the postman laughed and filled his bag and all the time Cubitt looked away from him down the street waiting for Hale. Hale knew exactly what he'd do; he knew the whole bunch; Cubitt was slow and had a friendly way with him. He'd simply link his arm with Hale's, draw him on where he wanted him to go.
But the old desperate pride persisted, a pride of intellect. He was scared sick, but he told himself: 'I'm not going to die.' He jested hollowly: 'I'm not frontpage stuff.' [] this was real: the two women getting into a taxi, the band playing on the Palace Pier, 'tablets' fading in white smoke on the pale pure sky; not red-haired Cubitt waiting by the pillar box. Hale turned again and crossed the road, made back towards the West Pier walking fast--he wasn't running away, he had a plan.
He had only, he told himself, to find a girl; there must be hundreds waiting to be picked up on a Whitsun holiday, to be given a drink and taken to dance at Sherry's and presently home, drunk and affectionate, in the corridor carriage. That was the best way: to carry a witness round with him. It would be no good, even if his pride had allowed him, to go to the station now. They would be watching it for certain, and it was always easy to kill a lonely man at a railway station: they had only to gather close round a carriage door or fix you in the crush at the barrier; it was at a station that Colleoni's mob had killed Kite.
All down the front the girls sat in the twopenny deck chairs, waiting to be picked, all who had not brought their boys with them: clerks, shop girls, hairdressers--you could pick out the hairdressers by their new and daring perms, by their beautifully manicured nails: they had all waited late at their shops the night before, preparing each other till midnight. Now they were sleepy and sleek in the sun.
In front of the chairs the men strolled in twos and threes, wearing their summer suits for the first time, knifeedged silver-grey trousers and elegant shirts--they didn't look as if they cared a damn whether they got a girl or not, and among them Hale went in his seedy suit and his string tie and his striped shirt and his inkstains, ten years older, and desperate for a girl.
He offered them cigarettes and they stared at him like duchesses with large cold eyes and said: 'I don't smoke, thenk you,' and twenty yards behind him he knew, without turning his head, that Cubitt strolled.
It made Hale's manner strange. He couldn't help showing his desperation. He could hear the girls laughing at him after he'd gone, at his clothes and the way he talked. There was a deep humility in Hale--his pride was only in his profession: he disliked himself before the glass, the bony legs and the pigeon breast, and he dressed shabbily and carelessly as a sign, a sign that he didn't expect any woman to be interested. Now he gave up the pretty ones, the smart ones, and looked despairingly down the chairs for someone plain enough to be glad of his attentions.
Surely, he thought, this girl, smiling with hungry hope at a fat spotty creature in pink whose feet hardly touched the ground. He sat down in an empty chair beside her and gazed at the remote and neglected sea coiling round the piles of the West Pier.
'Cigarette?' he said presently.
'I don't mind if I do,' the girl said. The words were sweet, like a reprieve.
'It's nice here,' the fat girl said.
'Down from town?'
'Yes.'
'Well,' Hale said, 'you aren't going to sit here alone all day, are you?'
'Oh, I don't know,' the girl said.
'I thought of going to have something to eat, and then we might--'
'We' the girl said; 'you're a fresh one.'
'Well, you aren't going to sit here alone all day, are you?'
'Who said I was?' the fat girl said. 'Doesn't mean I'm going with you.'
'Come and have a drink anyway and talk about it.'
'I wouldn't mind,' the girl said, opening a compact and covering her spots deeper.
'Come along then,' Hale said.
'Got a friend?' the girl said.
'I'm all alone,' Hale said.
'Oh, then, I couldn't,' the girl said. 'Not possibly. I couldn't leave my friend all alone,' and for the first time Hale observed in the chair beyond her a pale bloodless creature waiting avidly for his reply.
'But you'd like to come?' Hale implored.
'Oh, yes, but I couldn't possibly.'
'Your friend won't mind. She'll find someone.'
'Oh, no. I couldn't leave her alone.' She stared pastily and impassively at the sea.
'You wouldn't mind, would you?' Hale leant forward and begged the bloodless image, and it screeched with embarrassed laughter back at him.
'She doesn't know anyone,' the fat girl said.
'She'll find somebody.'
'Would you, Delia?' The pasty girl leant her head close to her friend's and they consulted together; every now and then Delia squealed.
'That's all right then,' Hale said, 'you'll come?'
'Couldn't you find a friend?'
'I don't know anyone here,' Hale said. 'Come along. I'll take you anywhere you like for lunch. All I want', he grinned miserably, 'is for you to stick close.'
'No,' the fat girl said. 'I couldn't possibly, not without my friend.'
'Well, both of you come along then,' Hale said.
'It wouldn't be much fun for Delia,' the fat girl said.
A boy's voice interrupted them. 'So there you arey Fred,' it said, and Hale looked up at the grey inhuman seventeen-year-old eyes.
'Why,' the fat girl squealed, 'he said he hadn't got a friend.'
'You can't believe what Fred says,' the voice said.
'Now we can make a proper party,' the fat girl said. 'This is my friend Delia. I'm Molly.'
'Pleased to meet you,' the boy said. 'Where are we going, Fred?'
'I'm hungry,' the fat girl said. 'I bet you're hungry too, Delia?' and Delia wriggled and squealed.
'I know a good place,' the boy said.
'Do they have sundaes?'
'The best sundaes,' he reassured her in his serious dead voice.
'That's what I want, a sundae. Delia likes splits best.'
'We'll be going, Fred,' the boy said.
Hale rose. His hands were shaking. This was real now: the boy, the razor cut, life going out with the blood in pain--not the deck chairs and the permanent waves, the miniature cars tearing round the curve on the Palace Pier. The ground moved under his feet, and only the thought of where they might take him while he was unconscious saved him from fainting.
But even then common pride, the instinct not to make a scene, remained overpoweringly strong; embarrassment had more force than terror, it prevented his crying his fear aloud, it even urged him to go quietly.
If the boy had not spoken again, he might have gone.
'We'd better get moving, Fred,' the boy said.
'No,' Hale said. 'I'm not coming. I don't know him. My name's not Fred. I've never seen him before. He's just getting fresh,' and he walked rapidly away, with his head down, hopeless now: there wasn't time; only anxious to keep moving, to keep out in the clear sun... until from far down the front he heard the woman's winy voice singing, singing of brides and bouquets, of lilies and mourning shrouds, a Victorian ballad, and he moved towards it as someone who has been lost a long while in a desert makes for the glow of a fire.
'Why,' she said, 'if it isn't lonely heart,' and to his astonishment she was all by herself in a desert of chairs. 'They've gone to the Gents',' she said.
'Can I sit down?' Hale said. His voice broke with relief.
'If you've got twopence,' she said. 'I haven't.'
She began to laugh, the great breasts pushing at her dress. 'Someone pinched my bag,' she said. 'Every
