ‘Pull in when you can, Michael.’

  There was a lay-by close to Stonehenge, and as soon as I opened the door they shot out with such force that I went down into the wet grass. They found a stump a few yards away, and I thought that if they emptied themselves much more they’d go down flat like balloons. Moggerhanger sat in the car and watched them proudly through the open door, while Lantorn lay with his head back after the hard day’s work and was on the point of going to sleep.

  When I went to get them in, Long Tom jumped in the air, spun like an acrobat, came down facing the opposite direction, and went off sniffing from tree to tree. Abel Cain snapped at my hand to bite it when I got close, then thought it might not taste so good, and ran after Long Tom. They romped and scampered happily, and for a while I thought maybe they had a right to ten minutes of fresh air and frolic, albeit wet, before coming back into the stuffy car.

  But Claud thought differently: ‘Get them in.’ I knew it was no good running, because how could I hope to catch them when they’d just won me two hundred quid against the fastest dogs in England? I crouched, and went up slowly, calling them pretty names, my hand held out as if a piece of raw steak were spread in it. They looked tempted, but only to torment me, because they turned and ran through a hedge and into the middle of a field. I chased them, aware of Claud’s bull-like roaring behind. Together with Lantorn, who had now been roused, they fanned left and right while I was beating up front. My shoes and trousers were saturated, and rain started to come down heavier.

  There was no sign of the dogs, but we kept up the advance, knowing they must be in our flimsy net somewhere. I heard Lantorn coughing on one horizon and Moggerhanger cursing on the other. The afternoon was heavy and quiet but for the dogs’ names being shouted, and the occasional thin drone of a car going by on the road we were fast leaving behind. We were worried in case the dogs should double back and slip through on to it, where they’d be in danger from traffic. But as far as we knew they were still up ahead in the expanding distance. I began to reflect that this job had its good and bad points, to see that if this went on much longer I wouldn’t be able to keep my date with Bridgitte for that night. Owing to the unexpected demands of Moggerhanger I hadn’t been able to see her for a few days, and missed the occasional nestle into her naked body.

  The raw wind and the blight-rain put such pretty thoughts away. I waded ahead calling for the dogs, unable to curse and wish them in hell because they had just won me two hundred quid. The great blocks of Stonehenge rose on the other side of some railings, Long Tom and Abel Cain sporting around and under them. Without considering, I lifted myself up, tearing my trousers at the arse and ankle, but doing the great feat of getting over, nearly breaking my abdomen when I landed on the sacred earth of the other side. Long Tom came up to me, and for a second I touched his collar, but he snapped free and ran back to Abel Cain, his mouth open and choking on moist wind as he snapped at his pal’s back legs.

  I ran under the stones, around the supports, my lungs creaking and rending. I leapt forward and fell, sprawled along the soaked gravel and soil, damning the painted, perverted druids for all I was worth. Moggerhanger and Lantorn waited at different parts of the fence. ‘Get him,’ Claud called out. ‘Come on, Michael. There’s a bonus when you’ve got ’em in. Good lad. Good lad.’

  I swerved, zig-zagged, ran, switched back, reached out, spun, ran again, circled, cut my arm on a supporting pillar so that the blood ran salty in my mouth when I licked it during a pause. Rain poured down. Lantorn had gone back, told to bring the car closer so that the dogs could be bundled in more easily when we caught them. They mocked me, tricked me, tried to bite me. I was their mortal earthly enemy, and they were my devils, cut out of Stonehenge stone and waiting for me to exhaust myself before they could turn and rend me. I fell on to Abel Cain by a ruse, but he snapped so fiercely with his ugly teeth that I was frightened and let go.

  The bastards were turning ugly. As far as I was concerned they could take the two hundred quid and pad their rabbit-ribs with it. I thought of giving it up when Lantorn and Moggerhanger came into the enclosure, followed by a keeper who, however, didn’t take part in the round-up but only stood by grinning. I envied him and saw how sensible he was, but the drug that had been pumped into the dogs must have worked off because they seemed calmer. I hoped they were becoming exhausted, so that we could then lift them into the car like so many sleeping pieces of meat.

  Moggerhanger spoke to them affectionately, but their eyes were mad and hollow, not of the world beyond the stones of Stonehenge, and with no effort they rallied their energy and were right away from us. Then we were all running without any purpose. I was dreading that they’d extend their field of freedom by getting outside the Stonehenge enclosure again and spreading over the whole of Wiltshire. If that happened they’d be lost for good, because Moggerhanger could hardly advertise in the papers that he’d lost his dogs, when he was not supposed to be out of London. At least I couldn’t imagine Lantorn allowing that, for it might be more than his job was worth – unless Moggerhanger were prepared to employ him at a similar sort of salary.

  We ran our guts out till it got dark, and at the end only captured Long Tom, who was kicked savagely into the car by his loving master. Abel Cain was never seen again. We searched and sweated through the mouldy perishing dusk, driving to all points of the compass, then walki
ng inwards like a military search operation. In fact it would have needed an army to track down that lousy dog which was worth its weight in gold to Moggerhanger. At nine o’clock we gave up, sat glumly in a pub saloon hardly able to talk.

  Lantorn’s long face was grey with exertion, while Moggerhanger’s was pasty from shock. I just felt knackered, hardly able to get down my sandwich and tomato juice. Moggerhanger said we’d have to come out tomorrow at the slit of dawn to carry on the hunt, but Lantorn said this wouldn’t be possible while he was on bail. I thought Moggerhanger was going to slit him there and then, and both of us make a break for it, but his white gills relaxed into a smile as he downed another brandy and began to look human again. ‘It’ll be worth a few hundred,’ he said, ‘on top of the thousand you got today.’

  But I could see Lantorn’s face from where Moggerhanger couldn’t, because he was sitting by his side. Lantorn had remembered what firm he was working for, and his face now showed it. ‘Couldn’t,’ he said, ‘old sport. The super’s back tomorrow and it’s more than my life’s worth.’

  Moggerhanger tried it from all angles, but the more he did so the more did Lantorn dig his heels into the soil of his heart. It wasn’t that he couldn’t let Claud off the hook tomorrow. He could, and he knew he could, and do it with safety. And Moggerhanger knew as well. But for no reason at all Lantorn chose not to, and nobody could do anything about it. In this black mood we travelled back to London, and it was more like being in a boat than a car because the rain poured down all the way. Being so late, there was no thick traffic, though I was driving with my nerve-ends on the final run, which came just about midnight. There was no cardsharping, or brandy swigging, and the silence almost sent me to sleep. At one point I went straight across a red traffic light, but nobody was the worse for it. The only break was an occasional whine from Long Tom who by now was beginning to miss his mate, and perhaps still felt the boot marks that Moggerhanger had planted on it. Lantorn must have felt the most hated man in the world by the time we got home, and I sensed that his only aim left in life, if he had anything to do with the prosecution (and I knew that he had), was to get Moggerhanger the longest possible sentence for whatever he’d done wrong in the eyes of the law. Moggerhanger knew this as well, and I hoped there was something he could do about it, because out of the two rogues I was driving home I knew whose side I was on, without even having to make the choice. I suppose this was one of the reasons why Moggerhanger had taken me on and, having weighed me up, had not found me wanting in this respect. Still, I could not bask in such a man’s approval, even though I was young, because the fact that he might approve of me had nothing to do with me approving of myself – though maybe it was fast becoming so.

  The next day Moggerhanger handed me a bundle of notes, and I thanked him as I stuffed them into my pocket. ‘Count them,’ he said.

  ‘I trust you, Mr Moggerhanger.’

  ‘You’re a bigger fool than I thought you were. Never trust anybody. If you do you’ll make the fatal mistake of one day trusting yourself. And any man who trusts himself is asking for trouble.’ He was in the dining-room having breakfast. ‘Pour yourself some coffee,’ he laughed, ‘and sit down when you’re talking to me.’ The Spanish servant had let me lie in till ten, so I felt refreshed after my eighteen-hour day of yesterday. I drew a large cup of coffee, with a dash of milk. ‘And while you’re drinking it,’ he insisted, ‘count that money. I shan’t be offended.’

  ‘It’s all correct,’ I said, flattening it into my wallet.

  ‘Got a bank account?’ If I hadn’t, he said I ought to open one, and offered to recommend me to his bank, which I accepted. ‘Put that two hundred on deposit,’ he said, ‘and forget about it – until you can add to it.’

  ‘I was thinking of buying a car, to take my girlfriend out in.’

  ‘Who is she?’ he asked, sharply.

  ‘A coloured girl from West Ken, student at London University. We clicked on a bus to Hampstead. Very platonic, though.’

  He smiled. ‘Good luck to you. But don’t buy a car,’ he said, ‘till you’ve got the price of one ten times over. Then find a good one, and have the best out of it. I’ll tell you something else. Don’t get a second-hand car. Only a rich man finds a bargain, because he can get it under his own time and conditions. I didn’t have a car till there was fifty thousand quid in the bank. Then I bought a new one, for cash. I walked or used taxis till then, and it didn’t interfere with my work, or my self-esteem. It’d need a lot to do that. I run my life on ten of my own commandments. I worked them out month by month in prison as a young man, though they were a bit different to what they turned out to be later. Life smooths all edges. Pour some more coffee and I’ll run through them for you. Number one was: don’t do anything against a friend who can still help you, or an enemy who might soon be talked into doing you a good turn. Not bad, eh?’

  ‘Very sharp,’ I had to admit.

  ‘Two: don’t kill for money, spite, or love, but only to get what somebody else has got but what you consider to be your own.’

  ‘That’s rough.’

  ‘Ain’t it? Number three: when you put money into the bank don’t do it like a happy saver, but feel on top of the world, as if you’re throwing it away. But hoard your gains, because money is power over others – though never over yourself.’

  I was struck by his sense, not to say flabbergasted, and hoped I’d remember all he said. There was no stopping him.

  ‘Four: treat the police as well as you would like to be treated if you were one of them. They are put there by society to help you keep what you have got no matter how you got it. They’re only human. Five: when you don’t know whether to say yes or no, always say yes. Six: train yourself never to love, and never to hate. Seven: if you want to make money, sell people what they need, not what they’ve been told to want. Then you’ll have earned it. Eight: people are always stupider than you think. If you don’t know this, you’ll hardly ever act. Nine times out of ten you’ll be right. But polish your powers of intuition, and plot every step intelligently. Note where there’s a chance of your being found out, and prepare to turn it to your advantage if this should happen. Nine: never be afraid, neither of God, man, nor beast. The others are always more afraid than you are. Ten: be law-abiding in every possible way, except when it stops you getting what you want. Eleven, and the last: honour thy father and thy mother. If it weren’t for them you wouldn’t be here, and if you live by these rules they’ll certainly do well by you.’

  ‘Sounds all right,’ I said, ‘but they’re not so easy to follow.’

  ‘Takes time,’ he admitted. ‘If you try hard you can do it by the time you’re thirty. But even if you only try, you’re a thousand times better off than those who don’t know about them.’

  ‘Do you want me to go out to Stonehenge today and look for Abel Cain? He might still be somewhere in the neighbourhood.’

  He stood up and fastened his jacket. ‘I know when something’s good and lost. He’s stashed away in somebody’s barn or kennel by now. We’ll never see him again, at least not under the name he’s been known by. Thanks all the same. I’ll be off to see my lawyers in half an hour, so get the car ready. I’m going to wrap this case up so neatly in its warp and weft that that bastard Lantorn can wear it around his neck as a scarf for the rest of his life.’

  In the next few days I worked day and night at the beck and call of Moggerhanger’s eleven deadly rules. One journey was to take a box of groceries to the house of his eighty-year-old mother in Hendon. I didn’t get a glance of her because the maid took them from me. Moggerhanger spent much time talking to lawyers, and during these weeks he must have dropped a couple of stone in weight, though he was loud and cheerful through it all.

  Bridgitte accused me of going cold on her, and once when I went to see her Smog cried as I was about to leave. It seemed that Dr Anderson’s wife had come back, and so he had started licking his way towards Bridgitte again. This didn’t worry me, because I wasn
’t the jealous sort. But Bridgitte said I ought to do something about it and that if I wasn’t jealous it proved I didn’t love her. Smog snuggled up to her and said: ‘I still love you, though,’ and she clutched him as the tears ran down her apple cheeks, her beautiful button nose an island in between. I told her that the day after tomorrow Moggerhanger’s case would be over. Then I’d make sure to spend more time with her. If he went to prison, I’d be out of a job. If he was free he’d go for a holiday, and so would I. ‘In the meantime,’ I added, when Smog had gone to his innocent dreams, ‘if that dirty bastard Dr Anderson tries to slip his hands up your clothes again you should go out and buy a lipstick that neither you nor his wife uses, and put it under her pillow so that she can find it and cause a rumpus. Then she’ll leave again, and he’ll brood so much on her going that he won’t be able to paw you.’ I threw off this idea more or less in an idle moment, never thinking she’d act on it. At least I left her calm that night, which settled my mind for all the Moggerhanger work still to be done.

  The case against him was thrown out of court for lack of evidence. The headline that night said: MOGGERHANGER ACQUITTED – and I caught some of his satisfaction in the guts as I drove him from the lawyers’ on Chancery Lane. On the steps of the court he had shaken hands with Lantorn, an immortal picture for me if ever there was one. He sat with me in the front, saying nothing, looking far grimmer than he’d done while waiting for the trial, as if he had in mind some sort of cataclysmic revenge on those who’d tried to get him. The only thing was that he belched more frequently than he’d done lately, as if now that it was over his stomach could relax.

  At home all was set for a quiet celebration dinner with his wife and beautiful dark-haired daughter, and his brother Charles Moggerhanger, who was the managing director of a department store in the North, and who looked after Claud’s property up that way. Charles Moggerhanger was quiet, sarcastic, and suspicious, a lightly built man of medium height with a quiet tread, a bald head, and finer features than his brother. All in all it was hard to say who would be the worse to get on the wrong side of.