'Tell me,' he said, 'now who rang up who and why?'
'I rang up yo u, but you weren't in. He answered.'
'He?' the Boy repeated.
'The one who left the ticket that day you came in.
You remember you were looking for something.'
He remembered all right the hand under the cloth, the stupid innocent face he had expected would so easily forget. 'You remember a lot,' he said, frowning at the thought.
'I wouldn't forget that day,' she said abruptly and stopped.
'You forget a lot too. I just told you that wasn't the man you heard speak. That man's dead.'
'It doesn't matter anyway,' she said. 'What matters is someone was in asking questions.'
'About the ticket?'
'Yes.'
'A man?'
'A woman. A big one with a laugh. You should have heard the laugh. Just as if she'd never had a care. I didn't trust her. She wasn't our kind.'
'Our kind'; he frowned again towards the shallow wrinkled tide at the suggestion that they had something in common and spoke sharply: 'What did she want?'
'She wanted to know everything. What the man who left the card looked like.'
'What did you tell her?'
'I didn't tell her a thing, Pinkie.'
The Boy dug with his pointed shoe into the thin dry turf and sent an empty corn-beef tin rattling down the ruts. 'It's only you I'm thinking of,' he said. 'It don't matter to me. I'm not concerned. But I wouldn't want you getting mixed up in things that might be dangerous.' He looked quickly up at her, sideways.
'You don't seem scared. It's serious what I'm telling you.'
'I wouldn't be scared, Pinkie not with you about.'
He dug his nails into his hands with vexation. She remembered everything she ought to forget, and forgot all that she should remember the vitriol bottle.
He'd scared her all right then he'd been too friendly since: she really believed that he was fond of her.
Why, this, he supposed, was 'walking out,' and he thought again of Spicer's joke. He looked at the mousy skull, the bony body, and the shabby dress, and shuddered involuntarily, a goose flying across the final bed. 'Saturday,' he thought, 'today's Saturday,' remembering the room at home, the frightening weekly exercise of his parents which he watched from his single bed. That was what they expected of you, every polony you met had her eye on the bed; his virginity straightened in him like sex. That was how they judged you; not by whether you had the guts to kill a man, to run a mob, to conquer Colleoni. He said: 'We don't want to stay round here. We'll be getting back.'
'We've only just come,' the girl said. 'Let's stay a bit, Pinkie. I like the country,' she said.
'You've had a look,' he said. 'You can't do anything with the country. The pub's closed.'
'We could just sit. We've got to wait for the bus anyway. You're funny. You aren't scared of anything, are you?'
He laughed queerly, sitting awkwardly down in front of the bungalow with the shattered glass. 'Me scared? That's funny.' He lay back against the bank, his waistcoat undone, his thin frayed tie bright and striped against the chalk.
'This is better than going home,' Rose said.
Where's home?'
'Nelson Place. Do you know it?'
'Oh, I've passed through,' he said airily, but he could have drawn its plan on the turf as accurately as a surveyor: the barred and battlemented Salvation Army gaff at the corner, his own home beyond in Paradise Piece, the houses which looked as if they had passed through an intensive bombardment, flapping gutters and glassless windows, an iron bedstead rusting in a front garden, the smashed and wasted ground in front where houses had been pulled down for model flats which had never gone up.
They lay on the chalk bank side by side with a common geography, and a little hate mixed with his contempt. He thought he had made his escape, and here his home was: back beside him, making claims.
Rose said suddenly: 'She's never lived there.'
'Who?'
'That woman asking questions. Never a care.'
'Well,' he said, 'we can't all 'ave been born in Nelson Place.'
'You weren't born there or somewhere round?'
'Me. Of course not. What do you think?'
'I thought maybe you were. You're a Roman too. We were all Romans in Nelson Place. You believe in things. Like Hell. But you can see she doesn't believe a thing.' She said bitterly: 'You can tell the world's all dandy with her.'
He defended himself from any connexion with Nelson Place: 'I don't take any stock in religion.
Hell it's just there. You don't need to think of it not before you die.'
'You might die sudden.'
He closed his eyes under the bright empty arch, and a memory floated up imperfectly into speech.
'You know what they say 'Between the stirrup and the ground, he something sought and something found.' '
'Mercy.'
'That's right: Mercy.'
'It would be awful though,' she said slowly, 'if they didn't give you time.' She turned her cheek onto the chalk towards him and added, as if he could help her: 'That's what I always pray. That I don't die sudden. What do you pray?'
'I don't,' he said, but he was praying even while he spoke to someone or something: that he wouldn't need to carry on any further with her, get mixed up again with that drab dynamited plot of ground they both called home.
'You angry about anything?' Rose asked.
'A man wants to be quiet sometimes,' he said, lying rigidly against the chalk bank, giving nothing away. In the silence a shutter flapped and the tide lisped--two people walking out: that's what they were, and the memory of Colleoni's luxury, the crowned chairs at the Cosmopolitan, came back to taunt him.
He said: 'Talk, can't you? Say something.'
'You wanted to be quiet,' she retorted with a sudden anger which took him by surprise. He hadn't thought her capable of that. 'If I don't suit you,' she said, 'you can leave me alone. I didn't ask to come out.' She sat up with her hands round her knees and her cheeks burned on the tip of the bone: anger was as good as rouge on her thin face. 'If I'm not grand enough your car and all '
'Who said?'
'Oh,' she said, 'I'm not that dumb. I've seen you looking at me. My hat...'
It occurred to him suddenly that she might even get up and leave him, go back to Snow's with her secret for the first comer who questioned her kindly; he had to conciliate her, they were walking out, he'd got to do the things expected of him. He put out his hand with repulsion; it lay like a cold paddock on her knee. 'You took me up wrong,' he said, 'you're a sweet girl. I've been worried, that's all. Business worries. You and me' he swallowed painfully 'we suit each other down to the ground.' He saw the colour go, the face turn to him with a blind willingness to be deceived, saw the lips waiting. He drew her hand up quickly and put his mouth against her fingers; anything was better than the lips; the fingers were rough on his skin and tasted a little of soap. She said: 'Pinkie, I'm sorry. You're sweet to me.'
He laughed nervously: 'You and me,' and heard the hoot of a bus with the joy of a besieged man listening to the bugles of the relieving force. 'There,' he said, 'the bus. Let's be going. I'm not much of a one for the country. A city bird. You too.' She got up and he saw the skin of her thigh for a moment above the artificial silk, and a prick of sexual desire disturbed him like a sickness. That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape anywhere for anyone? It
