A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  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.’

  They were glad to see the back of us, though not of William, because he left a ten-bob note for a tip. ‘You’re more trouble than a bloody baby,’ he said, and, after we’d been to the hat-shop, ‘Now who’s that coming towards yourself in that mirror over there?’

  ‘Where?’ I said. ‘Where?’ – looking straight into it, at this smart young fellow I didn’t for a moment recognize. I tipped my hat to him, and wondered what the hell would happen next.

  The following morning Mr Hay went on a trip to Beirut, and I was left again to wander the town. But I had been given instructions as to what I should do, each daily walk marked on a map in different-coloured pencil. William stipulated that I must carry my briefcase, which he had already filled with short lengths of lead so that it felt on lifting like a twenty-pound weight hanging from my arm. What’s more, he had t
aken the key so that I couldn’t throw any of it out. There was, of course, no reason why I should have carried the briefcase at all, but because this was an important part of my training I didn’t want to spoil any chance of getting into their racket simply by being idle and unable to carry the right weight when it came to a test. The first day took me to the middle of town and back, and I don’t know whether it was part of a laugh on William’s part, but it so happened from the map that I was to turn around at the Old Bailey.

  The idea that I was to take this weight, and wear my hat, and walk in a casual way as if I had little more than a copy of that morning’s newspaper in my briefcase was, as I found after the first hundred yards, easier said than done. In the middle of Battersea Bridge I wanted to put it down and sit on it because I was sweating like a dog. When I picked it up again I wanted to sling it in the river. But I carried on, recalling as I walked how my Irish ancestors (one of them anyway) had survived the Famine created by the callous English in order to come over and build the railways for them, digging out their navigating guts as they linked up one place to another. So bearing this picture, I struggled through Chelsea, hoping I didn’t look too much like a coalman about to deliver his last load of the day.

  By the time I got back to the flat my arms felt a foot longer, but the second day was worse because though by then I’d got used to carrying the actual weight, I had been specially requested to put on the expression of nonchalance. If it was impossible to do this on setting out, it was even more difficult by the time I was on the return leg. The walks had been planned so that they got longer each time, and when I was putting the key into the flat door I cursed myself for a fool and swore I’d clear out as soon as I got my clothes together. It had drizzled and rained much of the day, what’s more, and this only increased my exhaustion and despondency.

  After a bath and a few mugs of tea I began to lose my rage. From the height of the flat I could look out, and see that the rain had stopped. The sun was shining somewhere, and softened the light, giving a rich and vivid colour to the air. It made me think of the marvellous and narrow life I’d left behind in Nottingham, though it didn’t inspire me to go back there. Then I had a vision of all I could do in this soft and beautiful world if I had money, and that since I might be put in the way of getting plenty if I followed William’s advice, I might as well persist in this short stretch of training he had set for me during his absence. It would be weak and foolish to give up now, and I had never considered myself either weak or foolish. I put on a record, and fell asleep before the first side ended, not waking up until the following morning, when the treadmill began all over again.

  I had broken through, picked up that briefcase like an old friend, as if we’d already done a full year of days together. With a newspaper under the other arm I whistled along, even saying a cheery good morning to a copper on the bridge – knowing old Hay would approve of that. This was the longest trudge of all, but I knew I could make it. I walked from Battersea to the middle of Hampstead, changing the briefcase over now and again, but only as if to give the other hand the privilege of holding it. On the map there was a blue circle around the Tube station at Hampstead, which meant I was to have lunch there, and I made it a good one, dawdling so long at the Pimpernel that it was almost three o’clock before I left.

  The day was fine, except for a bit of wind which nearly blew my hat off a time or two, and I actually enjoyed the walk, the weight no longer so oppressive that I couldn’t look around me and take things in. My route led down through the streets towards Finchley Road, and I was passing a row of large houses which were used as private schools. Boys came out wearing fancy caps with tassels, and the girls with grey bowlers, accompanied by maids or parents. There was a queue of glossy cars waiting by the kerb, and a lot of honking from some that wanted to turn round and get out of the cul-de-sac. It was amusing to pick my way through, and assume the easiness of a father going there casually from the office (after a hard day since eleven o’clock) to pick up his Crispin and Felicity. But I stopped to watch a little boy with a briefcase stand outside a door at the top of some steps. He wore his cap at such an extremely cocky angle that it was about to slide off. The heavy black glasses were so big over his eyes that they almost covered his face. Compared with the rest of the kids swarming down the steps he was very small indeed, yet through this disguise of posh-school clobber I would have known him anywhere.

  He jumped up on the concrete wall, which sloped steeply towards the gate-post, put his briefcase on it, and slid at a great rate to the bottom, falling off so that his cap went one way and his glasses the other. The school door opened, and Bridgitte ran down the steps, picked him up, smacked his face, and collected his things together. ‘You shouldn’t hit a kid like that,’ I said. ‘It’s just high spirits.’

  She glared at me without recognition. ‘Mind your own business. I’m his mother.’

  ‘Are you? I must be his father, then. Don’t you know me, darling?’

  She looked again, but Smog cried: ‘It’s Uncle Mike! Have you come to take me away?’

  ‘You!’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Thanks for the welcome. I thought we were old friends – until you vanished out of my life.’

  ‘I’m Mrs Anderson now,’ she said, ‘thanks to you. And the mother of this.’

  ‘It’s not possible,’ I laughed, taking it bravely.

  ‘It is, let me tell you.’ Smog snuggled up to my legs. Then he danced around me. He tried to pick up my briefcase, but stopped when his face turned purple. He kicked it, and stubbed his toe, came close to tears. Then he laughed and grabbed me again. ‘Still the same old Smog,’ I said, pulling his cap off and putting it in my pocket.

  ‘He’s not,’ she said, ‘he’s worse. I took him to Holland last month and he wrecked my father’s farm. He laid it waste singlehanded, and my father won’t see me again.’

  I was mystified at the fact that, as she said, she was now Mrs Anderson, and I tried to cover my wound by banter. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘we don’t call him Smog any more. It’s forbidden. It’s very bad for him.’

  ‘It can’t make him much worse than he is, can it, Smog?’

  He looked up: ‘No, it can’t actually. Will you buy us some cakes?’

  ‘You’d better ask your mother.’

  ‘She’s not my mother. My mother went away, and divorced Daddy because she found him in bed with Bridgitte.’

  ‘Is that so?’ I said. ‘You can’t trust anybody these days, can you? Never tell anybody that you love them. That’s my motto from now on.’

  ‘Poor you,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s find a place to have some tea,’ I said, taking Smog’s hand and offering my arm to Bridgitte. We walked down the hill, looking as united a group as ever was.

  ‘You set the whole thing off,’ she said, as if wishing I never had, which made me see a glimmer of hope over the opposite rooftops. ‘You remember,’ she went on, after we’d found a corner table in a respectable place near Swiss Cottage, ‘when we last met, and I told you that Donald – that’s my husband’s name – had been trying to make up to me – I mean make me, as you say – and you said I should slip some lipstick in his bed so that his wife would find it, and throw him out? Well, I was putting it in there, very neatly, when he was out, or so I thought, but he was in, and standing watching me. He saw me take the lipstick from my pocket and pull back the bedclothes, then bend over to set it under the pillows. When I’d done this he asked me what I thought I was doing, and I was so confused that he jumped on me and pulled my clothes off. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t fight him. I was shouting for help, and calling your name, but then I saw that it was no use, and he did everything to me, as well as beating me, because he saw I’d been trying to do him some harm with the lipstick.

  ‘Then – I’m sorry Michael – but there was nothing I could do about it. I forgot everything. He did, too, because he’s told me so since, and while we were there, his wife came in and saw
us. She’s tall and thin and has nearly no breasts, though she’s very good-looking at the face. She shouted it was the last straw, packed her things, and went in a taxi. The next day she came with a vehicle and took half the furniture. I was surprised she didn’t take Smog, but she didn’t because Donald told me she was going to live with her own lover who wouldn’t have put up with him for a single minute. Then I found out that they were divorced already, had been for a year! So we got married because he said he loved me, and we were still living together, anyway. I liked him, just a little bit, you know.’

  ‘I phoned you,’ I said bitterly, ‘night after night, and I called at the flat as well.’

  ‘We went to Scotland for a fortnight, and then we gave up the flat. We live in Hampstead now in a house.’

  ‘Things happen too fast to me. I’m still in love with you.’ It was the truth. She was no longer dressed like the gorgeous au pair girl of old, but had put on a few years of maturity with the clothes of a London wife, not to mention her added responsibilities.

  ‘I can’t say anything,’ she nudged me. ‘You understand?’ – a glance at Smog who now had all three cups in front of him and was filling them with the remains of the tea, water, milk, and sugar, as well as the stinking contents of the ashtray.

  ‘At least give me your telephone number so that we can have a secret word together now and again. There’ll be no harm in that.’

  ‘I hope not,’ she said, smiling as she wrote it out for me. She stood up to go. ‘Come on, Smog.’

  ‘I haven’t finished my chemical experiments.’

  ‘Smog, don’t be a little bastard. Come on.’

  He stood up and put on his cap, backwards. ‘I’m not a little bastard. I want to go with Michael.’

  ‘You can’t,’ I said, ‘not yet.’ As I shook hands for the farewell she said: ‘You look more prosperous.’

  ‘Changed my job. I work for the Bank of England. Just been to see a client who has an overdraft. If we can get him to settle it, England’s balance of payments will be OK – for this month anyway. I get all sorts of special missions like this. Mother pulled a few strings to get me the job. I don’t mind using her if I’m in an especially tight corner.’