Only When I Larf. Len Deighton

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      Silas had been with Liz right from when I first met him. If I hadn’t seen the score between them, I might have thought that Silas was queer. I’d had trouble with a queer while I was in the nick. Peter the bigamist they called him and it was nearly too late before I found out how he got the name. There was nothing queer about Silas but that doesn’t mean that I knew what made him tick.

      Things I didn’t have; Silas had. Things I’ll never have; Silas had, and let’s face it, things I’ll never want Silas had. He was urbane, you know what I mean? He could wear evening clothes like Fred Astaire wore them. He had a feeling of command. If I put on a white coat I was a house painter, if Silas put one on, he was a surgeon, you know the type? And of course women go for that bossy upper class manner, women were all crazy for Silas. Liz was, I just hoped I’d be able to pull birds like Liz when I got to be his age.

      It was that war that did it. Before Silas was twenty two he was a major in the tank corps and had half a dozen medals. He was bossing a hundred people, and some of them were old enough to be his father. If they as much as answered back, I suppose they’d have been in front of a firing squad or something. And perhaps a few of them were! Well I mean, can you wonder he was bossy. I mean I like him, he had this sly sense of humour and we could kid each other along with neither of us giving even a flicker of a smile, and that was great, but when you got down to it, he was a cold fish. That was the war too, I suppose. I mean, you don’t go around killing people for five years and come out the other end a warm-hearted philanthropist do you? I mean you don’t.

      He had this sort of computer brain, and to let emotion enter into his calculations would be like programming errors into the computer. He told me that. Several times he told me that. I don’t know how Liz could stay in love with him so long. He was sort of in love with Liz, but he was a cold fish, and there would come one day when the computer would reject Liz’s punch card, and I’m telling you he could turn away mid sentence and never come back. He was tough, and he had a terrifying temper that showed itself now and again. He had no friends whatsoever. They were all killed in the war Silas says. Yes, I said, and do you want me to guess who killed them? Liz got really angry when I said that, but I can tell you, he’s been a rough bastard that Silas, so don’t let that old school tie, and plumstone accent fool you.

      He despises me. Silas despises me because I’m not educated properly and yet he pours cold sarcasm on every attempt I make to learn something. Every time he sees me reading a book he adds ‘for little people’ or ‘simply explained for the under fives’ to the title, to make me feel like a moron. I can see what he’s trying to do. He would have liked me to stop educating myself. He was frightened that one day I would take over the leadership. He was frightened I’d take over Liz too. I could see the glint of that fear in his eyes at times. Liz was much younger than Silas. Her family had known him for years apparently and Silas had started off keeping an eye on her and they had finished up living together. She says that Silas had asked her to marry him, but that she had refused. Years ago. Oh yeah. I doubted it; very much. Why would Silas have asked her that? The computer would have rejected that idea and sounded the buzzer. Silas had nothing to gain. And what Silas had nothing to gain from, Silas didn’t do.

      These operations didn’t have any dash or real style – élan the French say – it was always Silas doing the big man and dangling his watch chain, while me and Liz were running around like a couple of coolies doing the real work. Now, if Silas had let me plan this operation things would be different. I’d have us posing as an aerobatics team that was selling its three planes to change over to jets. I’d told Silas that idea, but he wouldn’t even listen properly. Or there was my other idea about us being a three person expedition on our way to find the lost treasures of Babylon. I could use my book on archaeology if we did that one. Then there was an idea I had, where I would be a very young financial genius who everyone wanted to be in with. A sort of secret power in the finance politics of Europe, toppling governments with a stroke of the pen. Scratch you chum.

      Anything would be better than these capers in dreary offices. Imagine the old coot who sat here in this little hardarse seat, every day from nine to five. Imagine beating that typewriter, answering the phone, yes sirring the boss until superannuation, and all for a hundred a week and all the pencils you can take home. Pow. Not me. Not me, man. I’m for the open road, the jet routes, Cannes, Nice, Monte; where the pickings are rich and the living is easy, the suckers are rising and the cabbage is high. I’d like to be there for the Grand Prix. I didn’t look like a security guard, but a driver – a racing driver – that’s what I looked like. He’s coming into the casino turn, vroom vroom, and he’s too fast, but no, he’s controlling that skid, German corner won’t kill this boy. Vroom, vroom, vroom. Up over the pavement. Both cars, their wheels missing by a millimetre, he’s ahead of von Turpitz and down the hill and the duel begins. Vroom, vroom. It’s unbelievable folks, they’re setting a new fantastic lap record. Monte has never seen anything like this before and the crowd are going wild, wild, I tell you, wild.

      ‘For God’s sake stop making that noise,’ said Liz putting her head around the door. ‘They will be arriving soon.’

      I pulled my security guard cap on more firmly.

      ‘And don’t dare smoke,’ said Liz. ‘You know how angry Silas gets. Have one of my toffees instead.’ She put a toffee on the table.

      ‘Vroom,’ I said. ‘Vroom, vroom, vroom.’ I gave her a sexy little hug but she pulled away from me. She went out and closed the door. I was dying for a cigarette but I didn’t light one. Silas doesn’t allow smoking on duty, unless the role calls for it, and I never upset him – really upset him I mean – when it’s an operation. At other times I upset him quite a lot.

      2

      Liz

      I wouldn’t have called it an auspicious start, but Silas and Bob were bowing to each other, like a couple of Japanese Generals, and saying ‘Stage One completed,’ so I hung the framed photo over the dummy safe and phoned the bank to confirm that we’d be coming for the money. Then Bob went next door and I guessed he was trying on his security guard peaked cap and preening himself in the mirror. I hoped that he wouldn’t have a cigarette because Silas would be sure to smell it and go into one of his tantrums. The two marks were expected at any minute. I debated whether to change my nylons; one of them had a tiny ladder, but the other had gone at the knee. Silas was scattering some land search papers across the desk. His face was taut and his lips pressed tight together with nerves. I wanted to go to him and put a hand on his arm, just so that he would look up and relax and smile for a moment, but before I could do so he said, ‘Two thirty five. The driver should have them at the front hall soon. Take your position darling.’ He looked perfect; black jacket, pinstripe trousers, gold watch chain and those strange half frame spectacles that he peered over abstractedly. I loved him. I smiled at him and he gave a brief smile back as though frightened to encourage me in case I wasted time embracing him.

      We still needed a fake teleprinter message, so I hurried down the hall to the unoccupied teleprinter room. The janitor had pointed it out to me on the previous Saturday’s visit. I switched it into local so that it would not transmit, and then typed a genuine Bahamas teleprinter number and Amalgamin as an answerback code. Under that I typed the phoney message from Nassau and then switched the machine back to normal working again. I left the torn-off sheet near Bob’s uniform. There were a couple of genuine messages on the same sheet. I removed my earrings and necklace and tried to straighten my hair, but it was no use, it needed reshaping before it would ever look right again. Silas called to me, ‘Get down to the lobby, caterpillar. I don’t want those two idiots up here for at least five minutes, so stall them.’

      ‘Just going darling,’ I said. I put a pair of heavy, library-style spectacles around my neck on a neck string, and picked up my notebook. It was lucky I hurried, for the Lincoln hire-car that we had sent to collect the marks СКАЧАТЬ