He played the game to the last card, fetching up a grin and a compliment, ‘I’d do more for you.’
‘You were wonderful,’ she said, loving him among the lavatory smells, but her praise was poison: it marked her possession of him: it led straight to what she expected from him, the horrifying act of a desire he didn’t feel. She followed him out into the fresh air of Nelson Place. The children played among the ruins of Paradise Piece, and a wind blew from the sea across the site of his home. A dim desire for annihilation stretched in him: the vast superiority of vacancy.
She said, as she had said once before, ‘I always wondered how it’d be.’ Her mind moved obscurely among the events of the afternoon, brought out the unexpected discovery. ‘I’ve never known a mood go so quick. They must have liked you.’
4
Ida Arnold bit an éclair and the cream spurted between the large front teeth. She laughed a little thickly in the Pompadour Boudoir and said, ‘I haven’t had as much money to spend since I left Tom.’ She took another bite and a wedge of cream settled on the plump tongue. ‘I owe it to Fred too. If he hadn’t tipped me Black Boy. . . ’
‘Why not give everything up,’ Mr Corkery said, ‘and just have a bit of fun. It’s dangerous.’
‘Oh, yes it’s dangerous,’ she admitted, but no real sense of danger could lodge behind those large vivacious eyes. Nothing could ever make her believe that one day she too, like Fred, would be where the worms. . . Her mind couldn’t take that track; she could go only a short way before the points automatically shifted and set her vibrating down the accustomed line, the season ticket line marked by desirable residence and advertisements of cruises and small fenced boskages for rural love. She said, eyeing her éclair, ‘I never give in. They didn’t know what a packet of trouble they were stirring up.’
‘Leave it to the police.’
‘Oh no. I know what’s right. You can’t tell me. Who’s that, do you think?’
An elderly man in glacé shoes, with a white slip to his waistcoat and a jewelled pin, came padding across the Boudoir. ‘Distinguay,’ Ida Arnold said.
A secretary trotted a little way behind him, reading out from a list. ‘Bananas, oranges, grapes, peaches. . . ’
‘Hothouse?’
‘Hothouse.’
‘Who’s that?’ Ida Arnold repeated.
‘That was all, Mr Colleoni?’ the secretary asked.
‘What flowers?’ Mr Colleoni demanded. ‘And could you get any nectarines?’
‘No, Mr Colleoni.’
‘My dear wife,’ Mr Colleoni said, his voice dwindling out of their hearing. They could catch only the word ‘passion’. Ida Arnold swivelled her eyes round the elegant furnishing of the Pompadour Boudoir. They picked out like a searchlight a cushion, a couch, the thin clerkly mouth of the man opposite her. She said, ‘We could have a fine time here,’ watching his mouth.
‘Expensive,’ Mr Corkery said nervously; a too sensitive hand stroked his thin shanks.
‘Black Boy will stand it. And we can’t have—you know—fun at the Belvedere. Strait-laced.’
‘You wouldn’t mind a bit of fun here?’ Mr Corkery asked. He blinked. You couldn’t tell from his expression whether he desired or dreaded her assent.
‘Why should I? It doesn’t do anyone any harm that I know of. It’s human nature.’ She bit at her éclair and repeated the familiar password. ‘It’s only fun after all.’ Fun to be on the right side, fun to be human. . .
‘You go and get my bag,’ she said, ‘while I book a room. After all—I owe you something. You’ve worked. . . ’
Mr Corkery flushed a little. ‘Half and half,’ he said.
She grinned at him. ‘It’s on Black Boy. I pay my debts.’
‘A man likes—’ Mr Corkery said weakly.
‘Trust me, I know what a man likes.’ The éclair and the deep couch and the gaudy furnishings were like an aphrodisiac in her tea. She was shaken by a Bacchic and a bawdy mood. In every word either of them uttered she detected the one meaning. Mr Corkery blushed, plunged deeper in his embarrassment. ‘A man can’t help feeling,’ and was shaken by her immense glee.
‘You’re telling me,’ she said, ‘you’re telling me.’
While Mr Corkery was gone she made her preparations for carnival, the taste of the sweet cake between her teeth. The idea of Fred Hale dodged backwards like a figure on a platform when the train goes out. He belonged to somewhere left behind; the waving hand only contributes to the excitement of the new experience. The new—and yet the immeasurably old. She gazed round the big padded pleasure dome of a bedroom with bloodshot and experienced eyes: the long mirror and the wardrobe and the enormous bed. She settled frankly down on it while the clerk waited. ‘It springs,’ she said, ‘it springs,’ and sat there for quite a long while after he’d gone planning the evening’s campaign. If somebody had said to her then ‘Fred Hale’, she would hardly have recognized the name: there was another interest: for the next hour let the police have him.
Then she got up slowly and began to undress. She never believed in wearing much: it wasn’t any time at all before she was exposed in the long mirror: a body firm and bulky: a proper handful. She stood on a deep soft rug, surrounded by gilt frames and red velvet hangings, and a dozen common and popular phrases bloomed in her mind—‘A Night of Love’, ‘You Only Live Once’, and the rest. She bore the same relation to passion as a peepshow. She sucked the chocolate between her teeth and smiled, her plump toes working in the rug, waiting for Mr Corkery—just a great big blossoming surprise.
Outside the window the sea ebbed, scraping the shingle, exposing a boot, a piece of rusty iron, and the old man stooped, searching between the stones. The sun dropped behind the Hove houses and dusk came, the shadow of Mr Corkery lengthened, coming slowly up from the Belvedere carrying the suitcases, saving on taxis. A gull swooped screaming down to a dead crab beaten and broken against the iron foundation of the pier. It was the time of near-darkness and of the evening mist from the Channel and of love.
5
The Boy closed the door behind him and turned to face the expectant and amused faces.
‘Well,’ Cubitt said, ‘is it all fixed up?’
‘Of course it is,’ the Boy said, ‘when I want a thing—’ his voice wavered out unconvincingly. There were half a dozen bottles on his washstand: his room smelt of stale beer.
‘Want a thing,’ Cubitt said. ‘That’s good.’ He opened another bottle and in the warm stuffy room the froth rose quickly and splashed on the marble top.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ the Boy said.
‘Celebrating,’ Cubitt said. ‘You’re a Roman, aren’t you? A betrothal, that’s what Romans call it.’
The Boy watched them: Cubitt a little drunk, Dallow preoccupied, two lean hungry faces he hardly knew—hangers-on at the fringes of the great racket who smiled when you smiled and frowned when you frowned. But now they smiled when Cubitt smiled, and suddenly he saw the long way he had slipped since that afternoon on the pier when he arranged the alibi, gave the orders, did what they hadn’t got the nerve to do themselves.
Frank’s wife Judy put her head in at the door. She was wearing a dressing-gown. Her Titian hair was brown at the roots. ‘Good luck, Pinkie,’ she said, blinking mascara’d lashes. She had been washing her bra: the little piece of pink silk dripped on the linoleum. Nobody offered her a drink. ‘Work, work, work,’ she moued at them, going on down the passage to the hot water-pipes.
A long way. . . and yet he hadn’t made a single false step: if he hadn’t gone to Snow’s and spoken to the girl, they’d all be in the dock by now. If he hadn’t killed Spicer. . . Not a single false step, but every step conditioned by a pressure he couldn’t even place: a woman asking questions, messages on the telephone scaring Spicer. He thought: when I’ve married the girl, will it stop then? Where else can it drive me, and with a twitch of the mouth, he wondered—what worse—?
‘When’s the happy day?’ Cubitt asked and
they all smiled obediently except Dallow.
The Boy’s brain began to work again. He moved slowly towards the washstand. He said, ‘Haven’t you got a glass for me? Don’t I do any celebrating?’
He saw Dallow astonished, Cubitt thrown off his mark, the hangers-on doubtful who to follow, and he grinned at them, the one with brains.
‘Why, Pinkie. . . ’ Cubitt said.
‘I’m not a drinking man and I’m not a marrying man,’ the Boy said. ‘So you think. But I’m liking one, so why shouldn’t I like the other. Give me a glass.’
‘Liking,’ Cubitt said and grinned uneasily, ‘you liking. . . ’
‘Haven’t you seen her?’ the Boy said.
‘Why, me and Dallow just lamped her. On the stairs. But it was too dark. . . ’
‘She’s a lovely,’ the Boy said, ‘she’s wasted in a kip. And intelligent. Don’t make any mistake. Of course I didn’t see any cause to marry her, but as it is—’ somebody handed him a glass: he took a long draught: the bitter and bubbly fluid revolted him—so this was what they liked—he tightened the muscles of his mouth to hide his revulsion: ‘as it is,’ he said, ‘I’m glad,’ and eyed with hidden disgust the pale inch of liquid in the glass before he drained it down.
Dallow watched in silence and the Boy felt more anger against his friend than against his enemy. Like Spicer he knew too much, but what he knew was far more deadly than what Spicer had known. Spicer had known only the kind of thing which brought you to the dock, but Dallow knew what your mirror and your bedsheets knew: the secret fear and the humiliation. He said with hidden fury, ‘What’s getting you, Dallow?’
The stupid and broken face was hopelessly at a loss.
‘Jealous?’ the Boy began to boast. ‘You’ve cause when you’ve seen her. She not one of your dyed totsies. She’s got class. I’m marrying her for your sake, but I’m laying her for my own.’ He turned fiendishly on Dallow. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘Well,’ Dallow, said, ‘it’s the one you met on the pier, isn’t it? I didn’t think she was all that good.’
‘You,’ the Boy said, ‘you don’t know anything. You’re ignorant. You don’t know class when you see it.’
‘A duchess,’ Cubitt said and laughed.
An extraordinary indignation jerked in the Boy’s brain and fingers. It was almost as if someone he loved had been insulted. ‘Be careful, Cubitt,’ he said.
‘Don’t mind him,’ Dallow said. ‘We didn’t know you’d fallen. . . ’
‘We got some presents for you, Pinkie,’ Cubitt said, ‘furniture for the home,’ and indicated two little obscene objects beside the beer on the washstand—the Brighton stationers were full of them—a tiny doll’s commode in the shape of a radio set labelled ‘The smallest A.1 two-valve receiving set in the world’, and a mustard-pot shaped like a lavatory seat with the legend, ‘For me and my girl’. It was like a return of all the horror he had ever felt, the hideous loneliness of his innocence. He struck at Cubitt’s face and Cubitt dodged, laughing. The two hangers-on slipped out of the room. They hadn’t any taste for rough houses. The Boy heard them laugh on the stairs. Cubitt said, ‘You’ll need ’em in the home. A bed’s not the only furniture.’ He mocked and backed at the same time.
The Boy said, ‘By God, I’ll treat you like I treated Spicer.’
No meaning reached Cubitt at once. There was a long time lag. He began to laugh and then saw Dallow’s startled face and heard. ‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘He’s crazy,’ Dallow intervened.
‘You think yourself smart,’ the Boy said. ‘So did Spicer.’
‘It was the banister,’ Cubitt said. ‘You weren’t here. What are you getting at?’
‘Of course he wasn’t here,’ Dallow said.
‘You think you know things.’ All the Boy’s hatred was in the word ‘know’ and his repulsion: he knew—like Prewitt knew after twenty-five years at the game. ‘You don’t know everything.’ He tried to inject himself with pride, but all the time his eyes went back to the humiliation. ‘The smallest A.1. . . ’ You could know everything there was in the world and yet if you were ignorant of that one dirty scramble you knew nothing.
‘What’s he getting at?’ Cubitt asked.
‘You don’t need to listen to him,’ Dallow said.
‘I mean this,’ the Boy said. ‘Spicer was milky and I’m the only one in this mob knows how to act.’
‘You act too much,’ Cubitt said. ‘Do you mean—it wasn’t the banisters?’ The question scared himself: he didn’t want an answer. He made uneasily for the door, keeping his eye on the Boy.
Dallow said, ‘Of course it was the banisters. I was there, wasn’t I?’
‘I don’t know,’ Cubitt said, ‘I don’t know,’ making for the door. ‘Brighton’s not big enough for him. I’m through.’
‘Go on,’ the Boy said. ‘Clear out. Clear out and starve.’
‘I won’t starve,’ Cubitt said. ‘There’s others in this town. . . ’
When the door closed the Boy turned on Dallow. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘you go too. You think you can get on without me, but I’ve only got to whistle. . . ’
‘You don’t need to talk to me like that,’ Dallow said. ‘I’m not leaving you. I don’t fancy making friends with Crab again so soon.’
But the Boy paid him no attention. He said again, ‘I’ve only got to whistle. . . ’ He boasted, ‘They’ll come tumbling back.’ He went over to the brass bed and lay down; he had had a long day. He said, ‘Get me Prewitt on the blower. Tell him there’s no difficulty at her end. Let him fix things quick.’
‘The day after tomorrow if he can?’ Dallow asked.
‘Yes,’ the Boy said. He heard the door close and lay with twitching cheek staring at the ceiling. He thought, it’s not my fault they get me angry so I want to do things: if people would leave me in peace. . . His imagination wilted at the word. He tried in a halfhearted way to picture ‘peace’—his eyes closed and behind the lids he saw a grey darkness going on and on without end, a country of which he hadn’t seen as much as a picture postcard, a place far stranger than the Grand Canyon and the Taj Mahal. He opened them again and immediately poison moved in the veins, for there on the washstand were Cubitt’s purchases. He was like a child with haemophilia: every contact drew blood.
6
A bell rang muffled in the Cosmopolitan corridor; through the wall against which the bed-end stood Ida Arnold could hear a voice talking on and on: somebody reading a report, perhaps in a conference room or dictating to a dictaphone. Phil lay asleep on the bed in his pants, his mouth a little open showing one yellow tooth and a gob of metal filling. Fun. . . human nature. . . does no one any harm. . . Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain—nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.
But it did no one any harm, it was just human nature, no one could call her really bad—a bit free-and-easy perhaps, a bit Bohemian. It wasn’t as if she got anything out of it, as if like some people she sucked a man dry and cast him aside like a throw-off—threw him aside like a cast-off glove. She knew what was right and what was wrong. God didn’t mind a bit of human nature—what he minded—and her brain switched away from Phil in pants to her mission, to doing good, to seeing that the evil suffered. . .
She sat up in bed and put her arms round her large naked knees and felt excitement stirring again in the disappointed body. Poor old Fred—the name no longer conveyed any sense of grief or pathos. She couldn’t remember anything much about him now but a monocle and a yellow waistcoat and that belonged to poor old Charlie Moyne. The hunt was what mattered. It was like life coming back after a sickness.
Phil opened an eye—yellow with the sexual effort—and watched her apprehensively. She said, ‘Awake, Phil?’
‘It must be nearly time for dinner,’ Phil said. He gave a nervous smile. ‘A pen
ny for your thoughts, Ida.’
‘I was just thinking,’ Ida said, ‘that what we really need now is one of Pinkie’s men. Somebody scared or angry. They must get scared some time. We’ve only got to wait.’
She got out of the bed, opened her suitcase and began to lay out the clothes she thought were suitable for dinner in the Cosmopolitan. In the pink, reading-lamp, love-lamp light spangles glittered. She stretched her arms; she no longer felt desire or disappointment: her brain was clear. It was almost dark along the beach; the edge of sea was like a line of writing in whitewash: big sprawling letters. They meant nothing at this distance. A shadow stooped with infinite patience and disinterred some relic from the shingle.
PART SIX
1
When Cubitt got outside the front door the hangers-on had already vanished. The street was empty. He felt in a dumb, bitter and uncomprehending way like a man who has destroyed his home without having prepared another. The mist was coming up from the sea, and he hadn’t got his coat. He was as angry as a child: he wouldn’t go back for it: it would be like admitting he was wrong. The only thing to be done now was to drink a strong whisky at the Crown.