‘Shall I tell you something?’ she said after we had been on our way for an hour. I nodded. ‘I think I’ve fallen in love. Don’t answer. I don’t mind what you say, but I think you should know how I feel. I first knew when I was alone in that Boeing toilet throwing my stomach out – the old one. Isn’t it funny that it should have begun at that moment?’
I snuggled close. ‘It had to start some time.’
‘And life’s been so interesting with you that I haven’t thought once about my boring old problems.’
‘I do my best,’ I said.
‘I’ll confess something else. I decided that while I was away I’d try to get pregnant.’
My eyes kept their look of adoration, and at the same time searched out the emergency exit. There wasn’t a door in sight. ‘Really?’
‘Maybe it won’t work. Perhaps it was my husband’s fault, and not because of me, that I was never able to have a child. But who can say? Anyway, I thought that if I met a halfway decent man during my holiday I’d go to bed with him and hope to get pregnant. I’m thirty-eight, and if I don’t try now it’ll be too late.’
I may have been nature’s gentleman, but I was also flabbergasted. It was usually me who said I was in love, and pressured the woman by a flow of stupid chatter to come to bed. Agnes’s gambit of saying she only wanted to make love so as to get pregnant was as perfect as any I could have thought up to get a woman into bed. I again regretted I had no hat to take off to her, because what man could refuse such a sincere and heartfelt request?
‘Now that we’ve come away together,’ she went on, ‘I thought I’d be fair and let you know what you were in for. If I do get pregnant you needn’t bother about the responsibility. I’ll look after everything. You just happen to be the one I’ve chosen.’
‘It’s a rare honour,’ I said. ‘I accept your terms unconditionally, but I hope you don’t mind if I make one or two comments on the matter. I mean, if you do have a kid – and the way we feel about each other you might well – what are you going to tell him, or her, when he or she gets to a certain age and asks about his or her father? It’s bound to be an intelligent little bastard who’ll ask awkward questions from very early on. Then again there’s the matter of supporting yourself, not to mention a hungry and demanding child.’
She laughed. ‘You can leave all that to me.’ I felt we would have no bother reaching Niagara now. Maybe she had sensed my worry, and invented this matter of getting pregnant so as to ease my mind, a kind of return for what she considered I’d done for her. The sweat in my groin wasn’t exactly the sort to give me an erection, but I must admit that she had pushed Moggerhanger and all his works out of my mind for a few minutes at least. But on realising this, the prospect of being killed in the next hour by the gang I had double-crossed came back to me. I was also sad at having been so callously sacrificed. Not that I’d ever thought there was any friendship between Moggerhanger and me. Outside his family he recognised no such thing. All the same, he could have sent Cottapilly or Pindarry, or some other expendable agent to do his dirty work. But he had to have someone halfway competent to bring off a coup like this and so had chosen yours truly, as if I would appreciate the honour of having a certificate of merit drawing-pinned onto the lid of my expensive coffin before it was let down into the hole and covered with wet soil. He had nothing if not style. He might also have suspected my avowal to get my own back at the first opportunity for the dirty trick he’d played ten years before – and what better way of forestalling me? Fortunately it was something I’d been on the lookout for from the beginning, a state of mind which activated my own warning lights on the aeroplane.
‘A penny for your thoughts, my love.’
I drew her close. ‘They’re worth more than that. In Niagara we can find a hotel and start making that baby. Tomorrow we’ll go across Rainbow Bridge and hop on a bus for New York.’
‘Or the day after,’ she said.
When we got into our room she took her clothes off, lay on the bed with her legs spread as wide as they would go, and closed her eyes. ‘Now,’ she told me.
Only when I’d kept my promise did she come to life. Such passion was too late, because all I could do was stroke her till she was satisfied, then go to sleep, struck dead by a mixture of jetlag, fear, the unexpected love affair (which I was now thinking I could well have done without), a new country, and the plain passage of time. She lay beside me and we went into oblivion.
Morning was my bad time. As I grew older it got worse, a fact I liked less and less. Whenever I woke up I wondered where I was, even if I’d slept in the same room for years. But because I was in a panic as to my latitude and longitude I invariably wanted to make love if there was a woman in bed with me, just to get my system working.
That morning in Niagara there was Agnes, and as soon as she opened her eyes I knew that she wanted to make love with me as well. Her cunt, cloyed with the sperm of the night before, increased her enthusiasm, and though I tried to hold back it wasn’t long before my backbone liquified into her, after which the events of the previous day began to pester me again. I was a hunted man.
Far from this causing me to kick her out and tell her to get back to St Albans, or wherever it was she came from, I embraced her as if never wanting to be separated from her comfortable body. Her suspenders, superfine stockings, frilly knickers, front opening brassiere and lace-edged slip hung over the rail of the bed, things she’d bought for the lucky man chosen to be her consort, but which looked like items for breakfast waiting to be eaten.
I didn’t know where the hell I was. For a change, one fuck wasn’t enough to get me into gear. If anything was, it was the realisation that I had to run and hide in New York, where I hoped no one would find me. We had to get moving. Her breasts pressed against me, and her night breath was the perfume of her soul. I said such things that came to me. How could a woman of thirty-eight blush? The great waterfall rushed to its doom under clouds of spray. ‘I could stay here forever,’ she said.
‘You’re not the only one.’
‘The room smells nice after all we’ve done in it.’ She put on a pair of pants but came back, and I held her by the hair and kissed her neck, and ran my hand around that soft material hiding softer skin.
We ate a Canadian breakfast of pork sausages, muffins and coffee. As soon as I saw that waterfall pouring over the precipice I knew she was pregnant. I would have fallen into the boiling spray but for the wire. No wonder honeymoon couples come here, I said. A woman’s only-got to look at such a mass of water to conceive. Aren’t there enough children in the world? Yes, yes, everyone shouts back, but they aren’t mine.
We got across the bridge and went southwest through the New England spring. Though I lay back on my bus seat in a cloud of crackpot infatuation and looked at the wonderful scenery, another part of my mind sorted out the permutations as to what form the hunt for me would take. When the boys in Toronto discovered the dud money on opening the bag and phoned the hotel to find out I wasn’t there, they would imagine I’d left on the first plane from the airport. By timing, they would guess to within half a dozen different destinations where I’d gone, but at each I could have changed planes for somewhere else, so I had got clean away, unless a couple of planes had left for New York around that time. To be on the safe side, when we got to the bus station I would jump on the next one to Philadelphia, on a hunt for brotherly love. My ultimate nightmare had always been that of falling into a trap, which was why the few I had got caught in had been so deadly. I never liked the idea of people waiting to do me an injury. As the bus drew out I thought I saw Harrow run to get on. My old two fingers went up in the V sign, and the man shook his fist at lunatic me whom he’d never seen before.
Agnes didn’t quibble at my plan. ‘I feel like a gypsy, going around with a writer who only wants material for his next book.’
Lies came in useful, though I made up my mind to confess as soon as we were back on home territory. ‘I’m a very jumpy person.’<
br />
‘I’ve got to make sure I’ll have my baby. Maybe we need a few more goes.’
I wondered what other plans she’d got for us, and felt morbid and superstitious. ‘It may be necessary for me to go back to England sooner than I thought.’
She held my arm, pressing closer. ‘If you could manage another night or two, I’d be very happy.’
‘I don’t want to go. I can’t explain fully, but I have to.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll fly back to Toronto and see my sister, then go to England from there.’
Halfway to Philadelphia we stopped off at a motel, and stayed three nights. We were safe, though it was a while before I lost my sense of apprehension. I told the manager and his wife we’d only been married a week, and were travelling around seeing the country. We loved the country. It was a great country. We’d never known such a fabulous country. ‘You’ve seen nothing yet,’ the man said. ‘America is the greatest country on God’s earth.’ They were wonderful to us, and made it hilariously obvious that they wanted to leave us alone as much as possible. I couldn’t remember such a wonderful time in cuntland and tit-country, the great united states of lips and nipples with its jungle lairs and mountain ranges – oh hymn to outright non-ashamed fuckery. We went at it as if I at any rate was going to be hanged in the morning, and when she said: ‘We’re certainly making sure of my baby,’ I laughed so much she even laughed with me, which showed how much in love we were.
I would take the bus to Philadelphia and she would leave in the opposite direction for New York. Separation was harder than we thought, which was the worst of being casual. She wanted to ask me not to go. I wanted to ask her to come with me. I was brainwashed by my inability to know what was happening. I felt as if I was committing suicide. Parting from her was a bullet in my brain. It would lodge there, but I would go on living.
My jacket was wet with her tears, something which hadn’t happened since Nottingham days. Her blouse was wet with mine. I felt as if I had been through the mincer and come out a different person. No such luck. She said nothing about seeing me again. My stiff upper lip had a blister on it. One clause of our contract was that if she became pregnant that would be the end of our affair. In spite of, or perhaps because of her passionate nature, I could see that she meant it.
‘Are you sure?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘Do you want me to stay another night?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to stay another night?’
‘No,’ I said. She was turning me into her husband, but I still loved her. She must have cared for me, in fact, if she was taking the trouble to turn me into her husband – or a facsimile of the man she had turned her husband into. Even though I loved her, I never wanted to see her again. In her suitcase, between the underwear, I left an address card, though I had no expectation of seeing her. I had served my purpose just as she had served her purpose in getting me this far without being killed.
At Philadelphia there was a special Air Nimbus flight to London with one bucket seat left, and with my pack of credit cards I was able to wangle myself on board. I would be safe after taking off, because these days, with so many terrorists wanting to dip their hands in the blood bucket, no one could get on board with a cut-throat razor in their hand luggage.
Flying in a Jumbo at night was like being in a long cellar underneath a laundry doing temporary duty as an air raid shelter, in which you sat until the all-clear went. After four hours I was hungry, but the smart young stern-faced stewardesses were still selling high octane drink, as if wanting us all to be too blindoe to know how foul the food was when it came, or not to care when the plane went into a spin. An occasional tray passed up and down the gangway, but the flight crew were eating first, and then the cabin staff. The smell of food was as fake as the music, which was also out of a can.
People were queuing for drinks near the galley, and when a woman pointed to water all over the floor I said in a loud voice as I squeezed by: ‘Never mind, love, as long as it’s not petrol.’
After the meal I tried to sleep. There were stars outside, and the movie this time was a long saga of ships bursting into flames. I regretted not having brought a few Sidney Bloods to pass the time. My brooding about Agnes lost its intensity as the journey went on. Misery evaporated, though the hours went by like weeks. Was she only another of my twenty-four-hour passions?
While looking out of the window at the green fields of Southern Ireland the stewardess reached for my breakfast tray which still held half a Danish pastry. As the meal had been one of the most meagre in my experience, and catching sight of her intention out of the corner of my eye, I stopped the tray in mid-air and pulled it back. She snorted and walked off. A gentleman a few seats along, being somewhat frailer than me, had perforce (as Blaskin might say), though after a somewhat spirited struggle, to relinquish the final crumbs of his blueberry muffin to a more determined young woman. They had a schedule to stick to, and no goddamned passenger was going to spoil it.
When we landed I got my luggage from the roundabout and headed for the. Nothing to Declare gangway. A hatchet-faced customs officer called me over and thrust his little board in front of my face, as if I had to pass a literacy test before being allowed into God’s Little Acre. He made me empty my case, and even felt along the seams and linings. I didn’t take the trouble to manufacture a supercilious grin – not having more than my allowance of Philip Morris fags and Jack Daniel’s whisky. The search was so thorough I couldn’t help thinking that somebody must have tipped him off that I was a notorious hash merchant. Yet no one knew I was coming back, and those who knew I had gone hadn’t expected me to return alive. He made me turn out my pockets and when he found nothing asked to see my jacket. My patience and forbearance seemed to encourage him, but he stopped short at a body search. ‘Sorry for the inconvenience,’ he said.
I was back. Watch out, Moggerhanger. I walked towards the taxi through the beautiful odour of real English rain. They couldn’t water that, at least.
Nineteen
Going over Hammersmith Flyover, a maroon Rolls-Royce told me I was back in Mogland. Pindarry wore his funny little Austrian-type hat with a feather up the side, and I recognised Moggerhanger’s big head in the back. He leaned against the window and, having much to think about, didn’t see me. At the moment only he was in my mind and I thought it a bad omen that I should spot him so soon after my arrival.
The presence of Harrods reassured me and it felt good to be safe home again. Letting myself into Blaskin’s flat, there wasn’t even Dismal to greet me, nothing except a couple of letters on the lounge table.
Dear Michael, [the first said]
I’ve decided to cut and run. I couldn’t stand it any longer. Not that Gilbert isn’t a gentleman. He certainly is that, the way he treats Mrs Drudge. We had some good times together. I had all the food and booze I wanted, but as soon as I finished writing his Sidney Blood story I lost interest in living here, and wanted to get out. Another thing was that that Mrs Drudge was getting on my wick. Every time I laid my hand on her arse she jumped a mile, as if I was going to rape her, or as if I wasn’t fit to touch such a person as her. I ask you, what kind of life is that? She wasn’t to know, I suppose, that it was only a friendly gesture. She also complained that I didn’t make my bed. Me make my bed! Anyway, I knew it was either her or me, and as I didn’t want to inconvenience Major Blaskin, Sergeant Straw had to get back into the wilderness and live under fire. Well, it makes a change.
Another thing is, I got so stir-crazy yesterday I went out for a walk as far as Harrods. You know my weakness for the place, well I went in for a look around. I saw that pillock Cottapilly in the toy department buying a fire engine. He’s got the best collection of toy fire engines of anybody I know. He’s very queer for fire engines, I can’t think why. Anyway, I don’t think he saw me, but I can’t be sure. If he did it’s only a matter of time before they come and
get me, or before they tip off the Green Toe Gang so that they can come and get me. Life’s not easy, Michael. It never was, not for yours truly. Oh, and another thing. I’ve taken Dismal. I’m sorry about that. I know you’re fond of him, but with me it’s a matter of life and death. I’ll buy a white stick from the Blind Shop, and with dark glasses and my coat collar turned up like on the pictures, I’ll be an object of pity and respect to all passers-by. I’ll have an impenetrable disguise, what’s more, and be able to pull in the odd penny or two if I don’t think it’s safe to go to my room and help myself to proper financial collateral from under the floor-boards. If I find I can’t cope with him I’ll put him in a basket and send him back to you by British Rail. That’s a risk, I know, because he might well end up in the engine sheds at Swindon running in and out to buy teabags. I’ll try and look after him, though. I hope you had a restful trip to Canada. See you some time.
Your old pal, Bill
PS. The probability is that by the time you read this I’ll be on some island in the South Pacific being served pineapple brandy by a smiling young girl in a grass skirt and no top.
The other letter, also in Bill’s handwriting, was from Lincoln Prison, on official notepaper:
Dear Michael,
I have been arrested but they’ll let me go if you send twenty-five pounds for the fine to the above address. I’ll explain later.
Bill Straw
I needed a long time to think about that one, but his peril was also mine, so five minutes later I put the money into an envelope, and paper-clipped it to a covering note as from Upper Mayhem. Then I went out and dropped it in the postbox so that it would arrive next morning. I needed all the pals I could get. If I didn’t knit myself quickly into some framework of defence I was finished, because whatever had gone wrong in Canada would sooner or later have unpleasant consequences for me. I wanted to throw myself out of the window and smack the ground five floors below. If I had known Moggerhanger was going to be standing underneath I might have done. But to do so otherwise was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I would just have to survive. My feet hadn’t touched the ground nor my soul the sky for almost a week. I recalled Agnes like the wet dream I always hoped would come true while going to sleep, and had to pinch myself into believing I’d seen her, though without our meeting on the plane I would have walked to my death in Toronto. She saved my life. The phone went and I picked up the receiver: ‘New Scotland Yard, can I help you?’
Life Goes On Page 27
