"Who? Colleoni?"
"No, the kid."
"I dunno who Brewer is," Ida said, "but things seem lively."
"You wait till the races start," the man said.
"They'll be lively all right then. Colleoni's out for a monopoly. Quick, look through the window there and you'll see him."
Ida went to the window and looked out, and again she saw only the Brighton she knew; she hadn't seen anything different even the day Fred died: two girls in beach pyjamas arm in arm, the buses going by to Rottingdean, a man selling papers, a woman with a shopping basket, a boy in a shabby suit, an excursion steamer edging off from the pier, which lay long, luminous, and transparent, like a shrimp in the sunlight. She said: "I don't see anyone."
"He's gone now."
"Who? Colleoni?"
"No, the kid."
"Oh," Ida said, "that boy," coming back to the bar, drinking up her port.
"I bet he's worried plenty."
"A kid like that oughtn't to be mixed up with things," Ida said. "If he was mine I'd just larrup it out of him." With those words she was about to dismiss him, to turn her attention away from him, moving her mind on its axis like a great steel dredger, when she remembered: a face in a bar seen over Fred's shoulder, the sound of a glass breaking, "The gentleman will pay" she had a royal memory. "You ever come across this Kolley Kibber?" she asked.
"No such luck," the barman said.
"It seemed odd his dying like that. Must have made a bit of gossip."
"None I heard of," the barman said. "He wasn't a Brighton man. No one knew him round these parts.
He was a stranger."
A stranger; the word meant nothing to her: there was no place in the world where she felt a stranger.
She circulated the dregs of the cheap port in her glass and remarked to no one in particular: "It's a good life." There was nothing with which she didn't claim kinship: the advertising mirror behind the barman's back flashed her own image at her; the beach girls went giggling across the parade; the gong beat on the steamer for Boulogne it was a good life. Only the darkness in which the Boy walked, going from Billy's, going back to Billy's, was alien to her: she had no pity for something she didn't understand. She said: "I'll be getting on."
It wasn't one yet, but there were questions she wanted to ask before Mr. Corkery arrived. She said to the first waitress she saw: "Are you the lucky one?"
"Not that I know of," the waitress said coldly.
"I mean the one who found the card the Kolley Kibber card."
"Oh, that was her" the waitress said contemptuously, nodding a pointed powdered chin.
Ida changed her table. She said: "I've got a friend coming. I'll have to wait for him, but I'll try to pick.
Is the shepherd's pie good?"
"It looks lovely."
"Nice and brown on top?"
"It's a picture."
"What's your name, dear?"
"Rose."
"Why, I do believe," Ida said, u you were the lucky one who found a card?"
"Did they tell you that?" Rose said. "They haven't forgiven me. They think I didn't ought to be lucky like that my second day."
"Your second day? That was a bit of luck. You won't forget that day in a hurry."
"No," Rose said, "I'll remember that always."
"I mustn't keep you here talking."
"If you only would. If you'd sort of look as if you was ordering things. There's no one else wants to be attended to and I'm ready to drop with these trays."
"You don't like the job?"
"Oh," Rose said quickly. "I didn't say that. It's a good job. I wouldn't have anything different for the world. I wouldn't be in a hotel, or in Chessman's, not if they paid me twice as much. It's elegant here,"
Rose said, gazing over the waste of green-painted tables, the daffodils, the paper napkins, the sauce bottles.
"Are you a local?"
"I've always lived here all my life," Rose said, "in Nelson Place. This is a fine situation for me because they have us sleep in. There's only three of us in my room, and we have two looking glasses."
"How old are you?"
Rose leant gratefully across the table. "Sixteen," she said. "I don't tell them that. I say seventeen.
They'd say I wasn't old enough if they knew. They'd send me" she hesitated a long while at the grim word "home."
"You must have been glad," Ida said, "when you found that card."
"Oh, I was."
"Do you think I could have a glass of stout, dear?"
"We have to send out," Rose said. "If you give me the money "
Ida opened her purse. "I don't suppose you'll ever forget the little fellow."
"Oh, he wasn't so..." Rose began and suddenly stopped, staring out through Snow's window across the parade to the pier.
"He wasn't what?" Ida said. "What was it you were going to say?"
"I don't remember," Rose said.
"I just asked if you'd ever forget the little fellow."
"It's gone out of my head," Rose said. "I'll get your drink. Does it cost all that a glass of stout?" she asked, picking up the two shilling pieces.
"One of them's for you, dear," Ida said. "I'm inquisitive. I can't help it. I'm made that way. Tell me how he looked?"
"I don't know. I can't remember. I haven't got any memory for faces."
"You can't have, can you, dear, or you'd have challenged him. You must have seen his picture in the papers."
"I know. I'm silly that way." She stood there, pale and determined and out of breath and guilty.
"And then it would have been ten pounds not ten shillings."
"I'll get your drink."
"Perhaps 111 wait after all. The gentleman who's giving me lunch, he can pay." Ida picked up the shillings again, and Rose's eyes followed her hand back to her bag. "Waste not, want not," Ida said gently, taking in the details of the bony face, the large mouth, the eyes too far apart, the pallor, the immature body, and then suddenly she was loud and cheerful again, calling out: "Phil Corkery, Phil Corkery," waving her hand.
Mr. Corkery wore a blazer with a badge and a stiff collar underneath. He looked as if he needed feeding up, as if he was wasted with passions he had never had the courage to pursue far enough.
"Cheer up, Phil. What are you having?"
"Steak and kidney," Mr. Corkery said gloomily.
"Waitress, we want a drink."
"We have to send out,"
"Well, in that case make it two large bottles of Guinness," Mr. Corkery said.
When Rose came back Ida introduced her to Mr.
Corkery: "This is the lucky girl who found a card."
Rose backed away, but Ida detained her, grasping firmly her black cotton sleeve. "Did he eat much?" she said.
"I don't remember a thing," Rose said, "really I don't." Their faces, flushed a little with the warm summer sun, were like posters announcing danger.
"Did he look," Ida said, "as if he was going to die?"
"How can I tell?" Rose said.
"I suppose you talked to him?"
"I didn't talk to him. I was rushed. I just fetched him a Bass and a sausage roll, and I never saw him again." She snatched her sleeve from Ida's hand and was gone.
"You can't get much from her," Mr. Corkery said.
"Oh, yes, I can," Ida Said, "more than I bargained for."
"Why, whatever's wrong?"
"It's what that girl said."
"She didn't say much."
"She said enough. I always had a feeling it was fishy. You see, he told me in the taxi he was dying and I believed him for a moment: it gave me quite a turn till he told me he was just spinning a tale."
"Well, he was dying."
"He didn't mean it that way. I have my instincts."
"Anyway," Mr. Corkery said, "there's the evidence, he died natural. I don't see as there's anything to worry about. It's a fine day, Ida. Let's go on the Brighton Belle and talk it over there. No closing hours at sea. After all if he did kill himself, it's his business."