"I don't," he said, but he was praying even while he spoke to someone or something: that he wouldn't need to carry on any further with her, get mixed up again with that drab dynamited plot of ground they both called home.
"You angry about anything?" Rose asked.
"A man wants to be quiet sometimes," he said, lying rigidly against the chalk bank, giving nothing away. In the silence a shutter flapped and the tide lisped--two people walking out: that's what they were, and the memory of Colleoni's luxury, the crowned chairs at the Cosmopolitan, came back to taunt him.
He said: "Talk, can't you? Say something."
"You wanted to be quiet," she retorted with a sudden anger which took him by surprise. He hadn't thought her capable of that. "If I don't suit you," she said, "you can leave me alone. I didn't ask to come out." She sat up with her hands round her knees and her cheeks burned on the tip of the bone: anger was as good as rouge on her thin face. "If I'm not grand enough your car and all "
"Who said?"
"Oh," she said, "I'm not that dumb. I've seen you looking at me. My hat..."
It occurred to him suddenly that she might even get up and leave him, go back to Snow's with her secret for the first comer who questioned her kindly; he had to conciliate her, they were walking out, he'd got to do the things expected of him. He put out his hand with repulsion; it lay like a cold paddock on her knee. "You took me up wrong," he said, "you're a sweet girl. I've been worried, that's all. Business worries. You and me" he swallowed painfully "we suit each other down to the ground." He saw the colour go, the face turn to him with a blind willingness to be deceived, saw the lips waiting. He drew her hand up quickly and put his mouth against her fingers; anything was better than the lips; the fingers were rough on his skin and tasted a little of soap. She said: "Pinkie, I'm sorry. You're sweet to me."
He laughed nervously: "You and me," and heard the hoot of a bus with the joy of a besieged man listening to the bugles of the relieving force. "There," he said, "the bus. Let's be going. I'm not much of a one for the country. A city bird. You too." She got up and he saw the skin of her thigh for a moment above the artificial silk, and a prick of sexual desire disturbed him like a sickness. That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape anywhere for anyone? It was worth murdering a world.
"It's beautiful here all the same," she said, staring up the chalky ruts between the To Let boards, and the Boy laughed again at the fine words people gave to a dirty act: love, beauty... all his pride coiled like a watch spring round the thought that he wasn't deceived, that he wasn't going to give himself up to marriage and the birth of children, he was going to be where Colleoni now was and higher... he knew everything, he had watched every detail of the act of sex, you couldn't deceive him with lovely words, there was nothing to be excited about, no gain to recompense you for what you lost, but when Rose turned to him again, with the expectation of a kiss, he was aware all the same of a horrifying ignorance. His mouth missed hers and recoiled. He'd never yet kissed a girl.
She said: "I'm sorry. I'm stupid. I've never had " and suddenly broke off to watch a gull rise from one of the little parched gardens and drop over the cliff towards the sea.
He didn't speak to her in the bus, sullen and ill at ease, sitting with his hands in his pockets, his feet close together, not knowing why he'd come this far out with her, only to go back again with nothing settled--the secret, the memory, still lodged securely in her skull. The country unwound the other way: Mazawattee tea, antique dealers, pull-ins, the thin grass petering out on the first asphalt.
From the pier the Brighton anglers flung their floats. A little music ground mournfully out into the windy sunlight. They walked on the sunny side past "A Night of Love,"
"For Men Only,"
"The Fan Dancer." Rose said: "Is business bad?"
"There's always worries," the Boy said.
"I wish I could help, be of use."
He said nothing, walking on. She put out a hand towards the thin rigid figure, seeing the smooth cheek, the fluff of fair hair at the nape. "You're so young, Pinkie, to get worries." She put her hand through his arm. "We're both young, Pinkie," and felt his body stonily withdrawn.
A photographer said: "Snap you together against the sea," raising the cap from his camera, and the Boy flung up his hands before his face and went on.
"Don't you like being snapped, Pinkie? We might have had our pictures stuck up for people to see. It wouldn't have cost anything."
"I don't mind what things cost," the Boy said, rattling his pockets, showing how much cash he had.
"We might 'ave been stuck up there," Rose said, halting at the photographer's kiosk, at the pictures of the bathing belles and the famous comedians and the anonymous couples, "next " and exclaimed with surprise: "Why there he is!"
The Boy was staring over the side where the green tide sucked and slid like a wet mouth round the piles.
He turned unwillingly to look and there was Spicer fixed in the photographer's window for the world to gaze at, striding out of the sunlight into the shadow under the pier, worried and hunted and in haste, a comic figure at which strangers could laugh and say: "He's worried right enough. They caught him una wares."
"The one who left the card," Rose said. "The one you said was dead. He's not dead. Though it almost looks" she laughed with amusement at the blurred black and white haste "that he's afraid he will be if he doesn't hurry."
"An old picture," the Boy said.
"Oh, no, it's not. This is where today's pictures go.
For you to buy."
"You know a lot."
"You can't miss it, can you?" Rose said. "It's comic.
Striding along. All fussed up. Not even seeing the camera."
"Stay here," the Boy said. Inside the kiosk it was dark after the sun. A man with a thin moustache and steel-rimmed spectacles sorted piles of prints.
"I want a picture that's up outside," the Boy said.
"Slip please," the man said and put out yellow fingers which smelt faintly of hypo.
"I haven't got a slip."
"You can't have the picture without the slip," the man said and held a negative up to the electric globe.
"What right have you," the Boy said, "to stick up pictures without a by-your-leave? You let me have that picture," but the steel rims glittered back at him, without interest a fractious boy. "You bring that slip," the man said, "and you can have the picture.
Now run along. I'm busy." Behind his head were framed snapshots of King Edward VII Prince of Wales in a yachting cap and a background of peep machines, going yellow from inferior chemicals and age; Vesta Tilley signing autographs; Henry Irving muffled against the Channel winds a nation's history. Lily Langtry wore ostrich feathers, Mrs. Pankhurst hobble skirts, the English Beauty Queen of 1 923 a bathing dress. It was little comfort to know that Spicer was among the immortals.
"Spicer," the Boy called, "Spicer!" He climbed up from Billy's small dark hall towards the landing, leaving a smear of country, of the downs, white on the linoleum. "Spicer!" He felt the broken bannister tremble under his hand. He opened the door of Spicer's room and there he was upon the bed, asleep face down.
The window was closed, an insect buzzed through the stale air, and there was a smell of whisky from the bed. Pinkie stood looking down on the greying hair; he felt no pity at all--he wasn't old enough for pity.
He pulled Spicer round; the skin round his mouth was in eruption. "Spicer."
Spicer opened his eyes. He saw nothing for a while in the dim room.
"I want a word with you, Spicer."
Spicer sat up. "My God, Pinkie, I'm glad to see you."
"Always glad to see a pal, eh, Spicer?"