‘Or do the other thing.’
‘You’re mostly silent then.’
‘My mouth is otherwise occupied,’ I said, feeling slightly disturbed by her new mood of seriousness.
‘I don’t believe anything,’ she said, ‘when it comes to talk. I’ve been let down so often, except by my own father, and he isn’t a man who talks very much, not to me, anyway. I only believe things when they’ve happened, and then I know whether I’ve been let down or not. I’m so mixed up, Michael, I don’t know what to say.’
I felt sorry for her, and in some strange way for myself as well. Just after making love was a bad time to strip oneself down to the fibres like this, though God knows there didn’t seem any other time when it might be possible to do it properly. She was right, I suppose, in choosing to do it now, though I might have been the one to start it if she hadn’t. I’d noticed before that the worst quarrels, or the most intense talk, only come after a wonderful bout of love.
‘I’ve had more of a sheltered life than you imagine,’ she said. ‘The people I should have been staying with in Geneva have already phoned my father to say I haven’t been seen these last two nights. In any case he’ll be waiting for me at the airport when we land, so maybe you’d better not come out with me, especially since he knows you.’
I was only too willing to accept her advice, not wanting to tangle with Moggerhanger a second time. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I had been strenuously advised by William Hay not to get into trouble during my run of smuggling trips. It was a pity though that I couldn’t go through the customs with Polly on my arm, which had been the reason for my arranging to travel back with her. I gave my telephone number, and took hers, neither of us knowing when we’d be able to contact each other again, never mind see each other. The light went on to douse fags and fasten seat belts, and we suddenly broke through the clouds to see Battersea Power Station below, without having had any time at all even to get properly stuck in to the unresolved questions that were starting in earnest to eat us away.
I went down the steps behind Polly, feeling like one of the walking wounded as I let her get far in front. But I ran and caught her up, and we kissed wildly before turning into the arrival lounge.
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I held back from saying it, but I do.’ She went to the ladies, and I walked up and down. Half in fun I glanced at the messages rack, and saw an envelope with my name on it. I took it down and tore it open, thinking it was for someone of the same name but curious to see what it said. ‘Number nine is good today. Hope you had a successful trip to Leningrad.’ So I let Polly get her luggage first, and she went through the customs with only a brief question from them and a half-smile. And I went through Gate Nine as instructed, though I saw no reason to do so because I only said I had nothing to declare, which was the truth for once, and then I was through and out of the place in time to see Moggerhanger’s head going down the steps to the floor below.
I hung around a while, then went below and got the bus back to town.
William was waiting at the flat, himself just back from a quick trip to the Lebanon. He sat on the living-room couch in his dressing-gown, and Hazel came in with a tray of coffee. She was a whore from Soho, with a hard face and voluptuous body, who visited him now and again, and he gave her the wink to clear out while we were talking. His cigarette smoked from a ridiculously long holder, and he sat back to hear my story, which I supposed he might deliver later to the Jack Leningrad Organization. Either that, or I had too big an idea of their thoroughness, and if this was the case then I must already be getting too outsized for such an outfit.
‘You’ve got something else for next week,’ he said when I’d finished. As he swallowed his coffee the skinbone and ligaments of his throat shook and convulsed, as if he’d been hit there with an invisible rubber sledgehammer while it was on its way through. ‘They’ll tell you where to in the morning.’ He poured another cup, while Hazel sang to herself in the bedroom.
‘What are you going to do with the money you earn?’ I asked.
‘Haven’t thought about it yet, my old lad. Mother’s coming down from Worksop next week to spend a couple of days. I’m fixing her up in a hotel. I’ll shunt her round the usual tea-caddy places, like Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace.’
‘Sounds lovely. In fact it’s touching.’
‘Don’t get bloody sarky, Michael. I’m only human, after all.’
‘That’s the trouble with both of us, I suppose.’
‘What’s splitting your tripes, though? I’ve seen plenty of blokes come back, and they’re usually cock-a-hoop with having done it in safety, but you’re a bit down in the sludge about it.’
‘I’m different. It wears me out, and I can’t help but show it.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’re the genuine bloody article, and that’s a fact. It’s better you’re like that, right in touch with yourself, than some of the over-confident young hotheads we could get our hands on. Just the sort we need, you are. When you decide to put on an act your soul goes into it so that nobody would ever twig. Get some snooze, then we might go out for a quiet feed somewhere. I’ll pack Hazel off. She won’t mind. Won’t bloody-well have to.’
‘Thinking of getting married?’ I asked.
‘Not in this game. Later, maybe.’ Neither of us had our feet on the ground, but we belonged to the world, for all that. But as I lay down in the spare room and thought about Polly, I got frightened, as if only now the full trembles at passing the customs loaded with gold had come upon me. The sky seemed black and I shook in every limb. The reality of my trip seemed like a dream, and like a dream it made me more afraid than reality. I felt a coward, and thought I might not do it any more. Yet when I woke up I knew I would, because being with an aim, an ambition, or even a plan, robbed me of that final edge of courage that helped me to stand by a negative decision. All this is hindsight perhaps, but hindsight is still only part of what existed at the actual time. My memory is clear enough for me to know this. My only positive act, if it can be so called, and I believe it can, was to let myself drift with events, out of curiosity to see where it would take me, and out of lethargy because I didn’t have the wit or strength to do anything else. But I told myself to fight off the black and woolly dog, not to worry, to hold on, to calm myself and let life take its course since I wasn’t able to steer the crazy airship of it, comforting myself with the thought that maybe I’d be more and more able to as I got older. But this last was only half hinted at, a grain of dust in the middle of the moon that I might never be able to get out to the light of day. I wondered what was in that grain, whether I would ever catch it between my two thumbnails like a flea and split it from end to end so that blood ran out.
William was waking me up but my head felt as thin as a post. He pushed a cup of tea towards my face and the smell of it went into me like jollop. ‘Get this,’ he said, a wide grin behind the steam. ‘It’ll help you to stand on your feet instead of your arse. You can’t stew in your own self all night.’
‘Why not?’
‘You might well ask, but you can’t. Here’s your wage packet from the gaffer. There’s thirty tenners in it. The easiest putty you’ll ever earn.’
I took the long envelope and put it under my pillow. ‘It wasn’t that easy.’
He sat in the armchair and watched me with his gimlet grey eyes, that were full of expression when they were trying to read me, as they were now. ‘What’s biting you, then?’
‘The rats. They’ve been at me since last Saturday afternoon. Ever been in love, Bill?’
His left leg jerked back, as if the reflexes under the knee had been hit. ‘It wasn’t the air hostess, was it? If it was, forget it. Under their white aprons they’re just like anybody else.’