Only When I Larf. Len Deighton

station as a poste restante address for his little game. He knew his postal orders would be piling up there and eventually he became so short of money that they drove back to London to collect them. In those days you could park in the street there and Benny sent the girl in to collect his mail. She had the necessary authority to do it but the clerk said the poste restante mail was in some locked back room and would take ten minutes. Of course he was on the blower to the law. Benny waited and waited. If he had driven away he might have disappeared all over again but he was crazy about her as only a forty-year-old playboy could be.’ He laughed without putting much effort into it. ‘Benny climbed out of the car and went into the post office just as a couple of plain clothes coppers arrived there. She was only a kid. Her father was kicking up a dust. They hammered him; stealing a car, abducting a minor as well as his postal order capers. I don’t have to list it all, do I?’ He smiled.

      ‘Poor Benny,’ I said. It is no fun to play a tragic role in a farce.

      I shuddered and didn’t ask what the sentence was. And with that heartless reaction that cripples the humanity of every writer, I began fashioning it into a chapter of a book. But by the time I started writing Only When I Larf Benny and the others had faded from my memory. My confidence tricksters were the smooth sort of rogues that answered my advertisement, and in my book I used some of their more elaborate swindles. Making it fiction removed the problems. When I became a film producer Only When I Larf was the first film I made.

      But before I started writing there were decisions to be made. Was this going to be the first-person story of a rich and flashy Benny or someone like him? Certainly not. The real money was made by teams, well-financed teams. That was the lesson I had learned during my lunchtime research.

      Creating your narrator for a first-person story demands much thought. Somerset Maugham mastered the idea of a narrator who is the undisguised voice of the author but this creates an extra barrier between writer and reader. I believe a first-person story should have an admirable and heroic hero who is also fallible and imperfect. The central character must be created so that the reader sees through the explanations and excuses to recognize all the hero’s faults and frailties but loves him nevertheless. This is how I designed Bernard Samson, and in nine books had him develop and change under the relentless scrutiny of the reader. In Violent Ward Mickey Murphy is a man both larger than life and yet a reflection of the life around him. In Close-Up a first-person narrative by a film star’s biographer is threaded between a third-person story of the star. The creation of the narrator is the essence of a first-person story. I am not experimental by nature. Books, plays, films or poems described as ‘experimental’ do not attract me. But the three-person team depicted in Only When I Larf seemed to cry out for a first-person narrative from each of them. It is said that all novels should express both a feminine and masculine vision of the world and I have always believed that. After lengthy consideration this was the format I chose. It was quite demanding and I hope you feel the hard work it represented was worthwhile.

      Len Deighton, 2011

      In 1925 a Czech nobleman writing on Ministère des Postes et Telegraphes notepaper invited bids from scrap metal merchants for 7000 tons of metal otherwise known as the Eiffel Tower. So successful was he that, having left Paris hurriedly, he returned one month later and sold it again.

      As recently as 1966 the Colosseum changed hands. A West German leased it for 10 years at 20,000,000 lire per year (cash in advance) to an American tourist who wanted to adapt the top of it for a restaurant.

      In 1949 a South African company purchased an airfield in England for 250,000 pounds sterling, giving a 10% deposit to a man in the uniform of an RAF Group Captain. In 1962 a Pole in Naples collected 90,000 dollars in deposits on US Navy ships. In 1963 an Irishman from Kerry sold a Scandinavian fishing fleet to a consortium of English businessmen after flying them to Bergen to view the fleet at anchor.

      In 1965 two English airline stewards took a 20,000 dollar deposit on a used Boeing airliner during a three-day stopover in Tokyo.

      To these men on land, sea and air, this book is respectfully dedicated.

      1

      Bob

      We’d been eight and a half minutes earlier on the dress rehearsal. This time we were held up in a traffic jam at Lexington and Fiftieth Street. Mid-town Manhattan on Friday afternoon is no place for tight schedules. I paid the cab driver with a couple of dollar bills, took fifty cents as change and gave him a two bit tip. Silas and Liz tumbled out and I heard Liz swearing softly and dabbing a spittle wet finger at the knee of her nylons.

      Silas waited for no one; umbrella in one hand, travel bag in the other, he marched off into the shiny hall of the Continuum Building. Liz, looking equally elegant, hurried after him. I scribbled $1.75 into my accounts notebook, stuffed it into my pocket and hurried after them. New York streets like a fairground; flashing lights, car horns, police whistles and all those organisation men with soft white shirts and hard pink faces hurrying so fast to nowhere that their grey flannel suits are going at the knees. It was late afternoon and there wasn’t much action in the Continuum Building. The hall was shiny, and silent except for the tap of our shoes. On the left side of the foyer there was the Continuum Building Coffee and Do-nut shop, and a newspaper and tobacco kiosk. Neither seemed to be doing much business. The right of the lobby was a side entrance to the bank. That wasn’t doing much business either, but we planned to do something about that.

      I was wearing overalls and I put down the heavy bags for a moment while I unlocked the glass case, removed the ‘For Rent’ sign and clipped the white letters into place: ‘29th Floor. Amalgamated Minerals.’ Pop. I closed the case and looked around but no one seemed to care. I followed the others into the lift and Mick pressed the button for the twenty-ninth. Liz snatched a look at her ladder and Silas sniffed his carnation. Vroom went the lift.

      ‘It’ll be the twenty-ninth again,’ said Mick.

      ‘That’s it,’ I said, picking up his brogue without meaning to.

      ‘You’ll be seeing the big fight.’

      ‘I will,’ I said.

      ‘That feller will never learn,’ said Mick, shaking his head. Silas stared at me reprovingly.

      ‘Have you had any more trouble from the O’Reilly twins?’ I asked Mick.

      ‘Not even a visit from the big feller,’ said Mick. ‘I knew me cousin Pat could fix the whole matter in a jiffy, but I didn’t like to worry him with little domestic squabbles.’ Silas looked at us both, then asked Mick, ‘What action did your cousin Pat take?’

      Mick looked at Silas suspiciously. It was the hard British accent that did it. The lift stopped. Mick leaned forward to Silas and lowered his voice, ‘Bless you sir, he broke their legs.’ He waited a moment before pushing the button. The doors opened with a burr. ‘Their back legs,’ added Mick. We got out. From my heavy bag I produced a card sign that said, ‘Amalgamated Minerals Reception.’ I hung it by the lift. As we walked along the corridor Silas switched on all the lights.

      ‘Who the hell’s that?’ said Silas. He shivered.

      ‘Mick, the liftman,’

      ‘How do you know all about his friends and family?’

      I said, ‘I heard someone talking to him one day. So now I always say, “Had any more trouble from the O’Reilly twins Mick?” or “How are the O’Reilly twins,” or …’ Silas grunted. As he walked along the corridor he closed the doors of the empty offices. Bonk, bonk, bonk.

      I followed Silas and Liz into the offices the janitor had furnished for us. From behind the door’s glass panel a voice said, ‘I’m just about done.’ The last of the putty fell onto a sheet of newspaper and the glass panel bearing the battered old words ‘General Manager’s Office’ lowered gently to reveal the ugly face of the janitor. ‘I’ve got rid of the cleaners and I’ve furnished both offices with the furniture you chose. It was heavy …’

      Almost without pausing in his stride, Silas placed a hundred dollars in tens between the man’s teeth.