Alfie Read online

  ‘You can’t blame the newspapers,’ said Lofty. ‘The working man sees all these others on the fiddle and he thinks what a mug he would be to knock himself out for the country.’

  ‘Somebody’s got to knock themselves out,’ said Sharpey. ‘You don’t want the country going to the dogs. What do you say, Alfie?’

  ‘There’s only one answer to all today’s trouble,’ I said, ‘and you know it as well as I do. It’s human bloody nature. If you got a bloke with five kids and you scared the life out of him, like they did in the old days, that he don’t get a bite for them kids or himself and his missis unless he works all the hours God sends – you’ll get him working.’

  ‘My dad used to work fourteen hours a day for three quid a week,’ said Lofty.

  ‘You don’t notice you’re working if you’re dead frightened of something,’ said Perce.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Sharpey. You can say that again, I thought.

  ‘Get the sods in debt,’ said Perce, ‘then they’ve got to keep working to get out of it.’

  ‘They’re already doing that,’ said Lofty. ‘What you say, Alfie?’

  ‘If you can’t scare ’em,’ I said, ‘and you can’t kid ’em – you need some bleedin’ big incentives to keep them working.’ Anyway, I thought I wouldn’t hang about here much longer, listening to that kind of chat, and as it’s near closing-time I decide to make a crafty getaway just in case any of them want a lift, so I drink my pint and go off and get into my car and drive off to Gilda’s.

  Now I’ve known this little Gilda for a twelve-month or more, and while she ain’t exactly stupid, she is a bit on the simple side. What I mean by stupid is when a dead dim bird tries to argue you out that its stupidity is sense. Gilda don’t do that. She lets you get on with what you have to say and listens. But she’d never make a number one because she’s not the sort of bird you could take out and show off. In fact she’s a bit backward at coming forward. She’s not a good-looker, neither, not by a long chalk, although she ain’t that bad, and she ain’t an exciting dresser, but she’s a cracking little standby. She’s clean and dainty, gives herself no airs or graces, and ain’t too bad on the old frying-pan stakes. All she seems to want from life is to be in love with a bloke and to think that he’s a bit in love with her, if you see what I mean. And she ain’t a liberty-taker. Most birds go mad to get hold of a regular bloke and they’ve no sooner got hold of him than the first thing they think about is how to go about changing him. Now I told this Gilda from the start that I wasn’t the marrying sort and she didn’t mind. The trouble I’ve had explaining to some birds that whilst I’m willing to say I love them, I definitely don’t want to marry them. Gilda ain’t like that. She never tried to put the block on me, or stamp out my ego. She’s always let me do what I want, have what I want and be as I am. Of course that might be another way a woman has of putting the block on a bloke. She’s a very contented little gal. She’s a standby and she knows it, and any bird that knows its place in this life can be quite content.

  She lives in a little street off the New Kent Road, see, and just as I’m parking my car, I spot one bloke called Humphrey coming out of the house. He’s about thirty-eight this geezer, but looks real old on account he takes life so serious, and he’s wearing his bus inspector’s uniform, which makes him look even older and more serious. I knew he must have been visiting Gilda, because we once met him together and she’s told me about him, how he was keen on her before she met me.

  It seems he’s been married once, see, got a lovely little wife and child and his own little home and everything, when one day, the wife and kid get killed in front of his eyes, or next door to it, by a cement trailer that broke loose and crashed outside a supermarket. He’s inside getting two tins of salmon for the price of one and when he comes out he’s a childless widower. I hate hearing of people things like that have happened to – it makes you feel guilty because nothing like that has ever happened to you. I wiped myself over again before going in, then I let myself in with the latchkey she’d given me and crept quietly up the stairs to her room. She was waiting for me, eager and all smiles.

  ‘I thought I saw that geezer Humphrey just going off,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, he just left,’ she said. She always tells you the truth straight out and it’s took me a long time to get used to somebody like that. I can’t help feeling there’s a trick in it somewhere.

  ‘You ain’t having it off with him, are you?’

  ‘Nothing like that, Alfie,’ she said. ‘He brought me some chocolates.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Nothing. He said he called round because he felt lonely. I asked him to stay for a cup of tea, but when I told him I was expecting you he wouldn’t wait. I felt sorry for him.’

  ‘Why feel sorry for him?’ I began helping myself to his chocolates – Black Magic, just what he would buy, I thought. ‘What else did he tell you?’

  ‘He told me he loved me,’ she said.

  ‘The soppy nit,’ I said. It’s the last thing you should ever tell a bird – I mean if it’s true. String ’em along with it if it ain’t.

  ‘He said he gets full of loneliness and longing, seems to fill his mouth and throat and he can’t taste the food he eats.’

  ‘I’ve a good mind to report him to London Transport,’ I said. ‘He’s no right to go round on the buses in a condition like that.’

  She looked at me. ‘Do you love me, Alfie?’

  ‘You shouldn’t ask me, you know. You put me in an awkward spot. I’ll always tell you if I feel like it.’ She looked a bit unhappy so I gave her a kiss. ‘Coo, you don’t half pong,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Phul-nana,’ she said. ‘The scent of Araby. Don’t you like it, Alfie?’

  ‘You know I like you to smell as you are. I hate a scent covering up a smell. It’s a mistake all you women make – you will not realise that a normal man prefers a smell to a scent.’

  ‘They’re funny things, are men,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and make some tea.’ She had a funny way of smiling, and you could never be sure if she was taking the mickey.

  I got myself comfortable on the chair and put my feet up on the bed and suddenly felt the hot water bottle in for us. She’s getting a bit previous, I thought. I knew I was always welcome, but I think it was the first time she’d put the hot water bottle in for me. Course the evenings were getting a bit chilly. A thought crossed my mind and I felt in my pocket and took out my little diary and opened it. There was a little ring round the 19th with a G on top of it. I began to feel a bit alarmed and I called out to her. ‘Hi, Gilda, ain’t today the 21st?’

  She walked in out of the kitchen with some sandwiches on a tray. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘why?’

  ‘Shouldn’t our little friend have arrived on the 19th?’ I said.

  ‘Our who?’

  ‘You know, Fred,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry, Alfie,’ she said, ‘he’ll turn up. He always has done.’

  ‘But he’s usually so punctual,’ I said. He was too, was little Fred, you could almost set your watch by him. ‘I don’t like it when he’s overdue.’ I looked at her and to my surprise her little face looked quite cracking for a minute, nice smooth skin, with bits of roses on her cheeks and her eyes kind of nice and happy-looking. ‘Know what, gal,’ I said to her, ‘there’s times when you don’t look too bad.’

  I always feel a bit of flattery is never wasted on a woman. I know it’s the oldest thing on earth and they know it too but you’d be surprised how few men will tell a woman she looks nice. Either they don’t see it or they’re too miserable to say it if they do. She came over and sat on my knee. I put my arm round her and I must say she had a lovely rounded-out shape to her. ‘How are things at the caff, gal?’ I said.

  ‘Do you know, Alfie,’ she said, ‘I took over fifty-two pounds on the till today. Isn’t it wonderful?’

  ‘What’s wonderful about it?’ I said. ‘It ain’t as if it were your money.�
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  She’s got this job at a little cafe run by an Italian and his wife, where she works in the kitchen and on the till when they’re serving dinners.

  ‘No, I know it’s not my money,’ she said, ‘but I like to feel they’re doing well. Besides it keeps me busy, and the time passes quicker.’

  ‘Ain’t it time you started that fiddle I told you about,’ I said; ‘you know, playing the piano on the till?’ I just can’t understand the mentality of people who are in charge of money and don’t work a take for themselves. I don’t mean thieving or anything like that, just the odd few bob every day. It’s surprising how it mounts up. And how it makes you feel even with life.

  ‘I couldn’t do that, Alfie,’ she said.

  ‘It must be the only till in London that ain’t bent,’ I said. A bird I know is in a cinema paybox over the West and she works what they call the pause. Say a bloke has fifteen bob change to come – you give him his ticket and the five bob and then pause. If he’s not certain or he’s in a hurry, he’ll think that’s his lot, and he’ll be away. She puts the ten-bob note on one side in case he comes back. She reckons it’s good for two or three notes a day.

  ‘Luigi and his wife treat me like one of the family,’ she said.

  ‘That’s more reason to do them,’ I said. ‘You’ve got their confidence, see, they’re not watching you.’

  ‘But I couldn’t look them in the face, Alfie, if I was swindling them like that.’

  ‘Who’s talking about swindling?’ I said. ‘A fiddle – a fiddle hurts nobody. Put it all down to the larking.’

  ‘But they’ve been so good to me, Alfie.’

  ‘Then you don’t have to do them out of nothing. You can work it all out of the customers. Tuppence here, threepence there, the odd tanner. They don’t notice it when they’ve had a feed and they buy a packet of fags.’

  ‘But they’re all ordinary people, drivers, building workers – they’re just like friends. They all make jokes with me.’

  ‘But they’re just the ones to do, I tell you. They trust you and they don’t take much notice. How do you think these millionaires make their money? They make it out of their friends.’

  ‘But I’m happy as I am, Alfie,’ she said.

  ‘You could still be happy with a few hundred pounds in the bank, instead of tuppence ha’penny. You’re in a rut, girl, and you’ve got to lift yourself out of it.’

  ‘But I feel happier, Alfie, if I’m honest.’

  ‘You’re idle, girl, that’s what you are, and you think you’re honest. You’re mentally idle. You don’t try to improve yourself. I hate talking to you like this – it makes me feel like a ponce, but somebody’s got to give you a good talking-to. Suppose I’d been like that, easy going – then I wouldn’t have needed no car, so’s every night I’d have been running for the last bleeding bus, instead of staying on here with you.’

  ‘But I’d still be as happy with you, Alfie, if you had no car.’

  ‘Look here, gal,’ I said, ‘if you say you’re happy once more I’ll begin to doubt it. Straight up, I will. This world is divided into two kinds of people – those who’ve got a car an’ those who ain’t. And they hate each other like poison. It’s a terrible thing what you’re saying, Gilda, that you’re content with being as you are. It’s people like you get the country upside-down.’

  ‘But money isn’t everything, Alfie.’

  You nit, I thought, you’re as dim as a box of a’soles. Of course money is everything – but people won’t admit it openly. I mean if you’ve got money you can have everything – beautiful hand-tailored suits, your own car, lap up as many birds as you want, and eat and drink what you fancy – what more can any man ask for.

  Course I didn’t tell her all that – all I said was, ‘It’s only people who ain’t got none talk like that.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed, Alfie, I owe nothing.’

  ‘But you should be ashamed, Gilda,’ I said, putting an arm around her. ‘What you gotta get in that little head of your’n, gal, is that nobody don’t ’elp you in this life – you gotta ’elp yourself!’

  CHAPTER THREE

  I was thinking as I lay there in bed in my T-shirt cotton vest beside Gilda sometime later that same night, about the first job I had when I left school, working as an errand boy at one of these sweat shops over the East End where they make boys’ suits. If I don’t drop off to sleep straightaway after it, I find I’m wakeful and I often go over little thoughts in my mind and memories and that sort of thing. I don’t like lying there in the raw with a bird – I seem to come over clammy and sticky. Now what I used to do on that job was to knock off one of these suits when nobody was looking, nip into the lavatory with it, then I’d slip my own off, put the suit on next to my skin, and then put my own back on top. I wore a nice big jacket specially for the job. Then I’d nip home as quick as I could on one of my errands and slip off the suit. Alice, my step-mum, used to flog it in the pub of a night. She used to get as much as twenty-five bob a time for those suits, and she’d give me a dollar out of it.

  Now I found that little fiddle gave me a real interest in the work, and it’s my firm belief everybody should take an interest in their work. I was always willing and cheerful, and popular with everybody around the place. I could afford to be, couldn’t I? Mind you, I wouldn’t have been so cheerful if I’d known what I know now. It makes a guv’nor suspicious. Never be cheerful on a job if you’re working a fiddle. Here, I had a nice little fiddle going a short time back, driving a lorry for one of these supermarket firms, and when we were loading up, I’d got this one special loader who would always slip me in an extra crate of canned salmon and put it down to the larking. I mean I’d flog it to one of the branch managers, see, and he’d pay me half what it was worth and I’d share the bunce with the loader. There’s a special way when you’re loading of slipping one in so that even when they check your load they can’t count it. If done properly it’s all an art.

  Now one day I was loading up and whistling away when I spots the guv’nor with his eye on me. ‘You sound cheerful, Elkins,’ he says. I tumbled at once I should never have whistled. So I says, ‘Yeh, some mornings I feel chirpy.’ So he says, ‘You can’t be feeling all that chirpy on what I’m paying you. You must be working a nice little fiddle.’ So I says, ‘That’s deformation of character, mate. I’ll have to see my union.’ And he says, ‘Don’t come it – ’ow do you think I got where I am? I’m satisfied,’ he says, ‘so long as you do your job well and don’t get too greedy, else you’ll kill the goose.’ I was quite glad of that little tip because we had been overdoing it.

  Now where was I with my little life as a boy – oh yes, knocking off these suits. This one day I gets one a bit on the large side. I go into the lavatory with it, strip down, put it on and put my other one over the top of it. I only just managed to get myself all fastened up. Now when I come out, there was the guv’nor standing there. A nice bloke he was – with a sad face that always made me feel sorry for him. ‘How are you liking this little job, Alfie?’ he said. ‘It ain’t bad, sir,’ I said, ‘to be quite frank, I like it. I mean, you’re kept on the go, but I don’t mind that. Matter of fact, I’m just dashing off this minute.’ Then he pats me on the shoulder and he says, ‘You seem to have grown a lot lately, Alfie, you’re getting quite a size.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I says, ‘that’s what my mum says.’ ‘Look at your chest and your shoulders, Alfie,’ he says, ‘I can hardly believe it,’ and at the same time he keeps tapping and feeling around my back, shoulders and chest. ‘Have you anything to tell me, Alfie?’ he says. ‘I’m in a hurry, sir,’ I says. ‘Alfie, you shouldn’t have done it,’ he says. ‘Now go in there and take it off again.’ ‘Take what off?’ I says. ‘Take this off,’ he says and he opens my shirt at the front. ‘Blimey,’ he says, ‘That’s out of my top range. Now go on in and take it off before I get annoyed.’

  Now one thing I’d learnt even at that age was that you must destroy the evidence, so I thought to myself, th
ere’s only one thing for it – down the hole it goes, and I’ll flush the chain. He was standing outside and he must have read my thoughts. ‘Don’t shove it down the hole, Alfie,’ he says, ‘you’ll only block the plumbing up. The lad before you did that. Just bring the suit out as it is.’ I expected him to send for the police or give me a good rucking, but all he did was to take me to his office and give me my week’s wages. ‘Sorry, Alfie,’ he says, ‘I don’t think you’re suitable for this job. Let me know if you want a reference.’ A nice bloke he was, but when I told my step-mum and my dad about what had happened, they said what a horrible thing it was for a chap to look under a lad’s shirt to find his suit. Funny thing, but once you get a taste for that lark, it’s surprising how it sticks with you.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I’m going to call on Gilda this night and I’ve stopped my car at the corner of the street and I’ve seen this Humphrey hanging around.

  ‘Oh, how go there,’ he said. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I was hoping I might see you,’ he said. He’d only been waiting for me.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘It’s about Gilda.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Would you like to come for a drink?’ he said.

  ‘I’m in a bit of a hurry,’ I said. I can’t bear to be with a bloke whose only to do with me is that we both know the same bird.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I wanted to ask you,’ he said, coming straight out with it at last. ‘Do you intend to marry her?’

  He can’t know she’s up the club, I thought. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. I’m sorry. I know that’s something between you and her. But I’ve always had a hope she might marry me one day.’

  Come to that, I thought, that might be a handy little way out of the whole business. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’ I said. ‘You never know your luck.’