Two men in twenty

Cain sighed. 'You're telling me. It's amazing, the tobacco trade inside. Hungry men will give you their dinner for a drag.'

'If I can't get enough, I find it's best to forget it.'

'Ah. The same with women?'

'Sure. You can do without sex if you don't spend so much damn time thinkin' about it.'

'You're not married. Give me a bit of home comfort myself. I miss it when I'm inside. Jesus, I feel choked with it sometimes.'

Then there was a brief silence, until Cain said: 'What did you think about them bits of ideas of mine?'

France shook his head. 'You're just out, but I've been out eighteen months. Things have changed. There's a thing called Securicor, and they use armoured cars to cart money and diamonds about. Nowadays you can't pick up a few thousand with a handful of pepper and a length of lead pipin'. The payroll snatch is dangerous. Me, I like to go in and get what there is, and come out all nice and quiet. With nobody lookin' at me.'

'Is that what you're doing just now?'

France was cool. 'At the moment I'm restin', as they say in Drury Lane. I'm fairly well fixed.'

'If you're well fixed, you won't mind lending me a fiver.'

France looked steadily at Cain. He said: 'I don't remember you ever doin' me any good.'

'I never did you any harm, did I?'

'You really need a fiver?'

'Just now I really need it.'

France said: 'Excuse me a minute.' He left the bar and went to a door marked 'Gentlemen'. Watching him go, Cain reflected that he was a proper elegant bastard. He looked a bit like Ronald Colman used to look on the pictures, when Cain was a youth. He knew where to buy his clothes, and when he opened his mouth he sounded like a toff. He was good enough to be a corner man, speaking golden words to provincial business types who thought they recognized money for nothing when they heard of it. Also, as it happened, he was one of the best door-and-window men in the country. So what did he do with his great talent? He sneaked in and out of flats, knocking down latches with his bit of celluloid, picking up a few pounds here and there. Well, it was one way to make a living.

France returned, and Cain said: 'I really could do with that fiver.'

France proffered a closed hand, knuckles up. Cain put forward an open palm, and received five one-pound notes. 'Thanks,' he said. 'I'll pay you back.'

'I'm sure you will,' France said, in a tone which suggested belief in himself rather than belief in his debtor. It was then that Cain realized, with helpless anger against a widely circulated untruth, that France had been to the toilet in order to get out five pounds without revealing whereabouts on his person he kept the bulk of his money.

'Damn it,' he exclaimed. 'You're another who thinks Howie Cain is a rotten dip.' He threw the little wad of notes on the bar. 'Keep your bloody money. I'll manage without it.'

The two men looked at each other, one red with mortification, the other cool and appraising.

France grinned. 'Pick it up, Howie,' he said. 'You don't look like a dipper to me.'

Slowly the colour of rage faded from Cain's face. 'Well thanks, Jimmy,' he said, and picked up the money.

* * * * *

For a while Cain was in straitened circumstances, and Dorrie would not allow him to pawn the diamond-studded watch which he once had bought for her with real money when he was flush. He even had to submit to the indignity of signing on at the Labour Exchange. On being told that no money was immediately available for him there, he sank lower in his own estimation and went to the National Assistance office. He stood in a queue, feeling contaminated in a shower of mugs whose only idea of easy money was to get the wife in the family way often enough to fill the house with kids, and then live on the money doled out so that the kids wouldn't starve. This indignity Cain had to suffer in order to keep the home going until his geese turned out to be swans. Life was hard.

When it was his turn at the National Assistance, he was asked certain questions. He answered, to the effect that he was not receiving unemployment benefit, that he was married, that he had no children.

'Is your wife in good health?' the clerk asked.

'Yes, she ails nothing,' Cain replied.

'Couldn't she go out to work, till you get a job?'

Cain's lip curled. He thought that this fussy little man was taking too much on himself, as indeed he may have been. 'What is this?' he demanded loudly. 'A welfare state or a slave state? Who are you to tell my wife when to go out to work?'

The clerk was discomfited. These people! Ungrateful, they were. He referred no more to the matter of Mrs. Cain.

'Who were your last employers?' he wanted to know.

'Her Majesty's Prison Commissioners,' was the cool reply.

'In what capacity? I mean, have you a trade?'

'I'm an unemployed burglar,' Cain said. He didn't care. He knew they'd have to give him something anyway. They couldn't afford to turn a burglar out into the cold, cold snow with nothing in his pocket. That would be encouraging crime, that would.

The clerk was further discomfited, and of course annoyed. But Cain stared at him brazenly while he waited for a reply. Several men in the queue behind him must have heard the remark, but only one of them laughed. He turned to look. One man was gazing at him with contempt, and he was the only one who looked like a decent fellow. Three more were shabby layabouts whom Cain wouldn't have had at ten a penny. The one who had laughed-he was still grinning-was an ugly, thickset specimen with a round red face and beady brown eyes. Cain liked him least of all.

He turned back to the window. The clerk had made out a pay slip. He pushed it forward and pointed to the cashier's window without speaking. He had had enough of Cain.

Cain looked at the sum written on the slip. 'Pah!' he exclaimed as he turned away. The ugly man laughed again.

At the cashier's window there was some delay. Cain had to wait, and the men who had been behind him in the queue were paid before him. As he walked out of the place he found Ugly waiting for him in the lobby.

'They aren't open yet,' Ugly said, with a northern accent. 'But come on, I'll buy you a cupper tea an' a tram-stopper.'

Cain looked him up and down. He was sarcastic. 'Do I have the pleasure of your acquaintance?'

'Happen not. But unless you're naught but a big blabmouth I'd like to talk to you.'

Cain was incredulous. Who did this little Lancashire hotpot think he was? He decided to give the man a chance to talk himself into a smack on the beak. 'Can you really afford it?' he asked loftily.

'Do you allus act like it was half a dollar to talk to you?'

'For a hobbledehoy like you it could cost more.'

'That's a personal remark. Insultin', I call it. You might think that's clever, but I don't.'

Cain grinned, and shrugged.

'Happen you're not the man I thought you were,' Ugly said. 'I don't think you'll do for me.' He turned away.

Cain did not like that. Now he was the one who was being turned down. He asked: 'What was it you wanted?'

The man stopped. 'I wanted to talk, like I said. To find out if you're the right sort of feller. Well, I think I've fun' out.'

'I doubt it. I'll come along and listen to you. I have a few minutes to spare.'

Over a cup of tea and a ham sandwich Cain learned that the hotpot's name was Leo Husker. He looked at the hard eyes under the little beaky nose and decided that Husker was at least a man, and probably not a fool. And yet, in a way, he talked like a fool.

'Is it right you're a burglar, or were it a bit o' cod?'

'Hey, hey!' Cain reproved. 'You can't go around talking like that.'

'Well, you did.'

'I suppose I did. What do you want? To ghost my reminiscences?'

'I don't know naught about ghosts, but I know how to use an oxygen cuttin' tool.'