The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Alan Sillitoe

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СКАЧАТЬ stunts on the box of tricks that mam used to call us the Telly Boys, we got so clever at it.

      My pal Mike got let off with probation because it was his first job – anyway the first they ever knew about – and because they said he would never have done it if it hadn’t been for me talking him into it. They said I was a menace to honest lads like Mike – hands in his pockets so that they looked stone empty, head bent forward as if looking for half-crowns to fill ’em with, a ripped jersey on and his hair falling into his eyes so that he could go up to women and ask them for a shilling because he was hungry – and that I was the brains behind the job, the guiding light when it came to making up anybody’s mind, but I swear to God I worn’t owt like that because really I ain’t got no more brains than a gnat after hiding the money in the place I did. And I – being cranky like I am – got sent to Borstal because to tell you the honest truth I’d been to Remand Homes before – though that’s another story and I suppose if I ever tell it it’ll be just as boring as this one is. I was glad though that Mike got away with it, and I only hope he always will, not like silly bastard me.

      So on this foggy night we tore ourselves away from the telly and slammed the front door behind us, setting off up our wide street like slow tugs on a river that’d broken their hooters, for we didn’t know where the housefronts began what with the perishing cold mist all around. I was snatched to death without an overcoat: mam had forgotten to buy me one in the scrummage of shopping, and by the time I thought to remind her of it the dough was all gone. So we whistled ‘The Teddy Boys Picnic’ to keep us warm, and I told myself that I’d get a coat soon if it was the last thing I did. Mike said he thought the same about himself, adding that he’d also get some brandnew glasses with gold rims, to wear instead of the wire frames they’d given him at the school clinic years ago. He didn’t twig it was foggy at first and cleaned his glasses every time I pulled him back from a lamppost or car, but when he saw the lights on Alfreton Road looking like octopus eyes he put them in his pocket and didn’t wear them again until we did the job. We hadn’t got two ha’pennies between us, and though we weren’t hungry we wished we’d got a bob or two when we passed the fish and chip shops because the delicious sniffs of salt and vinegar and frying fat made our mouths water. I don’t mind telling you we walked the town from one end to the other and if our eyes worn’t glued to the ground looking for lost wallets and watches they was swivelling around house windows and shop doors in case we saw something easy and worth nipping into.

      Neither of us said as much as this to each other, but I know for a fact that that was what we was thinking. What I don’t know – and as sure as I sit here I know I’ll never know – is which of us was the first bastard to latch his peepers on to that baker’s backyard. Oh yes, it’s all right me telling myself it was me, but the truth is that I’ve never known whether it was Mike or not, because I do know that I didn’t see the open window until he stabbed me in the ribs and pointed it out. ‘See it?’ he said.

      ‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘so let’s get cracking.’

      ‘But what about the wall though?’ he whispered, looking a bit closer.

      On your shoulders,’ I chipped in.

      His eyes were already up there: ‘Will you be able to reach?’ 11 was the only time he ever showed any life.

      ‘Leave it to me,’ I said, ever-ready. ‘I can reach anywhere from your ham-hock shoulders.’

      Mike was a nipper compared to me, but underneath the scruffy draught-board jersey he wore were muscles as hard as iron, and you wouldn’t think to see him walking down the street with glasses on and hands in pockets that he’d harm a fly, but I never liked to get on the wrong side of him in a fight because he’s the sort that don’t say a word for weeks on end – sits plugged in front of the telly, or reads a cowboy book, or just sleeps – when suddenly BIFF – half kills somebody for almost nothing at all, such as beating him in a race for the last Football Post on a Saturday night, pushing in before him at a bus stop, or bumping into him when he was day-dreaming about Dolly-on-the-Tub next door. I saw him set on a bloke once for no more than fixing him in a funny way with his eyes, and it turned out that the bloke was cock-eyed but nobody knew it because he’d just that day come to live in our street. At other times none of these things would matter a bit, and I suppose the only reason why I was pals with him was because I didn’t say much from one month’s end to another either.

      He puts his hands up in the air like he was being covered with a Gatling-Gun, and moved to the wall like he was going to be mowed down, and I climbed up him like he was a stile or step-ladder, and there he stood, the palms of his upshot maulers flat and turned out so’s I could step on ’em like they was the adjustable jack-spanner under a car, not a sound of a breath nor the shiver of a flinch coming from him. I lost no time in any case, took my coat from between my teeth, chucked it up to the glass-topped wall (where the glass worn’t too sharp because the jags had been worn down by years of accidental stones) and was sitting astraddle before I knew where I was. Then down the other side, with my legs rammed up into my throat when I hit the ground, the crack coming about as hard as when you fall after a high parachute drop, that one of my mates told me was like jumping off a twelve-foot wall, which this must have been. Then I picked up my bits and pieces and opened the gate for Mike, who was still grinning and full of life because the hardest part of the job was already done. ‘I came, I broke, I entered,’ like that cleverdick Borstal song.

      I didn’t think about anything at all, as usual, because I never do when I’m busy, when I’m draining pipes, looting sacks, yaling locks, lifting latches, forcing my bony hands and lanky legs into making something move, hardly feeling my lungs going in-whiff and out-whaff, not realizing whether my mouth is clamped tight or gaping, whether I’m hungry, itching from scabies, or whether my flies are open and flashing dirty words like muck and spit into the late-night final fog. And when I don’t know anything about all this then how can I honest-to-God say I think of anything at such times? When I’m wondering what’s the best way to get a window open or how to force a door, how can I be thinking or have anything on my mind? That’s what the four-eyed white-smocked bloke with the notebook couldn’t understand when he asked me questions for days and days after I got to Borstal; and I couldn’t explain it to him then like I’m writing it down now; and even if I’d been able to maybe he still wouldn’t have caught on because I don’t know whether I can understand it myself even at this moment, though I’m doing my best you can bet.

      So before I knew where I was I was inside the baker’s office watching Mike picking up that cash box after he’d struck a match to see where it was, wearing a tailor-made fifty-shilling grin on his square crew-cut nut as his paws closed over the box like he’d squash it to nothing. ‘Out,’ he suddenly said, shaking it so’s it rattled. ‘Let’s scram.’

      ‘Maybe there’s some more,’ I said, pulling half a dozen drawers out of a rollertop desk.

      ‘No,’ he said, like he’d already been twenty years in the game, ‘this is the lot,’ patting his tin box, ‘this is it.’

      I pulled out another few drawers, full of bills, books and letters. ‘How do you know, you loony sod?’

      He barged past me like a bull at a gate. ‘Because I do.’

      Right or wrong, we’d both got to stick together and do the same thing. I looked at an ever-loving babe of a brand-new typewriter, but knew it was too traceable, so blew it a kiss, and went out after him. ‘Hang on,’ I said, pulling the door to, ‘we’re in no hurry.’

      ‘Not much we aren’t,’ he says over his shoulder.

      ‘We’ve got months to splash the lolly,’ I whispered as we crossed the yard, ‘only don’t let that gate creak too much or you’ll have the narks tuning-in.’

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