Only When I Larf. Len Deighton
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there would be no police messages; certainly not today, not tomorrow either, nor Monday. Well, Monday maybe. Police messages. Imagine getting off this aeroplane and have a couple of smiling law men waiting to put the irons across you.
Charlie was a smiling law man. Charlie was the most vicious screw on the block. A big fat smiling type with a balding head and a gold tooth. It was like he realised that he looked like a nasty piece of work and finally let art follow nature. He caught me with the two ounces of snout right in my hand, grabbed me by the hair and swung me round in the exercise yard until my feet slid from under me; then he let go. Slam against the wall.
Peter the bigamist saved me from being kicked bloody. He had nerves of steel Peter did. He stood up to Charlie without a word and Charlie backed down.
Charlie was going to get me for that. I mean, could anyone doubt it. He’d backed down in front of a yard full of hard cases and that was a dangerous thing for a screw to do. So Charlie would put the boot into me. It was just a matter of time.
‘It’s just a matter of time sonny,’ Charlie said. He didn’t believe in discipline except by knocking people around.
‘He’ll get you,’ Peter the bigamist warned me. ‘And when he has a go at you, kick the shit out of him, it’s your only chance.’
‘Yeah O.K.’ I said, and I looked at Charlie who was a giant and wondered which bit of him I’d kick first when he started to have a go at me. It’s no good worrying, I always say. But I always worry.
The next time I shaved was Monday morning. We were in our London flat eating breakfast. It was a pretty little place. The windows were poky and my room was no bigger than a cupboard, but it was cosy and warm. The mews outside was cobbled and our neighbours were starlets and young stockbrokers, as well as chauffeurs who lived near their cars and washed them and polished them and could be heard banging garage doors at three o’clock in the morning. The flat was so small – a ‘mews cottage’ the agent’s list said – that it didn’t need much furniture to make it ‘fully furnished’. My bed was the kind you have to have if something goes wrong with your backbone, and the refrigerator would only hold three bottles of champagne and a tin of caviar. Silas said we would have to get another one if we wanted to keep milk and butter cool too. There was one thing that I liked; an electric toaster. I plugged it in near the table so that I could make toast without going into the kitchen. I bought lots of wrapped bread, and I posted them into that machine as fast as I could spread butter and jam on them. I like toast very much, and with this machine you could select it to be dark, light or medium. Dark, I liked best.
Silas was dressed up in a silk dressing gown and paisley scarf and Liz was in a fluffy sort of coat with an ostrich feather collar. Right, but I didn’t see any reason to come to the table like the first act of an English play, so I was taking a little toast and coffee and shaving at the same time.
Silas said, ‘You look like a survivor from a particularly harrowing sea disaster.’ I pulled my dressing gown tighter and folded the collar more neatly.
Silas said, ‘Why aren’t you up at dawn doing Royal Canadian Air Force exercises?’
‘I haven’t even got an aeroplane,’ I said.
‘Must you use that terrible machine at the breakfast table?’ I switched the razor off.
‘I’ve thought of a good thing to do with this,’ I said.
‘Have you?’ said Silas.
I said, ‘Shave a round piece from the top of your head like you are going bald, see?’
Silas grunted.
‘Start selling hair restorer, and you can prove your hair is really growing back. Because it would be, on account of you’ve shaved it. Got me? They’d come running for that one, I tell you.’
‘Pass me the butter,’ said Silas. He turned his newspaper inside out while I took some more coffee. ‘And don’t rest your elbows on the meal table.’
‘They’re not my elbows,’ I said, ‘they’re my knees,’ Liz giggled and so did I.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ said Silas.
Well, I hadn’t even noticed that I’d belched, but I know it’s one of those things that he’s very funny about. ‘It’s considered very polite to do that in China,’ I said.
‘Really,’ said Silas. ‘I’ll remember that when we enter that vast and ever growing area of operations.’
Liz said, ‘300,000 suckers born every minute.’
Silas gave his remember-they-are-only-young-people, type of smile and I called the cat. The cat went with the flat. Its name was Santa Claus. Or, I suppose that might have been claws, as a joke. I called the cat and offered it a bit of buttered toast, but it didn’t respond. I put a little apricot jam on it and called the cat again. It ran toward me but kept on going and jumped up onto Silas’s knee. Silas stroked it without even noticing it, and the cat stared up at him as Liz did sometimes. Some men are like that, without doing anything, cats and women just adore them. I finished shaving and went on reading my book.
‘What’s everyone doing this morning?’ said Silas. ‘After we leave the bank I mean.’
‘Are we going to the bank first?’ said Liz.
‘Of course we are,’ said Silas. ‘What do you want to do, leave all that money lying around under the bed? Certainly, that’s the first thing to do; get that stuff into a good strong vault.’
‘Are we going to buy a car?’ Liz said.
‘I’ve arranged all that,’ said Silas. He pushed the cat off his knee.
‘I want a car of my own,’ I said. ‘I’m fed up with having to ask you every time I want to go anywhere.’
‘Just as you wish,’ said Silas. ‘If you want to undertake all the trouble and expense, then do.’
‘I want a red car.’
‘Very well,’ said Silas putting down his newspaper. ‘Have any car you wish. I shall of course deduct expenses and set aside our “projects fund” for the next operation, but after that there will still remain a sizeable payment for each of you.’ I said, ‘Can I buy two cars? A Mini Cooper as well as a Rolls.’
‘No,’ said Silas. ‘I bought two cars when I was a young man.’
I was going to say something corny like ‘did they have cars then?’ but I didn’t want to spoil his good mood. Silas went on, ‘I had them both delivered simultaneously and they were outside the door shining like an RSM’s boots. The neighbours were discussing them, and my younger brother stood near them just to get a bit of the glory. I went out and looked at each of them, as though making sure they were what I ordered, and then I got into the front one and started it up. The motor caught first time, and I pumped the accelerator and made the devil of a din. I made sure the gear lever was fully in, because I didn’t want the gears to crash, and then I let in the clutch. Too quickly of course, I wasn’t a very skilled driver. But I had the gear in reverse and bang I went back into the other car and smashed both of them severely. I can remember the neighbours trying not to laugh. My God the humiliation. I never owned two cars again. Never, no matter how much money I made on an operation, I never bought two cars.’
‘A yellow car would be gorgeous,’ Liz said. ‘Yellow like mustard.’
‘It’s not a bad job this one,’ said Silas. ‘You’ll have enough for a mink or a diamond.’
‘I just want you,’ said Liz and she kissed Silas. He was embarrassed but he needn’t have been. He should have been proud.
‘We will have a really good time. A happy time I mean,’ Silas said. Perhaps he was thinking about smashing up those cars when he was a kid, because he gave one of his rare loud laughs. It was disconcerting when he did that, because it was awfully easy to get the feeling that the joke was on you.