'The Blue Anchor, Union Street, Nottingham,' the Boy said. 'We'd better wire them. They might want to send flowers.'
'Be careful about finger prints,' Mr. Drewitt implored them from the washstand without raising his aching head, but the Boy's steps on the stairs made him look up. 'Where are you going?' he asked sharply. The Boy stared up at him from the turn in the stairs. 'Out,' he said.
'You can't go now,' Mr. Drewitt said.
'I wasn't here,' the Boy said. 'It was just you and Dallow. You were waiting for me to come in.'
'You'll be seen.'
'That's your risk,' the Boy said. 'I've got things to do.'
'Don't tell me,' Mr. Drewitt cried hastily and checked himself, 'don't tell me,' he repeated in a low voice, 'what things...'
'We'll have to fix that marriage,' the Boy said, sombrely. He gazed at Mr. Drewitt for a moment the spouse, twenty-five years at the game with the air of someone who wanted to ask a question, almost as if he were prepared to accept advice from a man so much older, as if he expected a little human wisdom from the old shady legal mind.
'It had better be soon,' the Boy went softly and sadly on. He still watched Mr. Drewitt's face for some reflection of the wisdom twenty-five years at the game must have given him, but saw only a frightened face, boarded up like a store when a riot is on. He went on down the stairs, dropping into the dark well where Spicer's body had fallen. He had made his decision j he had only to move towards his aim; he could feel his blood pumped from the heart and moving indifferently back along the arteries like trains on the inner circle. Every station was one nearer safety, and then one farther away, until the bend was turned and safety again approached, like Netting Hill, and afterwards receded. The middle-aged whore on Hove front never troubled to look round as he came up behind her: like electric trains moving on the same track there was no collision. They both had the same end in view, if you could talk of an end in connexion with that circle. Outside the Norfolk bar two smart scarlet racing models lay along the kerb like twin beds. The Boy was not conscious of them, but their image passed automatically into his brain, released his secretion of envy.
Snow's was nearly empty. He sat down at the table where once Spicer had sat, but he was not served by Rose. A strange girl came to take his order. He said awkwardly: 'Isn't Rose here?'
'She's busy.'
'Could I see her?'
'She's talking to someone up in her room. You can't go there. You'll have to wait.'
The Boy put half a crown on the table. 'Where is it?'
The girl hesitated. 'The manageress would bawl hell.'
'Where's the manageress?'
'She's out.'
The Boy put another half-crown on the table.
'Through the service door,' the girl said, 'and straight up the stairs. There's a woman with her though '
He heard the woman's voice before he reached the top of the stairs. She was saying: 'I only want to speak to you for your own good,' but he had to strain to catch Rose's reply.
'Let me be, why won't you let me be?'
'It's the business of anyone who thinks right.'
The Boy could see into the room now from the head of the stairs, though the broad back, the large loose dress, the square hips of the woman nearly blocked his view of Rose, who stood back against the wall in an attitude of sullen defiance. Small and bony in the black cotton dress and the white apron, her eyes stained but tearless, startled and determined, she carried her courage with a kind of comic inadequacy, like the little man in the bowler put up by the management to challenge the strong man at a fair. She said: 'You'd better let me be.'
It was Nelson Place and Manor Street which stood there in the servant's bedroom, and for a moment he felt no antagonism but a faint nostalgia. He was aware that she belonged to his life, like a room or a chair: she was something which completed him; he thought: 'She's got more guts than Spicer.' What was most evil in him needed her: it couldn't get along without goodness. He said softly: 'What are you worrying my girl about?' and the claim he made was curiously sweet to his ears, like a refinement of cruelty. After all, though he had aimed higher than Rose, he had this comfort: she couldn't have gone lower than himself.
He stood there, with a smirk on his face, when the woman turned; 'between the stirrup and the ground,' he had learned the fallacy of that comfort j if he had attached to himself some bright brassy skirt, like the ones he'd seen at the Cosmopolitan, his triumph after all wouldn't have been so great. He smirked at the pair of them, nostalgia driven out by a surge of sad sensuality. She was good, he'd discovered that, and he was damned: they were made for each other.
'You leave her alone,' the woman said. 'I know all about you.' It was as if she were in a strange country: the typical Englishwoman abroad. She hadn't even got a phrase book. She was as far from either of them as she was from Hell or Heaven. Good and evil lived in the same country, spoke the same language, came together like old friends, feeling the same completion, touching hands beside the iron bedstead. 'You want to do what's Right, Rose?' she implored.
Rose whispered again: 'You let us be.'
'You're a Good Girl, Rose. You don't want anything to do with Him.'
'You don't know a thing.'
There was nothing she could do at the moment but threaten from the door: 'I haven't finished with you yet. I've got friends.'
The Boy watched her go with amazement. He said: 'Who the hell is she?'
'I don't know,' Rose said.
'I've never seen her before.' The vaguest memory pricked him and passed.
'What did she want?'
'I don't know.'
'You're a good girl, Rose,' the Boy said, pressing his fingers round the small sharp wrist.
She shook her head. 'I'm bad.' She implored him: 'I want to be bad if she's good and you '
'You'll never be anything but good,' the Boy said.
'There's some wouldn't like you for that, but I don't care.'
'I'll do anything for you. Tell me what to do. I don't want to be like her.'
'It's not what you do,' the Boy said, 'it's what you think.' He boasted. 'It's in the blood. Perhaps when they christened me, the holy water didn't take. I never howled the devil out.'
'Is she good?' She came weakly to him for instruction.
'She?' The Boy laughed. 'She's just nothing.'
'We can't stay here,' Rose said. 'I wish we could.'
She looked round her, at a badly foxed steel engraving of Van Tromp's victory, the three black bedsteads, the two mirrors, the single chest of drawers, the pale mauve knots of flowers on the wallpaper, as if she was safer here than she could ever be in the squally summer night outside. 'It's a nice room.' She wanted to share it with him till it became a home for both of them.
'How'd you like to leave this place?'
'Snow's? Oh, no, it's a good place. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than Snow's.'
'I mean marry me.'
'We aren't old enough.'
'It could be managed. There are ways.' He dropped her wrist and put on a careless air. 'If you wanted. I don't mind.'
'Oh,' she said. 'I want it. But they'll never let us.'
He explained airily. 'It couldn't be in church, not at first. There'd be difficulties. Are you afraid?'
'I'm not afraid,' she said. 'But will they let us?'
'My lawyer '11 manage somehow.'
'Have you got a lawyer?'
'Of course I have.'
'It sounds somehow grand and old.'
