Free A Start in Life by Alan Sillitoe Page A

tea, looked me straight in the eye: ‘It’s all you’re going to get. It’s more than you deserve, twenty per cent, in any case, but I’ll stick to our agreement. A pity you lost your job over it, though. What’s a bright young lad like you going to do now?’
    â€˜I’m going to London.’
    â€˜That’s even brighter of you. This town would soon be too hot to hold you, I suppose.’
    â€˜I haven’t done anything wrong.’
    â€˜Nobody said you had. But you’ll like London, if I know you. You have the face to like it – though God knows, you must be careful.’ He waffled on like this for another half-hour, while I sat at my ease and listened to him tell about museums and famous places he thought I should see down there.
    When I left he shook my hand, held it and squeezed it, and his fingers were ice-cold so that I felt sorry for him, though I didn’t know why. After all, he had no troubles any more, having got rid of his wife and kids, and being about to sell his house for a good fat price. He’d have nothing then, and he’d be free. Maybe this was why I had that faint shred of sorrow for him.
    I got back in time to meet Claudine by the cinema. She was glad to see me, smiled as I took her hand and kissed it like an Italian count. ‘You’re in a good mood,’ she said, ‘have you got a raise, or been promoted?’
    â€˜Better than that. I’ve got the sack. I feel wonderful.’
    She stopped so suddenly in the middle of the pavement that a couple of postmen going at a good pace behind bumped into us and almost knocked me flying. It was as if I’d buried the blunt end of a claw-hammer in her back: ‘What for?’
    â€˜A good reason. A bloody good reason.’
    Her stony anger flashed itself full into me. ‘But why?’
    I had to tell her something, or just walk away, and I couldn’t do that. The real reason I’d got the push now seemed petty and stupid, and my pride buckled under it: ‘I was in the office this morning’ – persuading her to walk along so that it would be easier to talk – ‘when Weekley asked me to type a sheet of information about a house. Then I had to cyclostyle it, but the machine was no good and it left off the bottom part. When he saw it he called me an idle bastard, and I said that if there was an idle bastard in this office then he was that idle bastard, the idle bastard. At which he calls me a thieving bastard, an illiterate no-good bastard from Radford, so I punch him one, and knock his glasses flying. Everybody in the office had to hold me down, otherwise I’d have pummelled him into putty. He sent somebody for a copper, but they couldn’t find one near, so Weekley then said I wasn’t worth taking to court because I’d go there soon enough on my own, being already a criminal who could only go from bad to worse. All he wanted was to see the back of me, which he did, because I got out as fast as I could. I’ll never go near the place again. I hate it.’
    I piled it on so high it nearly toppled over. ‘Oh,’ she cried. ‘Oh, how awful.’ We walked in silence while the full blood of it sank into her, and me, getting more horrible all the time. ‘What have you been doing all day?’ she asked.
    â€˜Sitting in coffee bars,’ I said gruffly. ‘What else could I do after that little set-to?’
    â€˜You ought to have been looking for another job. You might have had one by now.’
    â€˜I hadn’t got the heart to.’
    â€˜Why do you do it? Oh, Michael, why did you do it?’ she cried with such anguish that a man passing by laughed at the thought of what I’d done to her, the dirty bastard. It sounded as if I’d just killed her mother, or something. ‘Well,’ she said, when I didn’t answer, ‘we can’t announce our engagement till you get another good job, and