Life Goes On by Alan Sillitoe Read Free Book Online

head me off. In that time I could do at least a mile and lose myself in the streets of Ealing. I’d driven so much around London I’d got an A to Z in my head – of the main roads and districts anyway.
    â€˜But money was the problem. It always is. It was what got me into the mess in the first place, and now it would have to get me out. I’d a few Swiss francs in coins in one pocket, and the equivalent of ten bob in the other – very useful for a bloke on the run, though not much cop for the likes of me. I had to think fast. I was walking so quick that in about twenty minutes – they hadn’t taken my watch – I got to Southall station. The sodium lights glowed, and I skulked along as if wanted by every police force or outlaw gang in the world. This wasn’t how I was feeling, Michael. It was tactical. I was really out of my mind with happiness at having got away. I knew that if they were looking for me they’d be expecting to spot an over-confident tall thinnish fellow walking along as if he owned the world – barefoot or not. So I pulled up the collar of my hundred guinea bespoke suit, fastened all three buttons, pulled my tie off and looped it round my waist, and sloped along in the shadows like a wino who’d just been given a talking-to by a do-gooder from Eel Pie Island. And as for that railway station, don’t think I would go into it in my present physical state. Not on your big soft cock. If they swung off that Gunnersbury roundabout and looked at the map that’s the first place their eyes would light on. They could be as tactical as I was when they’d been thwarted. I hope this tale’s something you’re learning a bit from, Michael. It’s a bit cautionary, like, in more ways than one.’
    I gave him a nod.
    â€˜Well, thank goodness the district was more like Bombay than Blighty, because I found an Indian Allsort store where I knew I could do a little trading, and went in out of the cold and dark. They had everything for sale, from cheap wristwatches and Russian junk radios to a second-hand clothes department behind a curtain. The chap who ran it was tall, very handsome and wore a turban. A couple of kids played on the floor, and his wife sat by the checkout.’
    â€˜â€œWhat can I do for you?” he asked me.
    â€˜â€œI’m in trouble,” I told him. You have to come straight out with it at such times. I have an instinct, Michael. I can always spot a face that’s going to help me. I knew he wouldn’t panic, or turn me in after offering me a cup of strong tea with all the sugar I want, like your average Englishman – or anyone else, come to that. I laid my case straight in front of him. “I’ve been robbed, and this is how they left me. I’d just got off the plane after two years in the States, and these white thugs stuck me up at gunpoint, bundled me into a car, took everything I’d got and threw me on the motorway. Can you help me?”
    â€˜â€œPiss off,” he said. “Get away from my shop, you National Front pig, or I’ll call the police, and even if they beat me up, burn my shop, club my kids and loot any stock that’s left they’ll still pin something on you for pulling them away from their tea.” These Good Samaritans always begin like that, but after half an hour’s chat and several cups of liquid boot polish I sold him my hundred-guinea suit for two, bought a suit and a pair of shoes for a quid that he’d got from a jumble sale for two bob, gave him a quid for the loan of a razor and permission to use it in his lavatory, then gave my foreign coins to his kids in exchange for an old cap, and parted the best of friends. I’ll never forget him. He saved my life and, what’s more, Michael – forgive me if at this point I get sentimental – he knew it, too. The robbing bastard was the salt of the earth. Ah, Michael, I love people! They never