from anyone but your old friend.'
'All right,' Ida said. 'Put me on twenty-five pounds. And my name's not Turner. It's Arnold.'
'Twentyfive nicker. That's a fat bet for you, Mrs.
Whatever you are.' He licked his thumb and began to comb the notes. Half-way through he paused, sat still like a large toad over his desk, listening. A lot of noise came in through the open window, feet on stone, voices, distant music, bells ringing, the continuous whisper of the Channel. He sat quite still with half the notes in his hand. He looked uneasy. The telephone rang. He let it ring for two seconds, his veined eyes on Ida; then he lifted the receiver. 'Hullo. Hullo.
This is Jim Tate.' It was an old-fashioned telephone.
He screwed the receiver close in to his ear and sat still while a low voice buzzed like a bee.
One hand holding the receiver to his ear Jim Tate shuffled the notes together, wrote out a slip. He said hoarsely: 'That's all right, Mr. Colleoni. Ill do that, Mr. Colleoni,' and planked the receiver down.
'You've written Black Dog,' Ida said.
He looked across at her. It took him a moment to understand. 'Black Dog,' he said, and then laughed, hoarse and hollow. 'What was I thinking of? Black Dog indeed.'
'That means Care,' Ida said. 'The Popes used to find them under the bed.'
'Well,' he barked with unconvincing geniality, 'we've always something to worry about.' The telephone rang again. Jim Tate looked as if it might sting him.
'You're busy/ 1 Ida said. 'I'll be going.'
When she went out into the street she looked this way and that to see if she could find any cause for Jim Tate's uneasiness; but there was nothing visible: just Brighton about its own business on a beautiful day.
Ida went into a pub and had a glass of Douro port.
It went down sweet and warm and heavy. She had another. 'Who's Mr. Colleoni?' she said to the barman.
'You don't know who Colleoni is?'
'I never heard of him till just now.'
The barman said: 'He's taking over from Kite.'
'Who's Kite?'
'Who was Kite? You saw how he got croaked at St.
Pancras?'
'No.'
'I don't suppose they meant to do it,' the barman said. 'They just meant to carve him up, but a razor slipped.'
'Have a drink.'
'Thanks. I'll have a gin.'
'Cheerio.'
'Cheerio.'
'I hadn't heard all this,' Ida said. She looked over his shoulder at the clock: nothing to do till one: she night as well have another and gossip awhile. 'Give me another port. When did all this happen?'
'Oh, before Whitsun.' The word Whitsun always caught her ear now: it eant a lot of things, a grubby cm- shilling note, the white steps down to the Ladies', Tragedy in capital letters. 'And what about Kite's Friends?' she said.
'They don't stand a chance now Kite's dead. The mob's got no leader. Why, they tag round after a kid Df seventeen. What's a kid like that going to do against Colleoni?' He bent across the bar and whispered: 'He cut up Brewer last night.'
'Who? Colleoni?'
'No, the kid.'
'I dunno who Brewer is,' Ida said, 'but things seem lively.'
'You wait till the races start,' the man said.
'They'll be lively all right then. Colleoni's out for a monopoly. Quick, look through the window there and you'll see him.'
Ida went to the window and looked out, and again she saw only the Brighton she knew; she hadn't seen anything different even the day Fred died: two girls in beach pyjamas arm in arm, the buses going by to Rottingdean, a man selling papers, a woman with a shopping basket, a boy in a shabby suit, an excursion steamer edging off from the pier, which lay long, luminous, and transparent, like a shrimp in the sunlight. She said: 'I don't see anyone.'
'He's gone now.'
'Who? Colleoni?'
'No, the kid.'
'Oh,' Ida said, 'that boy,' coming back to the bar, drinking up her port.
'I bet he's worried plenty.'
'A kid like that oughtn't to be mixed up with things,' Ida said. 'If he was mine I'd just larrup it out of him.' With those words she was about to dismiss him, to turn her attention away from him, moving her mind on its axis like a great steel dredger, when she remembered: a face in a bar seen over Fred's shoulder, the sound of a glass breaking, 'The gentleman will pay' she had a royal memory. 'You ever come across this Kolley Kibber?' she asked.
'No such luck,' the barman said.
'It seemed odd his dying like that. Must have made a bit of gossip.'
'None I heard of,' the barman said. 'He wasn't a Brighton man. No one knew him round these parts.
He was a stranger.'
A stranger; the word meant nothing to her: there was no place in the world where she felt a stranger.
She circulated the dregs of the cheap port in her glass and remarked to no one in particular: 'It's a good life.' There was nothing with which she didn't claim kinship: the advertising mirror behind the barman's back flashed her own image at her; the beach girls went giggling across the parade; the gong beat on the steamer for Boulogne it was a good life. Only the darkness in which the Boy walked, going from Billy's, going back to Billy's, was alien to her: she had no pity for something she didn't understand. She said: 'I'll be getting on.'
It wasn't one yet, but there were questions she wanted to ask before Mr. Corkery arrived. She said to the first waitress she saw: 'Are you the lucky one?'
'Not that I know of,' the waitress said coldly.
'I mean the one who found the card the Kolley Kibber card.'
'Oh, that was her' the waitress said contemptuously, nodding a pointed powdered chin.
Ida changed her table. She said: 'I've got a friend coming. I'll have to wait for him, but I'll try to pick.
Is the shepherd's pie good?'
'It looks lovely.'
'Nice and brown on top?'
'It's a picture.'
'What's your name, dear?'
'Rose.'
'Why, I do believe,' Ida said, u you were the lucky one who found a card?'
'Did they tell you that?' Rose said. 'They haven't forgiven me. They think I didn't ought to be lucky like that my second day.'
'Your second day? That was a bit of luck. You won't forget that day in a hurry.'
'No,' Rose said, 'I'll remember that always.'
'I mustn't keep you here talking.'
'If you only would. If you'd sort of look as if you was ordering things. There's no one else wants to be attended to and I'm ready to drop with these trays.'
'You don't like the job?'
'Oh,' Rose said quickly. 'I didn't say that. It's a good job. I wouldn't have anything different for the world. I wouldn't be in a hotel, or in Chessman's, not if they paid me twice as much. It's elegant here,'
