Life Goes On

by Alan Sillitoe

  The driver in question, who sat a few feet away, twitched his shoulders and turned. ‘I heard that. You can walk. Too much fucking lip, that’s your trouble. I was going to throw you out, anyway.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Percy Blemish said, ‘I talk too much.’

  ‘We all do,’ I said sadly.

  ‘I do hate swearing,’ Peggy said, though nobody heard but me.

  Percy’s hand was on the sauce bottle. Mine closed on the ketchup. It was a tie. ‘Drop dead,’ I told him, getting up to leave, and never wanting to see him again.

  I took the map out of the envelope and saw that I still had a good way to go, but it was only half past six so I dawdled along. The sky was clear, except that red streaks in the east were turning yellowish. The wind was cold and damp, however, though after a mile or two the sun burned through the windscreen. I thought I saw a police car going up a slight rise in front, but it was a white car and a motorbiker just ahead wearing a blue helmet. The sight made me nervous, so I overtook them both.

  While getting in the car after breakfast I’d noticed a container as big as a toolbox down by the back seat, and on opening it saw about three hundred Monte Cristos inside. I unscrewed a tube cap, and then drove effortlessly through green scenery on a full belly and with a delicious cigar between my teeth.

  In the last few years at Upper Mayhem I had begun to wonder about the purpose of my life. Living modestly off Bridgitte and my savings no longer seemed the right existence for an active man. Prison should not have depressed me as much as it did, but what pushed me down even more was my natural born liking for idleness as long as life wasn’t too uncomfortable. I’d never seen the point of stirring myself as long as I had a few quid in my pocket. Not that it could have gone on forever. My money was running out and Bridgitte realised that if she didn’t withdraw her support she would never get rid of me. The call to London had come just in time.

  Another factor was that the attitude towards idleness was changing. There were too many on the dole for it to be a virtue anymore. I lived on the edge of despair because I did not know why I was alive. It wasn’t even a matter of reforming. Moral imperatives left me cold. But I had reached the stage where I had to do something to convince myself that I had been brought onto the earth for a purpose instead of rotting pleasantly at the disused railway station of Upper Mayhem. Almost accidentally and, so far, painlessly, I had got out of it, even though working for Moggerhanger was not the kind of job one could be proud of. But it was a start, and no matter what Bill Straw said, nor what I saw, or what I felt in my bones, I had no reason to suppose Moggerhanger’s business affairs were anything other than legal. Even he, I hoped, had changed in the last ten years.

  The thoughts that go through one’s mind during a purloined luxurious smoke! A mouth doesn’t show its true shape till a cigar’s stuck in it, and when I took mine out between puffs I had an impulse to sing. I had set off from Upper Mayhem, forty-eight hours ago, determined to be honest in all my dealings. To put the cigar back where it came from was impossible. To throw what remained out of the window would be a criminal waste. I would finish my enjoyable smoke in peace, and steal nothing ever after. In the meantime, I would have a little music to soothe my faculties and make life perfect, so shoved a tape into the deck and waited for the overflowing balm of Victor Sylvester or Heavy Metal.

  Luckily I was slowing down before the Norman Cross roundabout, otherwise I’d have swung off the road with shock. ‘Remember,’ said Moggerhanger, ‘you are now driving for me, and don’t you forget it. I don’t want you eating, or sleeping in the car when you shouldn’t be, or spitting, or dropping cigarette ends and sweet wrappers, or getting mud all over the carpets. Neither do I want you to help yourself at the cocktail cabinet, or interfere in any way with the emergency hamper. And keep your thieving hands off my cigars. I’m particularly insistent on that. For one thing, they’re counted. And for another, if any are missing I’ll cut you to pieces, though if you’ve already had one, consider yourself forgiven, but don’t do it again. You have been warned. Just keep your eyes on the road and look after my car, which means never going above seventy. It’s better for the engine, but most of all I don’t want my employees fined for speeding. I don’t think I need tell you that if that happens, you’re out. And try not to let the fuel gauge show below the halfway mark. Now listen to the sweetest sound in the world. And have a good day.’

  I looked around, as much as I dared, for the closed-circuit television, and wondered if there wasn’t a built-in black box to register every stop. But his little joke seemed to be over and once more I was the captain of my ship, except that instead of music the tapedeck played a selection of church bells from parishes all over Bedfordshire, which racket I stood till I told myself that if another Quasimodo hung on my eardrums I’d belt the car into the nearest bridge support.

  I was drifting north and without thought went more quickly, finding it hard not to stray above the stipulated seventy-mark especially as, now that traffic was building up, young blokes floated by in Ford Escorts at ninety-five, and their bosses flew in BMWs at a hundred and ten. I could have overtaken them all, but not with Moggerhanger breathing down my neck.

  Some cars that overtook were plumbers’ vans or salesmen’s wagons, or old bangers with five men inside running a collective that got them to and from work (or the dole office) in the cheapest possible way. Others were smart and fast, and from a BMW window Percy Blemish waved his fist and pulled me a megrim as the car slid effortlessly by. It was my third view of him and I hoped it would be the last. His gloating and frantic face behind the Plexiglass reminded me of a baby deprived of its rights at the nipple, and I supposed he held every person he came across responsible for his misfortunes, unless he was given a lift. Even then, judging from the face that he turned on me, and which the benevolent driver of the moment could not see (luckily for him), I didn’t reckon his chances of cheap and easy travel were very high, either.

  I’d put back so much tea at breakfast that it was necessary to stop and wring out my bladder. I could get the petrol tank topped up at the same time. When I crunched slowly onto the petrol station forecourt, Percy Blemish was standing by the exit, waiting for another lift. I felt sure that the BMW man, goaded by one of his remarks, had dumped him there, and it was just my luck that I should be the next car along.

  A Ford Cortina skidded in from the road and, by a fancy manoeuvre, the cunning bastard of a driver put himself before me at the pumps. It was a self-service establishment and in a few seconds he had the nozzle gangling into his tank. The manager came out and asked me, sir (seeing as I drove a Rolls-Royce), how much I wanted. He then motioned me backwards and wiggled another python into my tank to be sick. I was happy to let him do the work, while waiting to watch the Ford Cortina carry Percy Blemish away.

  The driver was a young fair-haired chap in a polo-necked sweater who, having refuelled, went to the office to pay the clerk. I don’t suppose he noticed me smirking. He drove slowly towards the exit where Percy Blemish, giving the sign for a lift, placed himself halfway across the drive so that the car would be forced to stop. When he bent to the window to say where he wanted to go, hand already at the door, a fist shot out and knocked him flying.

  It was as blatant a refusal to give a poor chap a lift as I’d ever seen, totally unnecessary in its violence, though maybe the driver was wiser than he thought (and maybe not), for if he hadn’t spoken with his fist he would have driven onto the Great North Road with Percy Blemish hanging onto his door. This did not make things look good for me. I went for a long piss to think things over, but was unable to decide on any viable course of action.

  I strolled into the office to pay the reckoning. ‘That’s all right, sir,’ the manager smiled. ‘I’ll put it on Lord Moggerhanger’s account. He’s very good at settling the bills.’

  Percy Blemish had already gone. I wouldn’t stop till I reached Goole, so there’d be no further trouble. A few spits of rain hit the window, but the road was
still dry. I pushed in another tape, one of Tchaikovsky’s jackboot symphonies which tried to do a rush job on decorating the inside of my head. He was pasting away with three walls finished and one more to go, with only the woodwork to scratch and the door to burn off, to a ball-and-chain finale, so that I couldn’t stand it after five minutes, and flicked the button.

  ‘I was enjoying that.’ The disembodied voice came from behind, the second time I nearly had an accident that day. I was on the outer lane, overtaking a three-hundred-foot juggernaut which seemed to increase speed the faster I went, so that I was doing almost a ton by the time I came to a slight bend. But I got in front, left the lorry behind, and said to Percy Blemish who was grinning into my rear mirror: ‘You’d better get out, or I’ll stop at the next layby and do you in.’

  ‘Why did you take the music off?’

  If I stopped, I’d have to overtake the lorry again. ‘Where did you say you were going?’

  ‘You switched that music off,’ he said. ‘I like Tchaikovsky.’

  ‘Why? He’s only a block and tackle artist.’ I decided to humour him until such time as I could get him outside and kick his teeth in. Then I saw the bruise caused by the young blood-pudding at the filling station, and decided it would be more humane to feel sorry for him. In any case, I had no option. ‘It’s better to talk than listen to that,’ I said, ‘and you certainly can’t do both.’

  ‘My wife liked it.’ He shuffled around on the seat. ‘At least she said she did, and I believed her.’

  ‘You have to believe your wife, otherwise life isn’t worth living.’

  He sighed. ‘I suppose so. You see, I’m the sort of person who thinks that everybody I see is older than me.’

  ‘Interesting,’ I replied.

  He kept quiet for a while. Then the back of my neck tingled, for he piped up again. ‘Do you know the best way to cause a fire?’ There was a more sinister tone to his giggle. ‘A friend of mine was in the fire service, and he told me.’ I thought it best to let the bloody pest babble on, on the assumption that while he talked he was harmless. ‘You put a couple of flashlight batteries in a shopping basket with a few packets of steel wool. Sooner or later they’ll ignite – in the house or car of somebody you don’t like.’ His giggle turned into a laugh, and he rubbed his hands. ‘If you put two tins of hair lacquer of the aerosol type in the bag as well, with a newspaper and a box of matches, with a few bits of shopping on top, an explosion will eventually ensue.’

  ‘That’s a lot of bollocks,’ I shouted.

  He pouted. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘Have you ever tried it?’

  After a few minutes he came back into the world with: ‘No, but I might. You never know.’

  ‘Just shurrup,’ I said, thinking my Nottingham accent might have more effect.

  ‘I won’t shut up,’ he retorted, in the poshest voice he could muster.

  ‘Why don’t you learn some poetry?’ I suggested. ‘Or learn to knit?’

  ‘Don’t want to,’ he said sulkily. ‘I was happily married, I’ll have you know, till I ran away from my wife. I’m fifty-eight years old, and I’m either running away from her or running back to her. At the moment I’m running back. We live near Goole, in a lovely little isolated house called Tinderbox Cottage. I can’t understand why our marriage went wrong. I used to live in the south-east, and worked for Elfingham borough council as an engineer, but when I got ill they offered me early retirement and I took it, and came to live in the north with my wife. She can’t stand me, and I can’t stand her. We’ve tortured each other for thirty years. Out of what we thought was undying love has come unendurable suffering. Can you understand it?’

  ‘Yes, and no,’ I responded with perfect sincerity.

  ‘I think it’s economic,’ he said.

  ‘Economic?’

  ‘You see, if the gross national product was sufficiently buoyant, the government could issue an edict saying that all those who are married are to live apart immediately. No argument. And those who can’t afford to live apart get a pension in order to do so. Anyone caught staying married seven days from the date of this law will be shot. In twelve months, however, marriages can start again. You can get married to the same partner, if you feel so inclined.’ His eyes glowed in the mirror. ‘Good idea, don’t you think? I spent years working that one out.’

  ‘Good for some,’ I said. ‘But doesn’t it bother you that you can’t torment your wife when you’re not with her? You must have fun as well, otherwise how can you be going back to torment her again?’

  He hiccuped. ‘I love her, so why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘It’s all the same to me.’

  ‘I’m going to kill her,’ he said flatly. ‘Or maybe she’ll kill me. It wouldn’t surprise me.’

  I’d never met a loony who had a sense of humour, but then, if you were loony how could anything seem funny? It was too painful. I hoped he’d go to sleep, though because I was feeling sleepy myself I wanted him to keep talking. ‘Do you spend all your time hitching lifts on the Al?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got a brother living in London, in Streatham, and I visit him every so often, and stay till he says I have to leave. There’s enough money for the bus, but I prefer hitch-hiking because when I speak to someone on the bus the conductor puts me off for disturbing the passengers.’ Grantham passed on the starboard and then Newark on the port bow. I lit one of my own cigars on crossing the Trent, always an obligatory and satisfying gesture at such a point. ‘My brother burst into the room at four this morning and said I had to get out or he would strike me with an axe. That’s why I’m on the road so early.’

  ‘Life’s difficult.’

  ‘I’m really beginning to think it is.’

  ‘You must be tired,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you get your head down?’

  He sighed, like a boiler about to burst. ‘I can’t. Sometimes I’m unable to sleep for days. I’m in such a phase now. That’s why I’m going back to my wife.’

  I felt like a cat having its fur rubbed backwards. Maybe I would murder him before he murdered his wife. ‘Do you have any children?’

  ‘Two daughters. Janet and Phyllis. Janet lives with another woman and Phyllis lives in Dover with two children but no husband. We don’t see them, but they write now and again. They’ve got their own lives. Like all of us. Phyllis’s two children are boys. She calls them Huz and Buz. When they last came to see us I told them a bedtime story, so she never brought them again.’

  I was reminded of an incident from Bill Straw’s adventures, but couldn’t believe there was any connection.

  ‘Phyllis left home at sixteen. We had a blazing row one day because she’d been hanging around the docks. I didn’t receive a word from her for two years. Somebody told me she’d met an Irishman. Even the Salvation Army couldn’t find her. Then she wrote to say she was married and having a baby, and asked for money. Her mother sent five pounds, and it came back by return of post, cut in two – longways. I don’t know what we’d done to her. It’s amazing what people can be like. Have you ever seen people who are happy?’

  ‘I’ve seen them dead,’ I said, ‘so I suppose they were happy enough. But I’ve been happy from time to time.’

  ‘There should be a happy medium, don’t you think?’

  ‘A happy tedium, more like it,’ I said.

  The smell of soot was in the air, the delectable breath of the north, which partly made up for the gloom descending on the car. It was impossible to throw him out. Nor did I want to. I was neither dead nor happy. There was a stage in between which he didn’t know about, and that was his trouble. I thanked God first, and Moggerhanger second, and myself a close third, for including me in on it.

  ‘If you had given me a lift right from the beginning,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have had this black eye.’

  ‘This is my employer’s car,’ I said wearily. ‘I’m not supposed to give lifts. In my own car I always do. But not in this one. Do you understand?’

  ‘And yo
u switched off the music.’

  ‘It was driving me crazy.’

  A beautiful cream Mercedes passed us, and I glanced at it.

  ‘You signalled to that car,’ he said.

  ‘You’re off your head.’ If he wasn’t, I was – or would be soon.

  ‘It must mean something – what you do.’

  ‘It does if you want it to.’

  ‘Everything means something.’

  I’d never been so glad to see the Bawtry signpost, because it meant I would be back on the twisting arterial lanes and have to pay closer attention to driving. It also began to rain, big splashes coming at the windscreen, so I put on the wipers and hoped their rhythm would hypnotise him into sleep.

  ‘It means something whether you want it to or not,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, bollocks.’

  ‘Swearing reminds me of that horrible transport café.’

  ‘I’ll swear if I like.’ I overtook a coal lorry, so that we missed dying by inches. That would have meant something, but he was in no condition to notice. I could see the faces of drivers who were coming to pass me on the other side of the road. Those with their mouths open hadn’t yet learned to drink properly. The nipple still shaped them. One chap wearing a cap drove with a look of horror, as if death by fire could strike at any instant. Another man drove with so little of his face showing, he must have been three feet tall. Often the mouth was a circular hole in the middle of a plate of lard, just distinguishable between the dangling good luck charms and the India-rubber Alsatian behind. Most faces seemed angry, as if belonging to a body taking part in a bayonet charge, and set to kill every oncoming driver – unless it was the expression they put on at the sight of a Rolls-Royce. It was too common not to mean something, though I was inclined to think it their normal state. Those faces that didn’t look rabid were gritted tight in concentration. A fair proportion of phizzogs sported a benign idiot smile, looking about ten years of age and as if delighted to be at the wheel of a lethal machine. I didn’t know why, but most of the women’s expressions seemed more or less normal. I wondered with a smile what my face looked like to those able to take it in – and immediately took the smile off it and assumed a mature sternness befitting the captain of a ship.