Alfie Read online

  ‘You’re trying to poison my mind,’ he shouted.

  I very gently pushed him down again. ‘You’re poisoning your own,’ I said. ‘Just ask yourself, Harry, if what I’ve just told you ain’t the truth. Another thing, once you get used to it it ain’t too bad. Take one good gulp and swallow the bleeding lot.’ I could see he already had an idea that it was the truth, but there was no getting him to swallow it. I’d had to but somehow others won’t. ‘All I asked you, Harry, was to try to see life – what it is and what it does to you. Then no matter what happens to you, at least you get a giggle out of it. You don’t start bleedin’ moaning.’

  When I saw his white sweaty forehead and this unhappy lad’s eyes, I was sorry I’d spoke. It’s my one trouble – I will keep going on after everybody’s heard enough.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When the train shunted into Waterloo Station and I stood up and got my suitcase down, I felt I’d have given anything to get back to my little bed in the sanatorium. It had never struck me the din around you every minute of the day in London, and it seemed to me that the porters and everybody, and the blokes driving the little trucks, were all deliberately making as much as they could. It made me feel dizzy. On top of this there was all the filth and dirt around. I don’t mean just on the ground or on everything you touched, I mean in the air. I felt I didn’t want to breathe. When I used to spit out in the country it was lovely and clean, but I remember that first spit I made when I was walking out of the station, it was as black as could be. Well, getting on that way.

  I’d always been looking forward to the day when I’d leave the sanatorium, but same as everything else you look forward to, it turned out different. For one thing I’d made myself quite useful round the place, not only in helping serving the morning tea and that, but in one or two other handy ways. There were one or two fair little ward maids and orderlies about the place. This little Gina hadn’t been very forthcoming at the start, but I had found it a nice little challenge. I quite enjoy working on a sulky bird providing the sulky streak hasn’t got too firm a hold. If it has the only thing to do is give ’em a kick up the backside and forget it. She was short and thick-set – I might as well put you into the picture proper – with thick fingers and a thick little body, and she smelt a bit of garlic or something from the sausages her Mum used to send her from the little farm up amongst the mountains. Here, don’t get the wrong impression about these foreign girls that they’re easy. Little Gina was one of the hardest nuts I ever had to crack. It needed constant patience and persistence. But once I set myself out to do a thing I don’t like giving up – I mean halfway. She was very homesick for her Mum and brothers and sisters and her little home so far away – and I played on that. I didn’t give her sympathy, or any of that flannel, that would have been a mistake. I made out that I was lonely too – twin-souls, see. Well, you’ve got to do something.

  In a way I think she helped me to get better. There’s only one way to get over this T.B., or most other complaints come to that: don’t take too much notice of the doc. Just listen to him to get the form, and then go your own way about getting better. It was always the patients who did everything they were told, who rested themselves, who didn’t exert themselves, who took all the medicines, who stayed behind in the sanatorium when the others had gone away.

  I felt so ribby the first few days back in London, that I had to tell myself that if I wasn’t careful I would soon find myself back in the sanatorium. It’s one thing wishing you were somewhere, and it’s another being there when you get there.

  Sharpey, this mate of mine, had found a little place for me next door to where he was living, with two little rooms and a kitchen and bits of furniture. Now for a start I had no interest in anything. It was all I could do to go and get myself to sign on and draw the National Assistance. It’s very handy is that, and once you’ve started getting something for nothing you’ll find it’s not easy to break off the habit. Now whilst I was in the midst of all this gloom I suddenly said to myself: Alfie, you’ve got to take more interest in yourself; you’ve got to get up early tomorrow morning and go out and tackle life. Now same as I say, once I set my mind on something I’m not easily put off.

  What I decided would now be my main concern in life – more so than money, birds, suits, a car, or anything else – would be my good health. After all, you can’t enjoy any of the others to the full unless you’ve got your good health. Now the only way to go about it, I found out, is to have a routine.

  For a start it’s no use having a routine if you’re going to let anybody get in the way of it. You must always put yourself and your own interests first if you want to get anywhere in this life. Now that might sound selfish to some people, but in fact it’s one of the basic rules of life. If you’re going to let anybody put you off what you aim to do you’ll end up a failure. You’ll find people are never happier than when they can stop you from doing what you’ve set your mind on. On top of that, if they can only get you to join in what they’re doing – which is usually wasting time, talking, boozing, complaining – you’ll make their day for them. Now about people putting you off your stroke. You mustn’t even let yourself put you off, if you see what I mean. After all, we are each one of us divided in two – one part of you wants to forge ahead, and another part of you wants to keep you back. Now back to the drill.

  First thing in the morning when I got out of bed I’d get this hard friction towel, soak it under the cold tap, squeeze it out, and start rubbing myself down with it. That’s for a good circulation, see, most important. It feels ice-cold for a start, but you soon warm up with this rubbing. In particular, you’ve got to give your parts a good dowsing, and sponging over with cold water. They thrive on it – tighten up beautiful they do. It contracts the blood vessels see.

  Here, I mustn’t forget, I’d always have the window open wide, top and bottom. You might get the odd cold – OK, what about it? You’ll get that in any case. Now after that I’d set about doing my Royal Canadian Mounted Police exercises. They’re quite good, they are. Bending and stretching, down on your somach and whatnot. They take eleven minutes by right, but I found nine suited me better. Then I always finish off with a good two minutes deep breathing exercises.

  Now the trouble with most people is that they don’t know how to breathe. They imagine the art of breathing is filling your lungs; it’s not – it’s knowing how to empty them. If you empty your lungs out properly, right out, so there’s not a spoonful of air left inside, your stomach goes down dead flat, and you can lift the top end of your body clean up, and you get this marvellous feeling of being about seven feet tall. And when you breathe in, of course you’ve got to fill that bottom part not the top part. That’ll fill itself. Mind you, if you’ve got a fat belly, every time you breathe correctly means your lungs have got to shove that out or lift it up. Most fat people find it’s not worth the trouble.

  Now the worse you feel when you wake up the more you need this routine. Say your head feels very hot, you start off the day by putting it under the cold water tap. Say your limbs feel dead weak, you leave more water in the towel. Here’s a handy tip – soak the towel in a basin of salted water overnight: it feels after like having had a swim in the sea. You must never give yourself time to think, turn to your routine like a blind man turns to his stick.

  Now, soon as I’ve finished I’ve got the kettle on the go and I have a glass of hot water, always with some lemon juice squeezed in, and a bit of honey. That gives the old stomach a good rinsing out. Then I have a little light breakfast, say toast and tea, or it might be toast and coffee, because I find coffee goes better with this lemon flavour in the mouth. Just as it goes better than tea does with marmalade.

  Now you get a wonderful feeling when you go out in the morning air after that little lot. You see people slouching about the streets, going off to work with fags in their mouths, coughing and spluttering; you even get these old chars doing the outside of doctors’ houses always with a burn between
their lips, and you begin to wonder what the world’s coming to. I always imagine how they must look with their clothes off. As for their insides they must be unthinkable. Of course, I cut out smoking completely once I’d got out – and after a couple of weeks I couldn’t think how I’d wasted all that money over the years on fags. The money I would have had if only I’d saved it. I’ve learnt how to walk properly, see, keeping my stomach in and my shoulders straight, but relaxed, so that after a bit you find it a real pleasure. Best thing ever happened to me was that breakdown in my health.

  On top of this I found out by accident that one of the most beneficial things I’d ever known was eating the hearts of raw cabbages. It tastes lovely does the little tight white heart of a fresh cabbage. All you do is chew away at it. They only cost a tanner a time. I’d often make a meal out of that and a bit of cheese. I stuck to beer because I think that plenty of fluid keeps your kidneys and waterworks in good shape.

  Now same as I say, all this health routine isn’t a blind bit of use unless it’s backed up by putting yourself first. You’d be surprised how soon everybody gets used to it. Nobody expects more from you than you give them the impression you’ll deliver. So if you’re doing something with some others, playing cards or snooker, and you suddenly feel it’s not doing you any good, and you feel like a change or a breath of fresh air, just walk out. Always do what suits you best. Never consider others – let them consider themselves.

  Now some people seem to think the old nukky knocks you out, but that’s not my experience. It’s only blokes who think it’s doing them harm it harms. It’s my opinion it keeps you young. What knocks you out is getting no proper sleep, and having the windows shut tight, the room full of horrible fag smoke, and a bird breathing its used breath into you all night long. You take a look at some of these old queers, going on about seventy, who are full of interest about other men, and they don’t look a day more than fifty. But you see the average married man of seventy, who’s given up that side of his life, and he looks about eighty-five. They’ve got an interest, see, these bent old boys, and same as I always say, an interest not only keeps you going, but it keeps you young. Those old boys will always carry on right until the day they carry them off.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Now I’d decided about that time to set about getting a bit of money to one side, to go with my good health. To sort of back it up. I wasn’t going to get over-ambitious or nothing like that, just a few hundred nicker at one side. Know what, I found it dead easy after the start. What you do to make money is to buy and sell; all you need is a bit of capital, and it’s handy to have some luck. I found that if I’d had a car a week and somebody made an offer, I’d flog it for twenty or twenty-five quid profit. I bought watches and all sorts of things. If anybody had something to sell they’d nearly always turn to me and say: ‘Alfie, how much will you give me for this?’ The marvellous thing is the difference between the value in something you want to buy and something you want to sell. If a working bloke’s hard up he suddenly gets the notion that money’s very scarce and he’ll sell cheap, whereas if he’s got a bit of money he never gets the notion that there’s plenty knocking about and he’ll buy dear. I never dealt in real hot stuff, though I’ll admit some of it was warm. It’s surprising how it mounts up if you’re not paying income tax on it. I’d still do two or three days a week driving, just to keep my hand in and fill the time in. You’ve got to move around to know what’s going.

  Now to scrape up the money at the start, I was determined to do anything – provided, of course, it didn’t interfere with my health. I didn’t bother much about pleasure because I felt if you keep going, that’ll work its way in.

  For a start I did a little bit of black work as they call it – weddings and funerals, see, for one bloke I know who owned three cars. I’d get three nicker for the Saturday afternoon, all free of income tax of course, and a bit of dropsy if I was lucky. My mate Sharpey had always knocked out an easy living without working, and I went out on a few jobs with him. I did a turn on the smudge in the Haymarket and at Tower Hill. I even worked Oxford Street with him for a day or two, flogging kids’ toys from a tray. You could make ninepence or a shilling a time selling these toy spiders. You demonstrate with one on the pavement and you keep jerking this thing in your hand and the spider runs about. Of course, what you need for all those jobs is what they call a worker. You’ve got this special one, but the one the kid takes home ain’t going to be a bit like that. Same with balloons. You can get a worker you can blow up about five feet in diameter. Now, when a kid sees this he pesters his Mum to buy one. Of course, when he gets back to Acton or Surbiton, or wherever it is, and he tries to blow that balloon up he bought, he’d better look out when it gets more than eleven inches because it’ll pop off.

  I’d quite a few of those jobs, but it’s not really my line of work. Mind you, you can sometimes have a very good day. I remember going out to the races with Sharpey, and it seems there’s a bent copper on the gate at one of the enclosures. Now admittance tickets are a couple of quid each, but Sharpey and his mates have straightened this copper so that every time they come out of the enclosure on the quiet they pass him a fiver. Of course, he keeps rabbiting that he wants more – he’s got very big eyes this copper, and he can see they’re making a lot and he wants a bit more of the gravy. Now, I’m outside and I’m flogging these pass-out tickets for a quid or ten bob a time, and they’re going like hot cakes. There was another copper on the gate who wasn’t bent, and he can’t make out where all the mob was coming from with the passout tickets. Anyway, long before the big race was off you can’t turn round inside that enclosure. The officials must have been baffled because there were about three or four of Sharpey’s customers to one of the legals. We made a nice tenner a piece that day. Leastways I did – but Sharpey must have made a lot more.

  It’s quite a skilled little job being a good ticket tout, as they call them. You’ve got to look for what they call a Face. Nobody can tell you what it is that is different about this face from any other of the dozens of faces that are milling past you as you try to sell your tickets. But Sharpey was an expert in spotting one. The nearest I can describe it is a bloke who is going about without his defences up. That’s the man to stop. What put me off was one time when I had three tickets for the England-Scotland match at Wembley, and I was fool enough to pull them out in front of some of these Scotties. They took the lot and were away before there was anything I could do. It sharpens your wits, if they need sharpening, but somehow I was glad to get back to doing a bit of driving. I feel better if I’m earning an honest penny.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Now to get back to my little life. I’m doing very nicely on all this buying and selling caper, but same as I say, I like picking up any little job in between. Now on this occasion I’m doing this two-three days on private hire – no tax – with an old Daimler, and I’ve got this little job driving two Japanese about. Lovely tippers are Japanese, they used to slip me a couple of quid at the end of every day. The worst tippers are Germans. I find Americans dead mean, too, except for the odd one, and he makes up for the rest. By the way, I was beginning to feel real good now. I’d both my lungs working full blast, and I wasn’t knocking myself out too much one way or another. I mean except for occasionally.

  This day I’ve took these two geezers out Hertfordshire way, where they’d fixed up to have a round at golf with two English blokes they’re buying machines off, or selling machines to – I never quite made out – and they simply couldn’t get the balls in the holes. I mean the Japanese pair. l’ve never seen anything like it. Anyway one of these blokes fixes up that he’ll take my two back to town in his Jag so that I’m left to freewheel back just as I like.

  So along the drag I stop and call in at this transport caff called Flo’s. I used to look in there quite a bit in the old days. It’s a quiet time, about eight o’clock, just going dark, and there’s hardly anybody in. Now I’m chatting this Flo up, and she’s s
tanding behind the counter making bacon and egg sandwiches and handing out tea, when in walks this driver Lofty with a mystery in tow. I spots it at once and it takes my fancy. One of these quiet-faced birds who don’t say much but you feel there’s a lot going on underneath. Lofty is carrying the suitcase, which he puts down beside it at a quiet little table. Then he comes up to the counter.

  ‘Hi, Lofty,’ I said.

  ‘Egg an’ chips, twice, Flo, doubles, and put a couple of sausages on if you’ve got any,’ he said to Flo. ‘How’re you going on?’ he said to me.

  ‘Hearty but poor,’ I said. It’s a funny thing, but if I’m talking to anybody, I find I begin to talk their way. If I meet a Welshman I go all sing-song.

  ‘Right, Lofty,’ says Flo. ‘Bread and butter?’

  ‘Two lots, please. I’ll take the two teas now, one large, one small.’

  ‘Who’s the young lady, Lofty?’ said Flo.

  ‘Her name’s Annie,’ said Lofty, ‘she’s from the North.’ He turned round and looked at the table and she gave him a shy smile back. I could see she wasn’t one of the road girls. Then a bloke called Lacey comes in and takes a good look at this little Annie and comes up to the counter.

  ‘Who’s the mystery?’ he says. ‘I ain’t seen it around before.’

  ‘She’s no mystery,’ says Lofty.

  ‘Is it yours, Lofty?’ says Lacey. ‘Where d’you lap it up?’

  ‘I didn’t lap it up,’ says Lofty. ‘I gave the young lady a lift from Bury. Anything more you’d like to know?’

  The way Lofty gives Lacey a look shuts Lacey up for the time being. Then Flo says, ‘She’s got a real sad look about her. She ain’t in trouble is she, Lofty?’