They thought he was yellow. They'd think he'd squeal. He wouldn't even get the credit... a few tears of self- pity came pricking out of the dry ageing ducts.
I got to think, he repeated to himself, I got to think.
He opened the street door and went out. He didn't even wait to fetch his hat. His hair was thin on top, dry and brittle over the dandruff. He walked rapidly, going nowhere in particular, but every road in Brighton ended on the front. I'm too old for the game, I got to get out, Nottingham--he wanted to be alone, he went down the stone steps to the level of the beach--it was early closing and the small shops facing the sea under the promenade were shut. He walked on the edge of the asphalt, scuffling in the shingle. I wouldn't grass, he remarked dumbly to the tide as it lifted and withdrew, but it wasn't my doing, I never wanted to kill Fred. He passed into shadow under the pier, and a cheap photographer with a box camera snapped him as the shadow fell and pressed a paper into his hand.
Spicer didn't notice. The iron pillars stretched down across the wet dimmed shingle holding up above his head the motor-track, the shooting booths and peep machines, mechanical models, 'the Robot Man will tell your fortune.' A seagull flew straight towards him between the pillars like a scared bird caught in a cathedral, then swerved out into the sunlight from the dark iron nave. I wouldn't grass, Spicer said, unless I had to.... He stumbled on an old boot and put his hand on the stones to save himself: they had all the cold of the sea and had never been warmed by sun under these pillars.
He thought: that woman how does she know anything what's she doing asking questions? I didn't want to have Hale killed--it wouldn't be fair if I took the drop with the others; I told 'em not to do it. He came out into the sunlight and climbed back onto the parade. It'll be this way the bogies will come, he thought, if they know anything; they always reconstruct the crime. He took up his stand between the turnstile of the pier and the Ladies' Lavatory. There weren't many people about: he could spot the bogies easily enough if they came. Over there was the Royal Albion; he could see all the way up the Grand Parade to Old Steyne; the pale green domes of the Pavilion floated above the dusty trees; he could see anyone in the hot empty midweek afternoon who went down below the Aquarium, the white deck ready for dancing, to the little covered arcade where the cheap shops stood between the sea and the stone wall, selling Brighton rock.
The poison twisted in the Boy's veins. He had been insulted. He had to show someone he was a man.
He went scowling into Snow's, young, shabby, and untrustworthy, and the waitresses with one accord turned their backs. He stood there looking for a table (the place was full), and no one attended to him. It was as if they doubted whether he had the money to pay for his meal. He thought of Colleoni padding through the enormous rooms, the embroidered crowns on the chair-backs. He suddenly shouted aloud: 'I want service!' and the pulse beat in his cheek. All the faces round him shivered into motion, and then were still again like water. Everyone looked away. He was ignored. Suddenly a sense of weariness overtook him.
He felt as if he had travelled a great many miles to be ignored like this.
A voice said: 'There isn't a table.' They were still such strangers that he didn't recognise the voice, until it added: 'Pinkie.' He looked round and there was Rose, dressed to go out in a shabby black straw which made her face look as it would look in twenty years' time, after the work and the child-bearing.
'They got to serve me,' the Boy said. 'Who do they think they are?'
'There isn't a table.'
Everyone was watching them now with disapproval.
'Come outside, Pinkie.'
'What are you all dressed up for?'
'It's my afternoon off. Come outside.'
He followed her out and suddenly taking her wrist he brought the poison onto his lips: 'I could break your arm.'
'What have I done, Pinkie?'
'No table. They don't like serving me in there, I'm not class. They'll see one day '
'What?'
But his mind staggered before the extent of his ambitions. He said: 'Never mind they'll learn '
'Did you get the message, Pinkie?'
'What message?'
'I phoned you at Billy's. I told him to tell you.'
'Told who?'
'I don't know.' She added casually: 'I think it was the man who left the ticket.'
He gripped her wrist again. He said: 'The man who left the ticket's dead. You read it all.' But she showed no sign of fear this time. He'd been too friendly. She ignored his reminder.
'Did he find you?' she asked, and he thought to himself: she's got to be scared again.
'No one found me,' he said. He pushed her roughly forward. 'Come on. We'll walk. Ill take you out.'*
'I was going home.'
'You won't go home. You'll come with me. I want exercise,' he said, looking down at his pointed shoes, which had never walked further than the length of the parade.
'Where'll we go, Pinkie?'
'Somewhere,' Pinkie said, 'out in the country.
That's where people go on a day like this.' He tried to think for a moment of where the country was: the racecourse, that was country; and then a bus came by marked Peacehaven, and he waved his hand to it.
'There you are,' he said, 'that's country. We can talk there. There's things we got to get straight.'
'I thought we were going to walk.'
'This is walking,' he said roughly, pushing her up the steps. 'You're green. You don't know a thing.
You don't think that people really walk? Why it's miles.'
'When people say: Come for a walk, they mean a bus?'
'Or a car. I'd have taken you in the car, but the mob are out in it.'
'You got a car?'
'I couldn't get on without a car,' the Boy said, as the bus climbed up behind Rottingdean: red brick buildings behind a wall, a great stretch of parkland, one girl with a hockey stick staring at something in the sky, with cropped expensive turf all round her.
The poison drained back into its proper glands: he was admired, no one insulted him, but when he looked at the girl who admired him, the poison oozed out again. He said: 'Take off that hat. You look awful.'
She obeyed him: her mousy hair lay flat on the small scalp; he watched her with distaste. That was what they'd joked about him marrying: that. He watched her with his soured virginity, as one might watch a draught of medicine offered that one would never, never take; one would die first or let others die. The chalky dust blew up round the windows.
'You told me to ring up,' Rose said, 'so when '
'Not here,' the Boy said. 'Wait till we're alone.'
The driver's head rose slowly against a waste of sky: a few white feathers blown backward into the blue; they were on top of the downs and turned eastwards.
The Boy sat with his pointed shoes side by side, his hands in his pockets, feeling the throb of the engine come up through the thin soles.
'It's lovely,' Rose said, 'being out here in the country with you.' Little tarred bungalows with tin roofs paraded backwards, gardens scratched in the chalk, dry flower beds like Saxon emblems carved on the downs. Notices said: 'Pull in Here,'
'Mazawattee Tea,'
'Genuine Antiques'; and, hundreds of feet below, the pale green sea washed into the scarred and shabby side of England. Peacehaven itself dwindled out against the downs: half-made streets turned into grass tracks. They walked down between the bungalows to the cliff edge; there was nobody about; one of the bungalows had broken windows, in another the blinds were down for a death. 'It makes me giddy,'
Rose said, 'looking down.' It was early closing, and the store was shut; closing time and no drinks obtainable at the hotel--a vista of To Let boards running back along the chalky ruts of unfinished roads. The Boy could see over her shoulder the rough drop to the shingle. 'It makes me feel I'll fall,' Rose said, turning from the sea. He let her turn; no need to act prematurely; the draught might never be offered.
