A Start in Life by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘The actual robbery went smoothly. Nobody got knocked on the head. Not a gun was fired. Clockwork wasn’t in it. The individual always collaborates, Michael. He gets a glint in his eyes because he wants to be part of the gamble as to whether it’ll come off or not. It’s the regimented law-abiding swine who causes trouble when you ask him to be part of a team. Anyway, the case of money was put into my car by the second getaway car, which the blokes in it then abandoned and walked into South Ken tube station. I set off, cool as if I had just come back from Brighton and was on my way home to lie to my wife as to where I had been. I was supposed to deliver the money to a house in Highgate for the Green Toe Gang. But Moggerhanger had given me instructions to take it to Smilin’ Thru’, and when I stopped to wait at the red traffic light (I’ll never forgive that traffic light for being on red at that particular moment) I thought to myself: “A hundred thousand of real money is in the car, already checked and counted. It’s too good to hand over to the Green Toe Gang, or to Moggerhanger. I’ll keep it for myself.”

  ‘Ah, Michael, greed! That’s the downfall of the human race, and especially of yours truly. What commandment of the Good Book is that? One of them, I’m sure, so don’t tell me. Pure fucking greed, it was. I tell you I didn’t know what greed was till then. The idea struck me so strongly that I thought I would faint, hit another car, get pulled in by the cops and be marched off to the nick with the loot being shared out in the police car behind. But I pulled myself together. A blinding white light flashing GREED, GREED, GREED in front of my eyes got me back on an even keel. That sensation is described very well in one of Gilbert Blaskin’s novels, if I remember. It was on page one and I never got beyond it. But I was sweating, trembling, just how I was supposed to be. More than just a knee-trembler behind the dustbins in Soho would be mine for the asking with this amount of lolly. In a flash I wanted everything. You’re getting my drift, Michael? I wanted a yacht, a high-speed boat with six berths and me as Captain Codspiece flaring across the Channel to have a triple bunk-up in Cherbourg. Ah, what dreams! The likes of you don’t know one half.

  ‘Well, some bastard behind me in a powder blue minivan with a coat of arms on the side was blaring the horn to tell me that red had changed to green, and from thinking I would get my dusters out and give him short back and sides by breaking all his windows except the windscreen so that he would at least be able to drive off and get them repaired, I shot away, jet propelled by nothing else but good old-fashioned greed. Greedy but unashamed, that’s me.’

  ‘The material world is so dull,’ I said.

  He winked. ‘It might be. But it’s got the best stories and the most money. I’ll never forgive myself, I told myself as I left that traffic light behind. And neither, I knew, would the Green Toe Gang or Lord Moggerhanger. You just don’t do that sort of thing. I’ve got two of the most vicious gangs in London (and that means the world) after my tripes to the last millimetre. They’ll even kill the tapeworm as it tries to escape along the pavement, poor innocent thing. I honestly don’t see how I can survive.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ I said.

  ‘Fortunately, or unfortunately I now think, I had my passport with me when I shot from the traffic lights towards Sloane Square. That was because I make it a rule never to go out without it, not even to cross the street for the Evening Standard wearing my dressing gown. I’m too old a hand to be caught out on something like that.’

  I wondered how I would survive after having been seen talking to such a soft-headed vainglorious lunatic. ‘Stop boasting. Tell me what happened.’

  He laughed, a tone of hysteria crossed by one of self-satisfaction. ‘You must admit it was a brave thing to do, or would have been if it hadn’t been so foolhardy. Daring and original, now I come to think of it. I just don’t like being a dead man, that’s all.’

  ‘Neither would I.’

  ‘But you won’t abandon me, Michael?’

  ‘First chance I get.’

  ‘I drove straight to Dover. I was no fool. In Canterbury I gave a lift to a young woman called Phyllis with two kids named Huz and Buz, and before we had got to Dover I’d invited them to come on a continental holiday. She lived in Dover, and had to go home to get their passports. We looked as if we were going on holiday as we got on the boat. Police and customs waved us in with a smile. I never realised I could look such a family man. I even let the matelot wash my car when he asked me, though I locked the boot before going on deck for a breath of air. I can’t tell you how good I felt. It was the high point of my life. Here was I, a man of fifty odd, with a car, a woman and two of the worst-behaved little bastards I’ve ever had the misfortune to lay my hands on, and a hundred thousand quid, on the way to lovely France. I felt like my old self again – rejuvenated, I think is the word.

  ‘I spent a week at Le Touquet, then put my temporary family back on the boat at Ostend with a few hundred to keep them in ice creams and lollipops for a week or two. I then set off via Brussels and Aachen down the Rhine motorway, nonstop to Switzerland, that wonderful refuge of runaways and political exiles with money. Once there I headed for Geneva, where I put the money into an account I’d opened years ago, and still kept a few francs in to hold it open. A nest egg for a cuckoo, but the only thing is I won’t live to enjoy it. That’s the long and the short of it, Michael.’

  I offered a cigarette to calm his nerves. ‘But why did you come back? Why didn’t you head for Brazil like Ronnie Biggs?’

  ‘Have you got a cigar? Fags do my chest in.’

  I gave him one. ‘The same old scrounger.’

  ‘I like generous friends. You’ll never regret your friendship with me, Michael, even though it might cost you your life. Greater love hath no man …’ He swung his head back, and hee-hawed like a donkey set free after twenty years going round and round the well. ‘Why did I come back here? You haven’t heard half the tale yet. I didn’t return of my own free will. You think I’m daft as well as stupid?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re wrong. No, you may be right. The trouble is, Michael, there’s no subtlety in my life, none whatsoever. I miss it sorely, and regret not having it. I feel what it is, and say that I must be subtle, and I spend hours deciding how I can be, but when the time comes, I act just like my old violent loud-mouthed greedy unlucky self. Anyway, to get back to Geneva, I was walking out of my hotel, on my constitutional to the lake. I like to keep up my walking. Five miles a day at least, one way or another. I even do a bit of running now and again. You never know when a sudden ten-mile sprint’s going to come in handy. There’s a gym I go to for boxing. I used to belong to a rifle club, just to maintain my marksmanship. I’m not that much of an idiot that I don’t keep myself up to scratch, Green Toe Gang or no bleeding Green Toe Gang.’

  ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘It was a lovely day. I was on top of the world. My cigar tasted like the very best shit, a newspaper was under my arm, my hat was set on my head at the usual jaunty angle – and then it wasn’t. Somebody knocked it off, and when I bent to pick it up, before lamming into them, I was lammed into by three of the biggest bastards you ever saw, and a shooter was stuck at my ribs. I didn’t have a chance. They made sure I’d got my passport, and before I could say my name was Jack Straw or Bill Hay or Percy Chaff or whatever it was at the time (I honestly forget) I was on the plane to London and no messing.

  ‘Everything looked normal as I walked to the check-in desk at Geneva, but there was one bugger behind me at four o’clock, and another chiking from eight, so that one false move and I’d have been bleeding all over the excess luggage labels. I went as quiet as a lamb. You see, they thought I’d left the money in England. Why? I’ll never know, although I can speculate. The chief of the Green Toe Gang employs one of the best psychologists to help out with any problems, personal or otherwise, that come along. Every consultation probably costs a cool hundred. Mostly it pays off. So I assumed that in my case they put the problem before him, and wanted to know where in his opinion I??
?d gone and what I’d done with the money. So after much sweating at the temples the twit comes up with this scenario that even the big chief of the Green Toe Gang couldn’t quibble about, since it had cost him so much. They traced me to Switzerland, which wasn’t very clever of them. I could have done the same. This Dr Anderson chap must have told them that before leaving Blighty I’d stashed the cash in a hiding place I knew of, and that they would never find it until they got me back to the Sceptic Isle and made me talk.

  ‘You see, Michael, the gangs aren’t so cosmopolitan as they were in our day. They’re too insular. They couldn’t credit the fact that I would leave with the money and be happy to potter around continental resorts of pleasure for the rest of my life. They’d probably fed into this psychologist’s computer-brain all the facts they knew about me, and he’d told them I had buried the cash under the floor boards of the house I was born in in Worksop – which had gone in slum clearance years ago. Well, when I said I’d left the money in Blighty they didn’t even listen. They knew, poor sods.

  ‘They got me back to London Airport right enough. Easy. There was a hire car waiting for us. All according to plan. When it comes to organisation, those boys are second to none.’

  ‘They should run the country,’ I said ironically.

  ‘They do, Michael, they do, believe me. Anyway, we steamed onto the M4 and I pondered on the fate they had in store for me. My imagination wasn’t up to it, though my expectations kept tormenting me. What those lads can do to you don’t bear thinking about, but they try the sophisticated way first by locking you in for a couple of days with Dr Anderson. It usually works. Not a mark on you. But if it doesn’t (and it wouldn’t with me) out comes the tool kit. I was just about ready to be sick, but keeping a good face on it, when the car slows, to curses from the driver. A car in front had braked and we were too close to swerve out and overtake, so had to brake with it. Another car behind homed in. We were topped and tailed, the oldest manoeuvre in the book. My brain clicked into action. When I’m not using my brain I think it’s turning into a cabbage and that I’m a walking case of senile decay. I can’t remember anything at times, or think through the simplest problem. But when it’s a matter of being in peril, a time when action is needed, I’m as clear as tissue paper and as quick as a snake.

  ‘The two cars were from Moggerhanger Limited, and I knew they wanted me safe in their manor because I was worth close to a hundred thousand when they got me. This was the hijack. The Green Toe Gang hadn’t known that Moggerhanger had suborned me, so clearly they didn’t expect it. Kenny Dukes got out of one car with three of his pals. One of them was Ron Cottapilly, the other was Paul Pindarry and the third I’d never seen before. Cottapilly had once been on footpad duty nicking wallets and jewellery after midnight in the West End. He held me up once with a knife – a terrible mistake for him, because I punched him so hard all round the clock and up and down the compass that he ended up pleading for his life. Him and Pindarry worked for Jack Leningrad, remember? Now they’re going straight, being employed by Moggerhanger.

  ‘Three blokes got out of the other car. One was Toffeebottle, one was Jericho Jim, and the other I didn’t know. All of them had claw hammers, and Kenny had a shooter. While the others smashed the windows, Kenny shot the tyres. Two of the blokes came for me, but I hit one, kneed the other, and was up the bank with more bullets whizzing at my brain box than I’d heard since Normandy. I zig-zagged. Do you know, Michael, every chap should do military service. A stint with the Old Stubborns is absolutely vital, because there’s bound to be some time in your life when you need the expertise, either to defend your country, or to defend yourself from it. It don’t matter which. But the old infantry training’s saved my life more times than I care to think about. Breaks my heart to see fat young chaps riding about on motorbikes or lounging on street corners. They should be learning unarmed combat, weapons handling, fieldcraft, marksmanship – basic training for life.’

  My scornful look stopped him. ‘I’ve had none of that, and I can take care of myself.’

  ‘Ah, happen so, Michael, but you’d take care of yourself a lot better with it. Anyway, you’re different. But to cut a long story short, one of ’em chased me up that bank, but at the top I turned and kicked him so smartly under the chin he went rolling right back onto the hard shoulder. I don’t know what they feed people on these days, honest I don’t, because the others down by the cars, instead of coming up after me, just watched me kick this bloke as if they was at the theatre and we was actors on the stage. Honest to God, I thought they were going to clap. I’d have waited if I hadn’t seen Kenny Dukes reloading his shooter. Then I was off towards some houses in the distance.

  ‘It was afternoon and would soon be dark, so I had to get my bearings and reach civilisation. I tell you, Michael, I felt like an escaped prisoner of war, because listen to the state I was in. After landing and getting through the customs, while we were in the car park, they took my wallet and passport and my shoes as well. Would you believe it? I’m surprised in a way they didn’t give me the needle to keep me quiet till I got to a dungeon under Westminster Abbey or the London Mosque. They didn’t think the expense was justified, I suppose. Even so, they were taking no chances, though an ambush wasn’t expected.

  ‘Another thing was that when I shinned up that bank I didn’t realise I’d got no shoes on. Such was my impulse to get away I’d have run through hot coals and broken bottles. As for no money, a mere trifle. Identification papers had never bothered me. I’d never known who I was anyway, except that I was myself, and that’s all that mattered. If you know who you are, other people can get at you, and we don’t want that, do we? I can see those questions burning behind your eyes. Well, I’m in a right mess, I thought as I came to a lane. Luckily I’d done a bunk just beyond Junction Three, the London side, so the next exit for eastbound traffic wasn’t till Gunnersbury, about six miles away. It would take them fifteen minutes at the soonest to turn round, come back to Junction Three and swing north to try and head me off. In that time I could do at least a mile and lose myself in the streets of Ealing. I’d driven so much around London I’d got an A to Z in my head – of the main roads and districts anyway.

  ‘But money was the problem. It always is. It was what got me into the mess in the first place, and now it would have to get me out. I’d a few Swiss francs in coins in one pocket, and the equivalent of ten bob in the other – very useful for a bloke on the run, though not much cop for the likes of me. I had to think fast. I was walking so quick that in about twenty minutes – they hadn’t taken my watch – I got to Southall station. The sodium lights glowed, and I skulked along as if wanted by every police force or outlaw gang in the world. This wasn’t how I was feeling, Michael. It was tactical. I was really out of my mind with happiness at having got away. I knew that if they were looking for me they’d be expecting to spot an over-confident tall thinnish fellow walking along as if he owned the world – barefoot or not. So I pulled up the collar of my hundred guinea bespoke suit, fastened all three buttons, pulled my tie off and looped it round my waist, and sloped along in the shadows like a wino who’d just been given a talking-to by a do-gooder from Eel Pie Island. And as for that railway station, don’t think I would go into it in my present physical state. Not on your big soft cock. If they swung off that Gunnersbury roundabout and looked at the map that’s the first place their eyes would light on. They could be as tactical as I was when they’d been thwarted. I hope this tale’s something you’re learning a bit from, Michael. It’s a bit cautionary, like, in more ways than one.’

  I gave him a nod.

  ‘Well, thank goodness the district was more like Bombay than Blighty, because I found an Indian Allsort store where I knew I could do a little trading, and went in out of the cold and dark. They had everything for sale, from cheap wristwatches and Russian junk radios to a second-hand clothes department behind a curtain. The chap who ran it was tall, very handsome and wore a turban. A couple of kids played on the f
loor, and his wife sat by the checkout.’

  ‘“What can I do for you?” he asked me.

  ‘“I’m in trouble,” I told him. You have to come straight out with it at such times. I have an instinct, Michael. I can always spot a face that’s going to help me. I knew he wouldn’t panic, or turn me in after offering me a cup of strong tea with all the sugar I want, like your average Englishman – or anyone else, come to that. I laid my case straight in front of him. “I’ve been robbed, and this is how they left me. I’d just got off the plane after two years in the States, and these white thugs stuck me up at gunpoint, bundled me into a car, took everything I’d got and threw me on the motorway. Can you help me?”

  ‘“Piss off,” he said. “Get away from my shop, you National Front pig, or I’ll call the police, and even if they beat me up, burn my shop, club my kids and loot any stock that’s left they’ll still pin something on you for pulling them away from their tea.” These Good Samaritans always begin like that, but after half an hour’s chat and several cups of liquid boot polish I sold him my hundred-guinea suit for two, bought a suit and a pair of shoes for a quid that he’d got from a jumble sale for two bob, gave him a quid for the loan of a razor and permission to use it in his lavatory, then gave my foreign coins to his kids in exchange for an old cap, and parted the best of friends. I’ll never forget him. He saved my life and, what’s more, Michael – forgive me if at this point I get sentimental – he knew it, too. The robbing bastard was the salt of the earth. Ah, Michael, I love people! They never let you down – most of ’em.’