back for it; it would be like admitting he was wrong. The only thing to be done now was to drink a strong whisky at the Crown.
At the saloon bar they made way for him with respect. In the mirror marked Booth's Gin he could see his own reflection: the short flaming hair, the blunt and open face, broad shoulders; he stared like Narcissus into his pool and felt better; he wasn't the sort of man to take things lying down; he was valuable.
'Have a whisky?' somebody said. It was the greengrocer's assistant from the corner shop. Cubitt laid a heavy paw across his shoulder, accepting, patronising: the man who had done a thing or two in his time chummy with the pale ignorant fellow who dreamed from his commercial distance of a man's life. The relationship pleased Cubitt. He had two more whiskies at the grocer's expense.
'Got a tip, Mr. Cubitt?'
'I've got other things to think of beside tips,' Cubitt said darkly, adding a splash.
'We were having an argument in here about Gay Parrot for the two-thirty. Seemed to me...'
Gay Parrot... the name didn't mean a thing to Cubitt; the drink warmed him; the mist was in his brain; he leant forward towards the mirror and saw 'Booth's Gin... Booth's Gin,' haloed above his head.
He was involved in high politics: men had been killed; poor old Spicer; allegiances shifted like heavy balances in his brain; he felt as important as a prime minister making treaties.
'There'll be more killings before we're through,' he mysteriously pronounced. He had his wits about him: he wasn't giving anything away; but there was no harm in letting these poor sodden creatures a little way into the secrets of living. He pushed his glass forward and said: 'A drink all round,' but when he looked to either side they'd gone; a face took a backward look through the pane of the saloon door, vanished; they couldn't stand the company of a Man.
'Never mind,' he said, 'never mind,' and drank down his whisky and left. The next thing, of course, was to see Colleoni. He'd say to him: 'Here I am, Mr.
Colleoni. I'm through with Kite's mob. I won't work under a boy like that. Give me a Man's job and I'll do it.' The mist got at his bones: he shivered involuntarily; a grey goose... He thought: if only Dallow too... and suddenly loneliness took away his confidence: all the heat of the drink seeped out of him, and the mist like seven devils went in. Suppose Colleoni simply wasn't interested? He came down onto the front and saw through the thin fog the high lights of the Cosmopolitan; it was cocktail time.
Cubitt sat down chilled in a glass shelter and stared out towards the sea. The tide was low and the mist hid it: it was just a sliding and a sibilation. He lit a cigarette; the match warmed for a moment the cupped hands. He offered the packet to an elderly gentleman wrapped in a heavy overcoat who shared the shelter.
'I don't smoke,' the old gentleman said sharply and began to cough: a steady hack, hack, hack towards the invisible sea.
'A cold night,' Cubitt said. The old gentleman swivelled his eyes on him like opera glasses and went on coughing: hack, hack, hack, the vocal cords dry as straw. Somewhere out at sea a violin began to play: it was like a sea beast mourning and stretching towards the shore. Cubitt thought of Spicer, who'd liked a good tune. Poor old Spicer. The mist blew in, heavy compact drifts of it like ectoplasm. Cubitt had been to a seance once in Brighton; he had wanted to get in touch with his mother, dead twenty years ago. It had come over him quite suddenly the old girl might have a word for him. She had: she was on the seventh plane where all was very beautiful; her voice had sounded a little boozed, but that wasn't really unnatural. The boys had laughed at him about it, particularly old Spicer. Well, Spicer wouldn't laugh now. He could be summoned himself any time to ring a bell and shake a tambourine. It was a lucky thing he liked music.
Cubitt got up and strolled to the turnpike of the West Pier, which straddled into the mist and vanished towards the violin. He walked up towards the Concert Hall, passing nobody. It wasn't a night for courting couples to sit out. Whatever people there were upon the pier were gathered every one inside the Concert Hall; Cubitt turned round it on the outside looking in: a man in evening dress fiddling to a few rows of people in overcoats, islanded fifty yards out to sea in the middle of the mist. Somewhere in the Channel a boat blew its siren and another answered, and another, like dogs at night waking each other.
Go to Colleoni and say... it was all quite easy; the old geezer ought to be grateful.... Cubitt looked back towards the shore and saw above the mist the high lights of the Cosmopolitan, and they daunted him. He wasn't used to that sort of company. He went down the iron companionway to the Gents' and drained the whisky out of him into the movement under the piles and came up onto the deck lonelier than ever. He took a penny out of his pocket and slipped it into an automatic machine: a robot face, behind which an electric bulb revolved, iron hands for Cubitt to grip. A little blue card shot out at him: 'Your Character Delineated.' Cubitt read: 'You are mainly influenced by your surroundings and inclined to be capricious and changeful. Your affections are more intense than enduring. You have a free, easy, and genial nature. You make the best of whatever you undertake. A share of the good things of life can always be yours. Your lack of initiative is counterbalanced by your good commonsense, and you will succeed where others fail.'
He dragged slowly on past the automatic machines, delaying the moment when there would be nothing for him to do but go to the Cosmopolitan. 'Your lack of initiative...' Two leaden football teams waited behind glass for a penny to release them; an old witch with the stuffing coming out of her claw offered to tell his fortune. 'A Love Letter' made him pause. The boards were damp with mist, the long deck was empty, the violin ground on. He felt the need of a deep sentimental affection, orange blossoms and a cuddle in a corner. His great paw yearned for a sticky hand. Somebody who wouldn't mind his jokes, who would laugh with him at the two-valve receiving set. He hadn't meant any harm; the cold reached his stomach, and a little stale whisky returned into his throat. He almost felt inclined to go back to Billy's. But then he remembered Spicer. The boy was mad, killing mad, it wasn't safe. Loneliness dragged him down the solitary boards.
He took out his last copper and thrust it in. A little pink card came out with a printed stamp: a girl's head, long hair, the legend, 'True Love.' It was addressed to 'My Dear Pet, Spooner's Nook, With Cupid's Love,' and there was a picture of a young man in evening dress kneeling on the floor, kissing the hand of a girl carrying a big fur. Up in a corner two hearts were transfixed by an arrow just above Reg. No .745812.
Cubitt thought: It's clever. It's cheap for a penny. He looked quickly over his shoulder not a soul and turned it quickly and began to read. The letter was addressed from Cupid's Wings, Amor Lane. 'My dear little girl. So you have discarded me for the Squire's son. You little know how you have ruined my life in breaking faith with me, you have crushed the very soul out of me, as the butterfly on the wheel; but with it all I do not wish anything but your happiness.'
Cubitt grinned uneasily. He was deeply moved.
That was what always happened if you took up with anything but a buer; they gave you the air. Grand Renunciations, Tragedies, Beauty moved in Cubitt's brain. If it was a buer, of course you took a razor to her, carved her face, but this love printed here was class. He read on: it was literature; it was the way he'd like to write himself. 'After all, when I think of your wondrous, winsome beauty and culture, I feel what a fool I must have been to dream that you ever really loved me.' Unworthy. Emotion pricked behind his eyelids and he shivered in the mist with cold and beauty. 'But remember, dearest, always, that I love you, and if ever you want a friend just return the little token of love I gave you and I will be your servant and slave. Yours brokenheartedly, John.' It was his own name: an omen.
He moved again past the lighted Concert Hall and down the deserted deck. Loved and Lost. Tragic griefs flamed under his carrot hair. What can a man do but drink? He got another whisky just opposite the pier head and moved on, planting his feet rather too firmly, towards the Cosmopolitan plank, plank, plank along the pavement as if he were wearing iron weights under his shoes, as a statue might move, half flesh, half stone.
'I want to speak to Mr. Colleoni.' He said it defiantly. The plush and gilding smoothed away his confidence. He waited uneasily beside the desk while a page boy searched through the lounges and boudoirs for Mr. Colleoni. The clerk turned over the leaves of a big book and then consulted a Who's Who. Across the deep carpet the page returned and Crab followed him, sidling and triumphant with his black hair smelling of pomade.
'I said Mr. Colleoni,' Cubitt said to the clerk, but the clerk took no notice, wetting his finger, skimming through Who's Who.
'You wanted to see Mr. Colleoni?' Crab said.
'That's right.'
'You can't. He's occupied.'
'Occupied,' Cubitt said. 'That's a fine word to use.
