he's doing; and I thought it a lot of cock, or it only happened to drunks, and now I knew it was true and it had happened to me. I wasn't going to worry any more about how she'd get home; she'd told me not to, and she must have lived handy, she'd never have ridden out so far else, though it was funny living such a way from her work. But maybe in time she'd tell me more, bit by bit. I wouldn't drag it from her. I had one thing fixed in my mind, and that was to pick her up the next evening from the picture palace. It was firm and set, and nothing would budge me from that. The hours in between would just be a blank for me until ten p.m. came round.
I went on walking in the rain, and presently a lorry came along and I thumbed a lift, and the driver took me a good part of the way before he had to turn left in the other direction, and so I got down and walked again, and it must have been close on three when I got home.
I would have felt bad, in an ordinary way, knocking up Mr. Thompson to let me in, and it had never happened before either, but I was all lit up inside from loving my girl, and I didn't seem to mind. He came down at last and opened the door. I had to ring several times before he heard, and there he was, grey with sleep, poor old chap, his pyjamas all crumpled from the bed.
'Whatever happened to you?' he said. 'We've been worried, the wife and me. We thought you'd been knocked down, run over. We came back here and found the house empty and your supper not touched.'
'I went to the pictures,' I said.
'The pictures?' He stared up at me, in the passage-way. 'The pictures stop at ten o'clock.'
'I know,' I said, 'I went walking after that. Sorry. Good-night.'
And I climbed up the stairs to my room, leaving the old chap muttering to himself and bolting the door, and I heard Mrs. Thompson calling from her bedroom, 'What is it? Is it him? Is he come home?'
I'd put them to trouble and to worry, and I ought to have gone in there and then and apologised, but I couldn't somehow, it wouldn't have come right; so I shut my door and threw off my clothes and got into bed, and it was like as if she was with me still, my girl, in the darkness.
They were a bit quiet at breakfast the next morning, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. They didn't look at me. Mrs. Thompson gave me my kipper without a word, and he went on looking at his newspaper.
I ate my breakfast, and then I said, 'I hope you had a nice evening up at Highgate?', and Mrs. Thompson, with her mouth a bit tight, she said, 'Very pleasant, thank you, we were home by ten,' and she gave a little sniff and poured Mr. Thompson out another cup of tea.
We went on being quiet, no one saying a word, and then Mrs. Thompson said, 'Will you be in to supper this evening? ' and I said, 'No, I don't think so. I'm meeting a friend,' and then I saw the old chap look at me over his spectacles.
'If you're going to be late,' he said, 'we'd best take the key for you.'
Then he went on reading his paper. You could tell they were proper hurt that I didn't tell them anything, or say where I was going.
I went off to work, and we were busy at the garage that day, one job after the other came along, and any other time I wouldn't have minded. I liked a full day and often worked overtime, but today I wanted to get away before the shops closed; I hadn't thought about anything else since the idea came into my head.
It was getting on for half-past four, and the boss came to me and said, 'I promised the doctor he'd have his Austin this evening, I said you'd be through with it by seven-thirty. That's O.K., isn't it?'
My heart sank. I'd counted on getting off early, because of what I wanted to do. Then I thought quickly that if the boss let me off now, and I went out to the shop before it closed, and came back again to do the job on the Austin, it would be all right, so I said, 'I don't mind working a bit of overtime, but I'd like to slip out now, for half- an-hour, if you're going to be here. There's something I want to buy before the shops shut.'
He told me that suited him, so I took off my overalls and washed and got my coat and I went off to the line of shops down at the bottom of Haverstock Hill. I knew the one I wanted. It was a jewellers, where Mr. Thompson used to take his clock to be repaired, and it wasn't a place where they sold trash at all, but good stuff, solid silver frames and that, and cutlery.
There were rings, of course, and a few fancy bangles, but I didn't like the look of them. All the girls in the N.A.A.F.I. used to wear bangles with charms on them, quite common it was, and I went on staring in at the window and then I spotted it, right at the back.
It was a brooch. Quite small, not much bigger than your thumbnail, but with a nice blue stone on it and a pin at the back, and it was shaped like a heart. That was what got me, the shape. I stared at it a bit, and there wasn't a ticket to it, which meant it would cost a bit, but I went in and asked to have a look at it. The jeweller got it out of the window for me, and he gave it a bit of a polish and turned it this way and that, and I saw it pinned on my girl, showing up nice on her frock or her jumper, and I knew this was it.
'I'll take it,' I said, and then asked him the price.
I swallowed a bit when he told me, but I took out my wallet and counted the notes, and he put the heart in a box wrapped up careful with cotton wool, and made a neat package of it, tied with fancy string. I knew I'd have to get an advance from the boss before I went off work that evening, but he was a good chap and I was certain he'd give it to me.
I stood outside the jewellers, with the packet for my girl safe in my breast pocket, and I heard the church clock strike a quarter to live. There was time to slip down to the cinema and make sure she understood about the date for the evening, and then I'd beat it fast up the road and get back to the garage, and I'd have the Austin done by the time the doctor wanted it.
When I got to the cinema my heart was beating like a sledge-hammer and I could hardly swallow. I kept picturing to myself how she'd look, standing there by the curtains going in, with that velvet jacket and the cap on the back of her head.
There was a bit of a queue outside, and I saw they'd changed the programme. The poster of the western had gone, with the cowboy throwing a knife in the Indian's guts, and they had instead a lot of girls dancing, and some chap prancing in front of them with a walking-stick. It was a musical.
I went in, and didn't go near the box office but looked straight to the curtains, where she'd be. There was an usherette there all right, but it wasn't her. This was a great tall girl, who looked silly in the clothes, and she was trying to do two things at once — tear off the slips of tickets as the people went past, and hang on to her torch at the same time.
I waited a moment. Perhaps they'd switched over positions and my girl had gone up to the circle. When the last lot had got in through the curtains and there was a pause and she was free, I went up to her and I said, 'Excuse me, do you know where I could have a word with the other young lady?'
She looked at me. 'What other young lady?'
'The one who was here last night, with copper hair,' I said.
She looked at me closer then, suspicious-like.
'She hasn't shown up today,' she said. 'I'm taking her place.'
'Not shown up?'
'No. And it's funny you should ask. You're not the only one. The police was here not long ago. They had a word with the manager, and the commissionaire too, and no one's said anything to me yet, but I think there's been trouble.'
My heart beat different then. Not excited, bad. Like when someone's ill, took to hospital, sudden.
'The police?' I said. 'What were they here for?'
'I told you, I don't know,' she answered, 'but it was something to do with her, and the manager went with them to the police station, and he hasn't come back yet. This way, please, circle on the left, stalls to the right.'
I just stood there, not knowing what to do. It was like as if the floor had been knocked away from under me.
The tall girl tore another slip off a ticket and then she said to me, over her shoulder, 'Was she a friend of yours?'
'Sort of,' I said. I didn't know what to say.
'Well, if you ask me, she was queer in the head, and it wouldn't surprise me if she'd done away with herself and they'd found her dead. No, ice-creams served in the interval, after the news reel.'
I went out and stood in the street. The queue was growing for the cheaper seats, and there were children too, talking, excited. I brushed past them and started walking up the street, and I felt sick inside, queer. Something
