A Start in Life

by Alan Sillitoe

  Yet at least he was surrounded by bad breath and flesh-and-blood, whereas if my appendix suddenly burst I’d bleed to death and nobody would be any the wiser. I wasn’t going crazy, but I didn’t like living alone, and Bill’s old mother behind that sheet of glass knew it very well, those features showing a mixture of despair with love just beneath it and trying to break through, and to succeed in seeing her love, you had to look at her with all your spirit, and with tears about to come out of your own eyes. I wanted to turn it to the wall, but didn’t have enough coal in my brain for that. While filling me with remorse it also showed me there was nothing I could do for Bridgitte, that no mad rescue was possible or necessary because who, by the standards of Bill’s mother, could say she was either badly-off or suffering? Certainly not me, as I looked at the tragic photograph that Bill had so lovingly framed with his own hands – and made a somewhat shoddy job of it at that. I thought of doing a rush trip to Worksop to explain the fate of her son but knew that this wasn’t on the cards because I was stuck to the flat on Jack Leningrad’s orders.

  I was saved from the pain of this by the ringing telephone, and was surprised to hear that Appledore trill: ‘Oh, you’re back! Michael! I can’t believe it.’ I told her about my imaginary adventures in Lisbon during the last few days, but after a while she broke in and said: ‘Listen, tell me yes or no, can we come over and see you?’

  I was on my guard: ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Smog and I. I got him from school after giving up my job today and we’ve nowhere to go. Oh, Michael,’ she was crying now, ‘let us come over and see you.’

  ‘All right, then.’

  She laughed with joy: ‘I knew you would. I told Smog you would. Oh, I’ll kiss you when I see you.’ All I had to do was sit down and wait, casting a rugged glance now and again at old Ma Straw. If I’d had liquor in the house I’d have drunk a mountain, but there was only a drop of sherry and I hated that.

  Smog threw himself at me and started to cry, so I took him to a chair and sat him on my knee. ‘Get your coat off,’ I said to Bridgitte, who looked thin and wan, though it made her appear more interesting.

  ‘You were the only one I could turn to,’ she said.

  ‘I know, love. I know. I got your letter. It was pretty daft of you to go to Nottingham. Next time you feel like a trip up there I’ll give you my mother’s real address.’

  She pouted: ‘I don’t know why I did it. But it seemed like exactly the right thing to do, and the journey made me feel a lot better.’

  ‘I’ll bet it did,’ I said, riled that she’d had a good time with somebody else. Smog had quietened down, and now she began to snivel. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, meaning to go to her, but Smog clung so tightly that I couldn’t move. His face was wet from tears. ‘I want to live with you. I don’t like life like I did once. Dad is rotten, and things are all mixed up.’

  ‘Listen, Smog,’ I said, ‘life isn’t too good for anybody. Even children have to grow up and find that out. You’ll be seven soon, so you’re nearly a man. Lots of things have happened to you, and lots more will happen. It’s like that. You’ll be safe with Bridgitte and me, I promise. As far as I’m concerned we could all live together, all the time, but I don’t think your father would like that. Still, you don’t have to worry, because we’re friends for life.’

  He looked at me, his face small but already formed as if he were fourteen. ‘Can I have some tea and cakes?’

  ‘Come into the kitchen and help me to look for them,’ I said, ‘because I’m damned if I can remember where they are.’ I made a game of searching, and he was lost in it while I went into the living-room to kiss Bridgitte back to life: ‘Let’s forget about my lies,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about it.’ She was warm and steamy after the rain, and from our long embrace I saw Smog standing in the doorway with a packet of chocolate cakes in his hand. He forced himself between our legs, so that we made a house for him to hide and be warm in. ‘You’ve built me a cottage,’ he said. ‘Let’s fry some crumpets and stroke the cat.’

  ‘I’ll sing you the Volga Boat Song while I’m at it,’ I said. ‘But we don’t have a cat. I used it to clean the windows down this morning and it ran away.’

  I fixed him up in the main bed, since it seemed that William wouldn’t be needing it for a while. Bridgitte and I sat like any man and wife at supper, when the phone rang. It was Stanley to say I’d be wanted in Rome the following day, and that I should present myself at the usual Knightsbridge flat by nine in the morning. ‘What about William?’ I asked.

  ‘No news,’ he said. They were doing all they could, which was a lot, but they couldn’t say anything now, though they expected results every minute. I bit my tongue and said all right I’d be there.

  It wasn’t gold this time, but the errand of carrying a valise of true-blue British banknotes through the customs. I went out and back in a couple of days, by train and boat, landing at Dover and going through with my allowance of booze and fags so that no one could suspect a thing. It was my third time away and third time lucky, plying my trade in the mainland traffic and working with all the nerve I could muster, for not only was I fucking God’s own country, through the ribs, but I was getting a fat slice of pay for it as well, and what man could be more favoured than that? The hint was dropped when I collected my divvy that the notes were forged anyway, and I didn’t boast of it, even to myself, but gently let it seep down to the flowing dust of my blood in the hope that such easy tasks would become second nature to me. On the other hand, by the normal permutations of chance, I knew I could not do many of these trips without getting caught, or feeling the pressure of them break through to my face and give me away, even though to myself I might still seem to be in full control. So I had to think about the future, and organize some plan of withdrawal, keeping an eye cocked to my own safety should Jack Leningrad Limited not want me to leave when I felt it was time to do so for my one and only good, which was the only one that mattered.

  I did many more trips, and had nearly three thousand pounds in the bank. I wouldn’t let my hands get to it till I’d packed the job in because if I bought an expensive car I might get caught, in which case it would rot in the street while I did my three or five years. I hadn’t the ultimate confidence that I would go unscathed, and that was why I had to get out.

  I seemed to live on more solid ground while Bridgitte and Smog were at the flat, as if I were a married man with full responsibility going off to work now and again to earn them cakes and meat. We assumed that Dr Anderson would be interested in the whereabouts of his son, but when Bridgitte phoned to let him know that Smog was all right, the housekeeper said Dr Anderson was on a six-week lecture tour in America – where he no doubt told his audience that they had to be kind to one another. I tried to phone Polly, but couldn’t get through to her, so my love changed from the burden it had been at first, to an almost bearable pang whenever she jumped into my mind, which was still often enough to make me flinch when it hit me.

  But there was work to be done, a high-stakes trip to Lisbon, and I came back first class on a beautiful Caravelle, so that I could get soaked in champagne and stretch my legs, which deserved it after the work they’d done. I intended to doze the few hours away, but I reckoned without Arnold Pilgrim, a tall thin man who sat by my side. I’d seen him sloping in, and he had the sort of face that seemed clamped tight by never having known what he wanted to do in life. He looked by now on the point of finding out, yet realized he’d left it too late to find the means for doing what he wanted to do. I talk from hindsight, but his rather staid and baffled face wasn’t easy to forget, even on first sight, and I remember the journey because in one, sense it was vital to my life.

  We joked over the champagne, and he told me he had just been to Portugal to negotiate the sale of forty thousand machine tools, or cars, or litres of wine – I forget which. It seemed to have been successful, whatever it was, so I said: ‘Here’s to it, then!’ I knew I should neither drink nor talk, but these rules of
William’s I waived more and more, for I considered that to be too reticent while travelling only drew suspicion rather than the reverse. After all, William was rotting in jail, so he could afford to talk.

  Using the soul of Gilbert Blaskin, I told Arnold Pilgrim I was a writer, and that I’d just been to Lisbon for a week’s holiday. The only danger in this, I realized after he started talking, was that he would spill his heart to me for the entire flight, which he did. ‘When I get home,’ he said, ‘I’m going to murder my wife. There’s a story for you, if you’re a writer.’

  I was sitting by his side so couldn’t look dead-on at him, but the way he said it made me want to laugh, because he sounded as if he were serious. ‘You’ll want to know why, I expect. Well, don’t you?’ he demanded, when I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Why should I? I’m not your wife.’

  ‘I see what you mean. But I’ll tell you, anyway. My wife and I married quite young, ten years ago to be accurate, and we were really in love, as you usually are when you’re young, and when you get married. I hated all women, and she hated all men, so we got on like a house on fire, as it were. We started buying our own house in Putney, because I was well thought of in my job. There was a touch of ground frost in her makeup, but we thawed it out after a while. She was passionate, which meant that she realized her frostiness but did her best to overcome it. At the same time, I was cursed by a certain incompetence, which this also righted as time went on. So we got to our state of married happiness not without difficulty, but we got there, and I see now that we were happy, because we never really talked about happiness but just let the years flow by.

  ‘But we were children, because we were inert enough to think that we never needed to do anything for each other. In a sense we were right: we could have lived in reciprocal blindness till old age, but I suppose it’s always better to leave childhood behind.

  ‘My wife made friends one day with a woman, when they were both borrowing books at the local library. I never knew what they had in common, but this other woman, as the friendship went on, was the sort who was very independent. She was married, but made a cult of being self-sufficient in her life – as far as she could. Her husband was a photographer who did freelance work for magazines, and his wife was also a sort of journalist. My wife was fascinated by her, there’s no doubt of that, because she also had big ideas about women’s status in the world, ideas which I’d encouraged, as long as they didn’t disturb me. This other woman was the epitome then of what my wife had always wanted to be, for she had everything: a house, a good husband, a child, a job that she enjoyed, even a lover. There seemed nothing left to want. In the next two years I even became friendly with the husband, but not to the extent that Beryl was friendly with his wife, for he seemed a bit of a queer to me. I thought it was good that they should like each other, though I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t see how this other woman in some way disturbed her. My wife would cite her in arguments, and hold up her life to let me know how dull and narrow her own was. Then this other woman gassed herself.

  ‘My wife had known that she was depressed and withdrawn, but she hadn’t expected this, even as a remote possibility. Later it became known that the husband had been having an affair with another woman, and that the wife had found out, but had not told him or anyone that she knew. In spite of her own lover, she couldn’t stand her husband doing that sort of thing, so she quietly did herself in. It was a terrible shock to my wife, who was haunted by her friend’s death for weeks, so that I really believe she even began to think of turning on the gas as well. Nothing in the world seemed secure to her any more. I did my best by way of comfort, but was pushed completely to one side. In her shock it even seemed as if she blamed me in some way for what had happened, thinking perhaps that if she’d never married me she wouldn’t have been so dependent on the views that her friend held so intensely, in which case she would have been more human and open to sympathy, and it might then have been possible to fathom that her friend was going to kill herself. She may have saved her, she thought, but she was too deeply involved in her friend’s principles, and too dependent on my love and support – though she claimed that this never meant very much to her. But there was more to it than that, and it was a few years before I was able to see the outcome of it. You never know where a thing begins, I know that, but I think I can see where it’s going to end.’

  It was hot in the plane, and he wiped his forehead and cheeks. He spoke as if telling me about something that had happened to another person rather than to himself, smiling at whatever in his story disturbed him – which meant he had a faint smile of disgust or self-pity on his face most of the time. ‘I’m not going to’ complain for myself, or say I was full of perfect love and understanding. I’m sure I was in love with her, though she claims I wasn’t and never was. Our marriage came to seem like a negation of love. It was heavy with underground recrimination, as if we were both haunted and overshadowed by a new demonic force that hadn’t been there before – though maybe it had, but had taken all this time to brew itself up between us. But the lever of it had been the woman’s suicide, of that I have no doubt.’

  I offered him a cigarette. He didn’t smoke, or wouldn’t. He only drank. So I lit one: ‘It was a pity though. Your wife must have had a rough time.’

  His voice was caught in a laugh of irony: ‘She did. No doubt about that. I was sorry for her, and did my best about it. But nothing could be enough. She had to find her own cure, which meant trying to destroy me. It was the only thing she could do, but it was too much of a price for me to pay, though I was made to pay it. The method she chose was that age-old one of having an affair, of betraying me and letting me know that she was betraying me, and continuing it to the point of trying to drive me mad. The affair’s been going on for two years, though in that time she has grown more secretive about it because she has now become more deeply and seriously attached to the man she took up with. She ties me to her by saying how much she loves me, tells me she’s only ever loved me, and loves no one else no matter what she does or whatever happens. This saps my resolution to clear out, but I discovered that she was put up to this ploy by her boyfriend. She is a monster, but so am I. It is easy for her to deceive me because I am away from home so often. Why did I get such a job if I can’t trust my wife? We still live as man and wife, and make love often enough for us to seem so. But if the only way she could find to get over her friend’s vampire suicide was to morally destroy me, my price for recovering from this attempt is to kill her. I put the matter in a nutshell, though I hope I’m not boring you.’

  We had food in front of us, and it gave me the energy to go on listening: ‘It’s fascinating.’

  He tucked into this food remarkably well, considering the ideas he had for his wife’s future. I suppose a person always eats well before committing a murder, but not before killing himself – though I must admit that I still didn’t believe he was serious. ‘So when she grew more careful,’ he said, ‘I became more assiduous in finding out what she was up to. It’s cost me hundreds of pounds, which in other and happier times would have been better spent on repairs to the house, in having her shadowed by private detectives. Do you know how many men are necessary to follow one person? It’s a hell of a business. I only found out when I got a bill from one agency of over two hundred pounds. It takes three men to follow her. Maybe she suspects I’m having her watched and does a bit of evading. But I know exactly what she does and where she goes. So before leaving this time, after several days of vindictive skirmishes and one dreadful final quarrel, I got her to promise solemnly that she would give him up and not see him again, so that we could make a new start. All seemed set for a bright future – though at heart I didn’t believe it would work for a minute. We kissed tenderly when I left for my business trip. But I called at the detective agency in Soho on my way by taxi to the airport and gave them the usual details, paid them a good advance sum in cash, and told them that if they by any chance tailed her to her love
r’s flat they were to telegraph the fact to my hotel in Lisbon. I made up my mind that if she went through with any more treachery, I would murder her. I would destroy her. She would perish.

  ‘And when I left I hoped with all my heart that everything would be peaceful and calm, that she would not betray me, that all would be forgotten and forgiven. I was in a good and optimistic mood on the way out and for the first few days, when no telegram arrived, I thought that life really could begin again. More days went by, and no news. I was happier, I think, than I’d ever been in my life. My business negotiations went very well. My brain was clear, and I bargained with more than usual firmness. I got to the stage of packing my suitcase, and I was on my way out of the hotel, with a taxi waiting by the kerb to take me to the airport, when a bellboy ran up and handed me a telegram. I read it in the taxi, lay back sweating and half fainting. I had visions of bloody entrails, while rain was pouring down the windows of the taxi. The streets outside glistened and jumped with rain – but it was a perfectly blue clear day, as you know. I felt my eyes change colour. I looked ahead and saw a huge horse lying dead in the middle of the road and blocking it, almost the whole of its side scooped out as if it had had some dreadful accident, a white horse, its head rearing in agony, as if trying to lick the vast red wound. She’d spent every night with him. I screamed at the taxi driver to stop, but he laughed and went right on through it. The white mare would be killed. There’s nothing else I can do.’ His hands were shaking so much that he dropped his fork. He didn’t try to pick it up or get another but finished the meal with his knife alone, which began to look sinister enough to me, as more and more champagne went into my stomach.

  ‘That’s no reason to kill somebody,’ I said. ‘Just throw her out – with her coat on.’

  ‘I don’t have the strength to do that.’