good clothes, travel, money â not just in your pocket but in your life. Fine wine, eating in swanky places, flagging down a taxi to travel spitting distance.
To hear Andrew talk it wasnât really his fault he lacked all these things. He hadnât had the luck, that was the truth of it. Heâd had energy, enthusiasm, ideas â gosh, the ideas heâd had. The businesses heâd started, the dreams. To meet him youâd swear here was a man born for success. And nearly always youâd be right, for success attended most of Andrewâs ventures. The trouble was, after a while it became clear that the price of this success was the loss of everything that made existence fun. No time for a drink with the lads or a bet on the gee-gees. When the sun did come out no chance to lie in it. Up every morning at some ungodly hour, which meant no all-night casinos. Then there were women â more time-consuming than anything else in the world, but oh, how very much more worthwhile. Problem being, you had to be there for them. Take them out, talk to them, listen to them, go to the movies and for walks and drives and picnics. Dance them, schmooze them, kiss them a lot. How was a man supposed to do all this and run a business?
Not that the businesses were always legitimate. Indeed, for a while he sailed very close to the wind. Someone he went to the races with lent him a few hundred quid to put on a dead cert that turned out to be a dead loss. Stony-broke, he was invited to assist this man in whatever way proved necessary for as long as it took to pay it off. The harsh alternative having no appeal â Andrew rather liked his knees â he agreed. It wasnât so bad. Sometimes he drove a van, usually at night, to an appointed spot, waited while boxes of various sizes were loaded, then drove to another address where they would be rapidly unloaded. Several times he took heavy suitcases to a dry-cleaners in Limehouse, where they were received without thanks or comment. From time to time he was a lookout man and it was during one of these occasions that the arrangements between himself and his erstwhile creditor came to sudden grief.
At the time Andrew was in the garden of a large house near Highgate, keeping an eye open for visitors, dogs, roving police cars. The house had been dark when the thief he was covering entered but, after a while, a light came on in an upstairs room. Soon after that there was a lot of shouting and almost simultaneously a siren wailed.
The burglar came racing out of the house, pausing only to stuff something into Andrewâs pocket and drop a bag at his feet before vaulting over the shrubbery wall and vanishing into the night. Andrew watched the police car turn into the gates, saw the officers admitted to the house, then ran like the clappers. He left the bag, which contained tools, having no wish to be charged with âgoing equipped to stealâ and, as soon as the first Tube started running, hopped on to the Piccadilly Line and left London as well.
He still had his âsouvenirâ of that unpleasant experience â the burglarâs picks thrust into his pocket. If asked why heâd kept them Andrew couldnât have told you. Certainly he never intended to take up a life of crime. That one close call had completely flaked him out.
Eventually the Tube had fetched up in Uxbridge. With just the clothes he stood up in he registered at an employment agency and the next day started the first of what was to prove a long line of undemanding semi-clerical jobs. He rented a room and then a studio flat, eventually braving a trip back to the Smoke to collect the things he had left behind. But the work was so dreary it drove him half mad with ennui. This naturally led to absenteeism, extended lunch hours and constant sackings. The fact that computers bored him witless didnât help. They were like a foreign landscape without a map, though he could, just about, cope with