'It was just a joke,' Cubitt said. 'You don't need to take it so solemn. You want a sense of humour, Pinkie.'
'You think that was funny, eh?' the Boy said.
'Me marrying that cheap polony.' He croaked: 'Ha, ha,' at them. 'I'll learn. Come on, Dallow.'
'Wait till morning,' Cubitt said. 'Wait till some of the other boys come in.'
'You milky too?'
'You don't believe that, Pinkie. But we got to go slow.'
'You with me, Dallow?' the Boy said.
'I'm with you, Pinkie.'
'Then we'll be going,' the Boy said. He went across to the washstand and opened the little door where the jerry stood. He felt at the back behind the jerry and pulled out a tiny blade, like the blades women shave with but blunt along one edge and mounted with sticking plaster. He stuck it under his long thumb nail, the only nail not bitten close, and drew on his glove. He said: 'We'll be back with the sub in half an hour,' and led the way bang straight down Billy's stairs. The cold of his drenching had got under his skin: he came out onto the front a pace ahead of Dallow, his face contorted with ague, a shiver twisting the narrow shoulders. He said over his shoulder to Dallow: 'We'll go to Brewer's. One lesson'll be enough.'
'What you say, Pinkie,' Dallow said, plodding after. The rain had stopped; it was low tide and the shallow edge of the sea scraped far out at the rim of the sand. A clock struck midnight. Dallow suddenly began to laugh.
'What's got you, Dallow?'
'I was just thinking,' Dallow said. 'You're a grand little geezer, Pinkie. Kite was right to take you on.
You go straight for things, Pinkie.'
'You're all right,' the Boy said, staring ahead, the ague wringing his face. They passed the Cosmopolitan, the lights on here and there up the huge front to the turrets against the clouded moving sky. In Snow's when they passed a single light went out. They turned up the Old Steyne. Brewer had a house near the tram lines on the Lewes road almost under the railway viaduct.
'He's gone to bed,' Dallow said. Pinkie rang the bell, holding his finger on the switch. Low shuttered shops ran off on either hand; a tram went by with nobody in it, labelled Depot only, ringing and swinging down the empty road, the conductor drowsing on a seat inside, the roof gleaming from the storm. Pinkie kept his finger on the bell.
4 'What made Spicer say that about me marrying?' the Boy said.
'He just thought it'd close her clapper,' Dallow said.
'She's not what keeps me awake,' the Boy said, pressing on the bell. A light went on upstairs, a window creaked up, and a voice called: 'Who's that?'
'It's me,' the Boy said. 'Pinkie.'
'What dp you want? Why don't you come around in the morning?'
'I want to talk to you, Brewer.'
'I've got nothing to talk about, Pinkie, that can't wait.'
'You'd better open up, Brewer. You don't want the mob along here.'
'The old woman's awful sick, Pinkie. I don't want any trouble. She's asleep. She hasn't slept for three nights.'
'This'll wake her,' the Boy said with his finger on the bell. A slow goods train went by across the viaduct, shaking smoke down into the Lewes Road.
'Leave off, Pinkie, and I'll open up.'
Pinkie shivered as he waited, his gloved hand deep in his damp pocket. Brewer opened the door, a stout elderly man in soiled white pyjamas. The bottom button was missing and the coat swung from the bulging belly and the deep navel. 'Come in, Pinkie,' he said, 'and walk quiet. The old woman's bad. I've been worrying my head off.'
'That why you haven't paid your subscription.
Brewer?' the Boy said. He looked with contempt down the narrow hall the shell case converted into an umbrella stand, the moth-eaten stag's head bearing on one horn a bowler hat, a steel helmet used for ferns. Kite ought to have got them into better money than this.
Brewer had only just graduated from the street-corner, saloon-bar betting. A welsher. It was no good trying to draw more than ten per cent of his bets.
Brewer said: 'Come in here and be snug. It's warm in here. What a cold night!' He had a hollow cheery manner even in pyjamas. He was like a legend on a racing card: The Old Firm You Can Trust Bill Brewer. He lit the gas fire, turned on a stand lamp in a red silk shade with a bobble fringe. The light glowed on a silver-plated biscuit box, a framed wedding group.
'Have a spot of Scotch?' Brewer invited them.
'You know I don't drink,' the Boy said.
'Ted will,' Brewer said.
'I don't mind a spot,' Dallow said. He grinned and said: 'Here's how.'
'We've called for that subscription, Brewer,' the Boy said.
The man in white pyjamas hissed soda into his glass.
His back turned, he watched Pinkie in the glass above the sideboard until he caught the other's eye. He said: 'I been worried, Pinkie. Ever since Kite was croaked.'
'Well?' the Boy said.
'It's like this. I said to myself if Kite's mob can't even protect ' He stopped suddenly and listened.
'Was that the old woman?' Very faintly from the room above came the sound of coughing. Brewer said: 'She's woke up. I got to go and see her.'
'You stay here,' the Boy said, 'and talk.'
'She'll want turning.'
'When we've finished you can go.'
Cough, cough, cough: it was like a machine trying to start and failing. Brewer said desperately: 'Be human. She won't know where I've got to. I'll only be a minute.'
'You don't need to be longer than a minute here,' the Boy said. 'All we want's what's due to us. Twenty pounds.'
'I haven't got it in the house. Honest I haven't.'
'That's too bad for you.' The Boy drew off his right glove.
'It's like this, Pinkie. I paid it all out yesterday. To Colleoni.'
'What in Jesus' name,' the Boy said, 'has Colleoni to do with it?'
Brewer went rapidly and desperately on, listening to the cough, cough, cough upstairs. 'Be reasonable, Pinkie. I can't pay both of you. I'd have been carved if I hadn't paid Colleoni.'
'Is he in Brighton?'
'He's stopping at the Cosmopolitan,'
'And Tate Tate's paid Colleoni too?'
'That's right, Pinkie. He's running the business in a big way.' A big way it was like an accusation, a reminder of the brass bedstead at Billy's, the crumbs on the mattress.
'You think I'm finished?' the Boy said.
'Take my advice, Pinkie, and go in with Colleoni.'
The Boy suddenly drew his hand back and slashed with his razored nail at Brewer's cheek. He struck blood out along the cheekbone. 'Don't,' Brewer said, 'don't,' backing against the sideboard, upsetting the biscuit box. He said: 'I've got protection. You be careful. I've got protection.'
Dallow refilled his glass with Brewer's whisky. The Boy said: 'Look at him. He's got protection.' Dallow took a splash of soda.
'You want any more?' the Boy said. 'That was just to show you who's protecting you.'
'I can't pay both, Pinkie. God's sake, keep back.'
'Twenty pounds is what we've come for, Brewer.'
'Colleoni'll have my blood, Pinkie.'
