6 §OCIETY

TODAY

Going straight on bent money

in Scarlet

"I quite like window cleaning. You meet interestin' people. Trouble is that it gives you too much time to think."

Arthur is thirty-five now, a stocky, muscular man with sad, watery-blue eyes and the quick staccato step of someone who wants to get through life as quick as possible — who wants to get it over with. Away from his wife, Esther, he seldom seems to relax. He drinks the occasional pint in his local pub but doesn't get involved in darts teams and the like: he's not that much of a social animal. Most evenings he spends at home with Esther and the two kids in a ninth-floor council flat, glued to the telly from tea till bedtime.

"You don't have to think when the box is on," he says. "It helps you forget. And so long as my missus is there I don't have no need of other company."

During the next couple of weeks, however, Arthur is going to be forced to emerge just a little from his shell. As last year at this time, Esther is insisting they celebrate three separate but related anniversaries.

First, they will be celebrating the third anniversary of Arthur's discharge from prison — and that's by far the longest period of uninterrupted freedom he's enjoyed since first being sent to an approved school just over twenty years ago. Second, they will be celebrating the receipt of an unexpected windfall — a windfall which, Arthur is convinced, gave him his first-ever opportunity of "going straight". And last but certainly not least in Arthur's book, they will be celebrating the third anniversary of his wedding to Esther, the girl who, despite his long record of criminal convictions, waited while he served his last three-year sentence and met him the morning he came out.

"She's all right, my missus," he says with genuine admiration. "Set me to rights proper, she did." This is very obviously true. Just about five years ago Arthur was sentenced at Quarter Sessions for taking part in a 'job' during which a safe was removed from factory premises. It was reputed to contain about 0,000 in cash. Arthur was the 'labourer' of the team and, of the five men involved, the only one to be caught: he injured a leg during the operation and had to go to hospital for treatment.

Because he wouldn't 'grass' on the others and because of his own long record, he expected to get seven years; or at best five. Because a sympathetic probation officer gave him a good report and because Esther made a favourable impression on the judge, he got off comparatively lightly with only a three-year stretch.

Arthur, in best recidivist tradition, 'did his bird on his bunk'. He had previously survived approved schools, Borstal and other prisons. He had no convincing reason to believe he wouldn't be called on to survive others in the future.

Incarceration, to Arthur, was an occupational hazard. Within hours of his discharge, however, his si tuation had altered considerably: When Esther met him at the gate she had taken him straight back to her mother's flat. And it was to that flat that Arthur's 'windfall" was delivered.

"Been there 'bout an hour, we had," he remembers. "Then all on a sudden there's this bloke at the door askin' for me. Never seen him before, I hadn't. Anyway he says something about mindin' a parcel for me, hands it over, then scarpers. Never seen him since, I haven't."

The parcel contained E800 in used fiveand one-pound notes. It was Arthur's share of the robbery.

Actually laying hands on it was more than he'd ever dared think about, let alone hope for. He'd never believed in that 'honour among thieves' nonsense. But there it was, all in neat bundles on the kitchen table. Left to himself he would probably have gone `up West' and forfeited the lot within forty-eight hours, drinking and gambling — and probably ending up in some kind of trouble.

He wasn't left to himself, however. Esther was infinitely more practical. She had made plans for Arthur and while waiting for him had worked and saved hard in order to implement those plans. For it was she who recognised that Arthur was virtually unemployable, that nobody would ever offer him the sort of straight job he could be expected to keep for long, that his only future lay in being self-employed — with her right behind him to act as supervisor.

Esther knew exactly how the £800, together with her own savings, should be used. She permitted no celebrations. Before the day was out they had purchased a second-hand estate car, a roof rack, a set of short ladders, several plastic buckets and a pile of chamois leathers. They were in business. Exactly a week later they were married in a registry office. But still Esther allowed none but the mildest of celebrations. She spent what should have been her honeymoon going round the better class residential districts, ringing doorbells and touting for custom. She was a good saleswoman; she made Arthur a good window cleaner.

"You begin to get interested in people, seem' how they live and that. And you get to like them when you go regular. It's funny, you know, I thought it was only people like me had problems. But lots of quite rich people do as well. It makes you think a bit . . . ."

Arthur is not sure when he first began to realise that this new way of life was for real, that his earnings were, for the first time ever, honest. And not only that. They were both regular and more than enough for his needs.

"I just went where the missus told me and did what she said. It's all down to her really. She looks after the money side and all that. And we live nice and comfortable."

They do indeed. Their flat is simply furnished but spotlessly clean and tidy. They have a small son and a baby daughter. Arthur is immensely proud of them. Esther obviously enjoys being a wife and mother. And her influence over Arthur is great. There is, I think, little chance of Arthur reverting to crime.

Yet there is one fly in the ointment, one bone of contention between them. At some stage during the past three years, while humping his ladders around and polishing other people's glass, Arthur has started to do some thinking. And somewhere along the line he has developed a nagging conscience.

"It's that money," he says. "It's bent. How d'you go straight on bent money?"

Like many another crook converted to the straight and narrow before him, Arthur has begun to see things in terms of black and white. His idea of 'going straight' means dead straight — without any wavering to accommodate circumstance. To him that unexpected windfall, so welcome when it was delivered, has become a nightmare bogey. "It makes me feel like I'm still crook," he says.

Ideally, he would like to return the money whence it came, to the firm from which he helped to steal it. And it must be said that he could well afford to do so, together with any due interest. He and Esther have both worked hard and saved hard: they have more than enough in the bank.

Predictably, however, Esther won't hear of any such suggestion. Arthur has paid his debt to

society, she maintains. And the factory people will have been fully reimbursed by the insurance company — that's what insurance companies are for. And anyway, just think how much Arthur would have cost taxpayers in simple board and lodging if he hadn't been going straight. It was that extra money, she insists, that made all the difference . . . . That last comment always hurts Arthur. He doesn't like to think that he couldn't have gone straight without it. But Esther goes on producing arguments regardless. He's got a wife and kids to look after now, she tells him. He's got responsibilities. Besides, it's about time they started looking for a house of their own and their Savings were saved for that purpose . . . . Esther has a strong personalitY and every time the question arises between them, Arthur eventuallY gives in to her arguments. But giving in doesn't soothe his conscience, much less salve it. For more than a year now they have been intermittently arguing the toss. Last year's celebrations were married by just such an argument. One can but hope they will shortly resolve it. For if it ever comes between them and drives then.' apart, the personal and familY tragedy would be great.

And it would be a tragedy for which, I suspect, the taxpayer would end up paying the bill.

lain Scarlet, the writer and broadcaster specialising in crittle and penal affairs, conducts .° weekly programme on these topics on BBC Radio London.