The Death of William Posters: A Novel (The William Posters Trilogy Book 1)

by Alan Sillitoe

  A shock passed through Frank because the voice that called his name out loud was only half recognized by memory. Shelley set a briefcase down on their table, stood tall beside it, wrapped in the same long overcoat and cumbrous grey scarf. Frank knew him, in spite of the crew-cut and heavily-rimmed glasses that made him look like so many other Americans. ‘And what the hell are you doing in this godforsaken Bidonville?’ Shelley asked.

  ‘If you’ll sit down and have a drink, I might tell you.’ There were handshakes: ‘I got swacked on your brandy, remember?’ Shelley said, and called the waiter, who seemed to know him well, and came over immediately from another table. He ordered two double cognacs, and more tea for Myra.

  ‘We ended up here,’ Frank said. ‘After Granada it was the end of the line. We’ve got to hole up for a few months.’

  ‘It’s a good place,’ Shelley said with a high-powered laugh, ‘but it’s not the end of the line. I know a few places after this, and I don’t mean Casablanca.’

  ‘What about your girl friend in Barcelona?’ Myra asked. ‘Is she here too?’

  ‘Hell, no. She works up there, and I do my work down here. Now and again we have a date. I had to pull out quick.’

  ‘What sort of work?’ Frank asked. Shelley leaned back with a music-hall avuncular look from such contemporary shoulders. ‘Just wouldn’t you like to know? Oh boy, just wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Maybe I would at that,’ Frank said.

  Shelley asked where they were staying. Frank told him: ‘But we can’t bed in that fleapit for ever. We’re looking for a house or flat.’

  ‘Since independence you can pick up apartments cheap. But a furnished place isn’t so easy.’ The rain eased off, settled to a steady civilized downpour. Traffic livened the dusk, and beggars held out their hands again. Vendors toted hats, flowers, peanuts, purses, wooden puppets. The café lighting served as blinds, rain and dusk neutralizing everything. Myra felt out of time and place, Shelley telling of a flat he knew with four rooms, kitchen, bath and maid’s bathroom not far from the Boulevard Pasteur. ‘Belongs to a Frenchman who tears off six months of every year in Marseilles. I know the agent, a lawyer. Lets for around thirty thousand.’

  ‘That’s about five quid a week,’ Frank said. ‘We could manage that.’

  Shelley took a large diary from his briefcase: ‘Meet me here, nine-thirty, tomorrow morning?’

  ‘All right,’ Frank said. ‘Why do you need such a big diary in a place like this? Are you in business, or something?’

  ‘How you bug me, Frank! Sure I’m a business man, but don’t ask me what I sell. It’s too specialized.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Frank said. ‘And if you can’t forget it, drop dead. I don’t mind if you run a brothel.’

  ‘Tell me he’s broadminded, Myra,’ Shelley said, beckoning for another tray of drinks.

  The agent took them through a palatial entrance and up on a fine lift, four floors high in a modern block to show off the central heating and garbage disposal point. Myra had stayed in bed, so Frank was to decide. The furniture was ornate and heavy, but sparse enough not to be intimidating. Windows looked over the town towards Tetuan. Frank went back to the lawyer’s office with Shelley, signed the six-month contract and paid two months of it. They’d move in that afternoon, and Shelley suggested that since it was only ten maybe they could have breakfast and talk.

  Frank agreed. The way he said ‘talk’ made it sound mysterious, but that was Shelley’s way. Cutting up through the streets Frank said the only thing wrong with Tangier was the number of beggars, to which Shelley replied that though they were poor they might be happier than he imagined.

  ‘Whoever gave you the idea that me poor can be happy?’ Frank retorted, not sure how serious Shelley was being.

  ‘Who is happy then? The rich?’

  ‘Nobody’s happy,’ Frank said. ‘There’s no such thing as happiness except when you’re doing work for yourself that at the same time is helping other people.’

  ‘You don’t want much,’ Shelley laughed, ‘except the Millennium maybe.’ They turned a corner and went into a teashop-patisserie.

  Shelley ordered coffee and croissants: ‘It’s no use giving money to beggars. They get to know you and hound you to death. It does no good. Things have to get worse before they get better. If all these people didn’t like being poor they’d get up and change it.’

  ‘Who are you preaching to?’ Frank demanded. ‘They might want help in getting started. And what are we doing except sitting here and spreading the butter on thick?’ Shelley slapped him on the shoulder with a conspiratorial laugh: ‘One thing at a time, Frank.’

  ‘What thing?’ Frank wanted to know.

  ‘Maybe I’ll tell you,’ Shelley said, ‘though there’s a catch in it, unless you want to pull out now and not listen further. You’re all right to help, and you’re the sort of man we want on this job.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Frank said. ‘Let me know what I might want to pull out of, first.’

  ‘Can you drive? You have a licence? I didn’t ask you that. I want to know whether you can make with the clutch on rough roads and open ground. I take it you’ve been in the army, that you can fire a gun, read a map, throw a bomb? Don’t get excited. All I asked was can you drive? Sure, sure, you’ve got all the right answers, except that your sweet wife is pregnant and waiting for a new little Frank to pop out in beautiful Tangier. Stop telling me, man.’

  ‘Belt up, and get on with it, you clever bastard, and spill those fags. I forgot to get some this morning. Black Spanish ones, not those Yank coffin nails.’ Shelley’s hand shook slightly at the light, as if imitating shell-shock he might one day get, his laugh grating Frank’s nerves, then telling how he’d been drumming around Morocco and Algeria a year or so, and that he’d done all manner of work, not for money, you get me? For principles, though he’d taken some beigebacks now and again for stamp money to supplement his ill-gotten savings from Mad Avenue, New York City.

  Frank was learning nothing from this insane spiel, didn’t like jokes or smokescreens. Shelley asked if he was partial to the violent life and Frank said he could manage it if it came his way, or if he walked into it.

  ‘Or drove into it?’ Shelley supposed he’d heard of the war of independence in Algeria, and Frank said he’d supposed right, but what was he getting at? ‘The fact,’ Shelley went on, ‘that the F L N are losing. They’re desperate for certain things, and that means everything: rifles, shells, men, printed matter – such as maps and guerilla manuals in Arabic printed you-know-where. I’m going down in a fortnight, and want a co-driver to play a banjo by my side, strum that wheel when I’m knocked up from the shakes of the rocky trail. It’ll take a few days to reach that rendezvous point (the way I have to frigging well go) and most of the time the humps are far from smooth.’

  Frank felt himself getting the shakes, too. Shelley wanted to know if the job was accepted and Frank said yes after a bare minute of packed thought that he’d sort out when it was too late to back down from – not that he could imagine wanting to, all change being good as long as you never for a second thought it might be bad. And wasn’t this something he’d wanted all his life but considered to be nothing more than an impossible vision? To get out of his spiralled airtight shell and carry violence to the enemy camp instead of letting it run amok and cause destruction in his own? His anguish had been in abeyance during the year of life-change, but on drifting into Africa the bare bones of his own construction had sharpened again, surfaced.

  Shelley said that no frontiers were marked where they would go. The real border between Morocco and Algeria was sealed by the Monice line, a great electrified fence running from the sea to the desert edge that not even a gnat could flutter over without getting its stones scorched. Apart from that there were six million mines patterned around, everyone counted by the F L N! So they’d set off in a lorry loaded with crates of guns and ammunition, bales of printed matter, to a point south of this mined and electrified fron
tier in the wilderness of Adam and the Holy Bible where they’d wait for a truck to reach them from the other side, then switch loads and head back north. The half dozen recruits they’d take would stay there, be lifted into the Khabylie or Monts des Ksour as reinforcements to carry on the good fight.

  Frank asked why he’d been chosen when Tangier was full of bums and loafers only too glad of a few thousand francs. ‘Let’s say it’s for old times’ sake,’ Shelley said, ‘in honour of brandy on the Majorcan boat – and because a bum would be no good on this kind of job.’

  ‘Aren’t there enough Moroccans jumping for a chance?’

  ‘Sure. Except that they want to stay in Algeria. The others, well, I shan’t say they can’t be trusted, but there are good markets even inside Morocco for gear like this. Ever heard of dissident tribesmen? The Rif mountains? Abd el Krim? Untimely cravings for autonomy waiting to be supplied with guns by Hi-jackings Incorporated? It’s just that those (no names, what?) who shell this stuff out want it to get there for the purpose intended. I’m an old hand at it. And they trust me to find the right assistants.’

  ‘You mean it’s dangerous?’

  ‘If it isn’t you won’t go?’

  ‘I like to know things.’

  ‘Do you see any shell-holes in me, any craters in my skull?’

  Frank asked when they started, and Shelley, never having imagined it would be so easy to inveigle him into the job, mentioned a big garage on the outskirts of town. ‘At seven a.m. on the 18th – which leaves you two weeks to set up a little love nest in the Frenchman’s apartment and get Myra a good servant to wait on her while you’re away. I know a fatima who’s out of a job, a jolly, middle-aged, veiled woman who won’t let Myra lift a finger.’

  Frank did not know how to tell her. A few days after moving into the new flat he said he was going on a motor trip with Shelley, to deliver some stuff to a friend of his who lived in a Kasbah beyond the Atlas Mountains. It would be interesting to see the country down there, so they’d be taking off in ten days, and be away that length of time. He’d like her to come with them, but didn’t see that it’d be all that wise, with less than a couple of months to go before the baby was expected.

  ‘It’s a good chance of seeing the country,’ she said, ‘but try not to be away too long.’

  The flat was large, airy and sedate, scrupulously respectable, a place he’d never lived in before. The standard was similar to the house of Myra and George, almost the sort of place they would have chosen if they’d come out here together. He grinned at the sight of it, wouldn’t have known what to think if he hadn’t been going away so soon and if it hadn’t, after all, been in a foreign country.

  ‘Ten days,’ he said, ‘and no longer. Miriam will look after you. I’ll give her a bonus so’s she can buy stuff for her family.’

  Shelley called one morning and took him to a bookshop near the Fez market. Rain pummelled the town, as if the Atlantic were filtering through its gutters. Ships’ hooters sounded from the mist-blocked straits. ‘This is bad for the roads,’ Shelley said in the taxi, ‘but as long as we can get over the Big Atlas in one piece we’ll be O.K.’

  Frank looked at the titles while Shelley went through to the back. The only books in English were dirty books, and when Frank opened one which set off with a bang on the first page, a tight-trousered Moroccan youth in dark glasses tapped his elbow and beckoned him to the back room.

  A man sat at a table, facing Shelley. He was well-built, yet his face seemed frail, with open and delicate features, spectacles and receding grey hair. There was a notice board on one wall, a map of Africa on another, with Tangier a flea-dot on the very edge. ‘I’ll speak English,’ the man said – as if he could have spoken Swahili just as well, ‘for the benefit of our friend’ – meaning Frank. ‘All I want to know, because Mr Jones has vouched for you and I take his opinion sincerely, is whether you want the money paid to you in Tangier, or on a bank in Gibraltar.’

  Frank couldn’t speak. ‘I’m sorry,’ the man said, ‘but I absolutely refuse to pay you in dollars.’

  He held his rage back: ‘I don’t want money for this work.’

  ‘The last person who said that turned out to be a spy.’

  Shelley stood up angrily: ‘I didn’t bring the spy along. Look, Frank, don’t play hard to get. The reality is always a little sordid. Just go along with it. It’s a hell of a lot smoother that way.’

  Frank understood, not being without his rock-bottom sense of realism, saying that if a condition of his being allowed to go was to accept money, then he preferred payment when he came back. It wasn’t his habit to get paid until after the work was done. ‘They don’t do that where I come from.’

  ‘You’re not there any more,’ Shelley said.

  ‘Part of me is, or I wouldn’t be doing this job. I’m not in it for kicks and I’m not out for money. We can talk about that when we get back, otherwise I don’t go.’ They discussed it now, in French, and then in Arabic when they thought Frank was getting the gist of it. He wasn’t, stayed out front looking at the books until Shelley came to say that stalemate had broken by their giving in. Frank was surprised that an issue had been made of it at all. ‘That’s how they are,’ Shelley said. ‘Everybody has to learn.’

  Frank spent an hour in the American library, went in for a few minutes out of the rain. He picked up a volume of Arab stories and read one, about how a stream had reached the edge of the desert and was in danger of being sucked away completely by the sand. The stream knew that its destiny was to cross the desert but it didn’t know how. A voice said that the wind got across safely enough, so why couldn’t a river? ‘Let yourself be absorbed by the wind, and the wind will get you across.’ But the river didn’t want to lose its individuality. ‘You won’t lose it,’ said the voice, ‘because the wind will absorb all your moisture, carry you over the desert, let you fall like rain, and then you’ll be a river once more.’ ‘But I shall be a different river,’ said the river. ‘You’ll be different after any experience,’ argued the voice, ‘and that is all to the good. But if you stay here trying uselessly to get across you’ll end up as a salty quagmire. If you let the wind carry you over the desert you’ll then know what your true identity is.’

  Frank liked the tale, wondered why he’d had to come as far as Tangier for the accident of reading it. Going south, he’d see the desert, but not roam far into it. The slow days were beating down his spirit, and he wanted to set off, though at the same time aching at the thought of having to leave Myra at such a point in their lives.

  He woke at four o’clock, more disturbed than he’d imagined, birds of prey and an insomniac beast worrying him all night. He had coffee and bread in the kitchen to a low murmur of sleepless people out of the Emsallah district on one side, and a roistering noise from a couple of cabaret places on the other. A boat-hooter sounded in the port, a low, dreadful gut-mover indicating a funnel and row of lights about to set off for another land, which caught at his stomach like an ancestral voice, tugged at his journeyman legs. But it’s not so bad, he thought, because I’m moving as well, in another direction, but moving just the same. It’s harder for those said good-bye to, for Myra who’s got to stay among all the indications of what our life’s been like. I only want to live properly with her; to work hard by the day, until life is so absorbing that it jets by. Yet his return was only ten days away, and there was no use trying to wring three months of sentiment out of it.

  He did not know how to say good-bye. He stood in the dark bedroom. He had never said good-bye to anyone he was in love with. The thought of leaving her turned him to salt, to ice. He stood there, her face hardly visible, trying to tell himself he wasn’t in love with her, that to be so would mean a defeat for all he had lately surmised and stood for. But he was leaving too much, felt as if about to drop from the last grip of the lifesaving rope end. He blamed such thoughts on the morning, when the brain was clear and ruthless, showing in true light one’s bravery and apprehension.

/>   She felt his presence by the bed. ‘Are you going?’

  He waited a moment: ‘I don’t have to. Nobody’s dragging me. If only they were.’

  ‘You’re saying this for my sake,’ she said, opening her eyes. ‘I’ll see you quite soon.’

  ‘I’m a fool,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to leave you both.’

  She sat up. ‘I know. But don’t make it too difficult. I know how much you want to go.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘My roots are in you.’ You did love me, she thought. You’re incapable of love. You’ve wanted to be free of it for so long that now you’ve made it, you’ve won. ‘Just take care,’ she said, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘I’m running guns to the Algerians,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I’m glad. But Miriam already told me.’ She hoped that Shelley knew there was no danger in taking him from her at such a time.

  ‘If we can burst that frontier we’ll be O.K. I’ll be careful. I’m cool enough’ – feeling at last that there was no limit to what he could do. ‘I’ve come full circle, going off on a thing like this. I feel as if I left the factory only yesterday, got paid up, clocked-out, and took a plane down. There’s a natural connection between that work and what I’m going to do. My muscles feel it, and my head as well. It’s not much perhaps, but it means everything to me. I used to dream of being able to do something, but I’m not doing anything. I see that now. I’m just being myself. I’ve learned to be myself. I want to prove it finally though. Then I’ll come back. You’ll be all right. I know you’ll look after yourself.’

  ‘I’ve got Miriam and a few friends. You make it sound more final now. Do you think you won’t come back?’

  ‘No. I’ll come back. This is just dawn talk.’ But the tears bled out of her. Desolation would rend her bones and close her eyes, but there was no one to tell, Frank least of all. He roared her name, unfragmented syllables thrown out by his exploding heart. He felt it emptying, knelt by the bed, his hand under the clothes, smoothing her breasts, her enlarging belly. ‘He’ll be there when you come back,’ she said, her throat hardening into firmness, ‘but not if you come back too late.’