Life Goes On

  ‘The boss wants to see you,’ Kenny Dukes hissed. ‘I can’t think what for. Maybe he wants to give you a pat on the back.’

  If there was something I couldn’t take it was the humour of those whose world view was narrower than my own. No retort would have been heavy enough to put him down, so I whistled a fancy tune while walking along the corridor to the door of Moggerhanger’s sanctum. Jericho Jim went in to announce me. The boss was smoking a cigar and, dressed in a pinstriped suit and sporting a white flower in his buttonhole, he looked as if about to go out and celebrate his silver wedding with Lady Moggerhanger and the rest of his family at the Kaibosh Restaurant. Cottapilly and Pindarry stood to either side of the door, as if the fools thought I would make a run for it, or plunge a knife into the boss’s fat gut. He came from behind the protection of his desk for a better look at me. ‘I’ve got fifteen minutes to hear your account of the trip. Let’s have it. But be brief. I want no lies and no trimmings.’

  He went back to his desk and sat down. My legs were giving, but there was no option except to stay upright and tell everything – though without mentioning hitch-hikers. When my kitty was empty he opened his desk and held up a slip of paper. I wondered how I should react to such a signal. ‘Are you frozen to the spot?’ he said. ‘Come and get the bloody thing.’

  I turned cold. If I moved, would they put the knife in?

  ‘You’ve done the best job anyone could have done,’ he said when I went forward. ‘Everything’s safe under lock and key, exactly where it should be. I knew you had the steadiness not to panic and do something stupid. Now take this, and go and get some sleep. You look as if you need it. We’ve had the garage flat tarted up a bit since you left.’

  I was staring at a cheque for five hundred pounds.

  ‘Don’t spend it all on lollipops and french letters,’ he said, ‘there’s a good lad! You’re one of us now, Michael.’

  I was going to say I thought I’d kacked up the whole operation, but stopped myself in time. ‘I didn’t expect a bonus.’

  ‘The best men don’t, I’ve often noticed. But next time don’t be so free on the rides to bums who want lifts, especially to that fool pushing a panda-pram up and down the Al. I’ve passed him many a time. He nearly caused an accident once when I threw a ham sandwich at him.’

  Cottapilly and Pindarry sniggered. I wondered if they were holding hands.

  ‘And where’s Dismal?’ Moggerhanger asked.

  I gulped. ‘Dismal?’

  ‘That useless dog.’

  ‘I left him at a friend’s place.’

  ‘Bring him back. He belongs to my daughter. He was a present from Chief Inspector Lanthorn. He was sweet on Polly at one time, poor old Jack!’

  ‘Can I leave it till tomorrow?’

  ‘You can keep him as far as I’m concerned. But clear out now. You’re wasting my time. Wait a minute, though.’ I turned from the door to see a smile on his clean-shaven chops. I could smell his aftershave. ‘Did the rats bother you?’

  ‘What rats?’

  ‘At Peppercorn Cottage.’ His joke wasn’t taking effect.

  ‘Not really. But they came a bit tough when I ate one raw. When I boiled a couple for breakfast they tasted a treat, though.’

  He laughed, his whole face rosy. ‘Not everybody’s frightened to death of a few rats,’ he said to Cottapilly and Pindarry. ‘Those two wouldn’t go near the place. Nor would that big soft turd Kenny Dukes. That’s another reason I had to send you.’

  It was my turn to laugh. ‘I’ll go any time you like.’

  I went out to looks of dislike from those by the door, and unable to believe that the sky hadn’t fallen in. My impulse was to run to the bank and get the cheque in before the ricochet hit me between the eyes, though in my heart I knew that Moggerhanger’s cheques were as safe as the Bank of England.

  I collected my briefcase from the car and climbed the outside stairway to the flat. There was a carpet on the floor, and the bed had been made, a flowered counterpane laid on top. An ashtray had been put down in place of the tin lid on the bedside table, and somebody had left a copy of the Gideon Bible as well as six tins of Baxter’s Lager still in their cardboard handpack. On another table, under the window with chintz curtains drawn across, was a pot of plastic flowers. A sailing ship, framed on the wall, ploughed into snowy waves. In the corner was one of those big wireless sets from the fifties. I recognised the home-from-home style of Polly Moggerhanger. Or was it Mrs Whipplegate? Maybe Jericho Jim had been trying his hand at interior decorating, because there was something of a prison cell about the layout.

  I wasn’t in a state to appreciate it, not having slept properly for days – or weeks if I counted the argy-bargy with Bridgitte before she left for Holland. I opened a tin of beer (it was cold, as if it had recently come out of the freezer. Nice touch, that. Good to feel wanted) and smoked a fag. After being in the car for so long that it had become my skin, I hardly knew where I was. Blaskin would have said I was bemused, such was his talent with words, and I suppose he would have been right. Though it was only seven thirty I took off my clothes and got between clean sheets, sorry that Mrs Whipplegate hadn’t been here to welcome me.

  One afternoon at the end of April I was called to the house by Kenny Dukes. I’d had so much sleep in the week before that I thought it would take me a year to get back into one piece, yet as soon as I entered Moggerhanger’s presence my wits slotted into place. It was a matter of them having to. ‘He’s sitting in there with Parkhurst,’ Kenny said as we crossed the yard. ‘So I expect he’s organising another operation.’

  ‘Didn’t know he was a surgeon,’ I said. ‘Reminds me of that scene in Sidney Blood when he gets his worst enemy on the operating table.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kenny drooled, ‘don’t it, eh?’

  ‘The Running Gutter I think it was called.’

  ‘One of his best.’

  ‘Who’s this Parkhurst bloke?’

  ‘His son,’ Kenny said, ‘by his first marriage. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth and sent to the best private schools – but you wouldn’t know.’

  Parkhurst sat on the floor with his back to the wall, looking so straight ahead that I thought he was blind. You could tell he was a man of few words because all the time the boss was talking he scraped match after match along the emery until flame crackled into life, and then he would lay each charred stick in the ashtray when the heat got close to his fingers. Maybe he spent more on matches than on clothes, because he wore a shabby grey suit and cheap suede shoes, and a tie that looked as if it hadn’t been to the cleaners in months. He might have been good looking if he dressed better, in spite of his lank hair and thinnish face.

  ‘You’ve been called in,’ Moggerhanger told me, ‘because we’re going up to Spleen Manor, in Yorkshire.’ He laughed. ‘No rats, this time. There are servants’ quarters, what’s more, and a caretaker to keep the place warm, so we’ll be well looked after. It’s near Bluddenden. Work out a route. You’ll be towing the horse box, but the Roller will handle it all right.’ He looked at Parkhurst: ‘This is my son, by the way, unless you thought he couldn’t be. Parkhurst, wake up, for God’s sake, and meet one of my best men. I wish you’d take a few leaves out of Mr Cullen’s book, even if only chapter one – you bone idle bloody skiver.’

  I expected a scowl from Parkhurst to indicate that he would like to kill me, but he wouldn’t even rouse himself to that extent. Or maybe he’d heard such a spiel too often.

  ‘All you do,’ his father went on, ‘is idle your time away around the clubs. You don’t even dress properly, though your wardrobe’s full of good suits. Or get a haircut. Polly’s worth fifty of you. When I was your age I’d been on my own feet for twenty years. I stopped you going to prison for as long as I could, and when they finally dragged you off all it did was give you a nickname.’

  Parkhurst spoke in a low voice, as if he didn’t want to exert himself. ‘Bollocks!’

  Moggerhanger winced, and smiled to
cover his anger. ‘One of these days you’re going to get into such trouble that you’ll shoot into real life and wonder what you were doing ever to be like this. But I’ll tell you one thing: I’m going to stop paying your gambling debts.’

  ‘They’re your places I play in,’ Parkhurst said in the same dead voice, ‘and the tables are rigged.’

  There was a pause. ‘You can go elsewhere and see if it’s any different. If you can’t pay up then, you’ll soon have no face left. See how you like that.’ He changed his tone, or tactics. ‘Oh, Malcolm, why don’t you wake up? I’ve got no end of jobs for you. You could be a great help, if you’d decide to do as I tell you.’

  The match he threw onto the carpet went out. ‘Don’t want to.’

  ‘Is that all, Lord Moggerhanger?’ I asked.

  ‘Lord-fucking-Moggerhanger,’ Parkhurst babbled, as if to himself. ‘I ask you!’

  ‘Be ready in half an hour, Michael. Get George to fix the horsebox on, and make sure the inside’s spick and span.’

  ‘I was going to bring Dismal back today.’

  ‘He can wait. Polly won’t mind. She’s in Italy with her boyfriend – though she’s supposed to be happily married. What children I’ve got!’

  Parkhurst grunted. ‘At least they don’t have blood on their hands.’

  I thought Moggerhanger would burst. ‘But they have money whenever they ask for it. You’ll get no more cash from now on.’

  Parkhurst smiled as if he’d heard that one before as well. I left them wrangling. George sat on a garden seat reading the Standard. ‘Take a dekko inside, Mr Cullen. I’ve been working on it since five this morning. It’s as neat as Montgomery’s caravan.’

  It may not have been as big, but along one side was a series of drawers and cupboards, their brass handles flush in beautiful mahogany. The top made a flat surface for a desk, or a sleeping place at a pinch, and there was a swivel chair (itself worth a fortune) as well as a small window with curtains, a night cupboard (with no doubt a golden pot inside), a discreet radio rack and a stove and picnic-set under the desk. A map on the wall showed Moggerhanger’s properties, and on the table stood a photograph of the family when they were much younger. They also looked happier. Parkhurst, wearing the tie and blazer of some prep school, gripped his father’s right hand and looked up at him with a frightening mixture of adoration and panic. Polly stood a foot or so away, smiling widely at something only she could see, but which she knew she would one day get, and it wasn’t the camera.

  George looked over my shoulder. ‘Go on in.’ He thought it would be a real treat. The length of carpet on the floor looked as if it had been cut from a precious Persian (to the best of my knowledge). On the wall opposite the table-desk hung a dressing gown on a hanger, wrapped in cellophane. ‘Home from home,’ I said.

  ‘He could survive in the wilds for weeks. I can’t open the drawers for you, because they’re locked. He’s got guns and fishing tackle, and food to last a while. Not that Lord Moggerhanger will ever need it, but it takes his fancy to think he might have to use it one day. I suppose he’s got to spend his money on something. But when it’s on tow, go easy on the corners. I’d have a nervous breakdown if anything happened to it.’

  Cottapilly and Pindarry put Moggerhanger’s luggage into the boot. Mrs Whipplegate, coat on, stood in the yard with a suitcase, and I almost fainted at the thought that she was on the trip as well. ‘I have to go, because there’ll be some secretarial work.’

  I asked how long for.

  ‘A couple of nights, but you can never tell with Lord Moggerhanger. He’s thinking of buying some agricultural land adjoining Spleen Manor. Otherwise I’m as much in the dark as you are.’

  The car had been vacuumed inside, and polished highly on the outside to double for a shaving mirror. The telephone had been plugged in and the cocktail cabinet unlocked, as if we were going on holiday. Moggerhanger came to the car with a cigar burning. Lady Moggerhanger was like a ghost from ten years ago. Her hair had been black. Now it was grey. She was a good-looking woman in her early fifties but had put on weight. I saw Polly’s features embedded there as she held out her hand for me to shake in such a way that I thought she had been practising before a full length mirror since becoming Lady Moggerhanger. ‘How are you, Mr Cullen? I heard you were back. You don’t seem a day older.’

  I said I was very well, and that neither did she.

  ‘Drive carefully. And take care of Lord Moggerhanger.’ They made their goodbyes and I got in behind the wheel, noting that the wing mirrors gave fair views to the rear. I was happy that Parkhurst had wriggled his way out of the trip.

  By four o’clock we were locked into heavy traffic going towards the North Circular. ‘It’s the rush hour already,’ Moggerhanger grumbled. ‘You see ’em going to work at eleven in the morning, and they’re on their way home by three. It’s no wonder the country’s sluicing down the drain. I’m sometimes at it twenty-four hours a day, except for a short nap. I’m lucky to get a round of golf in, these days.’

  The horsebox wasn’t much of a pull, but on cornering I had to go out a bit so as not to clip the kerb or knock a lamp post. I almost fetched a cyclist off his grid, and the obscenities he screamed through the window sent a reddish tinge over Mrs Whipplegate’s liberated face, such an enjoyable sight that I blessed that grey-bearded irascible pushbiker.

  ‘You have to watch ’em,’ the chief said. ‘I don’t mind you cutting up some young blood in a BMW, but not a silly old bastard with soda in his eyes.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said.

  ‘Would you kindly pass me a brandy and splash, Mrs Whipplegate?’

  He nursed the glass while I did my fancy footwork in order to put a few miles behind us. The sky was dull, but the road dry. You couldn’t have everything. By five we’d gobbled a few miles on the same old route to the north. Not long ago I’d steamed down it with Ronald Delphick’s Panda Roadshow, and I hoped he’d had a profitable gig in Stevenage, followed by a night-long bang with a bevy of nubile admirers. Some people have all the luck. When I first saw him he was plain Ron Delph, and read a Tube Map anticlockwise, which everybody thought was pure genius in action. But that was in the sixties.

  A flick of the wheel and even the Rolls-Royce would concertina if I hit a bridge support at a hundred. But why would I want to do that? You may well ask, because I certainly asked myself. I had left Upper Mayhem intending to lead an honest life. Instead, I had landed a job with Moggerhanger in order to help a friend, and been enrolled to do work which I suspected was crooked to the core. Not that I thought it a valid reason to put an end to things. Life was wonderful, and would go on because I had a job, money, and respect (of a sort) from the man I was employed by. ‘Do you think this is one of the best cars in the world, sir?’

  ‘It’s not one of the best, it’s the best.’ He was in his most bullish mood. ‘There’s nothing to touch it.’

  ‘What about a Merc?’

  He shifted in his seat and peered through the windscreen at a Mini in front. ‘Get round him. The Merc’s good, but I feel better in a Roller than I do in a Merc, so it must be that much better, eh?’ He nudged me, but I stayed straight enough to thread the needle between a lorry and the central reservation. He threw a cigar-end out of the window, and I thought I saw the wheels of the Mini bump over it.

  ‘I buy British, Michael. I’m not a founder member of the British Abasement Society, like so many people today, who go crawling around anybody from the Third World to try and make up for what the good old British Empire didn’t do to them. Some people don’t know they’re born unless they grovel and run the country down in the process. I think we in the old country have to pull together.’

  The thoughts of Chairman Mog didn’t bear thinking about, but it wasn’t my place to say so as we floated north towards Spleen Manor. Percy Blemish stood by the roadside with his thumb in the air, on his way back to Tinderbox Cottage, I supposed, after an unsuccessful foray to look for his wife in London. ‘Run
over his toes. I’ve seen him before. He’s another nuisance.’

  I kept a straight course. Twilight was coming on, that long slow drift into nothingness that marks the end of an English day. Mrs Whipplegate was the queen of her compartment, as long as Moggerhanger cared to be in the cockpit with me. Via the rear-looking mirror I glimpsed her face as often as I dared, that subtle and concentrated line of beauty shaped by a mind engrossed in a novel. I hoped there was some sex in it, and longed for the gaffer to get tired and move back for a snooze. Then Mrs Whipplegate would sit up front with me.

  ‘There’s still too much revolution in the air these days,’ he said. Somebody seemed to have wound him up, and it wasn’t me. ‘It’s doing nobody any good. Revolution is either for single people or childless couples, and then only as a parlour game. They’d be the first to go to the wall if it did come, as we all know, and as they ought to know but don’t because they’re too stupid.’

  What seemed dead certain to me was that blokes like him would always come out on top. He asked Mrs Whipplegate to pass the food box, and helped himself to a smoked salmon sandwich.

  ‘I know a nice café up the road.’ I thought how pleasant it might be to tank up at the place next to Ettie’s diner. She’d be pleased to see me back.

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ he said, ‘but I like to eat my own stuff. Even when I’m going round my clubs I take my dear wife’s sandwiches – especially then. London is the salmonella capital of the world. Never eat out in it.’

  On drawing level to overtake some rep in his flash Ford he increased speed so as to keep up with me. Moggerhanger pressed the window button and bawled out: ‘You fucking anarchist! Jam your shoeleather down, Michael, and then cut in.’

  That was the most dangerous thing you could do, and as I was the captain of the ship I didn’t do it. ‘I’d rather not, sir.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he grumbled. I pulled well out in front, then settled back into the inner lane at a steady sixty. ‘The roads are crowded with maniacs,’ he said. ‘I’d go everywhere by train if I could have my own carriage. First class rail is no longer any protection. There’s no way to travel on public transport anymore for a man like me. The riff-raff are everywhere.’