Alfie (2 page)

After seeing Siddie off I had this other bird to meet called Gilda. I don’t know how it is but I look on an evening with just one bird as only half the menu, sausage-
and-mash
without the treacle pud. After all, variety’s the spice of life.

Matter of fact, what I like is to have three women – I don’t mean all three at once, but all three on tap. And I like a bit of variety in them: one thin, one fat and one medium, or, say, one very young, one a bit older and another in between. You’ll find with three like that you’ll get most of your needs satisfied.

Mind you, I never like to go straight from one bird to another without a break in between. For one thing I don’t think it looks nice, and for another, I find I need a bit of a change, a bit of a talk with a few mates, so I nipped into a pub where I knew one or two of my mates hang out. I don’t like making fixed arrangements with anybody – I like to live in a casual come-and-go style.

I think if you were to spend
all
your time with birds you’d begin to find you’re going a bit doolally. It’s my opinion there isn’t one in a thousand right in the head, but I must admit I love ’em. I mean they give a bloke so much pleasure in his little life. Mind you, I never fall for all that chat a bird likes to hand out about how she’s given you ‘the best years’ of her life and ‘you’ve had the best of my body’ and all that sort of stuff. ‘What do you think I’ve given you?’ I always say to them. I mean the man has to
give
every time, but the woman can wing it if she ain’t in the mood, if you see what I mean.

There were two mates of mine in the pub, Perce and Sharpey, and they were talking to a big bloke called Lofty, a long-distance driver who actually comes from up North. Now if there’s one thing gets on my wick it’s when working blokes start talking about politics.

‘I tell you what I think about the state of the world today,’ said Perce. ‘I think it’s dead rough.’

Now what do they know about the state of the world? They only know what they’re told. The truth only comes out about fifty years later.

‘I think the working man has got himself all blown up with conceit,’ said Sharpey.

‘You can’t blame the working man,’ said Lofty. ‘He’s brought up to believing this is the greatest country in the world – to believing we’re the greatest people—’

‘Aren’t we?’ said Perce. ‘I mean where’s the competition?’

‘I think all these wildcat strikes are making our 
country look a fool to others,’ said Sharpey. ‘What do you say, Alfie?’

‘And you have this feeling,’ went on Lofty, ‘you’d lay down your life for your country. Leastways I had. But then as you get a bit older, you read about all them at the top – how they’re all on the fiddle, dodging the income tax, entertaining, and buying their villas on the income tax—’

‘The bleedin’ golden handshake,’ said Perce.

‘The working man has never been better off in his life,’ said Sharpey, who’s never done a day’s work in his life. ‘The engineers are asking for a thirty-five hour week and treble time for Sunday, so that if one bloke works a twelve-hour Sunday he needn’t work the other six days and he’s got an hour’s overtime in.’

‘The working man begins to lose faith,’ went on Lofty. ‘He loses faith in his boss, he loses faith in the top dogs who are running the country, and he gets as he don’t want to know.’

‘I blame the newspapers,’ said Perce. ‘I think people were happier in their ignorance. It’s no use keep taking the bleedin’ lid off of everything.’

‘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 19
^th
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 21
^st
?’

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 19
^th
?’ 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.’

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.’