Brighton Rock (22 page)

‘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 penny 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.

At the saloon bar they made way for him with respect. In the mirror marked Booth’s Gin he could see his own reflection—the short flaming hair, the blunt and open face, broad shoulders. He stared like Narcissus into his pool and felt better; he wasn’t the sort of man to take things lying down; he was valuable. ‘Have a whisky?’ somebody said. It was the greengrocer’s assistant from the corner shop. Cubitt laid a heavy paw across his shoulder, accepting, patronizing: the man who had done a thing or two in his time chummy with the pale ignorant fellow who dreamed from his commercial distance of a man’s life. The relationship pleased Cubitt. He had two more whiskies at the grocer’s expense.

‘Got a tip, Mr Cubitt?’

‘I’ve got other things to think of beside tips,’ Cubitt said darkly, adding a splash.

‘We were having an argument in here about Gay Parrot for the two-thirty. Seemed to me. . . ’

Gay Parrot. . . the name didn’t mean a thing to Cubitt: the drink warmed him: the mist was in his brain: he leant forward towards the mirror and saw ‘Booth’s Gin. . . Booth’s Gin’, haloed above his head. He was involved in high politics: men had been
killed:
poor old Spicer. Allegiances shifted like heavy balances in his brain: he felt as important as a Prime Minister making treaties.

‘There’ll be more killing before we’re through,’ he mysteriously pronounced. He had his wits about him: he wasn’t giving anything away; but there was no harm in letting these poor sodden creatures a little way into the secrets of living. He pushed his glass forward and said, ‘A drink all round,’ but when he looked to either side they’d gone; a face took a backward look through the pane of the saloon door, vanished; they couldn’t stand the company of a Man.

‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘never mind,’ and drank down his whisky and left. The next thing, of course, was to see Colleoni. He’d say to him, ‘Here I am, Mr Colleoni. I’m through with Kite’s mob. I won’t work under a boy like that. Give me a Man’s job and I’ll do it.’ The mist got at his bones: he shivered involuntarily: a grey goose. . . He thought: if only Dallow too. . . and suddenly loneliness took away his confidence; all the heat of the drink seeped out of him, and the mist like seven devils went in. Suppose Colleoni simply wasn’t interested. He came down on to the front and saw through the thin fog the high lights of the Cosmopolitan: it was cocktail time.

Cubitt sat down chilled in a glass shelter and stared out towards the sea. The tide was low and the mist hid it: it was just a sliding and a sibilation. He lit a cigarette: the match warmed for a moment the cupped hands. He offered the packet to an elderly gentleman wrapped in a heavy overcoat who shared the shelter. ‘I don’t smoke,’ the old gentleman said sharply and began to cough: a steady hack, hack, hack towards the invisible sea.

‘A cold night,’ Cubitt said. The old gentleman swivelled his eyes on him like opera glasses and went on coughing: hack, hack, hack: the vocal chords dry as straw. Somewhere out at sea a violin began to play: it was like a sea beast mourning and stretching towards the shore. Cubitt thought of Spicer who’d liked a good tune. Poor old Spicer. The mist blew in, heavy compact drifts of it like ectoplasm. Cubitt had been to a séance once in Brighton: he had wanted to get in touch with his mother, dead twenty years ago. It had come over him quite suddenly—the old girl might have a word for him. She had: she was on the seventh plane where all
was
very beautiful: her voice had sounded a little boozed, but that wasn’t really unnatural. The boys had laughed at him about it, particularly old Spicer. Well, Spicer wouldn’t laugh now. He could be summoned himself any time to ring a bell and shake a tambourine. It was a lucky thing he liked music.

Cubitt got up and strolled to the turnpike of the West Pier, which straddled into the mist and vanished towards the violin. He walked up towards the Concert Hall, passing nobody. It wasn’t a night for courting couples to sit out. Whatever people there were upon the pier were gathered every one inside the Concert Hall. Cubitt turned round it on the outside looking in: a man in evening dress fiddling to a few rows of people in overcoats, islanded fifty yards out to sea in the middle of the mist. Somewhere in the Channel a boat blew its siren and another answered, and another, like dogs at night waking each other.

Go to Colleoni and say. . . it was all quite easy; the old man ought to be grateful. . . Cubitt looked back towards the shore and saw above the mist the high lights of the Cosmopolitan, and they daunted him. He wasn’t used to that sort of company. He went down the iron companionway to the gents and drained the whisky out of him into the movement under the piles and came up on to the deck lonelier than ever. He took a penny out of his pocket and slipped it into an automatic machine: a robot face behind which an electric bulb revolved, iron hands for Cubitt to grip. A little blue card shot out at him: ‘Your Character Delineated.’ Cubitt read: ‘You are mainly influenced by your surroundings and inclined to be capricious and changeful. Your affections are more intense than enduring. You have a free, easy, and genial nature. You make the best of whatever you undertake. A share of the good things of life can always be yours. Your lack of initiative is counter-balanced by your good common sense, and you will succeed where others fail.’

He dragged slowly on past the automatic machines, delaying the moment when there would be nothing for him to do but go to the Cosmopolitan. ‘Your lack of initiative. . . ’ Two leaden football teams waited behind glass for a penny to release them: an old witch with the stuffing coming out of her claw offered to tell his fortune. ‘A Love Letter’ made him pause. The boards were damp
with
mist, the long deck was empty, the violin ground on. He felt the need of a deep sentimental affection, orange blossoms and a cuddle in a corner. His great paw yearned for a sticky hand. Somebody who wouldn’t mind his jokes, who would laugh with him at the two-valve receiving set. He hadn’t meant any harm. The cold reached his stomach, and a little stale whisky returned into his throat. He almost felt inclined to go back to Frank’s. But then he remembered Spicer. The boy was mad, killing mad, it wasn’t safe. Loneliness dragged him down the solitary boards. He took out his last copper and thrust it in. A little pink card came out with a printed stamp: a girl’s head, long hair, the legend ‘True Love’. It was addressed to ‘My Dear Pet, Spooner’s Nook, With Cupid’s Love’, and there was a picture of a young man in evening dress kneeling on the floor, kissing the hand of a girl carrying a big fur. Up in a corner two hearts were transfixed by an arrow just above Reg. No. 745812. Cubitt thought: it’s clever. It’s cheap for a penny. He looked quickly over his shoulder: not a soul: and turned it quickly and began to read. The letter was addressed from Cupid’s Wings, Amor Lane. ‘My dear little girl. So you have discarded me for the Squire’s son. You little know how you have ruined my life in breaking faith with me, you have crushed the very soul out of me, as the butterfly on the wheel; but with it all I do not wish anything but your happiness.’

Cubitt grinned uneasily. He was deeply moved. That was what always happened if you took up with anything but a buer; they gave you the air. Grand Renunciations, Tragedies, Beauty moved in Cubitt’s brain. If it was a buer of course you took a razor to her, carved her face, but this love printed here was class. He read on: it was literature: it was the way he’d like to write himself. ‘After all, when I think of your wondrous, winsome beauty, and culture, I feel what a fool I must have been to dream that you ever really loved me.’ Unworthy. Emotion pricked behind his eyelids and he shivered in the mist with cold and beauty. ‘But remember, dearest, always, that I love you, and if ever you want a friend just return the little token of love I gave you and I will be your servant and slave. Yours broken-heartedly, John.’ It was his own name: an omen.

He moved again past the lighted concert hall and down the deserted deck. Loved and Lost. Tragic griefs flamed under his carrot
hair.
What can a man do but drink? He got another whisky just opposite the pier head and moved on, planting his feet rather too firmly, towards the Cosmopolitan—plank, plank, plank along the pavement as if he were wearing iron weights under his shoes, like a statue might move, half-flesh, half-stone.

‘I want to speak to Mr Colleoni.’ He said it defiantly. The plush and gilding smoothed away his confidence. He waited uneasily beside the desk while a pageboy searched through the lounges and boudoirs for Mr Colleoni. The clerk turned over the leaves of a big book and then consulted a
Who’s Who
. Across the deep carpet the page returned and Crab followed him, sidling and triumphant with his black hair smelling of pomade.

‘I said Mr Colleoni,’ Cubitt said to the clerk, but the clerk took no notice, wetting his finger, skimming through
Who’s Who
.

‘You wanted to see Mr Colleoni,’ Crab said.

‘That’s right.’

‘You can’t. He’s occupied.’

‘Occupied,’ Cubitt said. ‘That’s a fine word to use. Occupied.’

‘Why, if it isn’t Cubitt,’ Crab said. ‘I suppose you want a job.’ He looked round in a busy preoccupied way and said to the clerk, ‘Isn’t that Lord Feversham over there?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the clerk said.

‘I’ve often seen him at Doncaster,’ Crab said, squinting at a nail on his left hand. He swept round on Cubitt. ‘Follow me, my man. We can’t talk here,’ and before Cubitt could reply he was sidling off at a great rate between the gilt chairs.

‘It’s like this,’ Cubitt said, ‘Pinkie—’

Half-way across the lounge Crab paused and bowed and moving on became suddenly confidential. ‘A fine woman.’ He flickered like an early movie. He had picked up between Doncaster and London a hundred different manners; travelling first-class after a successful meeting he had learnt how Lord Feversham spoke to a porter: he had seen old Digby scrutinize a woman.

‘Who is she?’ Cubitt asked.

But Crab took no notice of the question. ‘We can talk here.’ It was the Pompadour Boudoir. Through the gilt and glass door beyond the boule tables you could see little signboards pointing down a network of passages—tasteful little chinoiserie signboards
with
a Tuileries air: ‘Ladies’. ‘Gentlemen’. ‘Ladies’ Hairdressing’. ‘Gentlemen’s Hairdressing.’