A Start in Life, Page 38

He took only a sip of it before we went in to dinner. It was the most stultifying meal I’d ever been at. I weighed every word carefully in my brain-pan before letting it out to do its best, or worst, and the same seemed true of the adult Moggerhangers, even of Polly. She was particularly subdued, and that I liked least of all, though occasionally she did try to open some new road of conversation. But everything seemed to die in its tracks, and I thought Moggerhanger himself was responsible for this. In fact he seemed to exult in it, as if showing off in front of me the power he held over his family. But I had my pride too, and was by no means inclined to start an entertaining stream of talk. To do so would have pleased him, for he would know himself responsible for it, and congratulate himself on having broken my nerve. There were moments when I didn’t know what I was doing there, until I looked across at Polly and managed a smile of complicity out of her. Worst of all, as if even that was planned, the food wasn’t up to the standard I’d been stuffing myself with at the Italian place.

  Towards the end of the meal we were comparing the merits of the various holiday spots in Europe, such as Klosters and Monte Carlo, Majorca and Cortina, none of which places I’d been to. But pretending that I had gave the conversation a more jumpy and natural rhythm, which caused a slight melting of the ice between us. When we stood up to go back into the living-room things became quite affable. But the deep armchairs felled me again. They were like fox-holes, from which we couldn’t talk but only snipe each other. I’d never imagined I could have landed so deeply into the household of such a bourgeois racketeer, but I supposed it to be just another proof of my unworldliness. Though I’d previously worked for him I’d thought this middle-class nook was only a front to face anyone who might accuse him of being a criminal to the core – which he certainly was.

  I’d been curious during most of the evening to know what he wanted to talk to me about. After an hour of brain-dragging small-talk he stood up and asked Polly and her mother to excuse us. I took the hint that I shouldn’t see Polly again for a day or two, so wished them goodnight and followed Moggerhanger into what he called his library. It’s true, there were books in it, a stand of five shelves full of novels I wouldn’t be seen dead, or even alive, reading, though I did have time to notice a couple by Gilbert Blaskin, one called Vampires In Love and another entitled The Seventh Highway.

  Happily there were no deep armchairs in this room, otherwise I’d have gone berserk with the table knife I’d slipped into my pocket at the end of the meal. The room was walled in panelled oak, and Moggerhanger stood behind his desk, neither of us being inclined to sit down.

  ‘Brandy?’

  ‘A noggin,’ I said.

  He pushed it over, as well as an opened box of Havanas: ‘Only one,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, unwrapping it.

  ‘And hand that knife over. Nobody goes out of this house with one of my knives, unless it’s in his back.’ He laughed at this joke, and even I thought it funny as I slid the knife on the desk. I wished I hadn’t stolen it now because some gravy had congealed inside the pocket of my best suit. ‘I just wondered whether you’d notice it.’

  He sat on the desk itself: ‘I don’t like pissed-up young tiddleywinks making tests on me, so watch it.’

  I certainly watched him, because I knew him to be as savage as a shark, a wild man who wore gold cufflinks and stank of after-shave lotion. ‘Tell me what you want, then.’

  ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ he joked. It was obvious to me that Polly had made a big mistake in letting him in on our secret. He was her own father but she didn’t know the first thing about him, taking his career for that of an honest property dealer when the only property he’d ever dealt in had been other people’s. There was not a hope of Polly and I ever marrying under his vicious auspices, so it didn’t matter to me whether I showed him any respect or not. ‘It was a pity you stopped working for me.’

  ‘You gave me the sack,’ I told him.

  ‘Yes, so I did.’

  ‘In any case,’ I said, ‘I didn’t feel like being a chauffeur all my life.’

  ‘There’s worse jobs.’

  ‘And better.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so. I would have had something better for you, by and by.’

  ‘I can’t help it if I were headstrong,’ I said, ‘but I’m getting over it.’

  ‘There’s hope for us yet, then, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘What sort?’

  He sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk. ‘If you want to join the family, I might ask you to prove your regard for it by getting you to show a bit of loyalty. I think I can safely say that my wife likes you, and I know Polly does. As for me, I always considered you the sort who would get on in the world – as you’ve shown by the job you’ve landed yourself in. I was pleased to hear it when Polly told me about it.’

  He gave me a hard look, and half a smile, and I knew he knew what was cutting through my mind. I’d have walked out, if I could have covered my retreat with a Molotov cocktail. The effort not to smile, twitch or say any halfcock joke made me sick at the stomach. ‘In my experience,’ said Moggerhanger, ‘the hardest thing for any man to do, including myself, is to keep his business to himself. You’re still young, though if I were at the butt-end of your flap-mouth I wouldn’t consider it much of an excuse. But I can understand you not thinking it too bad an indiscretion, because a man often tells things to his girlfriend that he’d never tell anyone else, not even his mother. And you weren’t to know that Polly has never had any secrets from me. She may hold back a while with some, but sooner or later she’ll confide in me or her mother, and I might say here and now that I find that sort of thing a great virtue. Anybody who confides something to me that’s in any way profitable can rely on me to stand by them for as long as they’ll be able to stand themselves. And that’s saying something. It’s saying a bloody lot, Michael, in fact, and I want you to know it.’

  He became quite emotional, more so than I’d ever seen him. And he shall reign for ever and ever, I thought, looking at him. ‘Loyalty,’ he said, suddenly calm, ‘there’s nothing to better it, Michael.’ Loyalty to whom? I wondered, as if I didn’t know, but I grew shakier by the minute, as he went on: ‘I’ve been familiar with the Jack Leningrad Organization for a long time. In fact I was a founder member, you might say, but I got pushed out by a little piece of chicanery just after the war – when I wasn’t as strong as I am now – by that bastard in his iron lung, who at the time was all hale and hearty. The organization, you see, began early in the war, and I was the lynchpin and mainstay of it, because in those days the danger was great – we had the Germans to put up with as well as the British. In spite of the occupation of France and everywhere else, we had couriers travelling all over Europe, and sometimes to Soviet Russia. Our offices were in Lisbon, London, Gibraltar, Zurich, and Madrid, and how we got gold from one place to another is just nobody’s bloody business. And at times it was a very bloody business indeed, with our chaps getting picked off by British or German officers who considered that they hadn’t been paid enough to leave well alone. There was near damn-all profit in it at times. Still, business picked up after the war when we booted Churchill out – the only trouble being that I got booted out as well. Not that it was a bad thing, because it put more strength in my elbow to push other affairs along, and I made more money than if I’d stayed with the Leningrad gang. That’s years ago, and I’ll tell you Michael that in the last year I’ve had a mind to get the organization back into my fold.’

  I was about to reach for another cigar when the canny bastard pushed them over. ‘The obvious way to begin, without using too much push, was to get a man in who could reconnoitre the situation. And this I did.’

  I nearly choked on smoke: ‘William Hay?’

  ‘Right. You’re too sharp already. But he got nabbed in the Lebanon. At first I thought the Lung had got him picked up so as to get rid of him. But that wasn’t the case, because if they’d got him pulled in
for that reason, they’d have had you in the same black hole of Beirut because he was the one who got you into the set-up. See what I mean?’

  ‘You’ve got me sweating,’ I said. ‘Internally. Blood.’

  ‘But they haven’t tumbled to a thing. You’re in the clear, my boy! So I can go on with my campaign.’

  ‘Why are you going back into their organization? Is there that much profit in it for you?’

  He gave a great laugh. ‘Not a bit of it. I’ve got so much I can’t want any more and keep my self-respect. I’m doing it because I’m bored for an hour every day, and I’ve got to put my brains and talent to something, otherwise the capital investment will run down.’

  ‘And now you’re proposing that I take William Hay’s place.’

  ‘Oh, Michael! If only I’d had a son like you! As well as a daughter, of course! And now my fondest hopes may come true, because you might be my son-in-law. What more can I want?’

  ‘Things are looking up,’ I said.

  ‘They’ll look up even more if you tell me you’ll do it.’

  ‘What, exactly?’

  ‘Just keep me informed on who does what, and what they take where, and when. I’m sure that’s not too much for you. You’ve got the talent for it.’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ I said, ‘I’d like a couple of days to think it over.’

  ‘Better and better. If there’s a thing that’ll ruin a man quicker than a loose mouth it’s hurry. But you realize that this conversation is so secret that to mention it anywhere would be a personal disaster for you?’

  ‘It’s engraved on my heart,’ I said. ‘But how would you break up such an organization as Jack Leningrad’s? It’s very tough and extensive, I might tell you.’

  ‘That’s my worry. I’ve got it all worked out. Say you’ll come in with me, and when I take over you’ll be my operations chief. You’ll have a house, an American car, a boat – and Polly as your wife – and I’ll tell you that you won’t get a better wife, or a better father-in-law come to that.’ His face grew hard: ‘With someone like you working on the inside of Jack Leningrad’s lousy set-up I’ll have his couriers disappear so fast into the nets of the law that he’ll wonder why God’s, turned against him. Then I’ll pay that paralytic a personal visit, I’ll smash his lung to pieces and watch him die like a fish on his own floor. So think it over, Michael. We’ll do great business together.’

  ‘Promise me one thing,’ I said, ‘and I’ll think very seriously about it.’

  ‘Anything,’ he said.

  ‘Find out where William Hay is, and help him.’

  ‘Done. Expect him back in a week or two. Don’t ask any questions, but welcome him like a brother and a hero.’

  He offered his chauffeur to drive me home, but I wanted to walk, to stop the crazy spinning in my head by pitching my eyes against the night air. I hadn’t the least intention of working for Moggerhanger, even though it seemed against my own best interests not to do so. I not only didn’t trust him but I disliked him intensely. True, I was caught up with Polly, but the idea had been to go off and live with her at Upper Mayhem, where I hoped he wouldn’t track us down. I’d never had a father and I didn’t want one now. The idea of it made me sick. How could any self-respecting man want to laden himself with a father? Not me, certainly, I told myself as I walked along, rattling two silver forks together in my pocket, and smoking another of the half-dozen cigars I’d lifted from the box unbeknown to the all-seeing Moggerhanger. Even if I decided to give up my cushy job with Jack Leningrad, it wouldn’t be to get entangled with Moggerhanger, because his promise of an eminent career for me as a racketeer didn’t bode well for my head staying on my shoulders. And I knew for certain and for sure that even if I helped him to get Jack Leningrad back into his grip, he’d never in a million years agree to me marrying Polly. All his rhetoric about loyalty and standing by people who’d done him a good turn was nothing more than wind and piss. He’d kick me aside when he got what he wanted, and then make Polly forget me by having her marry somebody else.

  I sweated at the thought of what she had told him. It seemed to have been quite enough for him to be going on with for a while. I wondered why she had done it, because such a thing wasn’t necessary in order to explain that we were in love and wanted to get married. My suspicions took me home through a series of nightmares, one being that Claud was already on the board of Jack Leningrad Limited, and was playing this bit of theatre only to find out whether or not I was loyal to the organization. Also, it had probably started months ago when he’d seen to it that Polly and I were on the same plane to Geneva, knowing we’d get acquainted on board like any two young people would. Even my socks were sweat-soaked. Maybe she wasn’t his daughter, but someone he’d taken from the club to work for him in this way. One minute I felt unborn, the next I was going crazy, and though I knew that these fantasies were mostly unjustified, the one about Polly being specially set on to me in order to get information for her father lingered and bothered me.

  It was a relief, once I was back at the flat, to get a call saying I was to take a consignment to Zurich on the next morning’s plane. I was so locked in with thoughts about Moggerhanger’s proposition that I walked through the airport customs as if in a dream. Lines of weary people at the beginning of their holidays straggled from each counter, and I joined them patiently, obviously not one of them, almost expecting a smile of recognition and commiseration from the officials when I went through the eggtimer into the crowded departure lounge. As always, I looked for friendly recognition from some old acquaintance, for though in a risky situation, I felt exposed without friends, one fly among many but unlike any of them. There was a smell of sweat, tea, coffee, mildewed fag smoke, make-up, booze, boot-polish, and nondescript dust, and a scattering of displaced faces staring dreamily in all directions, tourist-agency labels fastened on their lapels. In spite of my nonchalant air and familiarity with the procedure of separation, I knew that in my heart I felt the same as they did. It only seemed in all truth that my heart was buried a bit deeper than theirs, that’s all, as I stood looking at them like an experienced traveller – though I wasn’t at that time to know by how much.

  I came back from Zurich next day and went straight to the man in the iron lung’s flat to collect my pay and report the success of my trip. Stanley opened the door with a sombre look on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Has the firm gone bust?’

  He let out a cry: ‘That’s just not bloody funny, Michael. Come quickly. The boss wants to see you.’

  ‘I’ve got to see him,’ I said, ‘because I’ve some bad news.’

  I had the satisfaction of seeing him jerk back from me: ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just this,’ I shouted. ‘I’m fed up with doing these trips at three hundred a shot. I’m one of your most experienced men, and I think four hundred would be nearer the mark, so from now I’m putting in for a raise. This bloody Volga Boat Song has gone on too long as far as I’m concerned.’ I threw my smuggler’s coat at his feet for him to pick up himself or leave there to rot.

  He tried to calm me down. ‘All right, Michael, maybe you’ll get it, but for God’s sake be careful and break it to him bit by bit because I tell you he’s in an awful state today. Arthur Ramage has been caught on the Lisbon run.’

  He looked closely at me as he broke the news. ‘How do you expect me to feel?’ I cried. ‘He was the champion, the best man ever known in the trade. What do you expect? A smile because it wasn’t me? Goddamn it, somebody couldn’t keep their mouth shut.’

  As if full of grief and rage, because that was my only chance of not being killed as I walked through that door, I knocked Stanley aside and barged into Jack Leningrad’s pad with as much violence as I could muster. Cottapilly and Pindarry, two men I hardly knew were standing by the iron lung, but I rushed the whole length of the floor screaming that Ramage had been sold down the river, that Leningrad himself had done it, had picked up the phone to make an anonymous call to Lon
don airport because he thought Ramage had gotten too big for his elastic-sided boots and had wanted to split the organization so that he could take charge of part of it with the idea of one day snapping up the lot. So he’d gone the way of all flesh, just the same as William Hay, who Jack Leningrad had also framed.

  ‘It’ll be my turn next,’ I ranted on, ‘I can feel it coming. I’m working for a nest of vipers. You’re hand in glove with the customs men yourself and you can do what you like with us. Cottapilly and you, Pindarry, you’ll go after me, don’t worry, and that fat pasty-faced paralytic slug knows it. We’re puppets to him, wax figures that he’ll throw into the deepest jail as soon as he sees fit or gets frightened enough. He’s paranoid. We’re loyal, but he thinks we’re all set on doing the dirty on him. And if it’s not that, he now and again gets a spiteful little fit of sadism and thinks to pass the time on and gratify himself by getting a few of us caught. And when this happens he makes sure that the one he’s going to have pulled in has three-quarters of his load in false gold.’

  I was on my knees, screaming all the preposterous things I could think up, then on the floor, then standing up against the wall only ten yards away from him, sobbing, keeping him in good view all the time. His pale face grew yellow, and I could see a twitch at the temples under the border of black sleek hair that went thinly over his head. Out of the speakers came his raging voice, from every side of the room in stereo. ‘Stop it, you lying vandal. It’s not true.’ He held a heavy revolver and pointed it at me.

  ‘I’ve been loyal,’ I said, calming down, ‘I’ve worked hard, Mr Leningrad. You can rely on me to do my utmost. Maybe I said too much just now, but the news went through me like a knife. It’s terrible. I’m blinded by it. I can’t go on.’

  He actually smiled: ‘You have to, Mr Cullen. We’re in a tight spot. We’ve got a rush job on, urgent. If you’re loyal, as you say, you must stay with us.’

  I stood by his lung: ‘If I do I’ve got to have four hundred a trip. I can’t do it for less because I’ve bought a house, and my overheads are appalling.’