Quite Honestly

by John Mortimer

  Can you believe this? She put up her finger for a taxi. We could have gone to the bus stop or down the tube. No. She was a woman who used bad language and rode around in taxis. Showing off was what I put it down to.

  Anyway, I bet we were about the only customers to arrive at Burger King in Notting Hill Gate by taxi. And when I’d polished off a Whopper with all of what comes with it and was well assured that I wouldn’t have to burrow into my £46.75, I felt a lot calmer.

  What I remember most about that time at the Burger King was that I got given a mobile phone. Of course I’d had phones, and plenty of them, but not ones that were given up voluntarily. And what I remember thinking was, this is rather dull, being given a mobile without the interest attached to stealing it. She told me her number was in the phone and I should call her every morning and evening, which I hadn’t the slightest intention of so doing.

  One thing she did do was to agree to me going to Aunt Dot’s and not to any more prison-like accommodation in any hostel. She said she’d deal with Mr Markby about where I lived and I suppose, looking back on it, I should have said thank you for that, because I had no wish to deal with Mr Markby on any point, particularly on the subject of where I lived.

  At the end of the meal, she said I ought to thank her for the Whoppers and dealing with Mr Markby. What I said, and I remember this clearly, was I hadn’t asked her to do anything for me, and it was her who was doing all the asking.

  Well, that was true, wasn’t it?

  ‘Old lady no longer live here.’

  ‘Why, where’s she gone?’

  ‘Old lady dead.’

  When we parted, my teacher, lecturer, whatever she was, had given up taxis. She reminded me to phone or text her when I was settled in. So I’d walked up to the far end of Ladbroke Grove so as not to disturb my £46.75 and turned off towards Kensal Rise cemetery. The high tower block looked only a little more inviting because some graffiti artist had decorated its lower walls with a pattern of hearts entwined together, and I got out at the tenth floor and walked along the concrete balcony.

  The place seemed quieter than usual. Of course it was only about ten o’clock in the morning but I could hear no nicked cars racing around the block, not even quarrels or the occasional scream, like there usually was when I got home, not to mention the odd shot. Some kids were playing football that ought to have been in school. All the same, the buildings had never seemed quieter than when I opened Aunt Dot’s flat with the keys they’d given me back in the Scrubs that morning.

  I opened the door and let loose a great burst of Chinese voices. I don’t know what they thought. Probably that I’d come to rob them, because I didn’t ring the bell. But there were so many of them, at least three or four men, one of them picked up a baseball bat, three or four women, some small children and a baby who screamed at me.

  It wasn’t until I’d quietened them down and explained who I was that they told me. The old woman was dead. My Aunt Dot had passed over.

  And Uncle Arthur? I didn’t need to be told where my Uncle Arthur was. Gone away. No doubt after some bungled robbery or other. That was the trouble with prison. They never told you anything. Aunt Dot had died and there was I, alone in my cell, reading the Russian book and not knowing anything about it.

  When I was leaving the buildings, I have to say I felt really lonely. More lonely even than I’d ever felt inside. It suddenly struck me, I’d stepped out of prison into nothing at all. And I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do next.

  What I did next, I suppose, only went to show how unfit I was for the real world outside the Scrubs. I wandered about round London. I’d made up my mind not to go to the hostel. I wasn’t going to give Mr Markby the satisfaction. So when I left the buildings, the whole day stretched in front of me like a long sentence. The worst was that I had no idea where I was going to serve it.

  I’d walked back into London as far as Bayswater when I had the idea of phoning Chippy McGrath.

  ‘You’re out! In the land of the free. I’ll buy you a drink!’ That was what Chippy said when I got to him through the small army of protectors, minders and hangers-on that seemed to be around him in his place, what the ever-popular Chippy called ‘a maisonette property off the Edgware Road’.

  ‘I need a bit more than a drink, Chippy,’ I had to tell him. ‘Would you mind if I kipped down at your place? Just till I can get something fixed up.’

  ‘No problem. Meet you for that drink and we’ll fix it all up.’

  ‘Where’s the drink?’

  ‘Beau Brummell Club.’

  ‘Where the hell’s that?’

  ‘Harrowby Street. Bright lights, big bouncers in the doorway, you can’t miss it.’ And my old school friend rang off to attend to more important business.

  Well, at least I’ve got friends, I thought. But it was a long time till six o’clock. Life out of prison seemed to leave you with a lot of hours to fill in.

  Anyway, I invested in cigarettes and a toothbrush and toothpaste plus an evening paper and a packet of sandwiches from Marks which I took to a bench in Regent’s Park. The rain had stopped but there was a sky like a grey prison blanket all over the lake, so I sat there reading the paper and feeding bits of my sandwich to the ducks. By this time, my wealth was down to £36.

  ‘So you’re out! We can work together again.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why ever not? We done some good jobs together.’

  ‘I’m not too keen on going back inside.’

  ‘So what’re you going to do?’ Chippy had changed over the time I’d been away. He looked older, but he was much smoother. No longer the Chippy who’d say ‘Fuck off, man’ to any woman. He had the self-satisfied smile of a successful person.

  ‘I suppose get some sort of job,’ I told him, a bit uncertainly.

  ‘What sort of a job? Not much use with your convictions.’ Chippy spoke from a lofty height, as though he had the cleanest character ever, which was far from the truth. ‘You work along with me, Terry, and you could live like me.’ Here he waved his hand round the Beau Brummell Club as though he owned the whole place. There were tables with girls with dickie bows round their bare necks and naked shoulders who were dealing out cards and raking in money. Some of them spun wheels and raked in even more money. There were fruit machines clattering round the walls. In and out of the shadows round the bar there were easy-to-come-by women and men straining the buttons on their dark suits. I heard a few posh voices piping excitedly away and I thought, this is where the tip-top people come to mix with the crims.

  Chippy himself was perched on a high bar stool staring at what seemed to be his personal bottle of champagne. Give him the credit, he poured me a glass without hesitation.

  ‘Bubbles, Terry. I bet you didn’t get many of them in the Scrubs.’

  ‘Too right,’ I agreed.

  ‘You ought never to have got caught on that last job, Terry.’

  We’d made sure the couple who owned the house were away on holiday. It was just our luck they’d left a key with their daughter. She arrived with a pack of beefy young men just as I was packing up the last of the silver! Chippy, of course, heard their arrival and escaped in the getaway car. My friend Chippy, you’ll have noticed, always managed to escape.

  ‘It was a bit careless of you, Terry, to choose that particular gaff. I was lucky to get away.’

  ‘Of course. You’re always lucky. When you get nicked you’ll have had no previous convictions.’

  ‘What do you mean “when I get nicked”? I’m a law-abiding citizen, Terry. Let me give you one of these.’ At which he produced a wallet and extracted a business card which read ‘Leonard McGrath, BSc. Financial Adviser. Environmentally Friendly Investments. Mortgages and Home Loans Negotiated’ and gave the address of his maisonette in Connaught Square. I had to burst out laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Leonard. I always knew you as Chippy. Are you really a Leonard?’

&
nbsp; ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘And what’s all this BSc?’

  ‘Bachelor of Science.’

  ‘Are you one of those?’

  ‘Of course I’m not. Anyway, as I say, it was careless of you, Terry, to get us into that particular house. You bloody nearly lost my good character for me. I can’t take you out for a job if you’re going to be careless.’

  I explained again that I’d finished with that side of life and all I wanted was somewhere to kip down for the night until I could make other arrangements. Could Chippy help?

  ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t fit you into a corner of the maisonette.’ It was then that there was a burst of music from his top pocket and he got deep into a conversation to which he contributed nothing much more than a number of grunts. As soon as he’d put his phone back in his pocket he stood up. ‘Sorry, my lad, got to go. Urgent business. Oh, and the maisonette’s going to be chock-full, so you’ll have to make other arrangements. But do finish the bottle.’

  Then Chippy was gone. I wasn’t too upset, because I knew I had enough for a room for a couple of nights at least. So I took no notice when my phone rang and I knew it was Lucy, and when she texted me to ring her urgently I certainly didn’t feel the need to reply.

  And then my first day of freedom began to fall apart. Just after I’d knocked back the last glass, the barman asked me for money, saying my friend had been in a hurry and said he’d leave me to settle up. This led to a series of arguments which I needn’t go into, ending up with an invitation to step into the manager’s office for the opportunity to discuss how expert the chuckers-out from the front door were at beating up customers who didn’t meet their obligations. That was when I parted with £36, apparently the price of a bottle of bubbles at the Beau Brummell Club, so my remaining capital was nil.

  With the prospect of a decent bed for the night fading away, and still determined not to surrender to Mr Markby and his prison hostel, I thought I’d try and do what had worked for me a time or two when I was a teenager, which was to head off to the super-loo on Euston Station.

  It wasn’t bad in there, with a few creature comforts such as showers, and I still felt able to ignore Lucy ringing my phone. However, there was a bloke in that super-loo, where such blokes do gather, who was giving me the sort of looks my mum’s boyfriend was so free and easy with, and which was among the reasons for me leaving home. I didn’t want to get into trouble fighting on my first night out, not in the super-loo or anywhere else come to that. So I moved to my last known address for that night, which was a bench on platform four, which I had entirely to myself from around ten o’clock. I went to sleep soon after Lucy’s last unanswered call.

  I woke up with a mouth like the floor of a parrot’s cage, stiff legs and bitter thoughts about the superior comfort of my single cell in the Scrubs. Some unseen visitor must have visited my bench when I was asleep and made use of the opportunity for a good vomit. In the distance the trains were clanking into position. When my phone rang at 6.48 I gave up the fight and answered it.

  ‘Terry Keegan speaking.’ I tried to sound self-confident and successful.

  ‘Where on earth are you?’

  ‘Honeymoon suite. The Ritz Hotel.’

  ‘You’re not!’

  ‘Of course I’m bloody not.’

  ‘Are you at your Aunt Dot’s?’

  ‘I couldn’t stay at Aunt Dot’s.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It wasn’t convenient for her.’ I didn’t want to tell her the truth and have her feeling sorry for me.

  ‘So where did you sleep?’

  ‘Not a bad bench. Handy for platform four at Euston.’

  ‘And why didn’t you ring me? I rang you. I texted you. Why didn’t you answer?’

  ‘I thought I could manage on my own.’

  ‘You obviously can’t. Why didn’t you get a room somewhere? You’ve got money.’

  ‘Not now I haven’t.’

  ‘What did you do with it?’

  ‘Spent it all on a bottle of champagne.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘I wish I was.’

  She was quiet then and I wondered if she was going to cut off on me. Oddly enough, and for the first time, I hoped she wouldn’t.

  She didn’t.

  ‘One last chance,’ she said. ‘Get yourself over to Waterloo.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Waterloo Station. Meet you by W. H. Smith’s at, let’s say, 8.30. I’m telling you, it’s your last chance.’

  5

  ‘It was you did all the asking.’ That was what he actually said to me, remember? After I’d shelled out from the not much money I’d accumulated from waitressing over the Christmas period. I told him straight out, again if you remember, I reminded him that I’d bought him a mobile and second helpings at the Burger King and taken my courage in both hands and rung his probation officer to get him out of staying in the hostel. I’d done all that and all he could find to say was, ‘It was you did all the asking.’

  It was as if he expected me to go down on my knees and thank him for allowing me to spend out on him. Is that the trouble with trying to do a bit of good in the world? There are a lot of people in the world who don’t really want any good to be done for them. So they’ll never thank you for it.

  You can tell how disappointed I felt with this doing-good business. After he’d failed to answer my calls all day and all the evening, I decided to ring the advertising agency and tell them I’d be able to start work next week.

  It was when I’d been kept awake all night with anger and frustration I decided to give him the chance of one last call. Miracle of miracles, he answered me.

  All the same, he sounded quite patronizing, as though he was too busy to be bothered with telephone calls. Too busy sleeping on a bench in Euston Station! And he told me he’d spent all his prison money on a bottle of champagne. You know what that was, don’t you? That was a cry for help.

  All right. It’s a bit of a thankless task doing any sort of good in the world, but if you ever set out to do such a thing you can’t simply ignore them, not cries for help. That was when I told him to be at W. H. Smith’s on Waterloo Station, to which he’d no doubt have to walk if he’d spent all his money on champagne, and serve him damn well right.

  If he wasn’t there that would be a definite end to my trying to do good in the world. But before I met him I had to speak to my father.

  ‘You’re here then.’ I looked at Terry in amazement. I’d said 8.30 and I’d got to W. H. Smith’s on Waterloo Station at exactly 8.40. And there he was, looking a bit tired certainly, but alive and apparently unrepentant.

  ‘I’ve been buying you a ticket,’ I told him. ‘And it’s about the last thing I’m buying you if you don’t remember to phone me every night and every morning. I’m very disappointed in you, Terry.’ I was beginning to realize you can’t do good to people without being quite nasty to them occasionally.

  ‘All right then. Where are we going?’

  ‘To visit my parents.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He seemed determined not to show any sign of surprise. ‘Where do they live then?’

  ‘Not very far. Aldershot.’

  ‘No, I mean what they got? A house or just a maisonette?’

  ‘As a matter of fact it’s a palace,’ I said truthfully. At which I clearly succeeded in surprising Terry.

  ‘Pull the other one,’ he said, ‘it’s got fucking bells on it!’

  My dad is very handsome for a bishop, or indeed for anyone. He has chiselled features, clean cut, regular. His hair is going grey, in rather an attractive manner. He keeps thin by riding for miles uphill on a stationary bike he has fixed up in the bathroom. He wears the thinnest of dog collars and a pectoral cross said to have formed part of the pulpit where Archbishop Cranmer preached a sermon - although I’m not sure that the ecclesiastical outfitter wasn’t having Robert on a bit there. (My father always encouraged me to call him ‘Robert’ and not ‘Dad’, ju
st as I had to call my mum ‘Sylvia’.)

  When I collared him in the bathroom, and found him panting a bit to get up the hill, he was wearing black socks, a quite flattering pair of Gucci underpants and a T-shirt he’d bought as a joke when he was in San Francisco at an Episcopalian congress. This garment had written across the chest the words ‘Skanky Danky’. I’m not sure that my dad had any idea of what those words meant. He was, as always, very clean from the bath, but he’d not yet applied his daily squirt of Tommy Tingle’s Fragrance for Men.

  As a Christian, my dad was, I thought, an expert at doing good in the world, and he’d already shown considerable interest in the Terry Keegan story, so I gave him an update. As a professional forgiver of trespasses, he seemed to take Terry’s appalling behaviour less seriously than I did.

  ‘Sounds a bit of a character,’ he said. ‘Still with the possibility of redemption.’

  ‘He spent all his money on a bottle of champagne.’ Here I was giving Terry the benefit of the doubt. ‘I thought it might be a cry for help.’

  ‘Or just a cry for champagne.’

  My dad smiled and got off his bike, which buzzed in a complaining manner until he switched it off. Then I told him we had to have a last-chance plan for Terry. And once I told him that, Dad became extremely helpful.

  The Bishop’s Palace at Aldershot isn’t really all that palatial. It’s old, draughty and covered with ivy. To me, it always seems to have the smell of Sunday lunch, to which my dad invited whoever had preached that morning in the cathedral, and at which my mum was inclined to close her eyes and drift off into a snatch of sleep, having been in charge of the pre-lunch cocktails. That morning my dad greeted Terry as though he were some strange and wonderful being from outer space.