Len Deighton - Only When I Larf

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This paperback edition 2011

First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd in 1968

ONLY WHEN I LARF. Copyright © Len Deighton 1967. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2011

Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2011

Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007385867

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007450862

Version: 2017-08-22

There is an ancient saying among the peoples of

Mesopotamia, ‘Four fingers stand between truth

and lies’, and if you hold your hand to your

face you will find that measurement to be the

distance between the eye and the ear.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Cover designer’s note

Introduction

1. Bob

2. Liz

3. Silas

4. Bob

5. Liz

6. Silas

7. Bob

8. Liz

9. Bob

10. Silas

11. Liz

12. Bob

13. Liz

14. Silas

15. Bob

16. Liz

17. Silas

18. Bob

About the Author

Other Books by Len Deighton

About the Publisher

Prompted by seeing the renderings of my two murals for Cunard’s new ship, Queen Elizabeth, Len Deighton suggested that I illustrate some of the covers of this next quartet of re-issues. I am delighted to be given the opportunity to draw once again, as it has been well over thirty years since my days as a regular illustrator for the Sunday Times.

Initially, it was intended that the cover design for Only When I Larf would also feature an illustration but sometimes, during the evolution of a design, another approach presents itself that causes one to change tack, and so it was here.

When I was first considering how I might illustrate the cover, a trip up to Larry Edmunds’ famed cinema bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard had provided me with lobby cards from the film adaptation of Only When I Larf as reference for the trio of tricksters. I had decided that the background would be Manhattan’s former Pan Am building on Park Avenue, based upon a photograph I had taken on my very first visit to the US in the 1960s. On my return to England I took the helicopter to Kennedy airport from the building’s roof. My trip was actually around the same time of the book’s main characters’ helicopter flight – I could well have bumped into them!

But as I developed this idea I also became struck by how money plays such an important role in Only When I Larf, it is all that Silas, Liz and Bob are interested in. Just as the super rich victims, or ‘marks’, are the kind of people who are ‘made of money’ so I thought that this is what the three confidence tricksters aspire to. I recalled a childhood memory of making paper chains at Christmas and this quickly led to making a dollar-bill paper chain out of the three hustlers, with Liz in the middle of the two men in more ways than one. In addition to the A-line skirt, Liz sports a Susan B Anthony dollar coin for a head, whereas Silas and Bob only merit a half-dollar, perhaps an indication of the relative worth of each character.

The choice of font for the book’s title was inspired in part by the Pan Am livery; its breezy blue and bold lettering being so suggestive of the optimistic, confident period of the 1960s in which this story is set.

The two $1,000,000 notes on the back cover were given to me some time ago on condition that I did not go to a bank and try to cash them! My old British passports came in to play again with a touch of Photoshopping by my wife Isolde. She carefully switched the name of the traveller to one of many aliases employed by Silas. From Santiago, Chile came the period Pan Am airline ticket plus a cocktail swizzle stick for the three confidence tricksters’ ill-deserved in-flight cocktails!

A contemporary NYC subway token decorates the book’s spine. Observant readers will notice that each of the spines in this latest quartet of reissues features a metallic object; a subtle visual link that draws together four books written and set in very different times and places.

I have taken the photograph for this book’s back cover with my Canon 5D camera.

Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI

Hollywood 2011

The ideas in this story were planted many years before I began writing it and its format endured many radical changes. After completing my military service as an RAF photographer I won a grant to study illustration and graphic design at St Martin’s School of Art in Charing Cross Road, London, where I had studied briefly before my RAF service. To supplement my ex-service grant I took photographs for my fellow students and for the staff too. It was in the early nineteen fifties and photography was not the universal accomplishment that has come with fully automatic cameras and digital technology. Although it was a hand to mouth existence I scraped up enough money to rent one room in Soho and became a resident of that lively district of central London. Foreigners abounded: Mozart lived in Frith Street, Canaletto in Beak Street and Karl Marx in Dean Street, just around the corner.

At 10 Moor Street I rented the tiny back room at the top. The ground floor was occupied by a man’s shop that specialized in American-style clothes, e.g. wide-brimmed fedoras, brightly coloured ties and Bogart-style trench coats. It was about as near to St Martin’s School of Art as it was possible to live and it was cheap. With a chair that unfolded to become a bed, I used it as a stopover during the week and visited my parents at weekends. There was always a warm welcome and my mother was an outstanding cook who did a lot of my laundry, too. Life would have been hard without those two wonderful parents. It was the nineteen fifties and no one had any money; at least no one I knew had any money. The other top floor tenant with me in Moor Street was an estate agent, an elderly man – named Long, as I remember – in partnership with his daughter. They were very friendly to me and were tolerant in respect of the endless stream of noisy art students and other Soho acquaintances that came clattering up and down the stairs; and they never betrayed the fact that I was sleeping in my office.

Living in Moor Street extended my education. Soho in the fifties was a place where gangsters did little to hide their profession, neither did the prostitutes. Plump and contented policemen, especially those of the vice squad, were equally evident. Directly opposite my digs – on the corner of Greek Street and Old Compton Street – there was a large empty bomb-site where a polite and pleasant man called Nigel worked from a van serving coffee and sandwiches all through the night. There was always a small crowd there; it was Soho’s nocturnal Athenaeum. Arriving back late one night I was distressed to find I had forgotten my keys. I went across the street and very quietly asked Nigel if he knew anyone who could help me. There was no problem. On Nigel’s introduction, an elderly man put down his coffee, came across the street, put on his spectacles and noiselessly opened both street door and my office door with some small unseen implement. He refused payment and was back drinking his coffee before it cooled. ‘Always ask for a ‘builder,’ Nigel advised me afterwards. Euphemisms abounded in Soho at that time.