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Authors: Graham Greene

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BOOK: Brighton Rock
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‘It’s Mr Colleoni I want to talk to,’ Cubitt said. He breathed whisky over the marquetry, but he was daunted and despairing. He resisted with difficulty the temptation to say ‘sir’. Crab had moved on since Kite’s day, almost out of sight. He was part of the great racket now—with Lord Feversham and the fine woman. He had grown up.

‘Mr Colleoni hasn’t time to see everyone,’ Crab said. ‘He’s a busy man.’ He took one of Mr Colleoni’s cigars out of his pocket and put it in his mouth: he didn’t offer one to Cubitt. Cubitt with uncertain hand offered him a match. ‘Never mind, never mind,’ Crab said, fumbling in his double-breasted waistcoat. He fetched out a gold lighter and flourished it at his cigar. ‘What do you want, Cubitt?’ he asked.

‘I thought maybe,’ Cubitt said, but his words wilted among the gilt chairs. ‘You know how it is,’ he said, staring desperately around. ‘What about a drink?’

Crab took him quickly up. ‘I wouldn’t mind one—just for old time’s sake.’ He rang for a waiter.

‘Old times,’ Cubitt said.

‘Take a seat,’ Crab said, waving a possessive hand at the gilt chairs. Cubitt sat gingerly down. The chairs were small and hard. He saw a waiter watching them and flushed. ‘What’s yours?’ he asked.

‘A sherry,’ Crab said. ‘Dry.’

‘Scotch and splash for me,’ Cubitt said. He sat waiting for his drink, his hands between his knees, silent, his head lowered. He took furtive glances. This was where Pinkie had come to see Colleoni—he had nerve all right.

‘They do you pretty well here,’ Crab said. ‘Of course Mr Colleoni likes nothing but the best.’ He took his drink and watched Cubitt pay. ‘He likes things smart. Why, he’s worth fifty thousand nicker if he’s worth a penny. If you ask me what I think,’ Crab said, leaning back, puffing at the cigar, watching Cubitt through remote and supercilious eyes, ‘he’ll go in for politics one day. The Conservatives think a lot of him—he’s got contacts.’

‘Pinkie—’ Cubitt began and Crab laughed. ‘Take my advice,’
Crab
said. ‘Get out of that mob while there’s time. There’s no future. . . ’ He looked obliquely over Cubitt’s head and said, ‘See that man going to the gents. That’s Mais. The brewer. He’s worth a hundred thousand nicker.’

‘I was wondering,’ Cubitt said, ‘if Mr Colleoni. . . ’

‘Not a chance,’ Crab said. ‘Why, ask yourself—what good would you be to Mr Colleoni?’

Cubitt’s humility gave way to a dull anger. ‘I was good enough for Kite.’

Crab laughed. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but Kite. . . ’ He shook his ash out on to the carpet and said, ‘Take my advice. Get out. Mr Colleoni’s going to clean up this track. He likes things done properly. No violence. The police have great confidence in Mr Colleoni.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well, well, I must be going. I’ve got a date at the Hippodrome.’ He put his hand with patronage on Cubitt’s arm. ‘There,’ he said. ‘I’ll put in a word for you—for old times’ sake. It won’t be any good, but I’ll do that much. Give my regards to Pinkie and the boys.’ He passed—a whiff of pomade and Havana, bowing slightly to a woman at the door, an old man with a monocle on a black ribbon. ‘Who the hell—’ the old man said.

Cubitt drained his drink and followed. An enormous depression bowed his carrot head, a sense of ill-treatment moved through the whisky fumes—somebody some time had got to pay for something. All that he saw fed the flame: he came out into the entrance hall: a pageboy with a salver infuriated him. Everybody was watching him, waiting for him to go, but he had as much right there as Crab. He glanced round him, and there alone at a little table with a glass of port was the woman Crab knew. He watched her with covetous envy and she smiled at him—‘I think of your wondrous, winsome beauty and culture.’ A sense of the immeasurable sadness of injustice took the place of anger. He wanted to confide, to lay down burdens. . . he belched once. . . ‘I will be your loving slave.’ The great body turned like a door, the heavy feet altered direction and padded towards a table where Ida Arnold sat.

‘I couldn’t help hearing,’ she said, ‘when you went across just now that you knew Pinkie.’

He realized with immense pleasure when she spoke that she wasn’t class. It seemed to him like the meeting of two fellow countrymen a long way from home. He said, ‘You a friend of Pinkie’s?’ and felt the whisky in his legs. He asked, ‘Mind if I sit down?’

‘Tired?’

‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘tired.’ He sat down with his eyes on her large friendly bosom. He remembered the lines on his character. ‘You have a free, easy and genial nature.’ By God, he had. He only needed to be treated right.

‘Have a drink?’

‘No, no,’ he said with woolly gallantry, ‘it’s on me,’ but when the drinks came he realized he was out of cash. He had meant to borrow from one of the boys—but then the quarrel. . . He watched Ida Arnold pay with a five-pound note.

‘Know Mr Colleoni?’ he asked.

‘I wouldn’t call it
know
,’ she said.

‘Crab said you were a fine woman. He’s right.’

‘Oh—Crab,’ she said vaguely, as if she didn’t recognize the name.

‘You oughter steer clear though,’ Cubitt said. ‘You’ve no call to get mixed up in things.’ He stared into his glass as into a deep darkness: outside innocence, winsome beauty and culture—unworthy, a tear gathered behind the bloodshot eyeball.

‘You a friend of Pinkie’s?’ Ida Arnold asked.

‘Christ, no,’ Cubitt said and took some more whisky.

A vague memory of the Bible, where it lay in the cupboard next the Board, the Warwick Deeping,
The Good Companions
, stirred in Ida Arnold’s memory. ‘I’ve seen you with him.’ she lied: a courtyard, a sewing wench beside the fire, the cock crowing.

‘I’m no friend of Pinkie’s.’

‘It’s not safe being friends with Pinkie,’ Ida Arnold said. Cubitt stared into his glass like a diviner into his soul, reading the dooms of strangers. ‘Fred was a friend of Pinkie’s,’ she said.

‘What do you know about Fred?’

‘People talk,’ Ida Arnold said. ‘People talk all the time.’

‘You’re right,’ Cubitt said. The stained eyeballs lifted: they gazed at comfort, understanding. He wasn’t good enough for Colleoni: he had broken with Pinkie. Behind her head through the
window
of the lounge darkness and retreating sea. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘you’re right.’ He had an enormous urge to confession, but the facts were confused. He only knew that these were the times when a man needed a woman’s understanding. ‘I’ve never held with it,’ he told her. ‘Carving’s different.’

‘Of course, carving’s different,’ Ida Arnold smoothly and deftly agreed.

‘And Kite—that was an accident. They only meant to carve him. Colleoni’s no fool. Somebody slipped. There wasn’t any cause for bad feeling.’

‘Have another drink?’

‘It oughter be on me,’ Cubitt said. ‘But I’m cleaned out. Till I see the boys.’

‘It was fine of you—breaking with Pinkie like that. It needed courage after what happened to Fred.’

‘Oh, he can’t scare me. No broken banisters. . . ’

‘What do you mean—broken banisters?’

‘I wanted to be friendly,’ Cubitt said. ‘A joke’s a joke. When a man’s getting married, he oughter take a joke.’

‘Married? Who married?’

‘Pinkie, of course.’

‘Not to the little girl at Snow’s?’

‘Of course.’

‘The little fool,’ Ida Arnold said with sharp anger. ‘Oh, the little fool.’

‘He’s not a fool,’ Cubitt said. ‘He knows what’s good for him. If she chose to say a thing or two—’

‘You mean, say it wasn’t Fred left the ticket?’

‘Poor old Spicer,’ Cubitt said, watching the bubbles rise in the whisky. A question floated up, ‘How did you. . . ’ but broke in the doped brain. ‘I want air,’ he said, ‘stuffy in here. What say you and I. . . ?’

‘Just wait awhile,’ Ida Arnold said. ‘I’m expecting a friend. I’d like you and him to be acquainted.’

‘This central heating,’ Cubitt said, ‘it’s not healthy. You go out and catch a chill and the next you know. . . ’

‘When’s the wedding?’

‘Whose wedding?’

‘Pinkie’s.’

‘I’m no friend of Pinkie’s.’

‘You didn’t hold with Fred’s death, did you?’ Ida Arnold softly persisted.

‘You understand a man.’

‘Carving would have been different.’

Cubitt suddenly, furiously, broke out, ‘I can’t see a piece of Brighton rock without. . . ’ He belched and said with tears in his voice, ‘Carving’s different.’

‘The doctors said it was natural causes. He had a weak heart.’

‘Come outside,’ Cubitt said, ‘I got to get some air.’

‘Just wait a bit. What do you mean—Brighton rock?’

He stared inertly back at her. He said, ‘I got to get some air. Even if it kills me. This central heating. . . ’ he complained. ‘I’m liable to colds.’

‘Just wait two minutes.’ She put her hand on his arm, feeling an intense excitement, the edge of discovery above the horizon, and was aware herself for the first time of the warm close air welling up round them from hidden gratings, driving them into the open. She said, ‘I’ll come out with you. We’ll take a walk. . . ’ He watched her with nodding head, with an immense indifference as if he had lost grip on his thought as you loose a dog’s lead and it has disappeared, too far to be followed, in what wood. . . He was astonished when she said, ‘I’ll give you—twenty pounds.’ What had he said that was worth that money? She smiled enticingly at him. ‘Just let me put on a bit of powder and have a wash.’ He didn’t respond, he was scared, but she couldn’t wait for a reply: she dived for the stairs—no time for the lift. A wash: they were the words she had used to Fred. She ran upstairs, people were coming down, changed, to dinner. She hammered on her door and Phil Corkery let her in. ‘Quick,’ she said, ‘I want a witness.’ He was dressed, thank goodness, and she raced him down, but immediately she got into the hall she saw that Cubitt had gone. She ran out on to the steps of the Cosmopolitan, but he wasn’t in sight.

‘Well,’ Mr Corkery said.

‘Gone, Never mind,’ Ida Arnold said. ‘I know now all right. It wasn’t suicide. They murdered him.’ She said slowly over to herself: ‘. . .  Brighton rock. . . ’ The clue would have seemed hopeless
to
many women, but Ida Arnold had been trained by the Board. Queerer things than that had spidered out under her fingers and Old Crowe’s: with complete confidence her mind began to work.

The night air stirred Mr Corkery’s thin yellow hair. It may have occurred to him that on an evening like this—after the actions of love—romance was required by any woman. He touched her elbow timidly, ‘What a night,’ he said. ‘I never dreamed—what a night,’ but words drained out as she switched towards him her large thoughtful eyes, uncomprehending, full of other ideas. She said slowly, ‘The little fool. . . to marry him. . . why, there’s no knowing what he’ll do.’ A kind of righteous mirth moved her to add with excitement, ‘We got to save her, Phil.’

2

At the bottom of the steps the Boy waited. The big municipal building lay over him like a shadow—departments for births and deaths, for motor licences, for rates and taxes, somewhere in some long corridor the room for marriages. He looked at his watch and said to Mr Prewitt, ‘God damn her. She’s late.’

Mr Prewitt said, ‘It’s the privilege of a bride.’

Bride and groom: the mare and the stallion which served her: like a file on metal or the touch of velvet to a sore hand. The Boy said, ‘Me and Dallow—we’ll walk and meet her.’

Mr Prewitt called after him. ‘Suppose she comes another way. Suppose you miss her. . . I’ll wait here.’

They turned to the left out of the official street. ‘This ain’t the way,’ Dallow said.

‘There’s no call on us to wait on her,’ the Boy said.

‘You can’t get out of it now.’

‘Who wants to? I can take a bit of exercise, can’t I?’ He stopped and stared into a small newsagent’s window—two-valve receiving sets, the grossness everywhere.

‘Seen Cubitt?’ he asked, staring in.

‘No,’ Dallow said. ‘None of the boys either.’

The daily and the local papers, a poster packed with news: Scene at Council Meeting. Woman Found Drowned at Black Rock. Collision in Clarence Street: a Wild West magazine, a copy of
Film Fun
; behind the inkpots and the fountain pens and the paper plates for picnics and the little gross toys, the works of well-known sexologists. The Boy stared in.

‘I know how you feel,’ Dallow said. ‘I was married once myself. It kind of gets you in the stomach. Nerves. Why,’ Dallow said, ‘I
even
went and got one of those books, but it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. Except about flowers. The pistils of flowers. You wouldn’t believe the funny things that go on among flowers.’

The Boy turned and opened his mouth to speak, but the teeth snapped to again. He watched Dallow with pleading and horror. If Kite had been there, he thought, he could have spoken—but if Kite had been there, he would have had no need to speak. . . he would never have got mixed up.

‘These bees. . . ’ Dallow began to explain and stopped. ‘What is it, Pinkie? You don’t look too good.’

‘I know the rules all right,’ the Boy said.

‘What rules?’

‘You can’t teach me the rules,’ the Boy went on with gusty anger. ‘I watched ’em every Saturday night, didn’t I? Bouncing and ploughing.’ His eyes flinched as if he were watching some horror. He said in a low voice, ‘When I was a kid, I swore I’d be a priest.’

‘A priest? You a priest? That’s good,’ Dallow said. He laughed without conviction, uneasily shifted his foot so that it trod in a dog’s ordure.

‘What’s wrong with being a priest?’ the Boy asked. ‘They know what’s what. They keep away—’ his whole mouth and jaw loosened: he might have been going to weep: he beat out wildly with his hands towards the window: Woman Found Drowned, two-valve,
Married Passion
, the horror—‘from this.’

‘What’s wrong with a bit of fun?’ Dallow took him up, scraping his shoe against the pavement edge. The word ‘fun’ shook the Boy like malaria. He said, ‘You wouldn’t have known Annie Collins, would you?’

‘Never heard of her.’

‘She went to the same school I did,’ the Boy said. He took a look down the grey street and then the glass before
Married Passion
reflected again his young and hopeless face. ‘She put her head on the line.’ he said, ‘up by the Hassocks. She had to wait ten minutes for the seven-five. Fog made it late from Victoria. Cut off her head. She was fifteen. She was going to have a baby and she knew what it was like. She’d had one two years before, and they could ’ave pinned it on twelve boys.’

BOOK: Brighton Rock
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