The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Alan Sillitoe

get you off with probation.’

      ‘What money?’ I asked him, because I’d heard that one before as well.

      ‘You know what money.’

      ‘Do I look as though I’d know owt about money?’ I said pushing my fist through a hole in my shirt.

      ‘The money that was pinched, that you know all about,’ he said. ‘You can’t trick me, so it’s no use trying.’

      ‘Was it three-and-eightpence ha’penny?’ I asked.

      ‘You thieving young bastard. We’ll teach you to steal money that doesn’t belong to you.’

      I turned my head around: ‘Mam,’ I called out, ‘get my lawyer on the blower, will you?’

      ‘Clever, aren’t you?’ he said in an unfriendly way, ‘but we won’t rest until we clear all this up.’

      ‘Look,’ I pleaded, as if about to sob my socks off because he’d got me wrong, ‘it’s all very well us talking like this, it’s like a game almost, but I wish you’d tell me what it’s all about, because honest-to-God I’ve just got out of bed and here you are at the door talking about me having pinched a lot of money, money that I don’t know anything about.’

      He swung around now as if he’d trapped me, though I couldn’t see why he might think so. ‘Who said anything about money? I didn’t. What made you bring money into this little talk we’re having?’

      ‘It’s you,’ I answered, thinking he was going barmy, and about to start foaming at the chops, ‘you’ve got money on the brain, like all policemen. Baker’s shops as well.’

      He screwed his face up. ‘I want an answer from you: where’s that money?’

      But I was getting fed-up with all this. ‘I’ll do a deal.’

      Judging by his flash-bulb face he thought he was suddenly onto a good thing. ‘What sort of a deal?’

      So I told him: ‘I’ll give you all the money I’ve got, one and fourpence ha’penny, if you stop this third-degree and let me go in and get my breakfast. Honest, I’m clambed to death. I ain’t had a bite since yesterday. Can’t you hear my guts rollin’?’

      His jaw dropped, but on he went, pumping me for another half hour. A routine check-up they say on the pictures. But I knew I was winning on points.

      Then he left, but came back in the afternoon to search the house. He didn’t find a thing, not a French farthing. He asked me questions again and I didn’t tell him anything except lies, lies, lies, because I can go on doing that forever without batting an eyelid. He’d got nothing on me and we both of us knew it, otherwise I’d have been down the Guildhall in no time, but he kept on keeping on because I’d been in a Remand Home for a high-wall job before; and Mike was put through the same mill because all the local cops knew he was my best pal.

      When it got dark me and Mike were in our parlour with a low light on and the telly off, Mike taking it easy in the rocking chair and me slouched out on the settee, both of us puffing a packet of Woods. With the door bolted and curtains drawn we talked about the dough we’d crammed up the drainpipe. Mike thought we should take it out and both of us do a bunk to Skegness or Cleethorpes for a good time in the arcades, living like lords in a boarding house near the pier, then at least we’d both have had a big beano before getting sent down.

      ‘Listen, you daft bleeder,’ I said, ‘we aren’t going to get caught at all, and we’ll have a good time, later.’ We were so clever we didn’t even go out to the pictures, though we wanted to.

      In the morning old Hitler-face questioned me again, with one of his pals this time, and the next day they came, trying as hard as they could to get something out of me, but I didn’t budge an inch. I know I’m showing off when I say this, but in me he’d met his match, and I’d never give in to questions no matter how long it was kept up. They searched the house a couple of times as well, which made me think they thought they really had something to go by, but I know now that they hadn’t, and that it was all buckshee speculation. They turned the house upside down and inside out like an old sock, went from top to bottom and front to back but naturally didn’t find a thing. The copper even poked his face up the front-room chimney (that hadn’t been used or swept for years) and came down looking like Al Jolson so that he had to swill himself clean at the scullery sink. They kept tapping and pottering around the big aspidistra plant that grandma had left to mam, lifting it up from the table to look under the cloth, putting it aside so’s they could move the table and get at the boards under the rug – but the big headed stupid ignorant bastards never once thought of emptying the soil out of the plant pot, where they’d have found the crumpled-up money-box that we’d buried the night we did the job. I suppose it’s still there now I think about it, and I suppose mam wonders now and again why the plant don’t prosper like it used to – as if it could with a fistful of thick black tin lapped around its guts.

      The last time he knocked at our door was one wet morning at five minutes to nine and I was sleep-logged in my crumby bed as usual. Mam had gone to work for the day so I shouted for him to hold on a bit, and then went down to see who it was. There he stood, six-feet tall and sopping wet, and for the first time in my life I did a spiteful thing I’ll never forgive myself for: I didn’t ask him to come in out of the rain, because I wanted him to get double pneumonia and die. I suppose he could have pushed by me and come in if he’d wanted, but maybe he’d got used to asking questions on the doorstep and didn’t want to be put off by changing his ground even though it was raining. Not that I don’t like being spiteful because of any barmy principle I’ve got, but this bit of spite, as it turned out, did me no good at all. I should have treated him as a brother I hadn’t seen for twenty years and dragged him in for a cup of tea and a fag, told him about the picture I hadn’t seen the night before, asking him how his wife was after her operation and whether they’d shaved her moustache off to make it, and then sent him happy and satisfied out by the front door. But no, I thought, let’s see what he’s got to say for himself now.

      He stood a little to the side of the door, either because it was less wet there, or because he wanted to see me from a different angle, perhaps having found it monotonous to watch a bloke’s face always telling lies from the same side. ‘You’ve been identified,’ he said, twitching raindrops from his tash. ‘A woman saw you and your mate yesterday and she swears blind you are the same chaps she saw going into that bakery.’

      I was dead sure he was still bluffing, because Mike and I hadn’t even seen each other the day before, but I looked worried. ‘She’s a menace then to innocent people, whoever she is, because the only bakery I’ve been in lately is the one up our street to get some cut-bread on tick for mam.’

      He didn’t bite on this. ‘So now I want to know where the money is’ – as if I hadn’t answered him at all.

      ‘I think mam took it to work this morning to get herself some tea in the canteen.’ Rain was splashing down so hard I thought he’d get washed away if he didn’t come inside. But I wasn’t much bothered, and went on: ‘I remember I put it in the telly-vase last night – it was my only one-and-three and I was saving it for a packet of tips this morning – and I nearly had a jibbering black fit just now when I saw it had gone. I was reckoning on it for getting me through today because I don’t think life’s worth living without a fag, do you?’

      I was getting into my stride and began to feel good, twigging that this would be my last pack of lies, and that if I kept it up for long enough this time I’d have the bastards beat: Mike and me would be off to the coast in a few weeks time having the fun of our lives, playing at penny football and latching on to a couple of tarts that would give us all they were good for. ‘And this weather’s no good for picking-up fag-ends in the street,’ I said, ‘because they’d be sopping wet. Course, I know you could dry ’em out near the fire, but it don’t taste the same you know, all said and done. Rainwater does summat to ’em that don’t bear thinkin’ about: it turns ’em back into hoss-tods without the taste though.’