'Haven't you seen her?' the Boy said.
'Why, me and Dallow just lamped her. On the stairs. But it was too dark...'
'She's a lovely,' the Boy said, 'she's wasted in a kip. And intelligent. Don't make any mistake. Of course I didn't see any cause to marry her, but as it is ' Somebody handed him a glass; he took a long draught; the bitter and bubbly fluid revolted him so this was what they liked he tightened the muscles of his mouth to hide his revulsion. 'As it is,' he said, 'I'm glad,' and eyed with hidden disgust the pale inch of liquid in the glass before he drained it down.
Dallow watched in silence and the Boy felt more anger against his friend than against his enemy: like Spicer he knew too much; but what he knew was far more deadly than what Spicer had known. Spicer had known only the kind of thing which brought you to the dock, but Dallow knew what your mirror and your bedsheets knew: the secret fear and the humiliation.
He said with hidden fury: 'What's getting you, Dallow?'
The stupid and broken face was hopelessly at a loss.
'Jealous?' the Boy began to boast. 'You've cause when you've seen her. She's not one of your dyed totsies. She's got class. I'm marrying her for your sake, but I'm laying her for my own.' He turned fiendishly on Dallow. 'What's on your mind?'
'Well,' Dallow said, 'it's the one you met on the pier, isn't it? I didn't think she was all that good.'
'You,' the Boy said, 'you don't know anything.
You're ignorant. You don't know class when you see it.'
'A duchess,' Cubitt said and laughed.
An extraordinary indignation jerked in the Boy's brain and fingers. It was almost as if someone he loved had been insulted. 'Be careful, Cubitt,' he said.
'Don't mind him,' Dallow said. 'We didn't know you'd fallen....'
'We got some presents for you, Pinkie,' Cubitt said. 'Furniture for the home,' and indicated two little obscene objects beside the beer on the washstand; the Brighton stationers were full of them: a tiny doll's commode in the shape of a radio set labelled: 'The smallest A. I two-valve receiving set in the world,' and a mustard pot shaped like a lavatory seat with the legend, 'For me and my girl.' It was like a return of all the horror he had ever felt, the hideous loneliness of his innocence. He struck at Cubitt's face and Cubitt dodged, laughing. The two hangers-on slipped out of the room. They hadn't any taste for rough houses. The Boy heard them laugh on the stairs. Cubitt said: 'You'll need 'em in the home. A bed's not the only furniture.' He mocked and backed at the same time.
The Boy said: 'By God, I'll treat you like I treated Spicer.'
No meaning reached Cubitt at once. There was a long time lag. He began to laugh and then saw Dailow's startled face and heard. 'What's that?' he said.
'He's crazy,' Dallow intervened.
'You think yourself smart,' the Boy said. 'So did Spicer.'
'It was the bannister,' Cubitt said. 'You weren't here. What are you getting at?'
'Of course he wasn't here,' Dallow said.
'You think you know things.' All the Boy's hatred was in the word 'know' and his repulsion: he knew as Drewitt knew after twenty-five years at the game.
'You don't know everything.' He tried to inject himself with pride, but all the time his eyes went back to the humiliation. 'The smallest A. I...' You could know everything there was in the world and yet if you were ignorant of that one dirty scramble you knew nothing.
'What's he getting at?' Cubitt said.
'You don't need to listen to him,' Dallow said.
'I mean this,' the Boy said; 'Spicer was milky and I'm the only one in this mob knows how to act.'
'You act too much,' Cubitt said. 'Do you mean it wasn't the bannisters?' The question scared himself: he didn't want an answer. He made uneasily for the door, keeping his eye on the Boy, Dallow said: 'Of course it was the bannisters. I was there, wasn't I?'
'I don't know,' Cubitt said, 'I don't know,' making for the door. 'Brighton's not big enough for him.
I'm through.'
'Go on,' the Boy said. 'Clear out. Clear out and starve.'
'I won't starve,' Cubitt said. 'There's others in this town.., When the door closed the Boy turned on Dallow.
'Go on,' he said, 'you go too. You think you can get on without me, but I've only got to whistle...'
'You don't need to talk to me like that,' Dallow said. 'I'm not leaving you. I don't fancy making friends with Crab again so soon.'
But the Boy paid him no attention. He said again: 'I've only got to whistle...' He boasted: 'They'll come tumbling back.' He went over to the brass bed and lay down; he had had a long day; he said: 'Get me Drewitt on the blower. Tell him there's no difficulty at her end. Let him fix things quick.'
'The day after tomorrow if he can?' Dallow asked.
'Yes,' the Boy said. He heard the door close and lay with twitching cheek staring at the ceiling; he thought: it's not my fault they get me angry so I want to do things; if people would leave me in peace...
His imagination wilted at the word. He tried in a halfhearted way to picture 'peace' his eyes closed and behind the lids he saw a grey darkness going on and on without end, a country of which he hadn't seen as much as a picture postcard, a place far stranger than the Grand Canyon and the Taj Mahal. He opened them again and immediately poison moved in the vein--for there on the washstand were Cubitt's purchases.
He was like a child with haemophilia: every contact drew blood.
A bell rang muffled in the Cosmopolitan corridor--through the wall against which the bed end stood, Ida Arnold could hear a voice talking on and on: somebody reading a report perhaps in a conference room or dictating to a dictaphone. Phil lay asleep on the bed in his pants, his mouth a little open showing one yellow tooth and a gobof metal filling. Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert sad and dissatisfied brain nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.
But it did no one any harm, it was just human nature, no one could call her really bad a bit free and easy perhaps, a bit Bohemian--it wasn't as if she got anything out of it, as if like some people she sucked a man dry and cast him aside like a cast-off threw him aside like a cast-off glove. She knew what was Right and what was Wrong. God didn't mind a bit of human nature what He minded and her brain switched away from Phil in pants to her Mission, to doing good, to seeing that the evil suffered...
She sat up in bed and put her arms round her large naked knees and felt excitement stirring again in the disappointed body. Poor old Fred the name no longer conveyed any sense of grief or pathos. She couldn't remember anything much about him now but a monocle and a yellow waistcoat and that belonged to poor old Charlie Moyne. The hunt was what mattered. It was like life coming back after a sickness.
Phil opened an eye yellow with the sexual effort and watched her apprehensively. She said: 'Awake, Phil?'
'It must be nearly time for dinner,' Phil said. He gave a nervous smile. 'A penny for your thoughts, Ida.'
'I was just thinking,' Ida said, 'that what we really need now is one of Pinkie's men. Somebody scared or angry. They must get scared some time.
We've only got to wait.'
She got out of the bed, opened her suitcase, and began to lay out the clothes she thought were suitable for dinner in the Cosmopolitan. In the pink reading-lamp, love-lamp light spangles glittered. She stretched her arms; she no longer felt desire or disappointment j her brain was clear. It was almost dark along the beach; the edge of sea was like a line of writing in whitewash: big sprawling letters. They meant nothing at this distance. A shadow stooped with infinite patience and disinterred some relic from the shingle.
PART Six
WHEN Cubitt got outside the front door the hangers-on had already vanished. The street was empty. He felt in a dumb, bitter, and uncomprehending way like a man who had destroyed his home without having prepared another.
The mist was coming up from the sea, and he hadn't got his coat. He was as angry as a child: he wouldn't go
