superiority of vacancy.
She said, as she had said once before: 'I always wondered how it'd be.' Her mind moved obscurely among the events of the afternoon, brought out the unexpected discovery. 'I've never known a mood go so quick. They must have liked you,'
Ida Arnold bit an Eclair and the cream spurted between the large front teeth. She laughed a little thickly in the Pompadour Boudoir and said: 'I haven't had as much money to spend since I left Tom.' She took another bite and a wedge of cream settled on the plump tongue. 'I owe it to Fred too. If he hadn't tipped me Black Boy...'
'Why not give everything up,' Mr. Corkery said, 'and just have a bit of fun? It's dangerous.'
'Oh, yes, it's dangerous,' she admitted, but no real sense of danger could lodge behind those large vivacious eyes. Nothing could ever make her believe that one day she too, like Fred, would be where the worms... her mind couldn't take that track: she could go only a short way before the switch automatically shifted and set her vibrating down the accustomed line, the season ticket line marked by desirable residences and advertisements for cruises and small fenced boskages for rural love. She said, eyeing her Eclair: 'I never give in. They didn't know what a packet of trouble they were stirring up.'
'Leave it to the police.'
'Oh, no. I know what's right. You can't tell me.
Who's that, do you think?'
An elderly Jew in glac6 shoes, with a white slip to his waistcoat and a jewelled pin, came padding across the Boudoir. 'Distinguay,' Ida Arnold said.
A secretary trotted a little way behind him, reading out from a list. 'Bananas, oranges, grapes, peaches...'
'Hothouse?'
'Hothouse.'
'Who's that?' Ida Arnold said.
'That was all, Mr. Colleoni?' the secretary asked.
'What flowers?' Mr. Colleoni demanded. 'And could you get any nectarines?'
'No, Mr. Colleoni.'
'My dear wife,' Mr. Colleoni said, his voice dwindling out of their hearing. They could catch only the word 'passion.' Ida Arnold swivelled her eyes round the elegant furnishing of the Pompadour Boudoir. They picked out like a searchlight a cushion, a couch, the thin clerkly mouth of the man opposite her. She said: 'We could have a fine time here,' watching his mouth.
'Expensive,' Mr. Corkery said nervously; a too sensitive hand stroked his thin shanks.
'Black Boy will stand it. And we can't have you know fun at the Belvedere. Strait-laced.'
'You wouldn't mind a bit of fun here?' Mr. Corkery said. He blinked. Ydu couldn't tell from his expression whether he desired or dreaded her assent.
'Why should I? It doesn't do anyone any harm that I know of. It's human nature.' She bit at her Eclair and repeated the familiar password. 'It's only fun after all.' Fun to be on the right side, fun to be human...
'You go and get my bag,' she said, 'while I book a room.'
Mr. Corkery flushed a little. 'Half and half,' he said.
She grinned at him. 'It's on Black Boy.'
'A man likes ' Mr. Corkery said weakly.
'Trust me, I know what a man likes.' The Eclair and the deep couch and the gaudy furnishings were like an aphrodisiac in her tea. She was shaken by a Bacchic and a bawdy mood. In every word either of them uttered she detected the one meaning. Mr.
Corkery blushed, plunged deeper in his embarrassment. 'A man can't help feeling,' and was shaken by her immense glee.
'You're telling me,' she said, 'you're telling me?'
While Mr. Corkery was gone she made her preparations for carnival, the taste of the sweet cake between her teeth. The idea of Fred Hale dodged backwards like a figure on a platform when the train goes out; he belonged to somewhere left behind j the waving hand only contributes to the excitement of the new experience. The new and yet the immeasurably old.
She gazed round the big padded pleasure dome of a bedroom with bloodshot and experienced eyes: the long mirror and the wardrobe and the enormous bed.
She settled frankly down on it while the clerk waited.
'It springs,' she said, 'it springs,' and sat there for quite a long while after he'd gone, planning the evetaing's campaign. If somebody had said to her then: 'Fred Hale,' she would hardly have recognised the name--there was another interest: for the next hour let the police have him.
Then she got up slowly and began to undress. She never believed in wearing much: it wasn't any time at all before she was exposed in the long mirror a body firm and bulky, a proper handful. She stood on a deep soft rug, surrounded by gilt frames and red velvet hangings, and a dozen common and popular phrases bloomed in her mind 'A Night of Love,'
'You Only Live Once,' and the rest. She bore the same relation to passion as a peep show. She sucked the chocolate between her teeth and smiled, her plump toes working in the rug, waiting for Mr. Corkery just a great big blossoming surprise.
Outside the window the sea ebbed, scraping the shingle, exposing a boot, a piece of rusty iron, and the old man stooped, searching between the stones. The sun dropped behind the Hove houses and dusk came, the shadow of Mr. Corkery lengthened, coming slowly up from Belvedere carrying the suitcases, saving on taxis. A gull swooped screaming down to a dead crab beaten and broken against the iron foundation of the pier. It was the time of near- darkness and of the evening mist from the Channel and of love.
The Boy closed the door behind him and turned to face the expectant and amused faces.
'Well,' Cubitt said, 'is it all fixed up?'
'Of course it is,' the Boy said; 'when I want a thing...' His voice wavered out unconvincingly.
There were half a dozen bottles on his washstand: his room smelt of stale beer.
'Want a thing,' Cubitt said. 'That's good.' He opened another bottle, and in the warm stuffy room the froth rose quickly and splashed on the marble top.
'What do you think you're doing?' the Boy said.
'Celebrating,' Cubitt said. 'You're a Roman, aren't you? A betrothal, that's what Romans call it.'
The Boy watched them: Cubitt a little drunk, Dallow preoccupied, one or two lean hungry faces he hardly knew hangers-on at the fringes of the great game who smiled when you smiled and frowned when you frowne<J. But now they smiled when Cubitt smiled, and suddenly he saw the long way he had slipped since that afternoon on the pier when he arranged the alibi, gave the orders, did what they hadn't got the nerve to do themselves.
Billy's wife Judy put her head in at the door. She was wearing a dressing gown. Her Titian hair was brown at the roots. 'Good luck, Pinkie,' she said, blinking mascara'd lashes. She had been washing her brassiere: the little piece of pink silk dripped on the linoleum. Nobody offered her a drink. 'Work, work, work,' she moued at them, going on down the passage to the hot-water pipes.
A long way... and yet he hadn't made a single false step: if he hadn't gone to Snow's and spoken to the girl, they'd all be in the dock by now. If he hadn't killed Spicer... Not a single false step, but every step conditioned by a pressure he couldn't even place: a woman asking questions, messages on the telephone scaring Spicer. He thought: when I've married the girl, will it stop then? Where else can it drive mej and with a twitch of the mouth, he wondered what worse,,,?
'When's the happy day?' Cubitt said, and they all smiled obediently except Dallow.
The Boy's brain began to work again. He moved slowly towards the washstand. He said: 'Haven't you got a glass for me? Don't I do any celebrating?'
He saw Dallow astonished, Cubitt thrown off his mark, the hangers-on doubtful whom to follow, and he grinned at them, the one with brains.
'Why, Pinkie...' Cubitt said.
'I'm not a drinking man and I'm not a marrying man,' the Boy said. 'So you think. But Fm liking one, so why shouldn't I like the other? Give me a glass.'
'Liking,' Cubitt said and grinned uneasily, 'you liking...'
