Occupied.'
'Why, if it isn't Cubitt,' Crab said. 'I suppose you want a job.' He looked round in a busy preoccupied way and said to the clerk: 'Isn't that Lord Heversham over there?'
'Yes, sir,' the clerk said.
'I've often seen him at Doncaster,' Crab said, squinting at a nail on his left hand.-He swept round on Cubitt, 'Follow me, my man. We can't talk here,' and before Cubitt could reply he was sidling off at a great rate between the gilt chairs.
'It's like this,' Cubitt said, 'Pinkie '
Half-way across the lounge Crab paused and bowed and, moving on, became suddenly confidential. 'A fine woman.' He flickered like an early movie. He had picked up between Doncaster and London a hundred different manners--travelling first class after a successful meeting he had learnt how Lord Hoversham spoke to a porter--he had seen old Digby scrutinise a woman.
'Who is she?' Cubitt said.
But Crab took no notice of the question. 'We can talk here.' It was the Pompadour Boudoir. Through the gilt and glass door beyond the boule table you could see little signboards pointing down a network of passages tasteful little chinoiserie signboards with a Tuileries air: 'Ladies,'
'Gentlemen,'
'Ladies*
Hairdressing,'
'Gentlemen's Hairdressing.'
'It's Mr. Colleoni I want to talk to,' Cubitt said.
He breathed whisky over the marquetry, but he was daunted and despairing. He resisted with difficulty the temptation to say 'sir.' Crab had moved on since Kite's day, almost out of sight. He was part of the great racket now with Lord Heversham and the fine woman; he had grown up.
'Mr. Colleoni hasn't time to see anyone,' Crab said. 'He's a busy man.' He took one of Mr. Colleoni's cigars out of his pocket and put it in his mouth; he didn't offer one to Cubitt. Cubitt with uncertain hand offered him a match. 'Never mind, never mind/ 1 Crab said, fumbling in his double-breasted waistcoat.
He fetched out a gold lighter and flourished it at his cigar. 'What do you want, Cubitt?' he asked.
'I thought maybe,' Cubitt said, but his words wilted among the gilt chairs. 'You know how it is,' he said, staring desperately round. 'What about a drink?'
Crab took him quickly up. 'I wouldn't mind one just for old times' sake.' He rang for a waiter.
'Old times,' Cubitt said.
'Take a seat,' Crab said, waving a possessive hand at the gilt chairs. Cubitt sat gingerly down. The chairs were small and hard. He saw a waiter watching them and flushed. 'What's yours?' he said.
'A sherry,' Crab said. 'Dry.'
'Scotch and splash for me,' Cubitt said. He sat waiting for his drink, his hands between his knees, silent, his head lowered. He took furtive glances. This was where Pinkie had come to see Colleoni he had nerve all right.
'They do you pretty well here,' Crab said. 'Of course Mr. Colleoni likes nothing but the best.' He took his drink and watched Cubitt pay. 'He likes things smart. Why, he's worth fifty thousand nicker if he's worth a penny. If you ask me what I think,'
Crab said, leaning back, puffing at the cigar, watching Cubitt through black, remote, and supercilious eyes, 'he'll go in for politics one day. The Conservatives think a lot of him he's got contacts.'
'Pinkie ' Cubitt began and Crab laughed. 'Take my advice,' Crab said. 'Get out of that mob while there's time. There's no future...' He looked obliquely over Cubitt's head and said: 'See that man going to the Gents'? That's Mais. The brewer. He's worth a hundred thousand nicker.'
'I was wondering,' Cubitt said, 'if Mr. Colleoni...'
'Not a chance,' Crab said. 'Why, ask yourself what good would you be to Mr. Colleoni?'
Cubitt's humility gave way to a dull anger. 'I was good enough for Kite.'
Crab laughed. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'but Kite...'
He shook his ash out onto the carpet and said: 'Take my advice. Get out. Mr. Colleoni's going to clean up this track. He likes things done properly. No violence.
The police have great confidence in Mr. Colleoni.'
He looked at his watch. 'Well, well, I must be going.
I've got a date at the Hippodrome.' He put his hand with patronage on Cubitt's arm. 'There,' he said, '1*11 put in a word for you for old times' sake. It won't be any good, but I'll do that much. Give my regards to Pinkie and the boys.' He passed a whiff of pomade and Havana, bowing slightly to a woman at the door? an old man with a monocle on a black ribbon. 'Who the hell?' the old man said.
Cubitt drained his drink and followed. An enormous depression bowed his carrot head, a sense of illtreatment moved through the whisky fumes somebody sometime had got to pay for something. All that he saw fed the flaine: he came out into the entrance hall; a page boy with a salver infuriated him. Everybody was watching him, waiting for him to go, but he had as much right there as Crab. He glanced round him, and there alone at a table with a glass of port was the woman Crab knew.
She smiled at him 'I think of your wondrous, winsome beauty and culture.' A sense of the immeasurable sadness of injustice took the place of anger. He wanted to confide, to lay down burdens ... he belched once... 'I will be your servant and slave.' The great body turned like a door, the heavy feet altered direction and padded towards the table where Ida Arnold sat.
'I couldn't help hearing,' she said, 'when you went across just now that you knew Pinkie.'
He realised with immense pleasure when she spoke that she wasn't class. It was to him like the meeting of two fellow-countrymen a long way from home. He said: 'You a friend of Pinkie's?' and felt the whisky in his legs. He said: 'Mind if I sit down?'
'Tired?'
'That's it,' he said, 'tired.' He sat down with his eyes on her large friendly bosom. He remembered the lines on his character. 'You have a free, easy, and genial nature.' By God, he had. He only needed to be treated right.
'Have a drink?'
'No, no,' he said with woolly gallantry, 'it's on me,' but when the drinks came he realised he was out of cash. He had meant to borrow from one of the boys but then the quarrel... He watched Ida Arnold pay with a five-pound note.
'Know Mr. Colleoni?' he asked.
'I wouldn't call it know,' she said.
'Crab said you were a fine woman. He's right.'
'Oh Crab,' she said vaguely, as if she didn't recognise the name.
'You oughta steer clear though,' Cubitt said.
'You've got no call to get mixed up in things.' He stared into his glass as into a deep darkness: outside innocence, winsome beauty, and culture unworthy, a tear gathered behind the bloodshot eyeball.
'You a friend of Pinkie's?' Ida Arnold asked.
'Christ, no,' Cubitt said and took some more whisky.
A vague memory of the Bible, where it lay in the cupboard next the Board, the Warwick Deeping, The Good Companions, stirred in Ida Arnold's memory.
'I've seen you with him,' she lied; a courtyard, a sewing wench beside the fire, the cock crowing.
'I'm no friend of Pinkie's.'
'It's not safe being friends with Pinkie,' Ida Arnold said. Cubitt stared into his glass like a diviner into his soul, reading the dooms of strangers. 'Fred was a friend of Pinkie's,' she said.
'What you know about Fred?'
'People talk,' Ida Arnold said. 'People talk all the time.'
'You're right,' Cubitt said. The stained eyeballs lifted--they gazed at comfort, understanding; he wasn't good enough for Colleoni--he had broken with Pinkie--behind her head through the window of the lounge darkness and the retreating sea; through a ruined Tintern picture postcard arch lay desolation.
'Christ,' he said, 'you're right.' He had an enormous urge to confession, but the facts were confused.
