Mr. Drewitt knew. You were certain of that at the first sight of him. He was a stranger to no wangle, twist, contradictory clause, ambiguous word. His yellow shaven middle-aged face was deeply lined with legal decisions. He carried a little brown leather portfolio and wore striped trousers which seemed a little too new for the rest of him. He came into the room with hollow joviality, a dockside manner; he had long pointed polished shoes which caught the light. Everything about him, from his breeziness to his morning coat, was brand-new, except himself and that had aged in many law courts, with many victories more damaging than defeats. He had acquired the habit of not listening: innumerable rebukes from the bench had taught him that. He was deprecating, discreet, sympathetic, and as tough as leather.
The Boy nodded to him without getting up, sitting on the bed. 'Evening, Mr. Drewitt,' and Mr. Drewitt smiled sympathetically, put his portfolio on the floor, and sat down on the hard chair by the dressing table.
'It's a lovely night,' he said. 'Oh, dear, oh, dear, you've been in the wars.' The sympathy didn't belong; it could be peeled off his eyes like an auction ticket from an ancient flint instrument.
'It's not that I want to see you about,' the Boy said.
'You needn't be scared. I just want information.'
'No trouble, I hope?' Mr. Drewitt said.
'I want to avoid trouble. If I wanted to get married what'd I do?'
'Wait a few years,' Mr. Drewitt said promptly, as if he were calling a hand in cards.
'Next week maybe,' the Boy said.
'The trouble is,' Mr. Drewitt thoughtfully remarked, 'you're under age.'
'That's why I've called you in.'
'There are cases,' Mr. Drewitt said, 'of people who give their ages wrong. I'm not suggesting it, mind you. What age is the girl?'
'Sixteen.'
'You're sure of that? Because if she was under sixteen you could be married in Canterbury Cathedral by the Archbishop himself, and it wouldn't be legal.'
'That's all right,' the Boy said. 'But if we give our ages wrong, are we married all right legally?'
'Hard and fast.'
'The police wouldn't be able to call the girl?'
'In evidence against you? Not without her consent.
Of course you'd have committed a misdemeanour. You could be sent to prison. And then there are other difficulties.' Mr. Drewitt leant back against the washstand, his grey neat legal hair brushing the ewer and eyed the Boy.
'You know I pay,' the Boy said.
'First,' Mr. Drewitt said, 'you've got to remember it takes time.'
'It mustn't take long.'
'Do you want to be married in a church?'
'Of course I don't,' the Boy said. 'This won't be a real marriage.'
'Real enough.'
'Not real like when the priest says it.'
'Your religious feelings do you credit,' Mr. Drewitt said. 'This, I take it then, will be a civil marriage.
You could get a licence fifteen days' residence you qualify for that and one day's notice. As far as that's concerned you could be married the day after tomorrow in your own district. Then comes the next difficulty. A marriage of a minor's not easy.'
'Go on. I'll pay.'
'It's no good you just saying you're twenty-one. No one would believe you. But if you said you were eighteen you could be married provided you had your parents' or your guardian's consent. Are your parents alive?'
'No.'
'Who's your guardian?'
'I don't know what you mean.'
Mr. Drewitt said thoughtfully: 'We might arrange a guardian. It's risky though. It might be better if you'd lost touch. He'd gone to South Africa and left you. We might make quite a good thing out of that,'
Mr. Drewitt added softly. 'Flung on the world at an early age you've bravely made your own way.' His eyes shifted from bedball to bedball. 'We'd ask for the discretion of the registrar.'
'I never knew it was all that difficult,' the Boy said.
'Maybe I can manage some way else.'
'Given time,' Mr. Drewitt said, 'anything can be managed.' He showed his tartar-coated teeth in a fatherly smile. 'Give the word, my boy, and I'll see you married. Trust me.' He stood up, his striped trousers were like a wedding guest's, hired for the day at Moss's; when he crossed the room, yellowly smiling, he might have been about to kiss the bride. 'If you'll let me have a guinea now for the consultation, there are one or two little purchases for the spouse...'
'Are you married?' the Boy said with sudden eagerness. It had never occurred to him that Drewitt...
He gazed at the smile, the yellow teeth, the lined and wasted and unreliable face as if there possibly he might learn...
'It's my silver wedding next year,' Mr. Drewitt said. 'Twenty-five years at the game.' Cubitt put his head in at the door and said: 'I'm going out for a turn.' He grinned. 'How's the marriage?'
'Progressing,' Mr. Drewitt said, 'progressing,' patting the portfolio as if it had been the plump cheek of a promising infant. 'We shall see our young friend spliced yet.'
Just till it all blows over, the Boy thought, leaning back on the grey pillow, resting one shoe on the mauve eiderdown: not a real marriage, just something to keep her mouth shut for a time. 'So long,' Cubitt said, giggling at the bed end. Rose, the small devoted Cockney face, the sweet taste of human skin, emotion in the dark room by the bin of harvest burgundy; lying on the bed he wanted to protest 'not yet' and 'not with her.' If it had to come some time, if he had to follow everyone else into the brutish game, let it be when he was old, with nothing else to gain, and with someone other men could envy him. Not someone immature, simple, as ignorant as himself.
'You've only to give the word,' Mr. Drewitt said.
'Well fix it together.' Cubitt had gone. The Boy said: 'You'll find a nicker on the washstand.'
'I don't see one,' Mr. Drewitt said anxiously, shifting a toothbrush.
'In the soap dish under the cover.'
Dallow put his head into the room. 'Evening,' he said to Mr. Drewitt. He said to the Boy: 'What's up with Spicer?'
'It was Colleoni. They got him on the course,' the Boy said. 'They nearly got me too,' and he raised his bandaged hand to his scarred neck.
'But Spicer's in his room now. I heard him.'
'Heard?' the Boy said. 'You're imagining things.'
He was afraid for the second time that day: a dim globe lit the passage and the stairs; the walls were unevenly splashed with walnut paint. He felt the skin of his face contract as if something repulsive had touched him. He wanted to ask whether you could do more than hear this Spicer, if he was sensible to the sight and the touch. He stood up: it had to be faced whatever it was, passed Dallow without another word. The door of Spicer's room swung in a draught to and fro.
He couldn't see inside. It was a tiny room; they had all had tiny rooms but Kite, and he had inherited that.
That was why his room was the common room for them all. In Spicer's there would be space for no one but himself and Spicer. He could hear little creaking leathery movements as the door swung. The words, 'Dona nobis pacem,' came again to mind; for the second time he felt a faint nostalgia, as if for something he had lost or forgotten or rejected.
He walked down the passage and into Spicer's room.
His first feeling when he saw Spicer bent and tightening the straps of his suitcase was relief that it was undoubtedly the living Spicer, whom you could touch and scare and command. A long strip of sticking plaster lined Spicer's cheek; the Boy watched it from the doorway with a rising cruelty; he wanted to tear it away and see the skin break. Spicer looked up, put down the suitcase, shifted uneasily towards the wall.
