Night Over Water - Ken Follett [31]
I can’t live like this, he thought.
They went to Ma’s building and climbed the stone staircase to the fifth floor. Ma put the kettle on and said: “I’ve pressed your blue suit—you can change into that.” She still took care of his clothes, sewing on buttons and darning his silk socks. Harry went into the bedroom, dragged his case from under the bed and counted his money.
After two years of thieving he had two hundred forty-seven pounds. I must have pinched four times that much, he thought. I wonder what I spent the rest on?
He also had an American passport.
He flicked through it thoughtfully. He remembered finding it in a bureau at the home of a diplomat in Kensington. He had noticed that the owner’s name was Harold and the picture looked a little like himself, so he had pocketed it.
America, he thought.
He could do an American accent. In fact, he knew something most British people did not—that there were several different American accents, some of which were posher than others. Take the word Boston. People from Boston would say Bahston. People from New York would say Baa.uston. The more English you sounded, the more upper class you were, in America. And there were millions of rich American girls just waiting to be romanced.
Whereas in this country there was nothing for him but jail and the army.
He had a passport and a pocketful of money. He had a clean suit in his mother’s wardrobe and he could buy a few shirts and a suitcase. He was seventy-five miles from Southampton.
He could be gone today.
It was like a dream.
His mother woke him up by calling from the kitchen: “Harry—d’you want a bacon sandwich?”
“Yes, please.”
He went into the kitchen and sat at the table. She put a sandwich in front of him, but he did not pick it up. “Let’s go to America, Ma,” he said.
She burst out laughing. “Me? America? I should cocoa!”
“I mean it. I’m going.”
She became solemn. “It’s not for me, son. I’m too old to emigrate.”
“But there’s going to be a war.”
“I’ve lived here through one war, and a general strike and a Slump.” She looked around at the tiny kitchen. “It ain’t much but it’s what I know.”
Harry had not really expected her to agree, but now that she had said it, he felt despondent. His mother was all he had.
She said: “What’ll you do there, anyway?”
“Are you worried about me thieving?”
“It always ends up the same way, thieving. I never heard of a tea leaf that wasn’t collared sooner or later.”
A tea leaf was a thief, in rhyming slang. Harry said: “I’d like to join the air force and learn to fly.”
“Would you be allowed?”
“Over there, they don’t care if you’re working class, so long as you’ve got the brains.”
She looked more cheerful then. She sat down and sipped her tea while Harry ate his bacon sandwich. When he had finished he took out his money and counted out fifty pounds.
“What’s that for?” she said. It was as much money as she earned in two years of cleaning offices.
“It’ll come in handy,” he said. “Take it, Ma. I want you to have it.”
She took the money. “You’re really going, then.”
“I’m going to borrow Sid Brennan’s motorbike and drive to Southampton today and get a ship.”
She reached across the little table and took his hand. “Good luck to you, son.”
He squeezed her hand gently. “I’ll send you more money, from America.”
“No need, unless you’ve got it to spare. I’d rather you send me a letter now and again, so I know how you’re going on.”
“Yeah. I’ll write.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Come back and see your old ma one day, won’t you?”
He squeezed her hand. “’Course. I will, Ma. I’ll be back.”
Harry looked at himself in the barber’s mirror. The blue suit, which had cost him thirteen pounds in Savile Row, fitted beautifully and went well with his blue eyes. The soft collar of his