Life Goes On by Alan Sillitoe Page A

I don’t like about you,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry to say there are some things I positively abhor, if you’ll forgive my strong language, is that you are so simple, so, in other words, fucking crude. It’s not even as if you’re trying to hide something. There’s virtue in concealment, when it’s necessary, and even when it’s not, providing you know what you’re doing. But to show yourself as simple when you really are simple is inexcusable. The first sign of leaving it behind would be for you to know that you are simple and, being ashamed of it, learn how to keep your soupbox shut.’ He leaned forward and held my hand. ‘Do me a favour and make a beginning, there’s a good lad. Then we might not only get somewhere, but reach wherever it is we’re going in one piece. Are you getting my drift?’
    I now knew beyond doubt that the story he had spun was as false and fantastic as he was. Behind his deviousness there was just a great blank sea – but one in which I might well sink without trace. He was working for someone, either Moggerhanger or the Green Toe Gang or both, and he had been asked to recruit me for some project that needed the skill, expertise (or perhaps just plain simplicity), that I was supposed to have. I didn’t like it at all, if only because the pay wouldn’t be good enough. Yet I had passed the test of loyalty and, in my determination to prove that I was nowhere as simple as I looked, I used the excuse of curiosity rather than loyalty to stay on and find out what it was all about. ‘You’re just a funny old windbag. Just tell me why you really got me out of my railway station.’
    If I didn’t like him it was only because he couldn’t be straight with me, not through any moral fault or basic unfriendliness either on his part or on mine. On the other hand I did like him. I liked him very much. His thin jaws had flesh on them compared to a few years ago, but you could still see where the lines had been. The mark of hard times that had raddled his face for the first twenty-five years was sufficiently padded to give it a look of nonchalant ruthlessness, and that was what I didn’t like.
    â€˜You’re a bit of a chump, Michael.’ Judging by his smile, if the room had been above ground, and had a window or two, the sun would have shone on his face. ‘Untrustworthiness never got anybody anywhere.’
    â€˜Let’s call it caution,’ I said. Never trust anybody, was what I had believed all my life, though for reasons I could never understand it hadn’t stopped me trusting more people than was good for me.
    â€˜That’s different. If I thought you weren’t cautious I wouldn’t be talking to you, would I? Now me, I’m cautious. But I’m also careful. I think on two levels. All the time I’ve been talking to you I’ve been thinking. Do you know anybody else who can think and talk at the same time? About different things, I mean?’
    â€˜Only an old school pal called Alfie Bottesford, and he went mad.’
    He looked as if he’d like to kill me. If we’d been on a desert road fifty miles from anywhere, and he’d had a gun but I hadn’t, he might have considered it. I told him.
    â€˜Too fucking right.’ He patted my hand amiably. ‘But seriously, Michael, let’s make a plan of campaign.’ After five minutes’ silence he asked ruefully: ‘Where shall I hide? That’s all I want to know.’
    I told him, quick as a flash of lightning at a garden party. My best thoughts always came without thought. ‘We’ll get a taxi to my father’s flat in Knightsbridge. I can’t think of a better place for you to hole up in for a while.’
    â€˜Not so loud. Even walls have ears.’
    â€˜Not this one. It’s crawling with bugs.’
    He snatched his hand away, as one bit the end of his finger.