Rose said suddenly, ‘She’s never lived there.’
‘Who?’
‘That woman asking questions. Never a care.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we can’t all ’ave been born in Nelson Place.’
‘You weren’t born there—or somewhere round?’
‘Me. Of course not. What do you think?’
‘I thought—maybe you were. You’re a Roman too. We were all Romans in Nelson Place. You believe in things. Like Hell. But you can see she don’t believe a thing.’ She said bitterly, ‘You can tell the world’s all dandy with her.’
He defended himself from any connection with Paradise Piece: ‘I don’t take any stock in religion. Hell—it’s just there. You don’t need to think of it—not before you die.’
‘You might die sudden.’
He closed his eyes under the bright empty arch, and a memory floated up imperfectly into speech. ‘You know what they say—“Between the stirrup and the ground, he something sought and something found”.’
‘Mercy.’
‘That’s right: Mercy.’
‘It would be awful, though,’ she said slowly, ‘if they didn’t give you time.’ She turned her cheek on to the chalk towards him and added, as if he could help her, ‘That’s what I always pray. That I won’t die sudden. What do you pray?’
‘I don’t,’ he said, but he was praying even while he spoke to someone or something: that he wouldn’t need to carry on any further with her, get mixed up again with that drab dynamited plot of ground they both called home.
‘You angry about anything?’ Rose asked.
‘A man wants to be quiet sometimes,’ he said, lying rigidly against the chalk bank, giving nothing away. In the silence a shutter flapped, and the tide lisped: two people walking out: that’s what they were, and the memory of Colleoni’s luxury, the crowned chairs at the Cosmopolitan, came back to taunt him. He said, ‘Talk, can’t you? Say something.’
‘You wanted to be quiet,’ she retorted with a sudden anger which took him by surprise. He hadn’t thought her capable of that. ‘If I don’t suit you,’ she said, ‘you can leave me alone. I didn’t ask to come out.’ She sat with her hands round her knees and her cheeks burned on the tip of the bone: anger was as good as rouge on her thin face. ‘If I’m not grand enough—your car and all—’
‘Who said—’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m not that dumb. I’ve seen you looking at me. My hat—’
It occurred to him suddenly that she might even get up and leave him, go back to Snow’s with her secret for the first comer who questioned her kindly: he had to conciliate her, they were walking out, he’d got to do the things expected of him. He put out his hand with repulsion; it lay like a cold paddock on her knee. ‘You took me wrong,’ he said, ‘you’re a sweet girl. I’ve been worried, that’s all. Business worries. You and me’—he swallowed painfully—‘we suit each other down to the ground.’ He saw the colour go, the face turn to him with a blind willingness to be deceived, saw the lips waiting. He drew her hand up quickly and put his mouth against her fingers: anything was better than the lips: the fingers were rough on his skin and tasted a little of soap. She said, ‘Pinkie, I’m sorry. You’re sweet to me.’
He laughed nervously, ‘You and me,’ and heard the hoot of a bus with the joy of a besieged man listening to the bugles of the relieving force. ‘There,’ he said, ‘the bus. Let’s be going. I’m not much of a one for the country. A city bird. You too.’ She got up and he saw the skin of her thigh for a moment above the artificial silk, and a prick of sexual desire disturbed him like a sickness. That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape—anywhere—for anyone? It was worth murdering a world.
‘It’s beautiful here all the same,’ she said, staring up the chalky ruts between the To Let boards, and the Boy laughed again at the fine words people gave to a dirty act: love, beauty. . . All his pride coiled like a watch spring round the thought that he wasn’t deceived, that he wasn’t going to give himself up to marriage and the birth of children, he was going to be where Colleoni now was and higher. . . He knew everything, he had watched every detail of the act of sex, you couldn’t deceive him with lovely words, there was nothing to be excited about, no gain to recompense you for what you lost; but when Rose turned to him again, with the expectation of a kiss, he was aware all the same of a horrifying ignorance. His mouth missed hers and recoiled. He’d never yet kissed a girl.
She said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m stupid. I’ve never had—’ and suddenly broke off to watch a gull rise from one of the little parched gardens and drop over the cliff towards the sea.
He didn’t speak to her in the bus, sullen and ill-at-ease, sitting with his hands in his pockets, his feet close together, not knowing why he’d come this far out with her, only to go back again with nothing settled, the secret, the memory still lodged securely in her skull. The country unwound the other way: Mazawattee tea, antique dealers, pull-ins, the thin grass petering out on the first asphalt.
From the pier the Brighton anglers flung their floats. A little music ground mournfully out into the windy sunlight. They walked on the sunny side past ‘A Night of Love’, ‘For Men Only’, ‘The Fan Dancer’. Rose asked, ‘Is business bad?’
‘There’s always worries,’ the Boy said.
‘I wish I could help, be of use.’ He said nothing, walking on. She put out a hand towards the thin rigid figure, seeing the smooth cheek, the fluff of fair hair at the nape. ‘You’re so young, Pinkie, to get worries.’ She put her hand through his arm. ‘We’re both young, Pinkie,’ and felt his body stonily withdrawn.
A photographer said, ‘Snap you together against the sea,’ raising the cap from his camera, and the Boy flung up his hands before his face and went on.
‘Don’t you like being snapped, Pinkie? We might have had our pictures stuck up for people to see. It wouldn’t have cost anything.’
‘I don’t mind what things cost,’ the Boy said, rattling his pockets, showing how much cash he had.
‘We might ’ave been stuck up there,’ Rose said, halting at the photographer’s kiosk, at the pictures of the bathing belles and the famous comedians and the anonymous couples, ‘next—’ and exclaimed with surprise, ‘why—there he is.’
The Boy was staring over the side where the green tide sucked and slid like a wet mouth round the piles. He turned unwillingly to look and there was Spicer fixed in the photographer’s window for the world to gaze at, striding out of the sunlight into the shadow under the pier, worried and hunted and in haste, a comic figure at which strangers could laugh and say, ‘He’s worried right enough. They caught him unawares.’
‘The one who left the card,’ Rose said. ‘The one you said was dead. He’s not dead. Though it almost looks—’ she laughed with amusement at the blurred black-and-white haste—‘that he’s afraid he will be if he doesn’t hurry.’
‘An old picture,’ the Boy said.
‘Oh no, it’s not. This is where today’s pictures go. For you to buy.’
‘You know a lot.’
‘You can’t miss it, can you?’ Rose said. ‘It’s comic. Striding along. All fussed up. Not even seeing the camera.’
‘Stay here,’ the Boy said. Inside the kiosk it was dark after the sun. A man with a thin moustache and steel-rimmed spectacles sorted piles of prints.
‘I want a picture that’s up outside,’ the Boy said.
‘Slip, please,’ the man said, and put out yellow fingers which smelt faintly of hypo.
‘I haven’t got a slip.’
‘You can’t have the picture without the slip,’ the man said and held a negative up to the electric globe.
‘What right have you,’ the Boy said, ‘to stick up pictures without a by-your-leave? You let me have that picture,’ but the steel rims glittered back at him, without interest—a fractious boy. ‘You bring that slip,’ the man said, ??
?and you can have the picture. Now run along. I’m busy.’ Behind his head were framed snapshots of King Edward VIII (Prince of Wales) in a yachting cap and a background of peep machines, going yellow from inferior chemicals and age; Vesta Tilley signing autographs; Henry Irving muffled against the Channel winds; a nation’s history. Lily Langtry wore ostrich feathers, Mrs Pankhurst hobble skirts, the English Beauty Queen of 1923 a bathing dress. It was little comfort to know that Spicer was among the immortals.
4
‘Spicer,’ the Boy called, ‘Spicer.’ He climbed up from Frank’s small dark hall towards the landing, leaving a smear of country, of the downs, white on the linoleum. ‘Spicer.’ He felt the broken banister tremble under his hand. He opened the door of Spicer’s room and there he was upon the bed, asleep face down. The window was closed, an insect buzzed through the stale air, and there was a smell of whisky from the bed. Pinkie stood looking down on the greying hair. He felt no pity at all; he wasn’t old enough for pity. He pulled Spicer round; the skin round his mouth was in eruption. ‘Spicer.’
Spicer opened his eyes. He saw nothing for a while in the dim room.
‘I want a word with you, Spicer.’
Spicer sat up. ‘My God, Pinkie, I’m glad to see you.’
‘Always glad to see a pal, eh, Spicer?’
‘I saw Crab. He said you were at the police-station.’
‘Crab?’
‘You weren’t at the station, then?’
‘I was having a friendly talk—about Brewer.’
‘Not about—?’
‘About Brewer.’ The Boy suddenly put his hand on Spicer’s wrist. ‘Your nerves are all wrong, Spicer. You want a holiday.’ He sniffed with contempt the tainted air. ‘You drink too much.’ He went to the window and threw it open on the vista of grey wall. A leather-jacket buzzed up the pane and the Boy caught it in his hand. It vibrated like a tiny watchspring in his palm. He began to pull off the legs and wings one by one. ‘She loves me,’ he said, ‘she loves me not. I’ve been out with my girl, Spicer.’
‘The one from Snow’s?’
The Boy turned the denuded body over on his palm and puffed it away over Spicer’s bed. ‘You know who I mean,’ he said. ‘You had a message for me, Spicer. Why didn’t you bring it?’
‘I couldn’t find you, Pinkie. Honest I couldn’t. And anyway it wasn’t that important. Some old busybody asking questions.’
‘It scared you all the same,’ the Boy said. He sat down on the hard deal chair before the mirror, his hands on his knees, watching Spicer. The pulse beat in his cheek.
‘Oh, it didn’t scare me,’ Spicer said.
‘You went walking blind straight to There.’
‘What do you mean—There?’
‘There’s only one There to you, Spicer. You think about it and you dream about it. You’re too old for this life.’
‘This life?’ Spicer said, glaring back at him from the bed.
‘This racket, of course I mean. You get nervous and then you get rash. First there was that card in Snow’s and now you let your picture be stuck up on the pier for anyone to see. For Rose to see.’
‘Honest to God, Pinkie, I never knew that.’
‘You forget to walk on your toes.’
‘She’s safe. She’s stuck on you, Pinkie.’
‘I don’t know anything about women. I leave that to you and Cubitt and the rest. I only know what you tell me. You’ve told me time and time again there never was a safe polony yet.’
‘That’s just talk.’
‘You mean I’m a kid and you tell me good night stories. But I’ve got so I believe them, Spicer. It don’t seem safe to me that you and Rose are in the same town. Apart from this other buer asking questions. You’ll have to disappear, Spicer.’
‘What do you mean?’ Spicer said. ‘Disappear?’ he fumbled inside his jacket and the Boy watched him, his hands flat on his knees. ‘You wouldn’t do anything,’ he said, fumbling in his pocket.
‘Why,’ the Boy said, ‘what do you think I mean? I mean take a holiday, go away somewhere for a while.’
Spicer’s hand came out of his pocket. He held out a silver watch towards the Boy. ‘You can trust me, Pinkie. Look there, what the boys gave me. Read the inscription. “Ten Years a Pal. From the boys at the Stadium.” I don’t let people down. That was fifteen years ago, Pinkie. Twenty-five years on the tracks. You weren’t born when I started.’
‘You need a holiday,’ the Boy said. ‘That’s all I said.’
‘I’d be glad to take a holiday,’ Spicer said, ‘but I wouldn’t want you to think I’m milky. I’ll go at once. I’ll pack a bag and clear out tonight. Why, I’d be glad to be gone.’
‘No,’ the Boy said, staring down at his shoes. ‘There’s not all that hurry.’ He lifted a foot. The sole was worn through in a piece the size of a shilling. He thought again of the crowns on Colleoni’s chairs at the Cosmopolitan. ‘I’ll need you at the races.’ He smiled across the room at Spicer. ‘A pal I can trust.’
‘You can trust me, Pinkie.’ Spicer’s fingers smoothed the silver watch. ‘What are you smiling at? Have I got a smut or something?’
‘I was just thinking of the races,’ the Boy said. ‘They mean a lot to me.’ He got up and stood with his back to the greying light, the tenement wall, the smut-smeared pane, looking down at Spicer with a kind of curiosity. ‘And where will you go, Spicer?’ he said. His mind was quite made up, and for the second time in a few weeks he looked at a dying man. He couldn’t help feeling inquisitive. Why, it was even possible that old Spicer was not set for the flames, he’d been a loyal old geezer, he hadn’t done as much harm as the next man, he might slip through the gates into—but the Boy couldn’t picture any eternity except in terms of pain. He frowned a little in the effort: a glassy sea, a golden crown, old Spicer.
‘Nottingham,’ Spicer said. ‘A pal of mine keeps the “Blue Anchor” in Union Street. A free house. High class. Lunches served. He’s often said to me, “Spicer, why don’t you come into partnership? We’d make the old place into a hotel with a few more nickers in the till.” If it wasn’t for you and the boys,’ Spicer said, ‘I wouldn’t want to come back. I wouldn’t mind staying away for keeps.’
‘Well,’ the Boy said, ‘I’ll be off. We know where we are now, anyway.’ Spicer lay back on the pillow and put up the foot with the shooting corn. There was a hole in his woollen stocking, and a big toe showed through, hard skin calcined with middle age. ‘Sleep well,’ the Boy said.
He went downstairs, the front door faced east, and the hall was dark. He switched on a light by the telephone and then switched it out again: he didn’t know why. Then he rang up the Cosmopolitan. When the hotel exchange answered he could hear the dance music in the distance, all the way from the Palm House (thés dansants three shillings), behind the Louis Seize lounge. ‘I want Mr Colleoni.’ ‘The nightingale singing, the postman ringing’—the tune was abruptly cut off, and a low voice purred up the line.
‘That Mr Colleoni?’
He could hear a glass chink and ice move in a shaker. He said, ‘This is Mr P. Brown. I’ve been thinking things over, Mr Colleoni.’ Outside the little dark linoleumed hall a bus slid by, the lights faint in the grey end of the day. The Boy put his mouth close to the mouth of the telephone and said: ‘He won’t listen to reason, Mr Colleoni.’ The voice purred happily back at him. The Boy explained slowly and carefully, ‘I’ll wish him good luck and pat him on the back.’ He stopped and asked sharply, ‘What’s that you say, Mr Colleoni? No. I just thought you laughed. Hullo. Hullo.’ He banged the receiver down and turned with a sense of uneasiness towards the stairs. The gold cigar-lighter, the grey double-breasted waistcoat, the feeling of a racket luxuriously successful for a moment dominated him: the brass bedstead upstairs, the little pot of violet ink on the washstand, the flakes of sausage-roll. His board school cunning wilted for a while; then he turned on the light, he was at home. He climbed the stairs, humming softly: ‘the nightingale singing,
the postman ringing’, but as his thoughts circled closer to the dark, dangerous and deathly centre the tune changed: ‘Agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi. . . ’ He walked stiffly, the jacket sagging across his immature shoulders, but when he opened the door of his room—‘dona novis pacem’—his pallid face peered dimly back at him full of pride from the mirror over the ewer, the soap-dish, the basin of stale water.
PART FOUR
1
It was a fine fine day for the races. People poured into Brighton by the first train. It was like Bank Holiday all over again, except that these people didn’t spend their money; they harboured it. They stood packed deep on the tops of the trams rocking down to the Aquarium, they surged like some natural and irrational migration of insects up and down the front. By eleven o’clock it was impossible to get a seat on the buses going out to the course. A negro wearing a bright striped tie sat on a bench in the Pavilion garden and smoked a cigar. Some children played touch wood from seat to seat, and he called out to them hilariously, holding his cigar at arm’s length with an air of pride and caution, his great teeth gleaming like an advertisement. They stopped playing and stared at him, backing slowly. He called out to them again in their own tongue, the words hollow and unformed and childish like theirs, and they eyed him uneasily and backed farther away. He put his cigar patiently back between the cushiony lips and went on smoking. A band came up the pavement through Old Steyne, a blind band playing drums and trumpets, walking in the gutter, feeling the kerb with the edge of their shoes, in Indian file. You heard the music a long way off, persisting through the rumble of the crowd, the shots of exhaust pipes, and the grinding of the buses starting uphill for the racecourse. It rang out with spirit, marched like a regiment, and you raised your eyes in expectation of the tiger skin and the twirling drumsticks and saw the pale blind eyes, like those of pit ponies, going by along the gutter.