Brighton Rock (6 page)

It was all over. Ida squeezed out with difficulty a last tear into a handkerchief scented with Californian Poppy. She liked a funeral—but it was with horror—as other people like a ghost story. Death shocked her, life was so important. She wasn’t religious. She didn’t
believe
in heaven or hell, only in ghosts, ouija boards, tables which rapped and little inept voices speaking plaintively of flowers. Let Papists treat death with flippancy: life wasn’t so important perhaps to them as what came after: but to her death was the end of everything. At one with the One—it didn’t mean a thing beside a glass of Guinness on a sunny day. She believed in ghosts, but you couldn’t call that thin transparent existence life eternal: the squeak of a board, a piece of ectoplasm in a glass cupboard at the psychical research headquarters, a voice she’d heard once at a séance saying, ‘Everything is very beautiful on the upper plane. There are flowers everywhere.’

Flowers, Ida thought scornfully; that wasn’t life. Life was sunlight on brass bedposts, Ruby port, the leap of the heart when the outsider you have backed passes the post and the colours go bobbing up. Life was poor Fred’s mouth pressed down on hers in the taxi, vibrating with the engine along the parade. What was the sense of dying if it made you babble of flowers? Fred didn’t want flowers, he wanted—and the enjoyable distress she had felt in Henekey’s returned. She took life with a deadly seriousness: she was prepared to cause any amount of unhappiness to anyone in order to defend the only thing she believed in. To lose your lover—‘broken hearts,’ she would say, ‘always mend,’ to be maimed or blinded—‘lucky,’ she’d tell you, ‘to be alive at all.’ There was something dangerous and remorseless in her optimism, whether she was laughing in Henekey’s or weeping at a funeral or a marriage.

She came out of the crematorium, and there from the twin towers above her head fumed the very last of Fred, a thin stream of grey smoke from the ovens. People passing up the flowery suburban road looked up and noted the smoke; it had been a busy day at the furnaces. Fred dropped in indistinguishable grey ash on the pink blossoms: he became part of the smoke nuisance over London, and Ida wept.

But while she wept a determination grew; it grew all the way to the tram lines which would lead her back to her familiar territory, to the bars and the electric signs and the variety theatres. Man is made by the places in which he lives, and Ida’s mind worked with the simplicity and the regularity of a sky sign: the ever-tipping
glass,
the ever-revolving wheel, the plain question flashing on and off: ‘Do You Use Forhams for the Gums?’ I’d do as much for Tom, she thought, for Clarence, that old deceitful ghost in Henekey’s, for Harry. It’s the least you can do for anyone—ask questions, questions at inquests, questions at séances. Somebody had made Fred unhappy, and somebody was going to be made unhappy in turn. An eye for an eye. If you believed in God, you might leave vengeance to him, but you couldn’t trust the One, the universal spirit. Vengeance was Ida’s, just as much as reward was Ida’s, the soft gluey mouth affixed in taxis, the warm handclasp in cinemas, the only reward there was. And vengeance and reward—they both were fun.

The train tingled and sparked down the Embankment. If it was a woman who had made Fred unhappy, she’d tell her what she thought. If Fred had killed himself, she’d find it out, the papers would print the news, someone would suffer. Ida was going to begin at the beginning and work right on. She was a sticker.

The first stage (she had held the paper in her hand all through the service) was Molly Pink, ‘described as a private secretary’, employed by Messrs Carter & Galloway.

Ida came up from Charing Cross Station, into the hot and windy light in the Strand flickering on the carburettors; in an upper room of Stanley Gibbons a man with a long grey Edwardian moustache sat in a window examining a postage stamp through a magnifying glass; a great dray laden with barrels stamped by, and the fountains played in Trafalgar Square, a cool translucent flower blooming and dropping into the drab sooty basins. It’ll cost money, Ida repeated to herself, it always costs money if you want to know the truth, and she walked slowly up St Martin’s Lane calculating, while all the time beneath the melancholy and the resolution, her heart beat faster to the refrain: it’s exciting, it’s fun, it’s living. In Seven Dials the negroes were hanging round the public house doors in tight natty suitings and old school ties, and Ida recognized one of them and passed the time of day. ‘How’s business, Joe?’ The great white teeth went on like a row of lights in the darkness above the bright striped shirt. ‘Fine, Ida, fine.’

‘And the hay fever?’

‘Tur’ble, Ida, tur’ble.’

‘So long, Joe.’

‘So long, Ida.’

It was a quarter of an hour’s walk to Messrs Carter & Galloway who lived at the very top of a tall building on the outskirts of Grays Inn. She had to economize now: she wouldn’t even take a bus, and when she got to the dusty antiquated building, there wasn’t a lift. The long flights of stone stairs wearied Ida. She’d had a long day and nothing to eat but a bun at the station. She sat down on a window-sill and took off her shoes. Her feet were hot, she wiggled her toes. An old gentleman came down. He had a long moustache and a sidelong raffish look. He wore a check coat, a yellow waistcoat and a grey bowler. He took off his bowler. ‘In distress, madam?’ he asked peering down at Ida with little bleary eyes. ‘Be of assistance?’

‘I don’t allow anyone else to scratch my toes,’ Ida said.

‘Ha, ha,’ the old gentleman said, ‘a card. After my own heart. Up or down?’

‘Up. All the way to the top.’

‘Carter & Galloway. Good firm. Tell ’em I sent you.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Moyne. Charlie Moyne. Seen you here before.’

‘Never.’

‘Some place else. Never forget fine figure of a woman. Tell ’em Moyne sent you. Give you special terms.’

‘Why don’t they have a lift in this place?’

‘Old-fashioned people. Old-fashioned myself. Seen you at Epsom.’

‘You might have.’

‘Always tell a sporting woman. Ask you round the corner to split a bottle of fizz if those beggars hadn’t taken the last fiver I came out with. Wanted to go and lay a couple. Have to go home first. Odds’ll go down while I’m doing it. You’ll see. You couldn’t oblige me, I suppose? Two quid, Charlie Moyne.’ The bloodshot eyes watched her without hope, a little aloof and careless; the buttons on the yellow waistcoat stirred as the old heart hammered.

‘Here,’ Ida said, ‘you can have a quid; now run along.’

‘Awfully kind of you. Give me your card. Post you a cheque tonight.’

‘I haven’t got a card,’ Ida said.

‘Came out without mine, too. Never mind. Charlie Moyne. Care of Carter & Galloway. All know me here.’

‘That’s all right,’ Ida said. ‘I’ll see you again. I’ve got to be going on up.’

‘Take my arm.’ He helped her up. ‘Tell ’em Moyne sent you. Special terms.’ She looked back at the turn of the stairs. He was tucking the pound note away in his waistcoat, smoothing the moustache which was still golden at the tips, like a cigarette smoker’s fingers, setting his bowler at an angle. Poor old geezer, Ida thought, he never expected to get that, watching him go down the stairs in his jaunty and ancient despair.

There were only two doors on the top landing. She opened one marked ‘Enquiries’, and there without a doubt was Molly Pink. In a little room hardly larger than a broom cupboard she sat beside a gas-ring sucking a sweet. A kettle hissed at Ida as she entered. A swollen spotty face glared back at her without a word.

‘Excuse me,’ Ida said.

‘The partners is out.’

‘I came to see
you
.’

The mouth fell a little open, a lump of toffee stirred on the tongue, the kettle whistled.

‘Me?’

‘Yes,’ Ida said. ‘You’d better look out. The kettle’ll boil over. You
are
Molly Pink?’

‘You want a cup?’ The room was lined from floor to ceiling with files. A little window disclosed through the undisturbed dust of many years another block of buildings with the same arrangement of windows staring dustily back like a reflection. A dead fly hung in a broken web.

‘I don’t like tea,’ Ida said.

‘That’s lucky. There’s only one cup,’ Molly said, filling a thick brown teapot with a chipped spout.

‘A friend of mine called Moyne. . . ’ Ida began.

‘Oh, him!’ Molly said. ‘We just turned him out of house and home.’ A copy of
Woman and Beauty
was propped open on her typewriter, and her eyes slid continually back to it.

‘Out of house and home?’

‘House and home. He came to see the partners. He tried to blarney.’

‘Did he see them?’

‘The partners is out. Have a toffee?’

‘It’s bad for the figure,’ Ida said.

‘I make up for it. I don’t eat breakfast.’

Over Molly’s head Ida could see the labels on the files: ‘Rents of 1–6 Mud Lane.’ ‘Rents of Wainage Estate, Balham.’ ‘Rents of. . . ’ They were surrounded by the pride of ownership, property. . . 

‘I came here,’ Ida said, ‘because you met a friend of mine.’

‘Sit down.’ Molly said. ‘That’s the client’s chair. I has to entertain ’em. Mr Moyne’s not a friend.’

‘Not Moyne. Someone called Hale.’

‘I don’t want any more to do with that business. You ought to ’ave seen the partners. They was furious. I had to have a day off for the inquest. They kept me hours late next day.’

‘I just want to hear what happened.’

‘What happened! The partners is awful when roused.’

‘I mean about Fred—Hale.’

‘I didn’t exactly know him.’

‘That man you said at the inquest came up—’

‘He wasn’t a man. He was just a kid. He knew Mr Hale.’

‘But in the paper it said—’

‘Oh, Mr Hale
said
he didn’t know him. I didn’t tell them different. They didn’t ask me. Except was there anything odd in his manner? Well, there wasn’t anything you’d call odd. He was just scared, that’s all. We get lots like that in here.’

‘But you didn’t tell them that?’

‘That’s nothing uncommon. I knew what it was at once. He owed the kid money. We get lots like that. Like Charlie Moyne.’

‘He was scared was he? Poor old Fred.’

‘“I’m not Fred,” he said, sharp as you please. But I could tell all right. So could my friend.’

‘What was the kid like?’

‘Oh, just a kid.’

‘Tall?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Fair?’

‘I couldn’t say that.’

‘How old was he?’

‘—Bout my age, I dessay.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Eighteen,’ Molly said, staring defiantly across the typewriter and the steaming kettle, sucking a toffee.

‘Did he ask for money?’

‘He didn’t have time to ask for money.’

‘You didn’t notice anything else?’

‘He was awful anxious for me to go along with him. But I couldn’t, not with my friend there.’

‘Thanks,’ Ida said, ‘it’s something learnt.’

‘You a woman detective?’ Molly asked.

‘Oh, no, I’m just a friend of his.’

There
was
something fishy: she was convinced of it now. She remembered again how scared he’d been in the taxi, and going down Holborn towards her digs behind Russell Square, in the late afternoon sun, she thought again of the way in which he had handed her the ten shillings before she went down into the ladies. He was a real gentleman: perhaps it was the last few shillings he had: and those people—that boy—dunning him for money. Perhaps he was another one ruined like Charlie Moyne, and now that her memory of his face was getting a bit dim, she couldn’t help lending him a few of Charlie Moyne’s features, the bloodshot eyes if nothing else. Sporting gentlemen, free-handed gentlemen, real gentlemen. The dewlaps of the commercials drooped in the hall of the Imperial, the sun lay flat across the plane trees, and a bell rang and rang for tea in a boarding-house in Coram Street.

I’ll try the Board, Ida thought, and then I’ll know.

When she got in, there was a card on the hall table, a card of Brighton Pier: if I was superstitious, she thought, if I was superstitious. She turned it over. It was only from Phil Corkery, asking her to come down. She had the same every year from Eastbourne, Hastings and once from Aberystwyth. But she never went. He wasn’t someone she liked to encourage. Too quiet. Not what she called a man.

She went to the basement stairs and called Old Crowe. She needed two sets of fingers for the Board and she knew it would
give
the old man pleasure. ‘Old Crowe,’ she called, peering down the stone stairs. ‘Old Crowe.’

‘What is it, Ida?’

‘I’m going to have a turn at the Board.’

She didn’t wait for him, but went on up to her bed-sitting-room to make ready. The room faced east and the sun had gone. It was cold and dusk. Ida turned on the gas-fire and drew the old scarlet velvet curtains to shut out the grey sky and the chimney-pots. Then she patted the divan bed into shape and drew two chairs to the table. In a glass-fronted cupboard her life stared back at her—a good life: pieces of china bought at the seaside, a photograph of Tom, an Edgar Wallace, a Netta Syrett from a second-hand stall, some sheets of music,
The Good Companions
, her mother’s picture, more china, a few jointed animals made of wood and elastic, trinkets given her by this, that and the other,
Sorrell and Son
, the Board.

She took the Board gently down and locked the cupboard. A flat oval piece of polished wood on tiny wheels, it looked like something which had crept out of a cupboard in a basement kitchen. But in fact it was Old Crowe who had done that, knocking gently on the door, sidling in, white hair, grey face, shortsighted pit-pony eyes, blinking at the bare globe in Ida’s reading-lamp. Ida tossed a pink netty scarf over the light and dimmed it for him.

‘You got something to ask it, Ida?’ Old Crowe said. He shivered a little, frightened and fascinated. Ida sharpened a pencil and inserted it in the prow of the little board.

‘Sit down, Old Crowe. What you been doing all day?’

‘They had a funeral at twenty-seven. One of those Indian students.’