surprised if there wasn't more money in the long run...' He stopped and said to the Boy: 'What's up?
Take a drink. There's nothing to worry about now.'
The Boy looked across the tea room and the empty tables to where the woman sat. How she hung on!
Like a ferret he'd seen on the down, among the chalky holes, fastened to the hare's throat. All the same this hare escaped. He had no cause to fear her now. He said in a dull voice: 'The country. I don't know much about the country.'
'It's healthy,' Dallow said. 'Why, you'll live to eighty with your missus.'
'Sixty-odd years,' the Boy said, 'it's a long time.'
Behind the woman's head the Brighton lamps beaded out towards Worthing. The last sunset light slid lower in the sky and the heavy indigo clouds came down over the Grand, the Metropole, the Cosmopolitan, over the towers and domes. Sixty years: it was like a prophecy a certain future, a horror without end.
'You two,' Dallow said, 'what's got you both?'
This was the tea room to which they had all come after Fred's death Spicer and Dallow and Cubitt.
Dallow was right, of course: they were safe Spicer dead and Drewitt out of the way, and Cubitt God knows where (they'd never get him into a witness box: he knew too well he'd hang he'd played too big a part the prison record of 1 923 lay behind him).
And Rose was his wife. As safe as they could ever be. They'd won out finally. He had Dallow right again sixty years ahead. His thoughts came to pieces in his hand: Saturday nights; and then the birth, the child, habit, and hate. He looked across the tables: the woman's laughter was like defeat.
He said: 'This place is stuffy. I got to have some air.' He turned slowly to Rose. 'Come for a stroll,' he said. Between the table and the door he picked the right thought out of all the pieces, and when they came out on the windy side of the pier he shouted to her: 'I got to go away from here.' He put his hand on her arm and guided her with terrible tenderness into shelter. The waves came breaking up from France, pounding under their feet. A spirit of recklessness took him; it was like the moment when he had seen Spicer bending by his suitcase, Cubitt begging for money in the passage. Through the glass panes Dallow sat with Judy by the drinks; it was like the first week of the sixty years the contact and the sensual tremble and the stained sleep and waking not alone j in the wild and noisy darkness the Boy had the whole future in his brain. It was like a slot machine: you put in a penny and the light goes on, and the doors open and the figures move. He said with agile tenderness: 'This was where we met that night. Remember?'
'Yes,' she said and watched him with fear.
'We don't want them with us,' he said. 'Let's get into the car an' drive' he watched her closely 'into the country.'
'It's cold.'
'It won't be in the car.' He dropped her arm and said: 'Of course if you don't want to come I'll go alone.'
'But where?'
He said with studied lightness: 'I told you. In the country.' He took a penny out of his pocket and slammed it home in the nearest slot machine. He pulled a handle, didn't look at what he did, and with a rattle the packets of fruit gums came dropping out a bonus lemon and grapefruit and liquorice all-sorts.
He said: 'I've got a lucky hand.'
'Is something wrong?' Rose said.
He said: 'You saw her, didn't you? Believe me she's never going to leave go. I saw a ferret once out by the track.' As he turned one of the pier lights caught his eyes: a gleam, an exhilaration. He said: 'I'm going for a ride. You stay here if you want to.'
'I'll come,' she said.
'You needn't.'
'I'll come.'
At the shooting range he paused. He was taken with a kind of wild humour. 'Got the time?' he asked the man.
'You know what the time is. I've told you before how I won't stand...'
'You needn't get your rag out,' the Boy said.
'Give me a gun.' He lifted it, got the sight firmly on the bull, then deliberately shifted it and fired he thought: 'Something had agitated him, the witness said.'
'What's up with you today?' the man exclaimed.
'You only got an outer.'
He laid the rifle down. 'We need a freshener.
We're going for a ride in the country. Good night.'
He planted his information pedantically, as carefully as he had had them lay Fred's cards along the route for later use. He even turned back and said: 'We're going Hastings way.'
'I don't want to know,' the man said, 'where you're going.'
The old Morris was parked near the pier. The selfstarter wouldn't work; he had to turn the handle. He stood a moment looking at the old car with an expression of disgust; as if this was all you got out of a racket... He said: 'We'll go the way we went that day. Remember? In the bus.' Again he planted his information for the attendant to hear. 'Peacehaven.
We'll get a drink.'
They swung out round by the Aquarium and ground uphill in second gear. He had one hand in his pocket feeling for the scrap of paper on which she had written her message. The hood flapped and the split discoloured glass of the windscreen confined his view.
He said: 'It's going to rain like hell soon.'
'Will this hood keep it out?'
'It doesn't matter,' he said, staring ahead. 'We won't get wet.'
She didn't dare ask him what he meant she wasn't sure, and as long as she wasn't sure she could believe that they were happy, that they were lovers taking a drive in the dark with all the trouble over. She put a hand on him and felt his instinctive withdrawal; for a moment she was shaken by an awful doubt if this was the darkest nightmare of all, if he didn't love her, as the woman said... the wet windy air flapped her face through the rent. It didn't matter; she loved him; she had her responsibility. The buses passed them going downhill to the town: little bright domestic cages in which people sat with baskets and books; a child pressed her face to the glass and for a moment at a traffic light they were so close the face might have been held against her breast. 'A penny for your thoughts,' he said and caught her unawares 'Life's not so bad.'
'Don't you believe it,' he said. 'I'll tell you what it is. It's jail, it's not knowing where to get some money. Worms and cataract, cancer. You hear 'em shrieking from the upper windows children being born. It's dying slowly.'
It was coming now she knew it; the dashboard light lit the bony mind-made-up fingers; the face was in darkness, but she could imagine the exhilaration, the bitter excitement, the anarchy in the eyes. A rich man's private car Daimler or Bentley, she didn't know the makes rolled smoothly past them. He said: 4 'What's the hurry?' He took his hand out of his pocket and laid on his knee a paper she recognised.
He said: 'You mean that don't you?' He had to repeat it: 'Don't you?' She felt as if she were signing away more than her life Heaven, whatever that was, and the child in the bus, and the baby crying in the neighbour's house. 'Yes,' she said.
'We'll go and have a drink,' he said, 'and then you'll see. I got everything settled.' He said with hideous ease: 'It won't take a minute.' He put his arm round her waist and his face was close to hers--she could see him now, considering and considering} his skin smelt of petrol; everything smelt of petrol in the little leaking out-dated car. She said: 'Are you sure... can't we wait... one day?'
'What's the good? You saw her there tonight. She's hanging on. One day she'll get her evidence. What's the use?'
'Why not then?'
'It might be too late then' He said disjointedly through the flapping hood: 'A knock and the next thing you know... the cuffs... too late...' He said with cunning: 'We wouldn't be together then.'
He put down his foot and the needle quivered up to thirty-five the old car wouldn't do more than forty, but it gave an immense impression of reckless speedy the wind battered on the glass and tore through the rent.
