A Start in Life Page 17

  There was a knock at the door. Faces flashed through my mind: Claudine, Miss Bolsover, my mother, Mr Clegg come for his watch back, Bridgitte, even Smog to ask more questions on how babies were made, all or one of them at this crisis of my life intent on passing the time of the day. ‘Who is it?’ I croaked.

  It was the voice of the Scandinavian: ‘Kundt,’ he said. That’s what his name always sounded like to me, though I’m sure he wasn’t one – certainly not more of one than I was.

  ‘I’m washing at the sink. Stark naked,’ I cried. ‘See you later.’

  He opened the door and walked in, looking down at me: ‘Oh, you’ve fainted, Mr Cresswell. I’ll tell the manager to get a doctor.’

  ‘No,’ I said, trying to smile, ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘You look all crimson.’

  ‘Put my shoe on,’ I said, ‘and I’ll be eternally grateful. But close the bloody door first.’

  He did so, and laughed. ‘You Englishmen wear too many clothes. Not like the women. They have very little. I get too quick to it’ While he talked about submissive English women he rammed my shoe on and tied it, then lifted me upright like a slab of timber. He sat down. ‘I’m in love with a woman,’ he said, as if holding back gallons of melancholy tears, ‘and she went away last night. I didn’t know I was in love till this morning, and I want to write her a letter. You can help me with that.’

  ‘Why don’t you just go to her?’

  ‘She’s with her husband. But she’ll be back in a week.’

  ‘Your English’s good enough to write a letter,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I know, Mr Cresswell, but I want to talk to you about it.’

  ‘I’ll see you at the Tube station at ten o’clock,’ I said. ‘We can have a cup of coffee over it.’

  ‘All right. I’ll go now, and wait for you. But first I must shave and need one razor blade.’ I told him to take one and he went away smiling.

  The next thing was to get two jackets on my back. The sleeve-lining of the second one tore, but they both fitted more easily than I expected. I put a pair of socks in each jacket pocket, and my razor and toothbrush in the lapel pocket. Finally I got into my overcoat, put a scarf casually around my neck, and pulled on woollen gloves. Over all, on top of my head, was a cap. The great problem was: how to move? I walked across the room like a wooden dummy, and fell down. I was so padded that it caused no real noise, but I was far from the bedrail and had no way of getting up. The doorknob was close, so I got a grip on that. I heaved slowly, going up the door like a great fly, and almost made it, when the knob came off and I fell back with it in my hands. This is a pretty kettle of fish, I thought, instantly checking my blind rage. The next nearest thing that caught my eye was the sink, which had strong-looking steel supports underneath it. I took off my gloves for a better grip. If this is life, I thought, then roll on death. The sweat of it seemed to be already pouring off me. I’d always thought of myself as being strong, but it was an impossible job to get back on my feet, which it was essential to do if I was to walk free and unfettered from that hotel. But I weighed enough to cause the sink to slowly ease itself from the wall and hang by a thread on its curving bars just above my head.

  I slid back in despair, crawled around the floor like a dog that had lost its bone. By the bed I sat up, then swung myself on to all fours, then on to my knees, then, by using the good old faithful bed once more, I gradually escaped my dreadful impasse. I stood, free and upright. My gloves were on the floor, but with grandiloquent contempt I decided to forget them. In any case it might look more natural if I sauntered nonchalantly through with my hands in my pockets. But could I saunter? I could only walk like a monster newly created by its master, stiff and wooden, looking for some innocent to crush or strangle. This was no good, for I had to get myself out of that place looking more or less as I did every other morning.

  I spent half an hour walking up and down the room, keeping the window open to get cold air in. The effort was awful. I felt as, if I had no limbs at all, as if they’d been shot away in war, and I was a hero who had been given artificial limbs of the crudest sort, but who with fiery indomitable courage was sweating out his life in order to walk and work normally with these limbs, only to get back into his fighter plane and shoot down more German bombers. It was a real man’s life right enough while I was doing this, and after the first ten minutes I was drawing in strength and self-control I never thought I had. What was London and all the world doing while I was locked in this totally absorbing struggle? I didn’t know, because only I was concerned in it. After twenty minutes I seemed to be getting close to my ordinary walk, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I wanted it to be more than good in case I was tempted into a too optimistic assessment of my skill. I could take no chances, and knew it was my insistence on this that separated me from the run of people who might by now have given up. Not only were part of my earthly belongings at stake, but my honour and self-respect had got involved as well, to such an extent that I’d never recognized them in this way before.

  As a last gesture of bravado, when I was all set for a perfect going away, I picked up yesterday’s newspaper from the table, folded it under my arm, and strutted out. I whistled the crazy jig-like empty-brained tune that everyone else was whistling, locked my door, and stepped down the corridor. I hadn’t reckoned on the stairs, and felt my laminated interiors creaking and groaning like the timbers of an old ship as I took the steps as quickly as I could without capsizing. The manager at the counter greeted me in his usual friendly manner. ‘Off again, Mr Cresswell?’

  ‘A bit late today,’ I smiled, ‘but I had a report to write.’

  ‘It’s a hard life,’ he quipped.

  ‘Some have it harder,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back for dinner.’

  ‘Oh, I have a bill for you,’ he called as I turned to go out. ‘All made up.’

  ‘I’m off to the bank,’ I said. ‘Settle it when I get back.’

  He smiled. ‘No hurry. Just ask for it.’ I laughed at his good nature, and he wished me good morning again. Then I dropped my newspaper.

  I gripped my panic by the throat and forced it back. Because I was heavily enough dressed and must have weighed half a ton, I pushed it under the coat rack with my foot. ‘It’s yesterday’s, anyway.’

  He hadn’t seen it: ‘What did you say?’ – looking up.

  ‘It’s cold this morning.’

  ‘Bitter,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a bad winter, they say.’

  At the first stationer’s shop I bought sheets of brown paper and a ball of post-office string, meaning to reach a toilet where I could change, and make my surplus padding into a transportable parcel. It was later than ten when I stopped outside the Tube station, but Kundt was no longer there. He waited for no man, not Kundt, for time was precious to him. He was on his own ship and caught by a storm that made him sweat and that never let up. Every meaningful tick of time counted as he hatched and planned the delicate machinery of his gadabout life, which was probably wilder than any in London, so I knew I shouldn’t have him bothering me when I zombied in my crude way up to the station map.

  I travelled as far as Leicester Square, and couldn’t sit down because of the crush of people. Neither could I get my arm up for a bit of helpful straphanging, so I was bumped around when the train stopped and started, and a man in a bowler hat swore I was knocking into him on purpose. ‘If you want a punch-up,’ I said, ‘follow me when I go out. If you don’t, shut your arse-tight mouth.’ He looked at me, but finally didn’t brace himself to taking me on, which is just as well, for I was so boarded up he could have pushed me over with one finger.

  I came out of the gents carrying a big parcel and wearing my normal quota of winter clothes, feeling as if I were dressed in tissue paper. I shook and shivered and walked quickly, though I had nowhere to go. The double clothes had protected me, and now I was back on the Earth from Space, a babe unwrapped in the biting frost. I went into a phone box and dialled. A child’s voice answer
ed: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Put Bridgitte on,’ I said.

  ‘She isn’t here.’

  ‘Listen, Smog, this is you-know-who. Get her for me.’ I heard him laugh, and the phone clattered down. When Bridgitte came I asked what the score was for that night. ‘They’re staying in,’ she said, ‘so I can meet you somewhere.’

  ‘Make it the Cramborne, at six exactly,’ I said. ‘I’m having lunch with Mother. We’ve got to decide what to do about Alfie. He burned down the canning factory and sank his boat. It’s the straitjacket for him this time as far as she’s concerned, but I want to talk her out of it. I don’t believe in that sort of thing. By the way, I’ve changed my hotel. Mother came last night and made me leave. Said it was too sordid. I liked it, but what can you do?’

  ‘You have a marvellous life,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go now because Smog is kicking me. He’s pushing a hairgrip into a light socket.’ There was a click and our talk was over.

  I breathed and walked better at having come back into the world as a thinner man. As I struggled in that small toilet to get my surplus off, it felt like being born, bringing the real meaning of freedom home to me. I regained a narrow contact with people who were also thin, and was able again to walk on the streets with reasonable speed and flexibility. I wandered into Soho, and passed by the Clover Leaf. I’d called there in the last month hoping to see a friendly familiar face in the form of Bill Straw, but there’d been no sign of him, and Straw by word of mouth seemed not to exist. Of course I hadn’t for a minute believed that to be his real name, because no man with such a past would be daft enough to give it. I supposed him to live, like myself, under the sky of his own flimsy lies, but only to make himself easy to know when he talked to other people. He used lies to explain himself, not to hide behind, and I knew that to begin such a process as this, one had to falsify one’s name.

  It was more of a casual look than a search, some thread to remember as I walked around, that still took me back to the Great North Road. One night I dreamed about that car journey, coming down in an old-fashioned charabanc with a dozen other people, and Claud Moggerhanger in his private silver-sided bomber flying above, diving time and again till we were running through fields and the bus was a flaming ruin in the middle of the road. My dream-slime was trying to make a complete past of that day’s journey, and it was as if only something so crazy could explain the greater splintering of now.

  I sipped black coffee, and wondered what news theatre to kip in until meeting Bridgitte at six. But I couldn’t bear sitting in popcorn and spit, fag ads and Flash Gordon, so walked around more streets. When I was flush for money I hadn’t the courage to descend the cellar of a strip club, but now that I was on my last few legs I didn’t hesitate, paid my membership fee and entrance fare, and sat down with a score of other deadbeats, most of them middle-aged, or foreign tourists out to be shorn like the sheep. A tart tried to get me to buy her a drink for us both, but I just sat tight waiting for the fun to start. The audience was muttering and shuffling, but the management were hoping to pack more in. Another reluctant youth was pushed down the steps, and then a dash of music from a concealed speaker marked the opening of the curtains. A wall behind had a notice on it which said: ‘Miss Felicity Lash, Beauty Specialist for Ladies and Gentlemen.’ One of the men in the audience let out a high sort of squeal, then an elderly girl came on wearing clothes of a hundred years ago. There was a bed by the wall, and when she’d straightened it neatly she began to undress. I was half asleep, but when she was naked a fire started in the building, and a fireman in full rig came in. They began a bit of parley in mime, and he pointed to the flames when she didn’t want to come with him. She panicked and screamed but he gave her arse a couple of smacks, at which she quietened down and winked at us all as he carried her off over his shoulder.

  That was the first half, and it bored me so much that I would have left, except for the fact that I had nowhere to go. I think it was more of a show for women than men, though the men around me enjoyed it in a mild sort of way. In the next part a well-brought-up young girl was reading a book that looked like the Bible, and it seems that, as they say, her thoughts wandered, because a few feet away, in another part of the room, a man and woman were undressing each other. She became more and more excited at this, and eventually closed her book and reached for a candle, with which piece of tallow she started to toy with herself.

  The only interesting part for me in all this was the girl of the couple who were stripping each other, because I had seen her before – and not very long ago at that. In fact she had sat in my car for several hours coming down the Great North Road, and it was none other than June. I sweated under the fact of recognition and couldn’t wait for the show to end. When the lights went up I called one of the waiters and said I’d like to buy that wonderful actress a drink. He said he’d tell her, and that she’d be out in a minute, but would I buy one in the meantime for him? I told him to drop dead, but he indicated that he wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. So I said in that case he ought to come upstairs and we’d fight it out outside, but he ignored this and said that if that was how I felt I needn’t buy him a drink, and that he’d tell Miss Booth anyway, and that he wouldn’t take what I said in bad part because judging by my voice and language I was no more than one of the boys in the place.

  June came through a curtained doorway, and was led to me. ‘Oh,’ she said, knowing me immediately. ‘I thought it was a millionaire, and that my fortune was made.’

  ‘I hope you recovered from the car ride,’ I said.

  ‘Almost,’ she laughed. ‘I was shattered for a week though.’

  I felt glad to see her, almost, on my side anyway, as though we’d been through death together. She was the last plant I had smelled out of the North, and now the first flower I had met in London – not counting the Dutch tulip. She had dark hair held back in two strands by ribbons, and a blouse tied in a knot at the waist, leaving a bit of bare skin between that and the short skirt. ‘How’s your little girl?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s wonderful. Goes to school in Camden Town. My flat mate meets her in the afternoon, and I take hers and mine in the morning. It works very well.’

  ‘Sounds intelligent. My mother was that sort of woman. Still works in a factory.’

  ‘I’m on again soon,’ she said, ‘but stay around. I’ll tell the boss you’re a friend. We don’t get crowded at this time of the day.’

  ‘By the way,’ I said, before she could dash off, ‘whatever happened to Bill Straw?’

  She turned her saucer-eyes on me:

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The bloke you travelled down with.’

  ‘Him! Oh, my God. I’ll tell you about it later. So don’t go yet, will you?’ She had me on the hop, and there was nothing I could do but stay. When a story was in the offing I was all ears, like a man in chains. One listens, another talks so that nobody else can get a word in edgeways, and up to now I fit into the first bracket. The worst bother takes place between those who listen and those who talk, because the one who listens all the time is sly, and the one who talks all the time is over-confident, and if they ever come to grips, or when they do, it’s the Devil take the hindmost, with the listener never able to properly lose, and the talker never capable of really winning.

  But my cogitations broke at the touch of a boot, because during the next performance a man sitting two seats to my left started shouting the show was a cheat and he wanted his money back. ‘They’re whores,’ he bawled, about June and her companions, standing up as if to charge on to the tiny stage. ‘They do these things better in Manchester, anyway.’

  The manager got to him before I did, and was knocked through the curtained doorway like a shot skittle. I pulled the heckler from behind, gripped him in a half-nelson, but even so I was almost hauled like a flag up the mast of his back, could feel my arm giving and my feet trying to lift off. But I held, and gripped, and whispered in his big left ear that he should calm down or it would b
e the worst for him because they had Jack the Ripper on their payroll who would sell him to Pastrycooks Incorporated for making into meat pies when he’d done with him. I let go, and his whole body slumped. By this time another bouncer, borrowed maybe from the joint next door, came running down the steps. The manager was with him. What had happened to the girls behind the drawn curtain I did not know, and was just beginning to wonder when the huge man from Manchester straightened in one sudden movement.

  ‘You bastard!’ he cried, so that everybody heard it, and shattered me with a body blow as well.

  At the sound of that cruel word my heart and stomach stayed intact for a vindictive comeback, and I slammed him so that his whole bulk dropped away and tripped on a chair. He spun like a tombstone against the manager and his bouncer friend, falling on top and putting them out till they could heave him off and get free. When he did, I remembered his insult, hit him again so that he was knocked out cold. They screwed twenty quid damages from his wallet when he came round, otherwise they’d get him to the copshop, the manager said – a tall, thin old-school-tie bloke with the right accent. Then he came back and thanked me. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I thought the drunken bastard was going to get at the girls, that’s all.’

  He brought me a drink, while the show went on: ‘Do you want a job? All you do is stand around the place. Twenty pounds a week. We’ve been short of a man since we opened. You’ll have to be okayed by Mr Moggerhanger, but you’ll pass, on my recommendation.’

  I gagged at the name, but asked in a cool way: ‘Do you get many fights?’

  ‘A few,’ he said, very reticent. ‘But it’s not too exciting on the whole.’

  I wondered why not. ‘When do I start?’

  ‘You’ve started,’ he laughed. ‘If that was your audition you passed with flying colours.’