Life Goes On

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘It wasn’t me. It was Parkhurst. And Toffeebottle.’

  I wasn’t listening. I planned the severance some seconds in advance. Speed and timing was vital. Cars hooted to get by. Another few minutes and the rozzers would be onto us. I saw the turn-off. Whether Pindarry had been briefed as to my possible Harwich intention I didn’t know, but he was too preoccupied with his companion’s peril to remember if he had. Almost at the junction, I wound the window quickly down. At the same time I veered sharply.

  Kenny’s hand was free, though his bones must have taken a drubbing as the arm grated out. Their car went straight on, while I swerved left and, in good old Black Bess, got onto the slip road without turning over.

  As I went away I heard the car that had been behind me crash into the back of the Rolls, because no sooner had Pindarry realised my escape than he panicked, tried to cut in front of me, and slammed on the brakes to stop me when I was no longer there. Too late, he caused the biggest pile-up on that stretch of road since the black fogs of yesteryear.

  I won’t say I was laughing. Almost certainly, I had lost the boat to Holland – though my resurfaced optimism told me there might still be a chance. If I missed it, I would drop my incriminating evidence in the nearest Royal Red pillar-box so as not to have it in my possession if Moggerhanger’s lads finally ran me to ground.

  There was no advantage in speeding the last few miles. I would leave things to fate. When a tractor swung in front from a field beyond Manningtree I was as patient as a superannuated brigadier out on a pleasant country drive using a map from the 1930s. The young tractor driver had an earphone system clamped over his cloth cap, and was listening to the Jungle Blues from Radio Zombie as his vehicle moved sleepily along. Both of us waved in friendly fashion when I shot by.

  I could smell the North Sea, and sensed a rough crossing, which would be appropriate enough on such a day. Then the sea was in sight, as well as cranes and great sheds, fences and the car parks. The boat was still there. I ran into the ticket office, wondering whether Chief Inspector Lanthorn and his lads would be at the passport control waiting for me.

  ‘Hello, Cullen! Where is it this time, then? Continental holiday, eh? I hope you aren’t getting a bit above yourself. We wouldn’t like that down at the station. We’re getting to love you more and more. Without you our lives wouldn’t be worth writing home about. Our careers would be in jeopardy. Stand still, you bastard. There’s nothing you can do. It’s a fair cop, I think you’d call it. I’d like to say, though, that that little incident on the A12 just now had us absolutely brimming over with admiration. We had a chopper overhead filming the whole thing. No, I know you didn’t notice it. You were somewhat preoccupied. We’ll run the film for you one day – when you come out. Trouble is, film doesn’t keep very well. After twenty-five years it’ll be pitted and smudgy. You’d better come with me. And I don’t want any fucking nonsense. All I have to do is warn you that anything you say will be used to your detriment at the trial, and thrown back at you by the beak to get you the maximum possible sentence.’

  ‘You’re too late, mate. The boat’s leaving.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you that.’ I bit my tongue rather than snap at him. ‘Just sell me a ticket. I’d like a cabin, if you’ve got one.’

  ‘Oh well, maybe it’s not too late, sir.’ He loved playing with late arrivals, but lifted the phone. I stood so calmly I didn’t even light a cigar, though my innermost tripes shook like jellies.

  ‘Room for one more?’

  I looked idly around the room as seconds went by. My troubles weren’t over. They never would be. Moggerhanger might have someone waiting for me, even supposing I got on the boat, when I drove off at the Hook. There was no saying how far his vindictiveness would reach. The only reason for pursuing me was if he had proof that I had got the envelope. I didn’t see how that could be, though I was blind enough to believe anything. He wouldn’t stop me entering Holland, even if I had to leave the car on board and walk off. Such were the whirlings in my brain as I waited by the window.

  ‘You’re in luck. But you’ll have to get a move on.’

  I took the ticket without a word, then drove to the passport window with that vital laundrybook in my hand. I got it straight back, and the customs didn’t bother me. An old salt took half my ticket and pasted a chit on the windscreen. ‘That’s a vintage car, sir, ain’t it?’

  I thanked him for the compliment, and trundled ever onward into the car deck, hearing the steel wall fall to behind. A matelot offered to wash my car, and such was my relief at being on board that I gave him a fiver in advance. I felt the vibration of the engines while struggling upstairs with my briefcase, overnight bag and umbrella.

  Bursting sticks of chalk drew the ship out of harbour. I stood on the top deck, cold spray hitting my face. Lights winked from the flat countryside of Essex, and we were soon on the watery big dipper. There was a slight rust about the ironwork of the lifeboat derricks.

  I sat by the wreckage of my lunch, staring at paper flowers on the cafeteria table. Loudspeakers put out audio-masochistic music which I had even been too old to appreciate as a kid. One song had the word ‘Revolution’ wailed over and over by a group drugged either on Moggerhanger’s wares or their own souls.

  I couldn’t stay in that plastic maritime palace for processing tourists into foreign parts, so got up to walk. The rhythmic tinkling of pinball machines dominated every gangway and recreation place, though I was glad to be out of Moggerhanger’s reach. A man wearing a newspaper-hat led four kids in a conga-dance along the deck.

  Safe at last, I felt weak and purposeless though what else could I expect? Only my worst enemy would know that to make me powerless all he had to do was stop threatening me. Maybe Moggerhanger wasn’t that subtle, but I stayed on the alert, all the same.

  I left my case in the saloon, though I wouldn’t let go of the briefcase, and went on deck to watch a ship go by. Tinkling morse came from the wireless office. Was Moggerhanger sending a telegram to his agent on board, telling him to throw me over the side? Not on your big fat Bertie. All said and done, he was only a racketeer, one of many, and not even my wildest imagination suggested that his influence went beyond the land. Trying to reach a higher deck, the gate wouldn’t give, and I was about to get it open when I noticed the words GREEN TOE GANG painted there.

  The sea was heaving, with an invisible menagerie in the rigging, snarling and roaring. White cock-heads went to the walltop of the horizon, spumed up and never far away. I wanted to throw myself at it like the laughing man, but went on laughing after reading the words GREEN TOE GANG over and over. There was no mistake. I got under cover from driving rain, to the popsong noises I had despised a few minutes ago, but wherever I walked I sooner or later came upon the same GREEN TOE GANG label pinned over a door that I tried to open but couldn’t.

  I had stumbled on the flagship of the Green Toe Line, the gang’s Titanic, no less, gone from one frying pan into another. I staggered like a blind man, but found the first class bar and sat with coffee and brandy, a little internal bandaging for the nerves.

  Smoking the last of Moggerhanger’s cigars, I was filled with admiration at how the Green Toe Gang had affixed their name to so many doors and barriers. After all, they could have owned the ship without advertising the matter. To take over such a vessel was even beyond the power of Moggerhanger. He may have had the money, but hardly the panache. After a while I began to laugh on the other side of my sandpaper face at the thought that, having with such expertise escaped one racketeer’s minions, I had imprisoned myself on the good ship GREEN TOE GANG from which the only escape was to swim through a Force Nine Gale. The sensible course was to meet the Big Chief face to face. A jaunty crew member was walking between the tables, and I called him over. ‘Where does the boss of the Green Toe Gang have his cabin?’

  He looked at me as if I was crackers. ‘What gang?’

  ‘Green Toe Gang.’ He thought I’d walked on the ship straight out of an Essex loo
ny bin.

  ‘Was it on telly?’

  ‘It could have been, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know, then, would I? I work shifts.’

  ‘The Green Toe Gang,’ I said. ‘It’s written all over the place. You can’t fool me. I can read. Where’s the boss of it?’

  Something occurred to him, and he laughed. ‘Oh! Ah! Green Toe Gang! That’s a good ’un, mate. And to think – I never thought of it! There ain’t no boss, though, except the skipper, and Green Toe Gang don’t bother him.’

  ‘Doesn’t it? Why not?’

  ‘Well, you see, Green Toe Gang’s Dutch for NO ENTRY. See? It’s in English underneath.’

  He walked off, laughing, while I stood white-faced at the bar, thanking God for my narrow escape. Maybe the situation wasn’t as bad as I thought. I’d have another brandy, then go to my cabin and sleep so as to arrive in the Netherlands as fresh as a tulip. On landing I would drive to a lovely small town in the south, and put up at a hotel for a couple of days, where I could feed myself silly. But I had reckoned without fate, a mistake I had made too often in my life.

  ‘Get me one, will you, Michael, my owd duck? A double, if you don’t mind. And a nice black coffee for Maria. She’s feeling a bit queasy with the rocking of this superannuated troopship.’

  I tried to stop myself sliding into a dead faint. ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said blandly.

  ‘How did you get on board?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we didn’t come on hidden in a crate of oranges. Bill Straw travels like a gentleman – you ought to know that by now.’

  Maria wore a fur coat and a hat. She looked at me with her large, beautifully liquid eyes. Bill was impeccably got up, a Burberry on his arm and a large holdall by his feet. ‘Aren’t you glad to see us?’

  ‘I’m stunned out of my mind with the shock’ – which must have been true, because I ordered the brandies and coffee, and we took them to a table.

  ‘Perfectly understandable,’ he said. ‘You’ve been through hell in the last three days.’

  ‘It was my impression that you had, as well.’

  He leaned across Maria, who stroked the back of his neck. ‘The only thing wrong with these boats is that they don’t sell them little custard pies I like so much. And the tea-bag tea’s rotten.’

  ‘If you’d told ’em you was coming, they’d have mashed a real Worksop pot.’

  He lifted his brandy. ‘You’re as sarky as ever, aren’t you, Michael? Here’s to a lovely trip abroad for all of us.’

  ‘I didn’t know you fancied a threesome.’

  Maria slapped my hand, spilling some of the brandy.

  ‘What I’d like to know,’ I said, ‘is how you came to be on this boat. I thought Moggerhanger had you in Durrance Vile up to a couple of hours ago.’

  He took such a while over lighting his cigar that I knew he was about to tell me a pack of lies. ‘You’ll never believe me – but what do I care? He let us go last night.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He saw no point in holding us. It was you he wanted to frighten. He knew the three of us were like one happy family, and that the mere idea that he had got us at his mercy would make you cough up the doings. Claud’s a reasonable man, though he did make it a condition of our release that I wouldn’t phone Upper Mayhem and tell you about it. You can understand that, can’t you, Michael?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There’s nothing to go on about. We had a talk with Lord Moggerhanger before he let us go. He and Lady Moggerhanger had us in for tea. They’re not a bad couple, Michael. And the cakes were delicious.’

  ‘I’ll bet they were. On your grave they can write: “He sold his best pal for a Nelson Square”.’

  ‘Hey, steady on – a cream bun, at least!’

  ‘It’ll be in the Guinness Book of Epitaphs. You fucked up my plan.’

  ‘Michael, be realistic. You would never have got on this boat with Claud’s three million quids’ worth of kay-li. It wasn’t on, and you know it. Or you ought to.’

  ‘It’s a bitter pill to swallow,’ I said.

  ‘Most pills are, Michael.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I told him.

  ‘That’s more like the old Mike Cullen.’

  ‘So how did you get here?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. When Lord Moggerhanger let us go, we went to my room in Somers Town. I wasn’t followed, and the Green Toe Gang – I say, have you seen them notices all over the place? In’t it a bloody scream? Green Toe Gang everywhere! So that’s where they got their name? Makes you wonder, don’t it?’

  ‘Get on with your yarn.’

  ‘Let’s have another brandy first. And a pot of camomile tea for Maria. She’s getting worse, aren’t you, darling?’

  She only stopped kneading her hands together when they went over her bosom, or against her mouth, or were drawn across her glistening forehead. She nodded, but wouldn’t say anything in case the effort made her sick. She was obviously on the verge.

  ‘Make ’em doubles, Michael: there’ll be a queue soon.’ His sponging was a tidal wave, a wall of water stretching from the horizon that you couldn’t avoid. I got the drinks. ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘I pulled the money out of the mattress, fifty thousand pounds of it, and this morning we took the boat train from Liverpool Street. The money’s in this holdall at my feet, so go easy with your cigar ash.’

  ‘You mean to say you’ve cadged two rounds of drinks off me, and you got fifty thousand shekels in that bag?’

  He was offended. ‘I didn’t want to arouse your cupidity, or your suspicion. But now I’ve told you. I never had any secrets from you, did I, Michael?’

  ‘If you don’t stop calling me Michael every few seconds I’ll clock you one.’

  ‘That’s the ticket, duck. But don’t worry. I’ll buy the next round.’

  ‘What else did you talk about with Claud?’

  ‘Oh, it was just a general, wide-ranging sort of conversation.’

  ‘What, though?’

  ‘Travel. Things like that. We jabbered about holidays abroad, and I said I preferred the Dover-Calais run because it was the shortest and because there was a lovely little cake and coffee shop I could stoke up at. It had to be admitted, though, that some people liked longer crossings, for all sorts of reasons. I knew what he was getting at, mind you, and he fell right into my trap. “Michael allus goes to Holland to see his everloving wife on the Harwich to Hook run,” I said, as if you’d told it me only a few days ago, and I’d believed it hook line and sinker. I told him because I knew that in the next few days you would take any other crossing but this.’

  He was living proof, if proof was needed, that one Nottingham man can think for another, and more or less get it right. In that sense his treachery had little meaning. He understood my look.

  ‘I can see I was wrong, but Michael, what bloody crazy thought led you to take this crossing today?’

  ‘I’m safe on board, aren’t I? Though I only just made it.’

  ‘I suppose that’s all right, then. Eh, Maria?’

  She tried to laugh, but looked awful, her eyes opening wider at each wilful flip of the boat. I felt as if I could drink fifty more brandies and not get drunk. My brain was iced up, and I had hardly any contact with it.

  ‘What I’m certain of is this: that when I get to Holland and disclose all I know to Interpol, Moggerhanger will never be the same again. They’ll lock him up in the Tower of London till the end of his days.’

  Maria fell half fainting across the table.

  ‘Michael, give us a hand.’ I was surprised he was so concerned. He was stricken with anguish. ‘She’s going to spew by the look of her. Let’s get her on deck.’ He held her between us. ‘She told me she got seasick, but I hoped it would be calm. You can’t rely on anything, can you?’

  ‘Not even with fifty thousand pounds,’ I said. ‘You left it by the table.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ He ran back, and hung it ov
er his shoulder. ‘I thought these posh boats were supposed to have stabilisers,’ he said, staggering a few feet.

  I held the door open with the hook of my umbrella. ‘Don’t make much difference in the storm.’ We went to the leeward side, where only a few sprinkles reached us.

  ‘Let’s make her walk up and down a bit,’ he said. ‘Might bring her round. It’s funny she gets so seasick, a member of a great seafaring nation and all that.’

  ‘England’s oldest ally,’ I said.

  He cracked me so playfully in the ribs I had to tighten the grip on my briefcase. ‘Your general knowledge is nearly as good as mine.’

  The wind blew in circles, first clockwise and then anticlockwise. Fortunately, when Maria let herself go, the contents of her stomach went clear away from us. ‘You’ll never get Moggerhanger put inside,’ he said. ‘There can’t be any evidence to do it.’

  ‘Oh yes there is. And I’ve got it. The T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted. I’ve got so much on Moggerhanger and his world import drug business they’ll have to build new prisons for the crowds that get pulled in.’

  ‘Michael,’ he said, ‘what’s the use? You can’t do it.’

  He was spineless. He was inert. Or he was amoral and anti-social. He didn’t care. The trouble was, he was easygoing, and that was the reason we had stayed pals for so many years. Finally, we trusted each other. We’d always done what was best for each other. He didn’t want me to shop Moggerhanger because such an action would disturb the status quo. It would rob people like him of employment, and there were enough on the dole already. As for my own living, I was prepared to sacrifice that for the common good. ‘I’m turning him in. That’s all I’ve wanted to do for the last ten years.’

  ‘Michael, I won’t say it’s not right.’ He held my arm as if to prove his affection. ‘Why should I worry? I won’t go to jail. And I hope you don’t. We both could, though, but let’s not consider that for the moment. All I say is that however much evidence you’ve got, there won’t be enough.’ He chuckled. ‘If there was, you’d bring the country down.’