The Lowlife Read online

  Fellows ask me, especially when my wallet is full, why I should live in Hackney. Why not?—that’s enough to answer.

  Still, there is more to it. A lot of gambling fellows live in the West End, near the whores and the restaurants. Me? I want to live where I grew up. God knows, there’s no one left—hardly anyone, a face here and there—but that’s why the place holds me. There’s only the place left.

  Also, I like it. Here it is, a Victorian-Edwardian suburb swallowed up by London, broad streets, little villas and big tradesmen’s houses; and now, among these, factories and workshops everywhere, little workshops in the mews, big yellow-brick factories on the corner sites. Traffic roars in the streets. Here, all sorts live. The Cockneys are of the old breed, sharp-faced, with the stamp of the markets on them. The young Jews either look like pop singers or pop singers’ managers. The old ones—it’s funny, the pious old men with yellow beards I remember from my childhood seem to have died off, all of them, but the old women survive. Among the crowds you can see the old women, women you might have seen in the East End fifty years ago (Hackney isn’t the East End—that’s the mark of the outsider, when you hear someone call Hackney the East End. The East End starts two miles down the road, across the border of Bethnal Green) schlapping their big shopping bags.

  Ingram’s Terrace—this is where I roomed—is part of a street that joins Stoke Newington High Street next to Amhurst Road, not far north of Dalston Junction. It was probably named after the Victorian spec builder who ran it up; mostly two-storied houses, with basements; some bigger like old-fashioned vicarages; and the end houses with passages at the sides from street to back garden. Big rooms, high ceilings with mouldings on them; small areas in front that used to have hedges or fancy iron railings but since the war have wooden fences or nothing at all; neglected gardens at the back trampled and heaped with rubbish. When I was a boy, these houses were occupied by superior working-class families, who kept them in beautiful condition. Every year, when the fresh gravel and tar was laid on the road (I can still smell the tar) the houses were bright with fresh paint. Now most of them are tenements. The street is still clean. All the people are in work. Their cars jam the kerbs on both sides. All is quiet and decent. Negroes have come to live, more every month. And Cypriots. The Negroes are of marvellous respectability. Every Sunday morning they all go to the Baptist Chapel in the High Street. You should see the men, in beautiful pearl-grey suits and old-fashioned trilbies with curled brims, the big women full of dignity, and the little girls in white muslin and bonnets. It slays me. They are the Victorian residents of this street, come back a century later, with black skins. And the Cypriots—they gather at their gates, throwing their children in the air and kissing them when they come down.

  The people in Ingram’s Terrace don’t mix, but they all say ‘good morning’ to each other. I never smelt any hatred between one kind and another, not even an ember that might flare up in the future. Of course, they all have good jobs. The children mix. The children all play in the street together. I love to watch them. The children are the only real common ground of the grownups. The Yiddisher mumma who comes out with a cake for her boy will bring cakes for the kids he’s playing with, black, Cypriot, Gentile, the lot. Cockney women will gather round a pram to squeal, ‘Ooh, isn’t she pretty?’ over a Negro baby. And vice versa.

  So I had my half-hour walk round the houses, enjoying all this and some fresh sunshine for good measure. When I went back to the house the furniture men were unloading the van. The first thing I noticed was what they were carrying. It was cheap-contemporary. You know the sort of thing. Bright colours, uncomfortable designs, thin wood you could put your foot through. In the Terrace, taste still runs to solid furniture. (‘At least let it look like it’s worth the money.’) Well, young people. The old man told me the new people were a young couple with a baby. Gentiles.

  A girl was standing in the hall, telling the removal men where to put things. This must be the wife. Not my type at all. Thin, lank hair, jumper and skirt. What I call the Olive Oyl type. Next to her was a kid. A little boy, about four. A proper little bruiser. ‘This is the baby?’ I thought. ‘That little tearaway’s gonna make trouble in the house. A quiet house. Goodbye to my quiet house.’ At the moment, the kid wasn’t making a sound. He was watching the operation in the dumbstruck, hypnotised way kids sometimes have, absolutely still, big eyes taking everything in, standing very close to his mama, hand on her skirt.

  Siskin, the landlord, stood at the top of the basement stairs. He lives in the basement with his wife. I wouldn’t put a dog in that basement, and I hate dogs. They live in the basement, and the rest of the house is their income. Siskin is a small grey man who looks like a mouse, and he lives like one. He hardly ever comes up out of his hole. When he does, he puts his head timidly round the door from the basement stairs. You’d think he was making sure that it was all clear. Then he comes into the hall, and the way he watches you, you’re afraid to speak too loud in case he bolts back down his hole.

  Siskin said nothing. I said ‘Afternoon,’ to the girl. She gave me a cautious, new-neighbour smile and said, ‘Good afternoon,’ and I went upstairs.

  It wasn’t so easy to concentrate in the afternoon. I could hear the bumpings and scrapings of furniture down below, and the voices of the removal men.

  Once or twice I heard the kid’s voice. I couldn’t make out the words. Just a yell of protest or a whine of appeal. A kid. Such was my luck. Well, on a full belly, the next best thing to reading is a good sleep, so I got under the blankets.

  The sunlight had gone out of the room when I woke up. I felt muzzy, and I tried to focus on the noise that had woken me up. I couldn’t hear anything. Then I heard it again, a soft thump. I got out of bed and sluiced some cold water over my face. I dried myself, and listened. Silence again. Then the thump. Then silence. Then the thump.

  It sounded like the cupboard on the landing. But Miss Gosling wasn’t in yet. Miss G. was an ancient spinster who served in a draper’s down Kingsland Road. She’d worked there about fifty years. The shop is a survival from the past, the sort of place you read about in Kipps. It keeps going because you can get good bed linen there at low prices. Miss Gosling was also what you might call a survival. Her older sister, who had shared the room with her and worked at the same shop, had died the year before. The older one, Miss Maud, used to be a real old darling, but the one that was left, Miss Ethel, was the sour type, and since she was on her own she’d got worse. Her bedsitter was on the landing facing my room but three steps down, and her gas stove was out on the landing. Since her sister’s death she never seemed to use it. As far as I could tell she lived almost entirely on those sticky sweets with pretty wrappers we used to call Russian bonbons. She had them weighed out from the jar in the shop round the corner, and she threw the used wrappers all over the landing. In her sister’s time the pair of them used to keep themselves and the place spick and span. I didn’t see much of the old woman shut up in her room, but my opinion was that she must be going dotty in there. Anyway, the cupboard, although it was up on my landing, was hers.

  There’s no cat in the house. The moving van had driven away, or I’d have assumed one of the blokes had come prowling up to see what he could knock off.

  I looked out of my door. There was no one on the landing. There was no draught to shake the cupboard door. I went back to my room. I waited inside the door. Then I heard the floorboards on the landing creak. I opened my door again quickly. The cupboard door was open, and the kid was coming out of the cupboard. He just stood there and looked at me.

  I said, ‘You havin’ a look in the cupboard, kid?’

  He didn’t say anything. I said, ‘There’s only old cases in there. It’s dusty. Your mum won’t like it.’

  He didn’t answer. I said, ‘Show us your hands.’ He didn’t move, so I leaned down, carefully so as not to frighten him, and looked at his hands. They were covered with dirt.

  ‘I don’t mind you cornin’ up,’ I said, ‘but this cupboard isn’t mine. It belongs to a lady. She doesn’t like me to open it, so I don’t reckon you ought to, unless she says you can.’

  I asked him his name. He stood there with his lips clamped.

  Then his mother called up from the hall. ‘Gregory.’

  ‘I know your name. It’s Gregory,’ I said. ‘My name is Harryboy.’

  She called him again, this time a kind of sharp, annoyed yelp. ‘Gregory. Where are you? Come down at once.’

  He gave me a look as if everything I’d said had been a tough trial of his patience, and kept his lips pressed together like a little magistrate. I didn’t know if it was me he was fed up with or his mum. He turned round and started to trot downstairs.

  His mum was up on the landing already by the time he’d got down the first flight. The landing is where the bathroom and lavatory are. We all use them. ‘Gregory,’ she said, ‘I told you not to wander all over the house.’ She looked up at me. ‘Has he been annoying you? I’m ever so sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You can’t shut kids up.’

  She said, ‘He’s got to learn to behave himself. You won’t be troubled,

  Mr—?’

  ‘Boas.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you. Our name is Deaner.’ She said all this without any good nature. I know these women. They don’t sound nasty, just nervy and abrupt all the time. The kid stood next to her. He was all docile, all of a sudden. He was small but very sturdy in his build, with the sort of short chubby kids’ legs that get you. When he was on the landing with me, he faced me as if I was a big dog he mustn’t be frightened of. But now, next to his mum, he wasn’t frightened, just lifeless. She was going on. ‘He generally behaves himself. It’s just over-excitement, all the new surroundings.’

  I said, ‘Sure. You fixed up all right? Anything I can help ?’

  Her kind of woman is very funny. She went from being just nervy to— well, she just hardened as she stood there, and her face clenched. Anyone’d think I’d asked her up to my bedroom. She said, and it was plain hostile, ‘My husband will see to everything when he gets home. Come on.’ This was to the kid. She looked up from the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’ll see he doesn’t bother you.’

  I said, ‘That’s all right.’ I went back to my room.

  I looked at my Zola books. I reckoned the kid was too small to be at school. That’s all I wanted, a kid stamping up and down the stairs. Fat chance I had of reading in peace.

  Hi-aye, big sigh. Not time for supper yet. I got back into bed and pulled the blankets over me. I can sleep all day and night if I want to.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  From too much staying in bed I got the jack up to my eyebrows, so I went to see Marcia. Marcia is the only lady I ever knew. She lives in Half Moon Street near Piccadilly and she charges twenty pounds for a short time. I can only enjoy the best.

  She is at least thirty-five, but she has a skin like a young girl and what she’s got she uses better than any girl. She is tall and elegant, but solid in the flesh and muscular. An athlete. Splendid breasts. She was married to a bank manager once. They had a good car and a house in one of those expensive Buckinghamshire villages. The life bored her and by the time she’d got through all the men in the neighbourhood she started to ask herself, why should she let them have it for nothing? So she went into business. Why not? If I was a woman, I’d sell it.

  She isn’t the sort that tells her pathetic story to the customers, but after I’d seen her a few times I took her out one night to the dogs and won more for her than she would have earned staying at home. She stood me a supper and told me about herself. She chats to you like a man, relaxed and independent, her eyes casing you all the time. She aims to retire when she’s forty. In the meantime she’s buying houses and letting rooms. It must have been from her as well as Gus that I got the idea of doing the same thing some day. She is already a woman of means. Also the classiest tramp in the West End of London.

  I rang up and the maid answered, but Marcia took the phone away from her. ‘Harryboy,’ she said. ‘How nice. Give me an hour to get rid of this one and we’ll make a night of it.’ She does that sometimes. No extra charge. If she likes you.

  Some men don’t go much for whores. They need a woman to cling round their necks saying she loves them. I have to admit that I only feel relaxed with a whore. With the others, you never know what they are after. I am a free man. All my life I have gone my way, and no one has managed to take possession of my life or make me responsible for theirs. It nearly happened once, with a Frenchwoman. We lived together for a few months. For me, it was just an arrangement. I liked the girl, but only as good company for a while. For a while, that was the point. I liked her enough to look after her and give her all the good breaks I could. But not for life. I didn’t mean it to be for life. But I came to see that she was thinking of it that way. They all do, all the so-called normal women do. It’s biology. So I left her.

  Marcia and I had a real old rough and tumble that night. We always did. You can only enjoy Marcia if you accept that she is not one of these courtesan types you read about who minister to the male with all the ancient arts of womanhood and all that jazz. She is tough. She despises men. They are just implements to her, and even when they are paying her she just uses them. The secret with her is for the man, on his side, to use her. Not to give way to her, like most of her clients apparently do, but to bash for his own satisfaction and no consideration for her. I’m no sadist. I don’t mean that. I mean just self-interest.

  This is the only way. The man should look after his interests and the woman after hers. I detest a woman if she clings to me. In the back of my head I start to wonder what she wants from me. If she’s tough and independent and out for herself, I feel safe. I can like her genuinely then. Hence the whores.

  Debbie, my darling sister, has been begging me for twenty years to get married. Can I explain all this to her? Not only the intimate things. Debbie and I have never talked about such matters. But about freedom—could I make her understand what freedom means? I never told her about the Frenchwoman even, and this is an important part of my story, as you will understand when I tell you.

  In between, Marcia brought sandwiches and whisky from the kitchen. We drank most of a bottle. We can both take liquor. I like the warm jolt that comes with each shot. It means no more to me than that. I can do without it. The worst disgrace that could fall on me is to be drunk, even mildly. It hasn’t happened yet. Marcia talked to me about property. She said the surest bet these days was to buy stuff in the East End. ‘My God, Harry,’ she said, ‘you can buy whole streets. The owners practically go down on their knees to sell. What are you waiting for? You have a look round Saint George’s and Whitechapel. Slums. You buy them for the last five years before clearance and stuff them with niggers. They’ll pay the earth for a room. You could clean up, Harry. You don’t need much capital, you can buy a house for two hundred.’

  I said, ‘Whores are supposed to have hearts of gold. Lend me.’

  ‘Not this whore.’

  We slept healthy and I went home with the milk, through needling February rain. This was how I got to say good morning to Miss Gosling, who I hardly ever saw these days.

  I got in before eight. From the kitchen on the ground floor I could hear the little boy wailing. As I went upstairs the smell of burning milk got stronger. Miss Gosling was on the top landing, staring down over the banisters like a character in a horror film. On her gas stove in the corner, a pan of milk was boiling over.

  I pointed this out to her. She didn’t seem to hear. She just peered at me. She had unhappy, protruding eyes with big pouches under them. She was one of those tall, old-fashioned ladies who would be stately if they stood upright but they have a grim kind of stoop with the shoulders hunched in. Her black dress came down to the tops of her shoes like in old-fashioned photos. It used to be shining in her sister’s time but now it was dull and blotchy with stains.

  I said again, ‘Good morning, Miss Gosling. Your milk’s caught.’ She didn’t move, so I turned the gas off. She said, ‘It’s been going on since six o’clock.’

  I said, ‘A kid in the house, what do you expect?’

  ‘It’s going to be like this every day,’ she said. ‘I know it. My nerves won’t stand it.’

  ‘We have to make way for the young,’ I said.

  ‘What about my nerves, Mr Boas? I’ve suffered from my nerves ever since I was a child.’

  The yells were coming non-stop, high and piercing. I said, ‘Too bad.’

  ‘This used to be such a nice quiet house,’ she said. ‘I knew he was a nasty little boy. He was in the sweet shop. He came and stood near me when I was buying my sweets and he looked at me. He wanted to beg. I could see it. He would have begged from me if his mother hadn’t been there. I hate children who beg. In my childhood a little boy who begged would have been whipped. Children were properly brought up in my day.’

  I managed to close my door on her. I changed into slippers and a fresh shirt. Then, as it was a Friday, I went down to give the old man his rent.

  He worries. If I don’t go down he is liable to creep upstairs and disturb my morning sleep.

  Gregory’s parents were trying to hush him up when I went past. But he was yelling back at them and Miss Gosling and the whole world.

  Siskin was in his cellar drinking lemon tea. I think he sleeps in his shirt, on which I’ve never seen a collar, and his face is always hairy like a gooseberry.

  He looks up at me. His wrinkled old woman pauses with an armful of dirty sheets, squints her bitter stare at me and shuffles into the back room.

  He starts, ‘You been out with a woman.’ (What it sounds like is ‘You bin aht mid ah vooman’ like a corny character actor, but this I will leave to corny character actors.)