Alfie E-Book

Bill Naughton

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 365

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Alfie's not really a bad guy. It's just that he has this overwhelming desire for the ladies. You might say that 'birds' are irresistible to him, sort of second nature. There's Ruby - 'A lust box in beautiful condition' ; Clare - 'You're all lathered in sweat, Alfie'; Siddie - 'My regular Thursday night bint, a bit leggy for my fancy, but you make a married woman laugh and you're halfway home'; and Annie - but who's counting? Certainly not Alfie. Three in one evening if necessary. And necessary is the right word...

Leseprobe

Alfie

BILL NAUGHTON

CONTENTS

Title Page

BOOK ONEMoney is everythingPage

BOOK TWOWhat use is money without good health?Page

BOOK THREEIf you haven’t got peace of mind you’ve got nothingPage

About the Author

Copyright

BOOK ONE

Money is everything

CHAPTER ONE

‘Alfie,’ she said, ‘are you starting all over again?’

It was Siddie, my regular Thursday night bint, a married woman of twenty-nine, so she said, but she could be thirty-two or -three, or even thirty-five topweight, and quite a fair bit of grumble, clean as a nut, a trifle on the leggy side for my fancy, with muscles on her calves, but she’s got this beautiful chest, and she’s a handsome dresser, and a good speaker. In fact, a woman you can take anywhere, so what more do you want for three or maybe four vodka-and-tomato juices once a week, and every other round she stands her corner into the bargain, slipping the money to me under the table.

‘What about it if I am?’ I said.

Know what, she’s only putting the idea into my mind, hoping it’ll take root. I mean I’ve no idea of starting anything until I hear her mention it. We’d had it off on the back seat, see, stripped down a bit for the job, and when we’ve done I get out to water the old geranium against the offside rear wheel (I’ve been pinting it, see) and generally unjangle myself, and then I put on my jacket and slip in front into the driver’s seat, not forgetting to give her a last cuddle just to show I done it all out of love, and not lust, when blow me down if she ain’t inciting me all over again. Well, in for a penny in for a pound, I say, so I’ve took out my big white handkerchief and folded it carefully over my left lapel. I was wearing a navy-blue lightweight suit, in a material called Tonik, made by Dormeuil, and I didn’t want it spoiling. I don’t care whether a bird uses Max Factor Mattfilm or Outdoor Girl from Woolworth’s, if she starts purring up against your lapel, it won’t look the better for it.

‘Suppose the police were to come along,’ she said. They never come round there and she knows it – she’s only putting that bit in to stir up excitement.

‘Let ’em come,’ I said, ‘the doors is locked and the windows all steamed up. It’s like an igloo in here.’ It was too. We were parked in this quiet little hidden away spot near the Thames at Blackfriars in this Consul de luxe 375, and Fords have never improved on that model, but they did steam up easy. ‘’Ere, pull this rug over you, Siddie,’ I said, ‘just to be on the safe side.’

‘Mind you don’t ladder my stocking with your ring,’ she said.

‘Steady up,’ I tell her, ‘I ain’t no contortionist.’ It’s not my joints I’m thinking of, it’s my jacket. I don’t want it messing up. I know I should have took it off, but it’s too late now. You break your clutch at a time like that and you can spoil the whole thing for yourself, if you’re sensitive, like I am. She starts this jockeying about. I must say she’s got a handsome chest – I never knew a bird with such clavicles or whatever you call them. And talk about a cleavage! – it’s like the Rotherhithe Tunnel. She’s Jayne Mansfield on the surface and Mick McManus underneath.

Now just as I’m manoeuvring a particular dodgy spot (she’s got no mercy this Siddie), I suddenly hear this great loud blast in my ear.

‘What’s up, Alfie?’ she cries out.

‘Get your bloody great knee offa the steering-wheel,’ I yell at her.

‘I can’t!’ she cries. ‘I can’t move! I’m stuck!’ That’s the worst of these women with muscular legs, they go so far then they can’t get back. I think they must have over-developed cartilages or something. Anyway I give her knee a good belt with my hand and knock it off, and the horn stops.

‘I got the cramp in my thigh,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’ve told you before to be careful where you’re putting your leg, Siddie,’ I said. I open the door and get out and kind of shake and air myself. I do hate that sticky feeling you get when there’s an interruption.

‘I was only trying to be helpful,’ she said.

‘I can help myself,’ I said. ‘’Ere, what time did your old man say he’d be waiting for you at the station at Purley?’

‘Oh, never mind him.’

‘That’s just who I am going to mind,’ I said. The way these birds talk about their husbands these days. ‘Never spoil a good thing. That’s something you women can’t get into your nuts. Come on now, enough’s as good as a feast.’

I was sorry I’d let her get me started. It’s pure greed really. I think it must come from all those years you were longing for it and they wouldn’t let you have any. And now you can’t bear to let an opportunity go by.

Well, once Siddie sees there’s nothing further going she gets out of the car and starts tidying herself up. I didn’t look too closely at her because I find that dressing lark can set me off again. I mean they can say what they want about the female form divine and all that sort of caper, but if you ask me I reckon three parts of the charm of a woman is her clothes. Silk petticoats, suspenders being fastened over a nice thigh, nice black lacy bras, and things like that interest me much more than a great big woman would, stretched out naked on a bed. I know this might sound kinky, but I believe it’s dead normal.

‘You soon changed your tune,’ she said.

‘That horn put me off,’ I said, ‘if you want to know.’

I must admit I do hate a din at a time like that. She begins to pull her stockings and straightens the back seams, and I had to admit that her legs looked real good. Then she took the white handkerchief out of my lapel.

‘Don’t forget your napkin,’ she said. I took it from her and rolled it up and started doing my toilet. I’ve got my own little system. First I wet it and wipe all the lipstick off my face. It’s surprising how clean you can get yourself with a bit of spit and a white handkerchief.

‘Know what I thought, Alfie,’ she said, ‘when I first saw you put your handkerchief over your shoulder?’

‘What did you think?’

‘I thought you were going to take out your fiddle and play it,’ she said.

‘Well I did – didn’t I?’ I said. ‘I come from a musical family.’ I find with women it’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it. And if I get one of my comical strokes I can make most women laugh. The fact is, women don’t expect you to be funny – all they want to know is, do you want them to laugh. They’ll bleeding laugh. You’ve only to look at these Palladium comedians to know that. Then I take her bikini briefs out of my pocket and throw them to her. ‘Mind you don’t catch cold!’ I shout.

Next I start going over my suit very carefully with this handkerchief, after I’ve got all the lipstick off my face. I could hear Siddie laughing away to herself and I thought: she’ll go home happy. It struck me that I’d done her old man a real good turn, although I’d have a job making him see it. It’s a funny thing, but you won’t get one husband in ten feels any thanks to the wife’s fancy man for the happiness he brings to the marriage.

She’d been dead glum when I met her and I’d listened to all her problems and then got her laughing. Here, now that’s a good tip for any man: if you want to make a married woman, the first thing to do is to get her laughing. You’d be surprised how many of them are in need of a good laugh. It don’t strike the husbands. Except the ones who think they’re comedians. A woman told me she once went paralysed down one side of her face forcing herself to laugh at her old man’s jokes what she’d heard two million times. Yes, you make a married woman laugh and you’re halfway there with her. Course it don’t work with a single bird. It’ll set you off on the wrong foot. You get one of them laughing and you don’t get nothing else.

When I’d wiped my face and my suit down with the hanky I roll it up into a little ball and polish my shoes with it, then throw it away. That costs me two bob a time, but I find it’s well worth it in the long run, the explanations it saves. And it’s more hygienic.

‘All right now, Siddie?’ I said.

‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘What about you?’

‘I’ll do,’ I say, stretching myself out a bit and getting my jacket sitting properly. ‘Now what about next Thursday?’

‘Same place, same time, suits me.’

‘Right,’ I say, ‘back into the car and I’ll run you to Clapham Junction.’

She puts her arm round me under my jacket and presses her finger on my backbone and runs it down inside the back of my trousers and at the same time gives me a kiss.

‘Do you really love me, Alfie?’ she said. That finger on the bone works if a bloke’s in that mood but if he ain’t in it he couldn’t care no more than fly-in-the-air. I’ve yet to meet the woman who don’t ask me that after it’s all over.

‘Course I do.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Certain to positive.’

‘I’ve got a feeling you don’t – not in your heart.’

‘All right then, I don’t. I can’t win any way with you.’ I got the torch and shone it carefully around inside the car just to make sure everything was all right. I’m very tidy in my habits. ‘Now get back in the car, darling, we don’t want to keep your poor husband waiting at Purley.’

‘He won’t mind,’ she said, ‘he’s used to it.’

If there’s one thing puts me off marriage it’s married women.

‘Know what, Siddie,’ I said as we drove off, ‘I think we should change our rendezvous, just in case he chances to follow you.’

‘Follow me!’ said Siddie, ‘why it would never even occur to that husband of mine that any other man would want to take me out.’

‘That’s the mistake all you married women make,’ I said. ‘You think just because your husbands was clot enough to marry you, they don’t see nothing. Where d’you tell him you was going?’

‘I said I was going to the pictures with Olive.’

‘What pictures?’

‘Oh just the pictures.’

‘Nah, never be vague like that, Siddie. That plants suspicion.’

It’s no wonder there’s all these broken homes and marriages on the rocks and divorce about in these days, with women so careless. It distresses me it do. I don’t know what it is about love that goes to a woman’s head but it seems they lose all sense of responsibility once they start having a little affair. I offered her a Polo mint. ‘Here, suck one of these, Siddie,’ I said, ‘so he don’t smell your breath.’

‘I don’t care if he does smell it,’ she said.

I can’t stand it when a woman talks like that – no consideration for other people’s feelings. ‘Now don’t be like that, Siddie,’ I said, ‘be human. You and me are having a good time ain’t we? Now why should we hurt that poor geezer. He ain’t doing us no harm. Why can’t you keep him happy in his ignorance.’

‘All right, all right,’ she said.

‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘You go home and amuse him. Be nice to him – understand me?’

‘Why the hell should I amuse him? Let him amuse himself.’

‘Ain’t you got no heart, Siddie?’

‘You want to see everybody happy, don’t you?’ she said.

‘I don’t believe in making anybody unhappy or making an enemy,’ I told her. You could be crossing the Sahara desert and he’d be just the geezer you’d run into, if you see what I mean. ‘I don’t see why the husband shouldn’t have a good time as well.’

‘So long as you don’t have to give it to him,’ she said.

‘I would,’ I said, ‘if I were built that way.’ And I meant it. After all, that’s what we’re here for in this life, to help one another. I mean so long as it ain’t too inconvenient. ‘You don’t want always to think of yourself, gal.’

‘What about the firm’s dance?’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, aren’t you coming? I’ve got you a ticket.’

‘Won’t your old man be there?’

‘Course he’ll be there,’ she said, ‘but he’s not to know who you are. We could have a dance together and then I could introduce you. I’d like you to meet.’

Siddie, you don’t know it, I thought, but you’re on the way out. I’d seen it coming for some time – sooner or later they must get you to meet the old man. Once I’ve met the husband, it seems to put me right off the wife. I mean he could be dying in his bed but if I haven’t seen him I won’t think of him, will I? But once you meet and talk, like as not he’ll turn out a real good sport. I don’t know why but his sort usually are. Touches my heart, if you see what I mean. As I’m having it off with her I can’t help thinking of him, hanging up his drip-dry shirt, or going through these garden catalogues, or taking the dog for a walk, or arguing in the pub about Chelsea or cricket or something. I don’t know how it is but you seem to get a lot of his sort with Chelsea supporters. They like growing roses too, if they’ve got a garden.

I drew to a halt beside Clapham Junction Station. ‘Right, gal,’ I said, ‘here you are.’

‘Aren’t you seeing me to the platform?’

‘Better take no chances, we might be seen.’

‘What about the dance?’

‘I’ll ring you at work.’

‘It’s not always convenient at work.’

‘Then I’ll ring you at home on Monday night – that’s when he goes to visit his Mum, ain’t it?’

‘You can ring me any time you like at home. I don’t let him answer if I’m in.’

‘I’ll ring you on Monday when he’s at his Mum’s,’ I said. ‘Now good night.’

‘Good night, Alfie,’ she said.

‘Now don’t forget, be nice to him. And don’t wear that tight skirt next week.’

‘No I won’t,’ she shouted back, ‘I’ll wear my skin-tight slacks.’

I watched her running off into the station. There won’t be any next week, I thought. Once a married woman gets too hot on, that’s the time to cool off. They get you into trouble and it’s not worth it. Her poor bloody husband, I thought. On the other hand, what the eye don’t see, as they say, the heart agrees.

CHAPTER TWO

After seeing Siddie off I had this other bird to meet called Gilda. I don’t know how it is but I look on an evening with just one bird as only half the menu, sausage-and-mash without the treacle pud. After all, variety’s the spice of life.

Matter of fact, what I like is to have three women – I don’t mean all three at once, but all three on tap. And I like a bit of variety in them: one thin, one fat and one medium, or, say, one very young, one a bit older and another in between. You’ll find with three like that you’ll get most of your needs satisfied.

Mind you, I never like to go straight from one bird to another without a break in between. For one thing I don’t think it looks nice, and for another, I find I need a bit of a change, a bit of a talk with a few mates, so I nipped into a pub where I knew one or two of my mates hang out. I don’t like making fixed arrangements with anybody – I like to live in a casual come-and-go style.

I think if you were to spend all your time with birds you’d begin to find you’re going a bit doolally. It’s my opinion there isn’t one in a thousand right in the head, but I must admit I love ’em. I mean they give a bloke so much pleasure in his little life. Mind you, I never fall for all that chat a bird likes to hand out about how she’s given you ‘the best years’ of her life and ‘you’ve had the best of my body’ and all that sort of stuff. ‘What do you think I’ve given you?’ I always say to them. I mean the man has to give every time, but the woman can wing it if she ain’t in the mood, if you see what I mean.

There were two mates of mine in the pub, Perce and Sharpey, and they were talking to a big bloke called Lofty, a long-distance driver who actually comes from up North. Now if there’s one thing gets on my wick it’s when working blokes start talking about politics.

‘I tell you what I think about the state of the world today,’ said Perce. ‘I think it’s dead rough.’

Now what do they know about the state of the world? They only know what they’re told. The truth only comes out about fifty years later.

‘I think the working man has got himself all blown up with conceit,’ said Sharpey.

‘You can’t blame the working man,’ said Lofty. ‘He’s brought up to believing this is the greatest country in the world – to believing we’re the greatest people—’

‘Aren’t we?’ said Perce. ‘I mean where’s the competition?’

‘I think all these wildcat strikes are making our country look a fool to others,’ said Sharpey. ‘What do you say, Alfie?’

‘And you have this feeling,’ went on Lofty, ‘you’d lay down your life for your country. Leastways I had. But then as you get a bit older, you read about all them at the top – how they’re all on the fiddle, dodging the income tax, entertaining, and buying their villas on the income tax—’

‘The bleedin’ golden handshake,’ said Perce.

‘The working man has never been better off in his life,’ said Sharpey, who’s never done a day’s work in his life. ‘The engineers are asking for a thirty-five hour week and treble time for Sunday, so that if one bloke works a twelve-hour Sunday he needn’t work the other six days and he’s got an hour’s overtime in.’

‘The working man begins to lose faith,’ went on Lofty. ‘He loses faith in his boss, he loses faith in the top dogs who are running the country, and he gets as he don’t want to know.’

‘I blame the newspapers,’ said Perce. ‘I think people were happier in their ignorance. It’s no use keep taking the bleedin’ lid off of everything.’

‘You can’t blame the newspapers,’ said Lofty. ‘The working man sees all these others on the fiddle and he thinks what a mug he would be to knock himself out for the country.’

‘Somebody’s got to knock themselves out,’ said Sharpey. ‘You don’t want the country going to the dogs. What do you say, Alfie?’

‘There’s only one answer to all today’s trouble,’ I said, ‘and you know it as well as I do. It’s human bloody nature. If you got a bloke with five kids and you scared the life out of him, like they did in the old days, that he don’t get a bite for them kids or himself and his missis unless he works all the hours God sends – you’ll get him working.’

‘My dad used to work fourteen hours a day for three quid a week,’ said Lofty.

‘You don’t notice you’re working if you’re dead frightened of something,’ said Perce.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Sharpey. You can say that again, I thought.

‘Get the sods in debt,’ said Perce, ‘then they’ve got to keep working to get out of it.’

‘They’re already doing that,’ said Lofty. ‘What you say, Alfie?’

‘If you can’t scare ’em,’ I said, ‘and you can’t kid ’em – you need some bleedin’ big incentives to keep them working.’ Anyway, I thought I wouldn’t hang about here much longer, listening to that kind of chat, and as it’s near closing-time I decide to make a crafty getaway just in case any of them want a lift, so I drink my pint and go off and get into my car and drive off to Gilda’s.

Now I’ve known this little Gilda for a twelve-month or more, and while she ain’t exactly stupid, she is a bit on the simple side. What I mean by stupid is when a dead dim bird tries to argue you out that its stupidity is sense. Gilda don’t do that. She lets you get on with what you have to say and listens. But she’d never make a number one because she’s not the sort of bird you could take out and show off. In fact she’s a bit backward at coming forward. She’s not a good-looker, neither, not by a long chalk, although she ain’t that bad, and she ain’t an exciting dresser, but she’s a cracking little standby. She’s clean and dainty, gives herself no airs or graces, and ain’t too bad on the old frying-pan stakes. All she seems to want from life is to be in love with a bloke and to think that he’s a bit in love with her, if you see what I mean. And she ain’t a liberty-taker. Most birds go mad to get hold of a regular bloke and they’ve no sooner got hold of him than the first thing they think about is how to go about changing him. Now I told this Gilda from the start that I wasn’t the marrying sort and she didn’t mind. The trouble I’ve had explaining to some birds that whilst I’m willing to say I love them, I definitely don’t want to marry them. Gilda ain’t like that. She never tried to put the block on me, or stamp out my ego. She’s always let me do what I want, have what I want and be as I am. Of course that might be another way a woman has of putting the block on a bloke. She’s a very contented little gal. She’s a standby and she knows it, and any bird that knows its place in this life can be quite content.

She lives in a little street off the New Kent Road, see, and just as I’m parking my car, I spot one bloke called Humphrey coming out of the house. He’s about thirty-eight this geezer, but looks real old on account he takes life so serious, and he’s wearing his bus inspector’s uniform, which makes him look even older and more serious. I knew he must have been visiting Gilda, because we once met him together and she’s told me about him, how he was keen on her before she met me.

It seems he’s been married once, see, got a lovely little wife and child and his own little home and everything, when one day, the wife and kid get killed in front of his eyes, or next door to it, by a cement trailer that broke loose and crashed outside a supermarket. He’s inside getting two tins of salmon for the price of one and when he comes out he’s a childless widower. I hate hearing of people things like that have happened to – it makes you feel guilty because nothing like that has ever happened to you. I wiped myself over again before going in, then I let myself in with the latchkey she’d given me and crept quietly up the stairs to her room. She was waiting for me, eager and all smiles.

‘I thought I saw that geezer Humphrey just going off,’ I said.

‘Yes, he just left,’ she said. She always tells you the truth straight out and it’s took me a long time to get used to somebody like that. I can’t help feeling there’s a trick in it somewhere.

‘You ain’t having it off with him, are you?’

‘Nothing like that, Alfie,’ she said. ‘He brought me some chocolates.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Nothing. He said he called round because he felt lonely. I asked him to stay for a cup of tea, but when I told him I was expecting you he wouldn’t wait. I felt sorry for him.’

‘Why feel sorry for him?’ I began helping myself to his chocolates – Black Magic, just what he would buy, I thought. ‘What else did he tell you?’

‘He told me he loved me,’ she said.

‘The soppy nit,’ I said. It’s the last thing you should ever tell a bird – I mean if it’s true. String ’em along with it if it ain’t.

‘He said he gets full of loneliness and longing, seems to fill his mouth and throat and he can’t taste the food he eats.’

‘I’ve a good mind to report him to London Transport,’ I said. ‘He’s no right to go round on the buses in a condition like that.’

She looked at me. ‘Do you love me, Alfie?’

‘You shouldn’t ask me, you know. You put me in an awkward spot. I’ll always tell you if I feel like it.’ She looked a bit unhappy so I gave her a kiss. ‘Coo, you don’t half pong,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s Phul-nana,’ she said. ‘The scent of Araby. Don’t you like it, Alfie?’

‘You know I like you to smell as you are. I hate a scent covering up a smell. It’s a mistake all you women make – you will not realise that a normal man prefers a smell to a scent.’

‘They’re funny things, are men,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and make some tea.’ She had a funny way of smiling, and you could never be sure if she was taking the mickey.

I got myself comfortable on the chair and put my feet up on the bed and suddenly felt the hot water bottle in for us. She’s getting a bit previous, I thought. I knew I was always welcome, but I think it was the first time she’d put the hot water bottle in for me. Course the evenings were getting a bit chilly. A thought crossed my mind and I felt in my pocket and took out my little diary and opened it. There was a little ring round the 19th with a G on top of it. I began to feel a bit alarmed and I called out to her. ‘Hi, Gilda, ain’t today the 21st?’

She walked in out of the kitchen with some sandwiches on a tray. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘why?’

‘Shouldn’t our little friend have arrived on the 19th?’ I said.

‘Our who?’

‘You know, Fred,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, Alfie,’ she said, ‘he’ll turn up. He always has done.’

‘But he’s usually so punctual,’ I said. He was too, was little Fred, you could almost set your watch by him. ‘I don’t like it when he’s overdue.’ I looked at her and to my surprise her little face looked quite cracking for a minute, nice smooth skin, with bits of roses on her cheeks and her eyes kind of nice and happy-looking. ‘Know what, gal,’ I said to her, ‘there’s times when you don’t look too bad.’

I always feel a bit of flattery is never wasted on a woman. I know it’s the oldest thing on earth and they know it too but you’d be surprised how few men will tell a woman she looks nice. Either they don’t see it or they’re too miserable to say it if they do. She came over and sat on my knee. I put my arm round her and I must say she had a lovely rounded-out shape to her. ‘How are things at the caff, gal?’ I said.

‘Do you know, Alfie,’ she said, ‘I took over fifty-two pounds on the till today. Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘What’s wonderful about it?’ I said. ‘It ain’t as if it were your money.’

She’s got this job at a little cafe run by an Italian and his wife, where she works in the kitchen and on the till when they’re serving dinners.

‘No, I know it’s not my money,’ she said, ‘but I like to feel they’re doing well. Besides it keeps me busy, and the time passes quicker.’

‘Ain’t it time you started that fiddle I told you about,’ I said; ‘you know, playing the piano on the till?’ I just can’t understand the mentality of people who are in charge of money and don’t work a take for themselves. I don’t mean thieving or anything like that, just the odd few bob every day. It’s surprising how it mounts up. And how it makes you feel even with life.

‘I couldn’t do that, Alfie,’ she said.

‘It must be the only till in London that ain’t bent,’ I said. A bird I know is in a cinema paybox over the West and she works what they call the pause. Say a bloke has fifteen bob change to come – you give him his ticket and the five bob and then pause. If he’s not certain or he’s in a hurry, he’ll think that’s his lot, and he’ll be away. She puts the ten-bob note on one side in case he comes back. She reckons it’s good for two or three notes a day.

‘Luigi and his wife treat me like one of the family,’ she said.

‘That’s more reason to do them,’ I said. ‘You’ve got their confidence, see, they’re not watching you.’

‘But I couldn’t look them in the face, Alfie, if I was swindling them like that.’

‘Who’s talking about swindling?’ I said. ‘A fiddle – a fiddle hurts nobody. Put it all down to the larking.’

‘But they’ve been so good to me, Alfie.’

‘Then you don’t have to do them out of nothing. You can work it all out of the customers. Tuppence here, threepence there, the odd tanner. They don’t notice it when they’ve had a feed and they buy a packet of fags.’

‘But they’re all ordinary people, drivers, building workers – they’re just like friends. They all make jokes with me.’

‘But they’re just the ones to do, I tell you. They trust you and they don’t take much notice. How do you think these millionaires make their money? They make it out of their friends.’

‘But I’m happy as I am, Alfie,’ she said.

‘You could still be happy with a few hundred pounds in the bank, instead of tuppence ha’penny. You’re in a rut, girl, and you’ve got to lift yourself out of it.’

‘But I feel happier, Alfie, if I’m honest.’

‘You’re idle, girl, that’s what you are, and you think you’re honest. You’re mentally idle. You don’t try to improve yourself. I hate talking to you like this – it makes me feel like a ponce, but somebody’s got to give you a good talking-to. Suppose I’d been like that, easy going – then I wouldn’t have needed no car, so’s every night I’d have been running for the last bleeding bus, instead of staying on here with you.’

‘But I’d still be as happy with you, Alfie, if you had no car.’

‘Look here, gal,’ I said, ‘if you say you’re happy once more I’ll begin to doubt it. Straight up, I will. This world is divided into two kinds of people – those who’ve got a car an’ those who ain’t. And they hate each other like poison. It’s a terrible thing what you’re saying, Gilda, that you’re content with being as you are. It’s people like you get the country upside-down.’

‘But money isn’t everything, Alfie.’

You nit, I thought, you’re as dim as a box of a’soles. Of course money is everything – but people won’t admit it openly. I mean if you’ve got money you can have everything – beautiful hand-tailored suits, your own car, lap up as many birds as you want, and eat and drink what you fancy – what more can any man ask for.

Course I didn’t tell her all that – all I said was, ‘It’s only people who ain’t got none talk like that.’

‘I’m not ashamed, Alfie, I owe nothing.’

‘But you should be ashamed, Gilda,’ I said, putting an arm around her. ‘What you gotta get in that little head of your’n, gal, is that nobody don’t ’elp you in this life – you gotta ’elp yourself!’

CHAPTER THREE

I was thinking as I lay there in bed in my T-shirt cotton vest beside Gilda sometime later that same night, about the first job I had when I left school, working as an errand boy at one of these sweat shops over the East End where they make boys’ suits. If I don’t drop off to sleep straightaway after it, I find I’m wakeful and I often go over little thoughts in my mind and memories and that sort of thing. I don’t like lying there in the raw with a bird – I seem to come over clammy and sticky. Now what I used to do on that job was to knock off one of these suits when nobody was looking, nip into the lavatory with it, then I’d slip my own off, put the suit on next to my skin, and then put my own back on top. I wore a nice big jacket specially for the job. Then I’d nip home as quick as I could on one of my errands and slip off the suit. Alice, my step-mum, used to flog it in the pub of a night. She used to get as much as twenty-five bob a time for those suits, and she’d give me a dollar out of it.

Now I found that little fiddle gave me a real interest in the work, and it’s my firm belief everybody should take an interest in their work. I was always willing and cheerful, and popular with everybody around the place. I could afford to be, couldn’t I? Mind you, I wouldn’t have been so cheerful if I’d known what I know now. It makes a guv’nor suspicious. Never be cheerful on a job if you’re working a fiddle. Here, I had a nice little fiddle going a short time back, driving a lorry for one of these supermarket firms, and when we were loading up, I’d got this one special loader who would always slip me in an extra crate of canned salmon and put it down to the larking. I mean I’d flog it to one of the branch managers, see, and he’d pay me half what it was worth and I’d share the bunce with the loader. There’s a special way when you’re loading of slipping one in so that even when they check your load they can’t count it. If done properly it’s all an art.

Now one day I was loading up and whistling away when I spots the guv’nor with his eye on me. ‘You sound cheerful, Elkins,’ he says. I tumbled at once I should never have whistled. So I says, ‘Yeh, some mornings I feel chirpy.’ So he says, ‘You can’t be feeling all that chirpy on what I’m paying you. You must be working a nice little fiddle.’ So I says, ‘That’s deformation of character, mate. I’ll have to see my union.’ And he says, ‘Don’t come it – ’ow do you think I got where I am? I’m satisfied,’ he says, ‘so long as you do your job well and don’t get too greedy, else you’ll kill the goose.’ I was quite glad of that little tip because we had been overdoing it.

Now where was I with my little life as a boy – oh yes, knocking off these suits. This one day I gets one a bit on the large side. I go into the lavatory with it, strip down, put it on and put my other one over the top of it. I only just managed to get myself all fastened up. Now when I come out, there was the guv’nor standing there. A nice bloke he was – with a sad face that always made me feel sorry for him. ‘How are you liking this little job, Alfie?’ he said. ‘It ain’t bad, sir,’ I said, ‘to be quite frank, I like it. I mean, you’re kept on the go, but I don’t mind that. Matter of fact, I’m just dashing off this minute.’ Then he pats me on the shoulder and he says, ‘You seem to have grown a lot lately, Alfie, you’re getting quite a size.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I says, ‘that’s what my mum says.’ ‘Look at your chest and your shoulders, Alfie,’ he says, ‘I can hardly believe it,’ and at the same time he keeps tapping and feeling around my back, shoulders and chest. ‘Have you anything to tell me, Alfie?’ he says. ‘I’m in a hurry, sir,’ I says. ‘Alfie, you shouldn’t have done it,’ he says. ‘Now go in there and take it off again.’ ‘Take what off?’ I says. ‘Take this off,’ he says and he opens my shirt at the front. ‘Blimey,’ he says, ‘That’s out of my top range. Now go on in and take it off before I get annoyed.’

Now one thing I’d learnt even at that age was that you must destroy the evidence, so I thought to myself, there’s only one thing for it – down the hole it goes, and I’ll flush the chain. He was standing outside and he must have read my thoughts. ‘Don’t shove it down the hole, Alfie,’ he says, ‘you’ll only block the plumbing up. The lad before you did that. Just bring the suit out as it is.’ I expected him to send for the police or give me a good rucking, but all he did was to take me to his office and give me my week’s wages. ‘Sorry, Alfie,’ he says, ‘I don’t think you’re suitable for this job. Let me know if you want a reference.’ A nice bloke he was, but when I told my step-mum and my dad about what had happened, they said what a horrible thing it was for a chap to look under a lad’s shirt to find his suit. Funny thing, but once you get a taste for that lark, it’s surprising how it sticks with you.

CHAPTER FOUR

I’m going to call on Gilda this night and I’ve stopped my car at the corner of the street and I’ve seen this Humphrey hanging around.

‘Oh, how go there,’ he said. ‘Is that you?’

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘I was hoping I might see you,’ he said. He’d only been waiting for me.

‘What about?’

‘It’s about Gilda.’

‘What about her?’

‘Would you like to come for a drink?’ he said.

‘I’m in a bit of a hurry,’ I said. I can’t bear to be with a bloke whose only to do with me is that we both know the same bird.

‘I’ll tell you what I wanted to ask you,’ he said, coming straight out with it at last. ‘Do you intend to marry her?’

He can’t know she’s up the club, I thought. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. I’m sorry. I know that’s something between you and her. But I’ve always had a hope she might marry me one day.’

Come to that, I thought, that might be a handy little way out of the whole business. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’ I said. ‘You never know your luck.’

‘I have,’ he said. ‘She’s very kind, but she doesn’t want to know. Not that I blame her.’

‘But you felt with me out of the way—’ I said.

‘I suppose you could say that. With the coast clear you never knew what would happen. And I felt if you were only passing the time—’

‘Know what,’ I said, ‘I might be able to put a good word in for you.’

‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I can put my own good words in – once I know I’m in the running.’

‘If she won’t marry you now, mate,’ I said, ‘she’ll never marry you.’ Yet I had to admit to myself there was more to him than I’d thought.

‘Why,’ he said, ‘I don’t know about that, I don’t know at all.’

‘I do,’ I said, ‘so long.’

As I was going off he looked at me and said, ‘Never is a long time.’ I couldn’t make out quite what he meant but he had a funny way of looking. I went into Gilda’s.

Somehow she looked different to me.

‘Hallo, Alfie,’ she said. I gave her a kiss. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ she said.

‘Never shove things at me as soon as I get in, gal,’ I said. ‘I always like to get my bearings first.’

‘The kettle’s nearly boiling.’

‘Never mind the kettle,’ I said. ‘Is there any news? Any reports from the front?’

‘What? Oh! No, not yet.’

‘We’ll definitely have to do something about this little lot,’ I said.

‘I’ve tried everything, Alfie,’ she said. I looked at her. ‘I mean everything you hear about, Epsom’s salts, gin, and some pills a girl got me.’

‘You mean you’ve been taking stuff on the quiet?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ she said.

‘You worry me all the more,’ I said. ‘I wondered why you were looking so ropey. You don’t want to make yourself ill, gal.’ I looked at her little face, it looked so white and pinched, I felt a little spasm of sympathy or something come over me. I put my arms round her just to comfort her a bit. She presses close up to me, must be thinking I wanted to make love to her, but to be quite frank it’s the last thing on my mind at that moment.

‘You’re getting very cooey lately, Gilda,’ I said.

She had a hurt look in her eyes and I was sorry I’d spoke. ‘I don’t mind,’ I said, ‘except I don’t like things to be sprung on me, if you see what I mean. I might not be in the mood. Love’s like dancing, Gilda, always take your move from the man, but be quick to follow.’

‘Do you love me, Alfie?’ she said.

‘What have I told you about asking questions like that at awkward times?’ I said. ‘You know. I’ll always tell you when I feel like it.’ I was sorry I’d spoke to her like that so I gave her a kiss. ‘Here, you wouldn’t fancy marrying old Humphrey would you?’ I said.

‘Alfie!’ she said.