Life Goes On

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Like a book.’ I’d gone walking and cycling with Smog in the school holidays, and he was the one who had taught me to read maps.

  ‘You’re the only one who can, then,’ he said, ‘apart from myself. That’s why I took you on.’ The room was blindingly lit from a series of striplights flush with the ceiling. Two men I didn’t know sat at a table by the wall, earphones on and their backs to me, and I heard the crackle of police voices from one and the bird noises of morse from the other. Moggerhanger looked over his shoulder and said to Pindarry: ‘He’ll be in time if he sets off now. The boat gets in at eight o’clock.’ From behind his desk he asked: ‘Do you know where Goole is?’

  I was about to say I hadn’t seen him in years, when I remembered it was a place. ‘On the Lincolnshire coast?’

  ‘It’s a river port in Yorkshire,’ said Pindarry.

  I suppose I had to notice him. He didn’t have a pot belly, but he was beefy at the midriff, and that’s something you can’t hide. I liked him less than Cottapilly. Even in the presence of the chief he always wore a little Austrian-type hat with a feather up the side. One of his teeth was missing, which you wouldn’t notice unless he laughed – though he never laughed. He only smiled and then, so it was said, you were in trouble. But he had to eat, and Bill Straw told me he’d once shared a trough of rice and mutton with him on the pipeline road between Baghdad and Beirut in their smuggling days, adding that you no longer joined the Navy to see the world, but just signed on with Jack Leningrad Limited.

  ‘I want you to collect some packages,’ Moggerhanger said. ‘Leave at five and you should be there by ten. We’re sending you up in the Rolls-Royce, so take care of it. One scratch on the Roller means two on your face, only they’ll be deeper. You’ll be driving one of my prime motors, not a two-tone trapdoor estate with a battered right headlight and a crumpled wing, which has to be off the road before dark. If by any chance you should find yourself confronted by a police roadblock, don’t try a Turpin and jump over it. Just say what your business is, and they’ll let you through.’

  He ran his organisation like the head of a country in wartime, and maybe not even he knew whether he made more money out of lawful business than rackets. He owned gambling houses, cafés and restaurants, hotels and roadhouses, caravan parks and amusement arcades, sex shops and strip clubs, escort agencies, garages and car hire firms, bucket shops for cheap travel called Pole-axe Tours, as well as loan and finance firms: ‘Twelve thousand mortgages a day: just pay your money and you’re safe for life.’ Shadier operations involved smuggling and putting up money for criminal enterprises. If his connection with the Inland Revenue was frosty but correct, his association with some members of the police force was cordial, as I knew from the hand-in-glove manner in which he and Chief Inspector Lanthorn had got me put away for eighteen months. Lanthorn had to have someone to charge when the customs broke the smuggling gang, and Moggerhanger opted for me rather than Kenny Dukes – or himself. I had made plenty of money, so took the sentence as it was deserved and because I’d had no option. But I had grown less philosophical about it over the years, though I don’t suppose I would have been bitten so hard by the cobra of revenge if Bill Straw hadn’t dragged me back into the mainstream of a job with Moggerhanger.

  ‘I can’t guarantee a rotten little A40 won’t drive into me,’ I said. ‘The roads are full of anarchists these days.’

  He put an arm around my shoulder. ‘It’s only a manner of speaking, Michael. I want you to stay in one piece: drive carefully, collect the goods, and take them to a place in Shropshire, where you’ll wait till somebody collects them. Then come back here to me. If you want to know anything else, ask Mrs Whipplegate. She’s my private secretary, and knows everything.’

  She stood by a filing cabinet on the other side of the room, a tall thin woman who didn’t have what I reckoned to be a good figure. But because she seemed inaccessible – with her grey svelte dress, a natty coloured flimsy scarf at the neck, and high-heeled shoes – I wanted to get to know her in the one way that mattered. Maybe because of her short darkish hair, slightly grey at the temples, and small black hornrimmed glasses, I assumed she was a widow (and if not hoped she soon would be) and reckoned she was in early middle age, though I learned later she was thirty-eight. The best part was her legs which, being shapely and plump, were out of character with her thin figure. I thought she might be one of Moggerhanger’s girlfriends, but told myself she wasn’t the sort he liked. She carried a handful of envelopes. ‘If you’ll come next door, Mr Cullen, I’ll give you your instructions.’

  ‘Before you go, Michael, I want to wish you luck,’ Moggerhanger said. ‘It’s an important job, and if you do it well there’ll be a bonus for you. I look after my lads, though I don’t buy ’em. You won’t see that sort of money. But I’ll make it right with you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It’s loyalty all the way. No fucking around.’

  ‘I haven’t been to Oxford, so you can trust me.’ But can I trust you, I wondered, you bombastic double-dealing bastard. He must have got my drift, so ambled over: ‘Get going, then, before you get a knife in your back!’

  A sense of humour was all very well, but not when it was a camouflage for absolute villainy. He also used it as a trick to inspire confidence, and as a gambit to keep you energetic and alert.

  I followed Mrs Whipplegate into her tiny office of desk, chair and filing cabinet, the advantage to me being that her unsubtle perfume filled the room and I was closer to her than when in the boss’s big sanctum. She handed me the first large envelope. ‘There’s one map for the road to Goole, two to get you to Shropshire, and a large-scale one to find the cottage.’

  ‘I love you.’

  She blushed. ‘Here’s envelope number two, with your expenses of twenty five-pound notes.’

  ‘I’ll always love you.’

  ‘Keep an account of what you spend, and let me have the list, as well as any monies still unspent when you get back. There are no written instructions except for the two addresses clipped to the maps. The cottage has a six-figure map reference because it’s hard to find, and you’re not under any circumstances to ask anyone the way to it.’

  ‘I’d do anything for you.’

  ‘After you get to each place, destroy the instructions. Lord Moggerhanger has many business rivals and doesn’t like information to leak out. And please don’t mark the maps. They can be used again.’

  ‘When can we meet?’

  ‘I don’t see how we can.’ She looked at me with grey eyes, and I saw there was no hope, until I also noticed that the little finger of her left hand was trembling. ‘It’s now half past four, and you’re to start at five o’clock precisely. There’s a dual carriageway almost to Doncaster, but after that you’ll find the road somewhat twisted and cluttered …’

  ‘Not as much as I am, until I’ve been to bed with you.’ I regretted each stupid sally against her obvious impregnability, respectable demeanour, or plain distaste for the likes of me, but as usual in such situations I couldn’t control myself. ‘There’s something inordinately attractive about you.’

  ‘… as far as Goole. However, you should be in position by ten o’clock, and that will give you plenty of time.’

  ‘I’m not being flippant,’ I went on. ‘There’s something about you that I find profoundly interesting, and what I want is to get to know you a little better. I don’t really mean much else. Or I might – if I did get to know you better. But until then all I’m asking is whether or not you’ll have dinner with me when I get back.’

  I was tired from my short night, but the effect was to sharpen the tongue and give me a hard-on for no particular reason. She passed a slip of paper, a form which I was expected to sign for receipt of the money. I picked up the envelopes, and brushed against her as I went to the door. ‘Or even a cup of coffee.’

  She twitched, then put on a thoughtful expression. ‘I’m not sure whether Lord Moggerhanger likes fraternisation among his
employees.’

  Her naïvety frightened me, for she seemed to think he ran a lawful business and that this conspiratorial atmosphere was only a precaution against trade rivals. I wondered what the Green Toe Gang would think of that. A real clean-up, with a proper police force, would rope her in for ten years as well. I wanted to cry for her innocence, though mostly I craved to see her strip off that chic dress and clamber into bed with me. ‘On the other hand,’ I said, ‘perhaps he would like it to be kept in the family. Lord Moggerhanger is a very paternal sort of employer.’

  ‘You’d better leave. I didn’t have much sleep either.’

  I brushed by her again. ‘Will you be on days next week?’

  A smile was as far as she would go.

  Back at the garage I collected my briefcase, which contained underwear and a spare shirt, and a high-powered heavy duty two-two air pistol with a tin of slugs, as well as a carton of cigarettes and a small tranny for news and weather. With the envelopes stowed inside I felt as if I was on some kind of official business.

  The garage-hand was a toothless, grizzle-haired, battered chap with a heavy Glasgow accent called George, who had been chief engineer on a coastal steamer. He showed me to the Rolls-Royce. The dashboard was like that of an old-fashioned airliner, and I called out for him to pull the chocks away. Moggerhanger was right: it was quite different to Black Bess, the old banger I pottered about in at home. I felt a thrill as I rolled forward, out of the wide gate.

  Seven

  I schoonered towards the North Circular, a forlorn man and woman waiting on an empty road for the Dawnliner bus to take them to work. The All Night Radio Station came up with a weather forecast: ‘A warm and pleasant day everywhere. A real scorcher, in fact. Just a little mist on northern hills, perhaps, and some wind in the west bringing occasional drizzle, otherwise fine all over the country. A spot or two of rain in Central Wales and rather more prolonged downpours in the north, spreading south. Expect a little warmth, but a cold front developing in mid-Atlantic will reach the Midlands and north-east this afternoon to give snow and ice on high ground, with rain, fog, snow and hail just about everywhere. Further outlook dubious. Have a good day.’

  Or something like that, causing me to wonder why I was in this floating palace and not in bed with Mrs Whipplegate, though at the first whiff of that lovely bleak romantic A406 my sense of adventure came back at the thought of going north again. The compass needle swung as I turned off into Hendon and passed a jam sandwich parked at the roundabout. One of the police lads inside waved in greeting, and I felt like the king of the road. Anyone driving around at five in the morning can’t be up to any good, but I got a clear way through the traffic lights as if I had a control button on the dashboard. Maybe they photographed each car and flashed the numberplate to headquarters. Lights glowed from inside a filling station, an old man sleeping in a chair reflected in the glass. Dawn was seeping through as I turned right at the island. Trees were tinged with green, and dead grass bordered the roadside. I drifted in and out of a daydream, praying to see the first breakfast shack promising something to eat. Housefronts marched out of the melting darkness.

  I slowed down for a hitchhiker, then remembered that Moggerhanger had said I wasn’t to give lifts in his vehicles. In any case, I thought, he probably has fleas, muddy boots and concealed razor blades to slash the upholstery so slyly I won’t notice the damage till he’s got well away.

  In the rear mirror I saw he was without luggage and wearing an overcoat. I got a clean snapshot of pink face and bald head, indignation and misery. Pylon towers stood grey against darker cloud. I speeded up, and saw him cursing me blind by the roadside. He waved his arms, and I knew that leaving him there was a bad business, not to say a sickly kind of omen, which kept me downhearted for the next two minutes. I wanted to go back and smack him in the teeth, but that idea made me feel even worse.

  A bit of autoroute went by Stevenage (thank God) and not far beyond I saw a café that was open. I parked well to one side of a couple of decrepit lorries and a pantechnicon, and made my way between pools of water. The wind rattled two pieces of corrugated tin by the bucket-toilets. To the east there were clouds of dull red and gunmetal blue. I don’t know where that weather forecast had come from. Thirty miles in that direction Bridgitte was curled up in bed and, so I supposed, was Maria. I wished them luck and long life, and went into the warmth.

  I ordered a full-house of egg-bacon-sausage-beans-mushrooms-tomatoes-and-fried-bread. The lorry drivers looked at me as if I was a piece of shit that had crawled off the fire.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said, the worst thing you could come out with in such a place at that time of the day. You could say anything else, no matter how insulting, or even irrelevant – but not that. My tone was neutral, but my voice was clear, so I was taking my life in my hands. Fortunately they were too afflicted with lassitude to give more than non-committal grunts. I considered myself lucky and left it at that. Mike, the working-proprietor behind the counter, looked as if he was dying of starvation. He smoked a fag, and had half a mug of cold tea by his elbow. He poured a rope of charcoal into a mug for me and pushed it along. His wife Peggy was a solid-looking country woman with round steel glasses and a white apron. She actually smiled while buttering my sliced bread.

  ‘How’s business?’ I had to say something, or lose the use of my vocal cords, but that, of course, was the second worst thing you could say – at any time of the day.

  ‘Can’t grumble,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you tell him the truth?’ her husband chipped in. ‘It’s fucking awful. We’ll be bankrupt in a fortnight.’

  ‘Sorry I asked.’ I swigged the tea, which was strong and good.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ he said. ‘Don’t fucking kid me. Of course you’re not. You don’t give a fuck, do you?’

  ‘Well, not really,’ I said. My third mistake was in being honest. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t swear,’ Peggy said. ‘It don’t do any good.’

  Mike laughed, without mirth. ‘Not to him it fucking don’t. He’s not a free enterprise businessman trying to keep his head above water. It don’t matter to you, either, I expect,’ he said to his wife. ‘But it does to me, and that’s all as matters, innit?’

  ‘You’re always fucking whining.’ One of the lorry drivers had a slice of bacon half into his mouth. ‘Every time I stop off here I hear you whining. If you didn’t cook such good breakfasts, I wouldn’t stop. You’re a worse fucking whiner than the Aussies. I was four years down under, and I never heard so much whining in my life – except that they call it wingeing. But they do it in a loud voice, and only when they see no Pommies are around, so they don’t think it’s wingeing. But it’s bad in this country as well. That’s what’s wrong with it. Everybody whines if they aren’t making two hundred pounds a week just by lying in bed.’

  ‘They think the world owes them a living,’ said an older man, who had so many plates and cups on his table he looked as if he’d been lounging there all night. ‘But they are the world.’

  Mike threw my eggs and bacon into a pan of hot fat on the primus, while his wife boiled the beans. ‘It’s all right for you, Len, bringing illegal immigrants up from Romney Marsh to Bradford twice a month. One trip keeps you in luxury for weeks. I expect your lorry outside’s full of Pakkies now, innit? Why don’t you unlock the doors and bring the poor buggers in for some tea at least? Be good for my trade as well.’

  Len began to choke. ‘Keep your fucking trap shut.’

  Everybody laughed.

  ‘Well,’ Mike said, ‘stands to fucking reason, dunnit? Two loads of Pakkies every week and I might break even.’

  ‘I do wish you’d stop swearing,’ Peggy pleaded, devouring an elderberry-and-nettle pie. I went to an empty table, having had my fill of early morning conversation, though it seemed marvellous what arguments you could set off with an unrehearsed greeting. The breakfast was good when it came, and I could feel each mouthful waking me
up. During my second mug of tea I heard a lorry hit the tin by the toilets as it slid through a puddle and drew up outside. The first person to come in was the man I had seen by the road thumbing a lift. He stood in the doorway and looked around with glittering eyes, which stopped swivelling when they saw me.

  ‘I think I’ll sit by the Good Samaritan,’ he said to the lorry driver who came in behind. I was ready to punch him in the face if he did, but I didn’t. The hut was public property. He opened his overcoat, and showed a fairly good suit, with collar and tie. ‘People don’t get rid of me so easily.’

  ‘Come outside and say that,’ I said.

  He gave me a particularly scornful look, then went to the counter to order breakfast.

  ‘Where are you going to?’ I asked when he came back.

  ‘What’s that to you? Anyone who’d leave his fellow man to die of exposure by the roadside at half past five in the morning hardly deserves to be greeted with cordiality when they meet later in altogether different circumstances.’ When I said nothing in response, he added: ‘I’m going to Rawcliffe, just before a place called Goole, which I suppose you’ve never heard of. You can drop me off at Doncaster, if it’s on your way.’

  He wasn’t exactly reeking of aftershave, but he seemed decent enough. The trouble was, you could never tell. He looked amiable, with mild brown eyes, and smiled as he rubbed a hand over his bald head. ‘You don’t trust me,’ he said, ‘I can see that.’ He held out the same hand that had stroked his head: ‘Anyway, I’m Percy Blemish.’

  ‘Michael Cullen,’ I told him. ‘I can’t give you a lift because the person I’m working for has spies all along the road, and if he found that somebody else had been in the car, from that moment on I’d be seen to have a pronounced limp whenever the dole queue moved forward.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I’ll just have to continue my journey with that uncouth lorry driver, in his draughty cab.’