was worth murdering a world.
'It's beautiful here all the same,' she said, staring up the chalky ruts between the To Let boards, and the Boy laughed again at the fine words people gave to a dirty act: love, beauty... all his pride coiled like a watch spring round the thought that he wasn't deceived, that he wasn't going to give himself up to marriage and the birth of children, he was going to be where Colleoni now was and higher... he knew everything, he had watched every detail of the act of sex, you couldn't deceive him with lovely words, there was nothing to be excited about, no gain to recompense you for what you lost, but when Rose turned to him again, with the expectation of a kiss, he was aware all the same of a horrifying ignorance. His mouth missed hers and recoiled. He'd never yet kissed a girl.
She said: 'I'm sorry. I'm stupid. I've never had ' and suddenly broke off to watch a gull rise from one of the little parched gardens and drop over the cliff towards the sea.
He didn't speak to her in the bus, sullen and ill at ease, sitting with his hands in his pockets, his feet close together, not knowing why he'd come this far out with her, only to go back again with nothing settled--the secret, the memory, still lodged securely in her skull. The country unwound the other way: Mazawattee tea, antique dealers, pull-ins, the thin grass petering out on the first asphalt.
From the pier the Brighton anglers flung their floats. A little music ground mournfully out into the windy sunlight. They walked on the sunny side past 'A Night of Love,'
'For Men Only,'
'The Fan Dancer.' Rose said: 'Is business bad?'
'There's always worries,' the Boy said.
'I wish I could help, be of use.'
He said nothing, walking on. She put out a hand towards the thin rigid figure, seeing the smooth cheek, the fluff of fair hair at the nape. 'You're so young, Pinkie, to get worries.' She put her hand through his arm. 'We're both young, Pinkie,' and felt his body stonily withdrawn.
A photographer said: 'Snap you together against the sea,' raising the cap from his camera, and the Boy flung up his hands before his face and went on.
'Don't you like being snapped, Pinkie? We might have had our pictures stuck up for people to see. It wouldn't have cost anything.'
'I don't mind what things cost,' the Boy said, rattling his pockets, showing how much cash he had.
'We might 'ave been stuck up there,' Rose said, halting at the photographer's kiosk, at the pictures of the bathing belles and the famous comedians and the anonymous couples, 'next ' and exclaimed with surprise: 'Why there he is!'
The Boy was staring over the side where the green tide sucked and slid like a wet mouth round the piles.
He turned unwillingly to look and there was Spicer fixed in the photographer's window for the world to gaze at, striding out of the sunlight into the shadow under the pier, worried and hunted and in haste, a comic figure at which strangers could laugh and say: 'He's worried right enough. They caught him una wares.'
'The one who left the card,' Rose said. 'The one you said was dead. He's not dead. Though it almost looks' she laughed with amusement at the blurred black and white haste 'that he's afraid he will be if he doesn't hurry.'
'An old picture,' the Boy said.
'Oh, no, it's not. This is where today's pictures go.
For you to buy.'
'You know a lot.'
'You can't miss it, can you?' Rose said. 'It's comic.
Striding along. All fussed up. Not even seeing the camera.'
'Stay here,' the Boy said. Inside the kiosk it was dark after the sun. A man with a thin moustache and steel- rimmed spectacles sorted piles of prints.
'I want a picture that's up outside,' the Boy said.
'Slip please,' the man said and put out yellow fingers which smelt faintly of hypo.
'I haven't got a slip.'
'You can't have the picture without the slip,' the man said and held a negative up to the electric globe.
'What right have you,' the Boy said, 'to stick up pictures without a by-your-leave? You let me have that picture,' but the steel rims glittered back at him, without interest a fractious boy. 'You bring that slip,' the man said, 'and you can have the picture.
Now run along. I'm busy.' Behind his head were framed snapshots of King Edward VII Prince of Wales in a yachting cap and a background of peep machines, going yellow from inferior chemicals and age; Vesta Tilley signing autographs; Henry Irving muffled against the Channel winds a nation's history. Lily Langtry wore ostrich feathers, Mrs. Pankhurst hobble skirts, the English Beauty Queen of 1 923 a bathing dress. It was little comfort to know that Spicer was among the immortals.
'Spicer,' the Boy called, 'Spicer!' He climbed up from Billy's small dark hall towards the landing, leaving a smear of country, of the downs, white on the linoleum. 'Spicer!' He felt the broken bannister tremble under his hand. He opened the door of Spicer's room and there he was upon the bed, asleep face down.
The window was closed, an insect buzzed through the stale air, and there was a smell of whisky from the bed. Pinkie stood looking down on the greying hair; he felt no pity at all--he wasn't old enough for pity.
He pulled Spicer round; the skin round his mouth was in eruption. 'Spicer.'
Spicer opened his eyes. He saw nothing for a while in the dim room.
'I want a word with you, Spicer.'
Spicer sat up. 'My God, Pinkie, I'm glad to see you.'
'Always glad to see a pal, eh, Spicer?'
'I saw Crab. He said you were at the police station.'
'Crab?'
'You weren't at the station then?'
'I was having a friendly talk about Brewer.'
'Not about?'
'About Brewer.' The Boy suddenly put his hand on Spicer's wrist. 'Your nerves are all wrong, Spicer.
You want a holiday.' He sniffed with contempt the tainted air. 'You drink too much.' He went to the window and threw it open on the vista of grey wall.
A leatherjacket buzzed up the pane and the Boy caught it in his hand. It vibrated like a tiny watch spring in his palm. He began to pull off the legs and wings one by one. 'She loves me,' he said, 'she loves me not. I've been out with my girl, Spicer.'
'The one from Snow's?'
The Boy turned the denuded body over on his palm and puffed it away over Spicer's bed. 'You know who I mean,' he said. 'You had a message for me, Spicer.
Why didn't you bring it?'
'I couldn't find you, Pinkie. Honest I couldn't.
And anyway it wasn't that important. Some old busybody asking questions.'
'It scared you all the same,' the Boy said. He sat down on the hard deal chair before the mirror, his hands on his knees watching Spicer. The pulse beat in his cheek.
'Oh, it didn't scare me,' Spicer said.
'You went walking blind straight to There.'
'What do you mean there?'
'There's only one There to you, Spicer. You think about it and you dream about it. You're too old for this life.'
'This life?' Spicer said, glaring back at him from the bed.
'This racket, of course, I mean. You get nervous and then you get rash. First there was that card in Snow's and now you let your picture be stuck up on the pier for anyone to see. For Rose to see.'
'Honest to God, Pinkie, I never knew that.'
'You forget to walk on your toes.'
'She's safe. She's stuck on you, Pinkie.'
