penny I've got.' He watched her with astonishment.
'Oh,' she said, 'that's not the funny part. It's the letters. He'll have had all Tom's letters to read. Were they passionate! Tom'll be crazy when he hears.'
'You'll be wanting some money,' Hale said.
'Oh,' she said, 'I'm not worrying. Some nice feller will lend me ten bob when they come out of the Gents'.'
'They your friends?' Hale said.
'I met 'em in the pub,' she said.
'You think', Hale said, 'they'll come back from the Gents'?'
'My,' she said, 'you don't think?' She gazed up the parade, then looked at Hale and began to laugh again. 'You win,' she said. 'They've pulled my leg properly. But there was only ten bob and Tom's letters.'
'Will you have lunch with me now?' Hale said.
'I had a snack in the pub,' she said. 'They treated me to that, so I got something out of my ten bob.'
'Have a little more.'
'No, I don't fancy any more,' she said, and leaning far back in the deck chair with her skirt pulled up to her knees exposing her fine legs, with an air of ribald luxury she added: 'What a day!' sparkling back at the bright sea. 'All the same,' she said, 'they'll wish they'd never been born. I'm a sticker where right's concerned.'
'Your name's Lily?' Hale asked. He couldn't see the boy any more: he'd gone; Cubitt had gone. There was nobody he could recognise as far as he could see.
'That's what they called me,' she said. 'My real name's Ida.' The old and vulgarised Grecian name recovered a little dignity. She said: 'You look poorly. You ought to go off and eat somewhere.'
'Not if you won't come,' Hale said. 'I only want to stay here with you.'
'Why, that's a nice speech,' she said. 'I wish Tom could hear you--he writes passionate, but when it comes to talking...'
'Does he want to marry you?' Hale said; she smelt of soap and wine, comfort and peace and a slow sleepy physical enjoyment, a touch of the nursery and the mother stole from the big tipsy mouth, the magnificent breasts and legs, and reached Hale's withered and frightened brain.
'He was married to me once,' Ida said. 'But he didn't know when he was lucky. Now he wants to come back. You should see his letters. I'd show them you if they hadn't been stolen. He ought to be ashamed,' she said, laughing with pleasure, 'writing such things. You'd never think. And he was such a quiet fellow too. Well, I always say it's fun to be alive.'
'Will you take him back?' Hale said, peering out from the valley of the shadow with sourness and envy.
'I should think not,' Ida said. 'I know all about him. There'd be no thrill. If I wanted a man, I could do better than that now.' She wasn't boastful: only a little drunk and happy. 'I could marry money if I chose.'
'And how do you live now?' Hale said.
'From hand to mouth,' she said and winked at him and made the motion of tipping a glass. 'What's your name?'
'Fred.' He said it automatically: it was the name he always gave to chance acquaintances; from some obscure motive of secrecy he shielded his own name, Charles; from childhood he had loved secrecy, a hiding place, the dark; but it was in the dark he had met Kite, the boy, Cubitt, the whole mob.
'And how do you live?' she asked cheerfully. Men always liked to tell, and she liked to hear. She had an immense store of masculine experiences.
'Betting,' he said promptly, putting up his barrier of evasion.
'I like a flutter myself. Could you give me a tip, I wonder, for Brighton on Saturday?'
'Black Boy,' Hale said, 'in the four o'clock.'
'He's twenty to one.'
Hale looked at her with respect. 'Take it or leave it.'
'Oh, I'll take it,' Ida said. 'I always take a tip.'
'Whoever gives it you?'
'That's my system. Will you be there?'
'No,' Hale said. 'I can't make it.' He put his hand on her wrist. He wasn't going to run any more risks. He'd tell the news editor he was taken ill; he'd resign; he'd do anything. Life was here beside him, he wasn't going to play around with death. 'Come to the station with me,' he said. 'Come back to town with me.'
'On a day like this?' Ida said. 'Not me. You've had too much town. You look stuffed up. A blow along the front'll do you good. Besides there's lots of things I want to see. I want to see the Aquarium and Black Rock and I haven't been on the Palace Pier yet today. There's always something new on the Palace Pier. I'm out for a bit of fun.'
'We'll do those and then--'
'When I make a day of it,' Ida said, 'I like to make a real day of it. I told you I'm a sticker.'
'I don't mind,' Hale said, 'if you'll stay with me.'
'Well, you can't steal my bag,' Ida said. 'But I warn you I like to spend. I'm not satisfied with a ring here and a shot there: I want all the shows.'
'It's a long walk,' Hale said, 'to the Palace Pier in this sun. We better take a taxi.'
But he made no immediate pass at Ida in the taxi, sitting there bonily crouched with his eyes on the parade: no sign of the boy or Cubitt in the bright broad day sweeping by.
He turned reluctantly back, and with the sense of her great open friendly breasts, fastened his mouth on hers and received the taste of port wine on his tongue, and saw in the driver's mirror the old 1925 Morris following behind, with its split and flapping top, its bent fender and cracked and discoloured windscreen.
He watched it with his mouth on hers, shaking against her as the taxi ground slowly along beside the parade.
'Give me breath,' she said at last, pushing him off and straightening her hat. 'You believe in hard work,' she said. 'It's you little fellows...' She could feel his nerves jumping under her hand, and she shouted quickly through the tube at the driver: 'Don't stop. Go on back and round again.' He was like a man with fever.
'You're sick,' she said. 'You oughtn't to be alone. What's the matter with you?'
He couldn't keep it in. 'I'm going to die, I'm scared.'
'Have you seen a doctor?'
'They are no good. They can't do anything.'
'You oughtn't to be out alone,' Ida said. 'Did they tell you that--the doctors, I mean?'
'Yes,' he said and put his mouth on hers again because when he kissed her he could watch in the mirror the old Morris vibrating after them down the parade.
She pushed him off again, but kept her arms round him. 'They're crazy. You aren't that sick. You can't tell me I wouldn't know if you were that sick,' she said. 'I don't like to see a fellow throw up the sponge that way. It's a good world if you don't weaken.'
'It's all right,' he said, 'long as you are here.'
'That's better,' she said, 'be yourself,' and letting down the window with a rush for the air to come in, she pushed her arm through his and said in a frightened gentle way: 'You were just kidding, weren't you, when you said that about the doctors? It wasn't true, was it?'
'No,' Hale said wearily, 'it wasn't true.'
'That's a boy,' Ida said. 'You nearly had me scared for a moment. Nice thing it would have been for me if you'd passed out in this taxi. Something for Tom to read about in the paper, I'd say. But men are funny with me that way. Always trying to make out there's something wrong, money or the wife or the heart. You aren't the first who said he was dying. Never anything infectious though. Want to make the most of their last hours and all the rest of it. It comes of me being so big, I suppose. They think I'll mother them. I'm not saying I didn't fall for it the first time. 'The doctors only give me a month,' he said to me--that was five years ago. I see him regular now in Henneky's. 'Hullo, you old ghost,' I always say to him, and he stands me oysters and a Guinness.'
'No, I'm not sick,' Hale said. 'You needn't be scared.' He wasn't going to let his pride down as much as that again, even in return for the peaceful and natural embrace. The Grand went by, the old statesman dozing out the day, the Metropolitan. 'Here we are,' Hale said. 'You'll stay with me, won't you, even if I'm not sick?'
'Of course I will,' Ida said, hiccuping gently as she stepped out. 'I like you, Fred. I liked you the moment I
