A Start in Life

Epilogue

Moggerhanger had used me to bust Jack Leningrad, knowing that when I was in the hands of the police there’d be nothing else I could do but talk, in the hope of getting as little prison as possible. I didn’t accede to Moggerhanger’s wishes out of weakness, but from a position of strength, because having decided what my policy was to be, I stuck to it so that Moggerhanger got the best results as far as he was concerned. So did Lantorn, for this became one of his celebrated cases Moggerhanger had confidently fed me into the police machine like a spanner, and I didn’t disappoint anyone, so that any other case against him simply came to pieces in Lantorn’s hands.

I was so busy saving my neck that I hadn’t the time or emotional energy to brood about the way Moggerhanger had used me, but in the months before my downfall he must have had a huge diagram on his wall, with a series of pins labelled Cullen that he moved from place to place until I was sucked into the final trap he had laid for me. It had been so well plotted that if I didn’t hate him so much I would have admired him. There were a hundred places where his assumptions could have gone wrong, but such was his knowledge of human nature in general, and of mine in particular, that I had chosen exactly the right turning at every fork of the way, simply because he took care to make sure that I’d see each decision to my own advantage. He’d laid such a string of traps that after the first few I ceased to think or take any precautions.

I admitted carrying gold for Jack Leningrad Limited, but pleaded ignorance regarding the seriousness of what I was doing. Smut and Bunt the solicitors helped me, and it wasn’t till afterwards that I found out who paid them. They got an expert barrister of the old school to stand up and say I was a ‘man of good character though in many respects naïve, who has never been in any sort of trouble before’. They could say that again, and again, and I smiled inwardly to hear it, though it didn’t stop the judge from yapping out that he would have given me more than eighteen months but for the fact that I’d been such a fool.

At the moment of being caught I’d expected ten years, but between then and the trial I became more optimistic and saw myself getting less and less, being so puffed with hope and the barrister’s claptrap that I thought I’d get off with no more than a fat fine.

But no man is a real man, or a hero, unless he’s been in prison, and I was about to qualify for that honour. I had lots to think about, including the surprise of seeing my mother appear in court to testify what a loyal and loving son I’d always been. An even greater shock was to hear Gilbert Blaskin, described as a well-known author from the best of families, say what a good character I was, in such a way that I began to believe it myself. I seemed to have lived in a different world till then, been in fact one of the few saints in it to hear some people talk, though I was dropped abruptly back on to the scruffy earth when the verdict of eighteen months was announced from the mealy-mouthed old bastard stuck up on high. I was in such a state of rage and despair for the next few weeks that when I came out of it I was quite used to the conditions of prison. It was like a new country that I had learned to live in during a dream.

One day I had visitors, so stopped my sweeping-up to get marched off and see who they were. Beyond the double thickness of wire-meshed glass I saw my mother and Gilbert Blaskin. I leaned forward, but said nothing. They peered through the glass, and I wondered why they looked at me. For some minutes I couldn’t understand why they were there together. People were shouting and making signs all along the line on either side of me, and when my mother opened her mouth I realized that though she was talking I couldn’t hear a word. Gilbert smiled and lifted a hand, not even bothering to try. I smiled, put my head closer, and sneezed.

They wanted to tell me something, but I didn’t see what could be of sufficient importance to break through the overwhelming fact of me being locked away from them like a monkey on a wet day. Blaskin wore a trilby hat, looked healthier than I’d ever seen him. My mother also had a hat on, and seemed by her looks and figure to match well by the side of Blaskin. She had gained a little stoutness.

Her voice broke faintly through, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. The visit was going on too long. I could understand why she had come, but not Blaskin. He leaned as far forward as possible, put both hands to his mouth and bellowed. From the look on his face, and the anxiety on my mother’s, I tried to hear the words because it seemed particularly important to them both. I didn’t get it, so he made one more attempt. I conquered my stupidity by a force of will that in the outside world wouldn’t have needed any will at all. The words came as if from the bottom of the sea: ‘We got married last week!’

It was a blow under the heart, but maybe I needed it, because it knew where to go and went straight there. I said it aloud, repeating it, and though they couldn’t hear they read my lips, and both laughed and waved and kissed and held hands against the glass so that there could be no mistake. They even showed me the ring. I heard later how Gilbert had gone to Nottingham, after my last call at his flat near Sloane Square, and found my mother, wooing her till she’d agreed to marry him. After their visit I began to notice my surroundings, and to accustom myself to the new world, so maybe it did me some good after all.

One day as I was walking round the exercise yard a face floated by that I knew very well, and recognized as that of Stanley. ‘Oh,’ he said, when we talked later, ‘they brought me here from the Scrubs.’

‘So I see. If they want you to nark on me, I don’t know anything.’

His face was fatter, and two of his front teeth were missing. A smile made him appear sadder than when I’d last seen him. ‘I say,’ he sneered, ‘we have lost our good-natured trust, haven’t we?’

‘If you get like that with me, you’re going to perish while you’re here, make no mistake.’ This calmed him, so I cooled off as well. ‘They caught me at the airport, in case you didn’t know. I was trying to get the five bars to Geneva, but that bastard Moggerhanger had them waiting for me. And I suppose you were the one who told Moggerhanger to get your own back, because I know you blamed Cottapilly and Pindarry’s capture on me, not to mention Ramage, but how could that have been possible when I’d got nothing to gain by it, and in any case went out and got bodged straight away? I wanted to get that gold to Geneva for the good of the firm, and a lot of bloody good my great sense of duty did me. I even got there in time for the plane we had planned for. That’s why I ran out of the flat so suddenly. I’d seen that Moggerhanger was hit, so I was sure our side had the upper hand. And look where it got us. We’re all in the bloody iron lung now.’ I don’t know whose good books I expected this virtuous testimony to go into, so I laughed and ended it.

Over the days and weeks I got the rest of the story out of him, of how, as anyone ought to have known but me, Jack Leningrad wasn’t paralysed, and conducted operations from his iron lung to fool everybody. It was full of radio and electronic devices which, unfortunately, hadn’t warned him of Moggerhanger’s last great break-in. Maybe it had and he was too busy with me to notice it. The battle had gone on after I left, and Stanley made a fighting retreat with Jack Leningrad out of the building, leaving all the files and some stocks of gold in the hands of Moggerhanger, who must have been satisfied at the way the day finished up. The police arrived to find the flat empty, for Moggerhanger had two estate cars waiting outside into which he piled all the clues and every scrap of loot.

Stanley and Jack Leningrad found a hiding-place in Highgate, but the police surrounded it an hour later. Nevertheless, they escaped the net, and Stanley broke into a car. No sooner was it started than they were topped and tailed by the blue flashing light. Stanley was captured, but Jack Leningrad got away, and now, months later, nothing had been seen of him, and it was assumed he’d gone to Canada. For the man in the iron lung was agile and elusive once outside his trappings — though they had served him well for a long time. It looked as if he’d live to do more work in one guise or another.

The unluckiest person of all was Stanley, who got sent down for four years. I did my best to keep out of his way, but one day he came at me from behind and tried to stun me with his clenched fist. It was a hammer-thump, but it didn’t work, because I was able to turn and strike him back, not once, but too many times. I was disciplined for it, and lost my remission, which was why I had to serve every hour of eighteen months. This exploit made me more respected among the roughs of the place, for what that was worth, which wasn’t much.

I had several visits from Bridgitte, who said she was waiting for me, and who pressed a photograph of Smog against the grille so that I could see how tough and well he looked. I had no feeling for her at first because my two eyes were still full of Polly Moggerhanger. I burned for her, saw her as the one great love of my life whom I’d run to as soon as I got out of prison. The fact that she would in no way be waiting for me, that she would laugh at the idea of me even thinking about her, and that it was in other words clearly impossible for us to be together ever again, made her more real to me, brought her so close that at nights I woke up startled, thinking she was in the cell and about to put her hand on to my shoulder. It went on for a long time, till the emotional cost of keeping her in front of me began to wear me out, and she eventually faded with my absolute loss of spirit and energy. This landed me in a state of emptiness I would rather forget about, but when I came out of it, Bridgitte took her place, and never left it.

There were three men to a cell, sometimes four, and often in the middle of the night I’d feel that I wasn’t able to stretch myself out on the bed. What’s more, I clung to it, as if it were vertical and I was in danger of falling off into oblivion. In order to get the illusion of laying full length and finding more peace, I’d go down on the floor, and it gave me great comfort, even when it was bitterly cold, to press my limbs against the solid concrete, which was the nearest I could get to real earth in that madhouse. I would have given my right arm, and even taken another year of prison, to have been a coalminer for a few hours and gone a thousand feet under into the dark.

I got messages from William Hay that my station was being taken care of, and when I was released I found that he’d planted beans and potatoes in the garden, rose bushes and sunflowers along the borders and platforms. Bunting was hung across the station entrance saying: WELCOME HOME STATIONMASTER, when my taxi drew up from Huntingborough.

Wedding bells were ringing from the moon, because while I was inside, Almanack Jack, who stayed on at the station, got married to William Hay’s mother, who heard he was back from his adventure in the Lebanon, and came down to be with him. William lived in the booking office, while his mother and her new husband had taken over the waiting-room. The entrance hall that lay between was a sort of no-man’s-land in which they occasionally fought great fights over such insignificant items as a bucket of coal or a cup of sugar.

Almanack Jack became a man of many colours, for he smartened himself up at the station, though he still keeps a bushy spade-shaped beard. In an old cupboard he found and commandeered a railway guard’s uniform, which he makes Mrs Straw press and spruce up for him every week, so that with the hat, whistle, and small red flag, he strolls along the platform and on to the rusty railway line, anxiously looking at the fob watch of Clegg’s that I made him a present of. He keeps the business end of the station clean, makes his wife polish the brasses and lamps, sweep the platforms, and wash out the lavatories — though she does it swearing and grumbling. The palings have been reconstituted, and flowerbeds planted with pansies and jillivers. All it needs to make his life complete is to hear an engine whistle, and to see an old locomotive steaming down from the main line. But if ever it does (and it never will) he’d die of a heart attack, because we’ve known for a year or two that poor old Almanack Jack has a dicky ticker.

The travelling library van comes round once a week and brings him books on astrology, for he spends some of his spare time casting horoscopes for all of us. He says I’ll have a quiet life up to when I’m thirty-five, and then all hell will fly loose, sending me out on the wild again. I’ll believe it when it happens. Not that I have long to wait, because I’ll be at the gates of that age in a couple more years. Bridgitte isn’t pleased by such talk, but doesn’t otherwise mind, because Smog, who is fourteen now, has always been so fond of him.

Bridgitte and I got married soon after I came out of clink, as if I’d at some time promised faithfully to do just that. Both of us wanted it when it became possible because it seemed the only thing to do. She sold the house in Hampstead (which Dr Anderson, in spite of his addiction to kickshins, had taken care to leave her) for thirty thousand pounds, which, being well invested with her good Dutch sense that had surfaced at last, brings us enough money in to live on modestly. She’s got fuller now, redder in the face, and is no longer the glamorous and flighty au pair girl from the London days of old. But I’ve put weight on too, though not much, because I do plenty of work and walking around the place to keep me fit. She cooks haunches of meat and Dutch butter-dumplings for me and the kids, while Almanac Jack and his wife do their own catering. In summer they build an outdoor fire by the railway line, putting a pot on it like two old gipsies. That’s when they are happiest, and cause least trouble around the place. Bridgitte and I live in the house, which became big enough, since we had more children, only when William and I built two more rooms on the back of it.

Almanack Jack is also good with Julie and Ray and Jake, because in the morning he wakes them up and gives them breakfast, then takes them down the road to the village school. At first the local children jeered at him, but now they like him because he gives them sweets and brings them on conducted tours of our railway station. At harvest time he used to do a few weeks’ labour with the local farmers, and because he worked well they gave him milk or eggs, and tried to persuade him to stay on longer, or even permanently, but he never would, liking his freedom above all else.

William came and went, and came back again. Although he still had money his dream of getting into a market garden somewhere in Nottinghamshire, with his mother as his bond-maiden, never came off. He found new strength from somewhere with which to face life, never having been the sort to let death touch him in the form of early retirement.

A year or two after the Lebanon setback he found himself once more in some shady trade or other, maybe even smuggling, because his obvious prosperity couldn’t have stemmed from honest work. We were out for a drink at the village pub, and I asked how he got such a big car and dressed so well, at which he lost his good humour and told me to mind my own business. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I shan’t ask you to get me some of the same work.’

He relaxed, and laughed: ‘Not like last time, eh?’

‘Never. I’m set up for life here.’

‘Better you than me.’

It was a warm summer’s evening, and the pub was still empty. ‘I know when I’m well off,’ I said, taking a good drink of my pint.

‘Still,’ he said, ‘if ever you do find yourself in need of a bit of employment, let me know. You’re cool. You’ve got nerve, and that’s always a marketable commodity.’

‘I’ve not got so much as I once had.’

He jeered: ‘Just because of a bit of bird?’

‘Keep your voice down. I’m known as a respectable house-owner around here.’

‘That’s just another part you’re playing,’ he said, ‘and like all the others you play it very well. It’s lasted a long time, this one, but that doesn’t mean it’s permanent.’

‘It is as far as I’m concerned.’

He winked, and lifted his double brandy: ‘You’ve had a good long rest, that’s all. You’ll get back to work soon. Cheers, mate.’

‘Cheers,’ I said, smiling.

My mother and Gilbert Blaskin seemed reasonably happy for a few years. She went to America with him on a lecture tour, and this was a wild time because they played at making each other jealous, and by the time they got back they were in emotional rags and tatters. I don’t know how it came about, because my mother was well over forty, but she produced a baby daughter, and Gilbert thought this the best thing that had ever happened to him — after he got over the shock. They came down in his new Jaguar to see us, staying two nights at the hotel in Huntingborough.

I’d never got used to the idea that Blaskin was my father, and never would. I’d pumped myself so long with the fabrication that the only shadowy father I’d had was killed in the war that all my pipes and connexions of filial piety had atrophied and finally snapped. And yet here was my real father, coming towards me from his Jaguar and leaving my mother behind to struggle out with her newborn baby. He was tall, his face lined, his eyes slackening down from the fire they used to have. Blaskin dominated the small living-room, until he sat down. We set them a good winter’s meal for that evening, and sitting at the table were me, Bridgitte, Smog, Gilbert, and my mother, five of us surrounding a dumpling soup, and a side of beef, with egg-custard and apple fritters to follow. Gilbert was in a bad frame of mind, as if he’d just been unsuccessfully poisoned and was slowly getting over the illness of it.

After the meal he rolled a cigar at me across the table. I’d bought a bottle of brandy for the occasion, and poured everyone a shot after the blow-out dinner. The baby was asleep in Julie’s room, but we could make all the noise we liked because my mother said that once Lucy was asleep nothing could wake her — just like I had been in fact, when I was a baby. Gilbert was getting restless under this particular dome of conversation, so he asked whether I ever felt like getting down to any sort of work.

‘Not particularly,’ I said. ‘How about you?’

‘He does a lot,’ my mother said, ‘and I get bloody bored at times.’

I watched him looking at her, and he knew I was watching, which encouraged him to think of something rotten to say because of it. ‘You weren’t bored in New York. You just vanished for twelve hours at a time.’

‘I couldn’t hang around with your friends, that’s all. They weren’t interested in me, and I wasn’t interested in them. They were all poofs and drug fiends.’

Bridgitte and I laughed at this, and Smog, who was eight at the time, smiled, which didn’t help to calm things down.

‘So you went off to find a real man,’ he sneered.

‘No, love,’ she said. ‘I’d got you, so I didn’t need one.’

She was being sincere (at least I thought she was) but he took it as a slash of sarcasm: ‘And that little Lucy upstairs came out of it, I know.’

I stood up, ready for a fight. ‘Lay off my mother will you? I thought we were all here to have a good time.’ This stopped him, but it was a very uneasy peace that came out of it.

They left next morning. A year later they were divorced. My mother wasn’t too upset about it, because she still had a daughter to spend the next twenty years of her life on — unless another unexpected adventure stopped her dead in her tracks. A neighbour’s wife looked after Lucy while my mother went to work again at the factory. Blaskin made her some allowance, thinking perhaps of all the years he hadn’t provided for me, so that she didn’t absolutely need to work. But she used the money to get a flat, take driving lessons, and buy a Mini on the never-never, which means that every month or two she drives down with Lucy to see our mob at Upper Mayhem. Smog is very partial to Lucy, despite the difference in their ages, which pleases me very much.

The last thing heard of Gilbert Blaskin was that he lived at his Sloane Square flat with Pearl Harby. She’d tried to gas herself while he was married to my mother, but a girlfriend had pulled her head from the oven in time. This attempted suicide so impressed Blaskin that when he heard of it, just after leaving my mother, he went straight back to her, probably in the hope that sooner or later she will do it again, preferably while he is around to watch, so that he can write about it in a novel.

I wear a waistcoast now, and never go out unless there’s a golden sovereign in one of the pockets. While we till our garden, I love Bridgitte and the children more and more, being linked to them for ever. Smog is a tall, thin, dark boy who’ll need a shave in the next six weeks. He never says much, though we talk now and again about various things. He plays chess at his grammar school in Huntingborough, and collects botanical specimens. For his last birthday I bought him an expensive microscope, and for his twenty-first I’ve promised him ten of the golden sovereigns my grandmother passed on to me. My mother had given me back the twenty-five I’d offered her, since she had never needed them for her honeymoon with Albert in Paris.

From time to time I find myself getting interested in Almanack Jack’s prophecy that I’ll be on the wild at thirty-five, and though these flashes of interest only show my inborn Blaskinite stupidity (because there needn’t be anything in such crackpot prophecies at all, no more, in fact, than there is ultimately any truth in me), yet it snaps at my neckstrings now and again, because no one, finally, can spend all of his allotted span in an iron lung.