Life Goes On

by Alan Sillitoe

  Maria smiled as she plied the spatula.

  ‘She’s here to help out.’ I’d intended to say she was pregnant, but didn’t – I can’t think why.

  He couldn’t stop looking at her. ‘A gem, a real bloody gem. Is she foreign?’

  ‘She’s from Portugal.’

  ‘Do you know, Michael, I never use long words, but if anybody was to ask me, I’d say she was exquisite.’

  ‘I serve you in dining room.’ The Gem went before us with a tray. Rain beaded down the windows, and it seemed a good day to be indoors eating breakfast at three in the afternoon. ‘Tell me what went wrong in your great venture to the outside world,’ I said when we made a start on the big black teapot.

  He put two pieces of bread and butter together and began to eat. ‘Michael, forgive me if I chide you, but your sarcasm worries me. You didn’t used to be like that. Sarcastic people aren’t usually successful in life, and I wouldn’t like that to happen to you.’

  ‘I’m a bit on edge,’ I said, ‘what with one thing and another. I’ll tell you what happened to me since I last saw you, and then you’ll know why.’ Maria came in with our full-house English breakfast, and I marvelled at how much Bridgitte had taught her in such a short time. Bill was about to pat her on the arse, but a look warned him off, smitten though he was. While we wolfed our commons I recounted my trip, though managed to leave out my meeting with Agnes and my homecoming at which I’d been informed that Maria was pregnant.

  ‘That puts us in the same mess,’ he said. ‘If I was you, though, I’d go and see Moggerhanger and find out what the score is. In this kind of business you don’t know who was at fault. All you know is that you did your duty, and now that you’ve survived you’re worth twice as much to Moggerhanger than if you had failed.’

  ‘My mind boggles,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you see? If he sent you there to make a genuine delivery, you’ve nothing to worry about. You did deliver it, after all, whatever it was. Didn’t you?’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I said.

  ‘Granted. What’s more, you don’t know what arrangements he had for the stuff when it left your hands. That’s not your business to speculate about. If he sent you over to get you killed – and I think only your hyper-active imagination could suggest such a thing – now that you’ve beat ’em he’ll have to welcome you back into the fold. Once there, you’ll be too big to be knocked off. Or too useful. He’s got the others to think about, but if you stay on the run your life won’t be worth a light.’

  He didn’t realise that Moggerhanger already knew I was home again. ‘I wonder whose side you’re on?’

  He put his knife and fork down, so I knew things were serious. ‘Michael, listen to reason. I realise your instinct is to kill Moggerhanger. It may be understandable, but – bide your time. You may be cunning, but you’re not cunning enough. Nobody is. You don’t have a tactical brain quick enough, nor the sort of cool thought pattern that stops you just this side of ruthlessness. Cunning without tactical appreciation always leads to unthinking cruelty, which is no good to man nor beast. If you’re ruthless without due consideration your opponent may become your victim, but you might also put yourself in the way of becoming his. Savvy?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  He finished his breakfast in one great swipe across the plate. ‘I would, if I was you.’

  ‘How can you be so thin,’ I asked, ‘when you eat so much?’

  He gave me his wide Worksop grin. ‘I burn it off. It’s thought that does it, Michael. I never stop thinking.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’ I was careful to smile. ‘But tell me your story.’

  ‘Pass the marmalade, and I’ll start.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I went to Somers Town, and there was Toffeebottle standing as large as life by the corner of the street. I knew that if I went to my room, even in my disguise, I was a goner, and so was my cash. I backtracked it, hoping he hadn’t seen me, and got up to Goole as easy as pie. Taking Dismal was the best idea I had. I just stood by the road, held up my white stick and touched my dark glasses like Maurice Chevalier his hat, and had them bumper to bumper fighting to pick me up. “I’m going up north to see my brother,” I said, “I’m almost blind, and if it wasn’t for my faithful dog I wouldn’t be able to get around at all.” While Dismal jumped in the back, the man (or sometimes woman, because a blind man with a guide dog like Dismal couldn’t possibly get up to any dirty business) got out and opened the door for me in case I missed my target and walked out into the road and got killed. I must say, though, that with my new rig on, which included one of Major Blaskin’s hats – I hope he hasn’t missed it yet – I knew I couldn’t be recognised when I went snooping around Goole.

  ‘My journey up was a treat – only three lifts, as a matter of fact. One chap who took me straight up the Al to the Doncaster cut-off even stopped and bought me a meal, and I tell you, when I’d finished I could hardly move. Even Dismal was so full he scraped along on his belly to the door. Everybody seemed to love him all the more for it, though he’s a terrible farter, by the way. I can’t understand when people talk about a dog’s life. And the man paid up without a murmur, though I offered my share. He owned a few shops in Barkdale and drove a nice big Ford Granada, but he was just an ordinary chap like you and me, about fifty-five, I’d say. I told him about my adventures in the Merchant Navy, when I’d had my sight damaged in a fire.’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d ever been in the Merchant Navy.’

  As Maria cleared the table he looked at her with a mixture of longing and sheer lechery. ‘Michael, when somebody out of the goodness of his heart has given you a lift, it behoves you to entertain him if he’s half in the mind to hear it. Anyway, he then told me about his three sons, who all won scholarships at eleven and went up through the system till they got to the best universities. The eldest is one of the wonder boys at Marconi, another’s in computers in America and the third’s just got his master’s degree in modern languages at Oxford. I suppose there are thousands of families like that, Michael, and they keep the country running. It gives me faith, honest it does. Merit triumphs. There’s hope for us yet.’

  He gave his infectious maniac laugh.

  ‘I’m serious. There’s a lot of talent in this country, and it’s nice to realise Moggerhanger doesn’t have it all, although he and the criminal fraternity – the gold smugglers, dope peddlers, pickpockets, money printers, as well as tax dodgers, moonlighters, con-men (and con-women), muggers and cat burglars – cream off reams of intelligence. In the brain power and talent they employ it must be second only to the arms industry. Makes you think, don’t it?’

  I lit our cigarettes. ‘It’s the way we live now.’

  He rubbed his hands together. ‘It certainly is, old cock.’

  ‘So you got to Goole?’

  ‘Ever been there? Of course you have. It’s a funny sort of place – ships right in the middle of the town. You only need one of them medieval catapults to swing half a ton of heroin into the square. At night it’d be the easiest thing in the world: just roll your car roof back and the stuff pops in. Then you drive away and nobody’s the wiser. All I wanted was to go into a few pubs and see what I could find out. You never know what information you can pick up, or who you can see in pubs, especially when you tap your way in with a white stick, led by a dog. Now, Michael, I don’t know where you got that dog, but he has been trained to do some very funny things, because no sooner did we get in a pub than he went sniffing around, and he wasn’t just after Woodbines. There were five people in, and when Dismal passed by one and didn’t sniff him – a chap with a grey beard, straggly hair, and a Russian-type fur hat – the others who had been sniffed turned on him. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I’d been hoping for something, but not this. I just stood by. I had to, because I was supposed to be blind. But the others got hold of the chap Dismal had passed over, and held him against the wall. One of them was a big bald-head
ed specimen with a strawberry mark down one side of his face, a sailor from one of the boats, with the biggest set of fists I’d ever seen. “Who are you?” he asked the chap. “Wayland Smith,” he squeaked. That was a made-up name, if ever I heard one. I noticed a pansy-looking chap nearby who seemed to be the ringleader, a nasty bit of work who did nothing but file his nails. “What’s your job?” he asked. Wayland Smith shook and trembled, and called to the pub landlord that he should get the police, but the landlord only laughed and said “Get ’em yourself.” The sailor asked the same question, and Wayland Smith must have thought it was all up: “I’m a journalist,” he sobbed. Well, I ask you – a journalist! That was the worst thing he could have said. “I know him,” Nail File said. “He works for the television. BBC, I think.” That made it even worse. If it was ITV they might just have thrown him out and that was that. But the BBC! “You’d better put him in the van,” Nail File said. The sailor hit Wayland Smith in the stomach, and they dragged him outside. “It’s terrible,” the landlord said, “the way people can’t hold their drink. How was I to know he’s had thirty-five whiskies?” He looked at me. “If I was you I’d make myself scarce. And take that dog with you.” “I only came in for half a pint of mild,” I whined. “Bugger off,” he said, “or you’ll need a deaf aid as well, if that lot set on to you.” His advice was well meant, so I stepped outside. It was too late. Somebody hit me on the back of the head with the town hall.

  ‘I woke up in the cop shop on a charge of being drunk and disorderly. Dismal was put into the cell with me, in case I wanted to go to the lavatory pan in the corner. Whoever struck the blow outside the pub must have dragged me to a street on the outskirts and poured a bottle of brandy over me. Fortunately he wasn’t smoking at the time. The beak next morning said I should be ashamed of myself. “A blind man to get into such a state.” I was belligerent and nasty, he said, and took advantage of my disability to bamboozle the general public into protecting me. What’s more, I didn’t deserve the service of that faithful dog “whining so hard because it can’t get into the dock with you. However, in view of your condition, I will be lenient. Ten pounds fine, and fifteen costs.”

  ‘As you know, Michael, I hadn’t got a bean, so they sent me to Lincoln Prison. Why they packed me off there I’ll never know: it should have been Leeds, where I know the governor. I’d have been treated much better. They’d have given me a packed lunch as well, when they sent me off. Anyhow, they were glad to get rid of me, though they weren’t bad chaps. They let Dismal share my cell and always had a vat of slops for him to eat. When your letter came with the money I was off like a shot and got here an hour ago. I still don’t know what it all means, except that those smuggling lads don’t fuck about when you cross them. That smack across the skull seems to have damaged my appetite. The only good thing I can say about them is that they were English enough not to push a needle into Dismal and hurl him into the river.’

  ‘What did they do with Wayland Smith?’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Only what I heard at Blaskin’s. Seems he’s researching for a TV documentary on smuggling.’

  He took a silver toothpick out of his pocket and began to ply it. ‘He’s probably on his way to Hamburg by now. I expect he’ll wake up in the middle of a donkey show, and he won’t be playing the donkey.’

  ‘Can they get away with a thing like that?’

  He leaned back and laughed. ‘Michael, your sarcasm is more than made up for by your sense of humour. Them lads can do whatever they like. That’s why I think the sooner you’re back in the Moggerhanger compound the better. If you could spend your life never more than twenty feet away from the great chief himself you would live forever.’

  I called for Maria to bring another pot of tea. ‘That’s not my idea of life. I want to finish him off. I want to get him put behind bars.’

  He came forward so that I would hear every word. ‘Shall I tell you something? Life’s too short. And however bad life is, it’s very good. Why do you want to get him sent down? Because he’s done you a bad turn? If that’s the case, your motives are revenge, and that’s selfish, Michael. Don’t stoop to selfishness. In any case, “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord”. And it’s right. Why ruin yourself? Let the Lord take care of a lord. He will. And if he don’t, somebody else will. And if nobody else does, you and me’s got nowt to lose – by and large. But maybe you want to get rid of him because he’s ruining the economy? Or because he’s drugging the whole country silly? Very good motives, Michael. Far better than revenge. But shall I tell you something? Don’t bother. He’s drugging the whole country silly? It was drugged before, only the drugs was different. And what do you want to do with the country, anyway? Wake it up? Pardon me while I swim to France.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s much different there.’

  ‘No, but the grub’s better. Where’s that lovely young wench with the tea?’

  I felt as if I was swimming in treacle. I could neither sink nor get out. It was necessary to go back to the centre before I could decide what to do, but where was the centre? ‘I’ll report to headquarters tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s what I’d do in your place. Do you mind if me and Dismal hang on for another day or two?’

  ‘Ask Bridgitte.’

  We were sitting around the fire that evening, and she announced that she was missing the children. They’d had enough of a holiday without her. She was going back to Holland. ‘Besides, I have a boyfriend, and I’m missing him as well.’

  There was silence for five minutes, then I said, packing as much threat into my voice as I could: ‘What did you say?’

  She flushed her usual high colour when she was inwardly disturbed. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend in Holland.’

  I was ready to choke. ‘So it’s the end?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  I stroked Dismal’s wide head. ‘And what about my kids? I’m missing them as well. I haven’t seen ’em for weeks, and it’s breaking my heart.’

  There was a big tear in her left eye. ‘You can see them whenever you like.’

  ‘It comes to all of us,’ said Bill.

  ‘You keep out of this.’ I had been expecting it for a long time, hoping for it, in many ways wanting to be free of her for good, but now that the words had come out, and in front of other people, I felt sick. At the same time I wasn’t certain that she meant it, and this made me angry, so in order to make sure, no matter how much more miserable I was going to be, I asked: ‘When are you going to take your things from the house?’

  ‘It’s my place as much as yours. I’ll take them when I like.’

  ‘Make it soon,’ I said. ‘My girlfriend wants to move in.’

  ‘Do you play this game often?’ Bill said.

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  It was getting too complicated. ‘I’m only kidding. But what about Maria?’

  Maria, who sensed things were not as they should be, sat idly with the knitting on her lap. ‘She’s your responsibility,’ Bridgitte said. ‘You brought her.’

  ‘That’s nice of you. I need a caretaker.’

  ‘I’ll stay on for a day or two,’ Bill said. ‘She’ll be all right with me.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ll thank you to keep your hands off her if you do.’

  ‘I’ll go back to London,’ Maria said. ‘To get a job.’

  ‘You stay here,’ I told her. ‘I need you. Look after Dismal and Bill. London’s no good for a nice person like you. The police will send you back to Portugal if you haven’t got a job. In fact they’re probably hunting high and low for you at this minute.’

  She began to cry.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I told her. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m going to London tomorrow to kill the man you used to work for. Then I’m going to Holland to kill Bridgitte’s boyfriend. Then I’m going to kill myself. Clear the air a bit.’

  ‘A holocaust,’ said Bill. ‘Take a Bob Martin�
��s and calm down.’

  I fetched a bottle of whisky out of the cupboard and poured everyone a glass. ‘Here’s some medicine, Maria. It’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘It’s whisky.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘I like whisky.’

  So that’s how it happened, I thought. No wonder she didn’t know.

  ‘Give me another.’ Bill drained his glass before I set the bottle back on the table.

  ‘You won’t kill Jan,’ said Bridgitte. ‘He’ll kill you, you coward. You won’t frighten me, or him.’

  ‘Of course I won’t kill him,’ I laughed. ‘I’ll be too busy with Agnes.’

  She swallowed. ‘Agnes?’

  ‘The girlfriend I mentioned. I really have got one. She went to America with me. Her name’s Agnes. And she’s pregnant. This house won’t be big enough to hold us soon. It’s just as well you’re leaving.’

  ‘You’re rotten,’ she screamed. ‘Rotten, rotten, rotten.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said.

  She stood up.

  ‘You throw that glass,’ I told her in no uncertain terms, ‘and it’ll be the last thing you do.’

  She set it on the mantelpiece. ‘Maria, let’s go to bed.’

  Sweating with misery and rage, though I knew I was getting off lightly, I poured more whisky for Bill and myself. Maria had a look which I can only describe as ecstatic when Bridgitte picked up her glass, and the bottle, and they went out of the room holding hands.

  ‘This place has a funny effect on people,’ Bill said, ‘but I find it restful enough. Jack Daniel’s has a lovely taste. I wish you hadn’t let them take the bottle.’

  ‘I’ve got some more,’ I said, going to the cupboard.

  Twenty

  When everything is settled, torment slops away beyond recall. It is arguable, of course, whether anything is ever settled, but I thought it was as I dressed in my two-hundred-guinea bespoke three-piece suit, donned my tailor-made shirt, laced up my handmade boots, put a handkerchief in my lapel pocket and took a brace of duty-free Romeo and Juliet cigars from the box in the spare room. I filled a holdall with shirts, underwear, shaving gear, my hip flask and the air pistol. Last of all, I threaded the gold half-hunter watch across my waistcoat. No one was awake. I said goodbye only to Dismal. Maybe I would be back in the morning. Perhaps I would never be back. The outcasts of Upper Mayhem could look after themselves.