Brighton Rock

He knew only that these were the times when a man needed a woman's understanding. 'I've never held with it,' he told her. 'Carving's different.'

'Of course, carving's different,' Ida Arnold smoothly and deftly agreed.

'And Kite that was an accident. They only meant to carve him. Colleoni's no fool. Somebody slipped.

There wasn't any cause for bad feeling.'

'Have another drink?'

'It oughta be on me,' Cubitt said. 'But I'm cleaned out. Till I see the boys.'

'It was fine of you breaking with Pinkie like that.

It needed courage after what happened to Fred.'

'Oh, he can't scare me. No broken bannisters...'

'What do you mean broken bannisters?'

'I wanted to be friendly,' Cubitt said. 'A joke's a joke. When a man's getting married, he oughta take a joke.'

'Married? Who married?'

'Pinkie, of course.'

'Not to the little girl at Snow's?'

'Of course.'

'The little fool,' Ida Arnold said with sharp anger.

'Oh, the little fool.'

'He's not a fool,' Cubitt said. 'He knows what's good for him. If she chose to say a thing or two '

'You mean, say it wasn't Fred left the ticket?'

'Poor old Spicer,' Cubitt said, watching the bubbles rise in the whisky. A question floated up: 'How did you...?' but broke in the doped brain. 'I want air,' he said, 'stuffy in here. What say you and I...?'

'Just wait awhile,' Ida Arnold said. 'I'm expecting a friend. I'd like you and him to be acquainted.'

'This central heating,' Cubitt said. 'It's not healthy. You go out and catch a chill and the next you know '

'When's the wedding?'

'Whose wedding?'

'Pinkie's.'

'I'm no friend of Pinkie's.'

'You didn't hold with Fred's death, did you?' Ida Arnold softly persisted.

'You understand a man.'

'Carving would have been different.'

Cubitt suddenly, furiously, broke out: 'I can't see a piece of Brighton rock without...' He belched and said with tears in his voice: 'Carving's different.'

'The doctors said it was natural causes. He had a weak heart.'

'Come outside,' Cubitt said. 'I got to get some air.'

'Just wait a bit. What do you mean Brighton rock?'

He stared inertly back at her. He said: 'I got to get some air. Even if it kills me. This central heating ...' he complained. 'I'm liable to colds.'

'Just wait two minutes.' She put her hand on his arm, feeling an intense excitement, the edge of discovery above the horizon, and was aware herself for the first time of the warm close air welling up round them from hidden gratings, driving them into the open. She said: 'I'll come out with you. We'll take a walk...' He watched her with nodding head, an immense indifference as if he had lost grip on his thought as you loose a dog's lead and it has disappeared, too far to be followed, in what wood... He was astonished when she said: 'I'll give you twenty pounds.' What had he said that was worth that money? She smiled enticingly at him. 'Just let me put on a bit of powder and have a wash.' He didn't respond, he was scared, but she couldn't wait for a reply; she dived for the stairs no time for the lift.

A wash: they were the words she had used to Fred.

She ran upstairs, people were coming down, changed, to dinner. She hammered on her door and Phil Corkery let her in. 'Quick,' she said, 'I want a witness.'

He was dressed, thank goodness, and she raced him down, but immediately she got into the hall she saw that Cubitt had gone. She ran out onto the steps of the Cosmopolitan, but he wasn't in sight.

'Well?' Mr. Corkery said.

'Gone. Never mind,' Ida Arnold said. 'I know now all right. It wasn't suicide. They murdered him.'

She said slowly over to herself: '... Brighton rock ...' The clue would have seemed hopeless to many women, but Ida Arnold had been trained by the Board.

Queerer things than that had spidered out under her fingers and Old Crowe's--with complete confidence her mind began to work.

The night air stirred Mr. Corkery's thin yellow hair. It may have occurred to him that on an evening like this after the actions of love romance was required by any woman. He touched her elbow timidly.

'What a night,' he said. 'I never dreamed what a night,' but words drained out of him as she switched her large thoughtful eyes towards him, uncomprehending, full of other ideas. She said slowly: 'The little fool... to marry him... why, there's no knowing what he'll do.' A kind of righteous mirth moved her to add with excitement: 'We got to save her, Phil.'

At the bottom of the steps the Boy waited. The big municipal building lay over him like a shadow departments for births and deaths, for motor licences, for rates and taxes, somewhere in some long corridor the room for marriages. He looked at his watch and said to Mr. Drewitt: 'God damn her. She's late.'

Mr. Drewitt said: 'It's the privilege of a bride.'

Bride and groom: the mare and the stallion which served her j like a file on metal or the touch of velvet to a sore hand. The Boy said: 'Me and Dallow we'll walk and meet her.'

Mr. Drewitt called after him: 'Suppose she comes another way. Suppose you miss her... I'll wait here.'

They turned to the left out of the official street.

'This ain't the way,' Dallow said.

'There's no call on us to wait on her,' the Boy said.

'You can't get out of it now.'

'Who wants to? I can take a bit of exercise, can't I?' He stopped and stared into a small newsagent's window two-valve receiving sets, the grossness everywhere.

'Seen Cubitt?' he asked, staring in.

'No,' Dallow said. 'None of the boys either.'

The daily and the local papers, a poster packed with news: Scene at Council Meeting, Woman Found Drowned at Black Rock, Collision in Clarence Street; a Wild West magazine, a copy of Film Fun, behind the inkpots and the fountain pens and the paper plates for picnics and the little gross toys; the works of Marie Stopes: Married Love. The Boy stared in.

'I know how you feel,' Dallow said. 'I was married once myself. It kind of gets you in the stomach.

Nerves. Why,' Dallow said, 'I even went and got one of those books, but it didn't tell me anything I didn't know. Except about flowers. The pistils of flowers. You wouldn't believe the funny things that go on among flowers.'

The Boy turned and opened his mouth to speak, but the teeth snapped to again. He watched Dallow with pleading and horror. If Kite had been there, he thought, he could have spoken but if Kite had been there, he would have had no need to speak... he would never have got mixed up.

'These bees...' Dallow began to explain and stopped. 'What is it, Pinkie? You don't look too good.'

'I know the rules all right,' the Boy said.

'What rules?'

'You can't teach me the rules,' the Boy went on with gusty anger. 'I watched 'em every Saturday night, didn't I? Bouncing and ploughing.' His eyes flinched as if he were watching some horror. He said in a low voice: 'When I was a kid, I swore I'd be a priest.'

'A priest? You a priest? That's good,' Dallow said.

He laughed without conviction, shifted his foot uneasily, so that it trod in a dog's ordure.

'What's wrong with being a priest?' the Boy said.