In the great public-school grounds above the sea the girls trooped solemnly out to hockey: stout goalkeepers padded like armadillos; captains discussing tactics with their lieutenants; junior girls running amuck in the bright day. Beyond the aristocratic turf, through the wrought-iron main gates they could see the plebeian procession, those whom the buses wouldn't hold, plodding up the down, kicking up the dust, eating buns out of paper bags. The buses took the long way round through Kemp Town, but up the steep hill came the crammed taxicabs a seat for anyone at ninepence a time a Packard for the members' enclosure, old Morrises, strange high cars with family parties, keeping the road after twenty years. It was as if the whole road moved upwards like an Underground staircase in the dusty sunlight, a creaking, shouting, jostling crowd of cars moving with it. The junior girls took to their heels like ponies racing on the turf, feeling the excitement going on outside, as if this were a day on which life for many people reached a kind of climax. The odds on Black Boy had shortened, nothing could ever make life quite the same after that rash bet of a fiver on Merry Monarch. A scarlet racing model, a tiny rakish car which carried about it the atmosphere of innumerable roadhouses, of totsies gathered round swimming pools, of furtive encounters in by-lanes off the Great North Road, wormed through the traffic with incredible dexterity. The sun caught it: it winked as far as the dining-hall windows of the girls' school. It was crammed tight: a woman sat on a man's knee, and another man clung on the running board as it swayed and hooted and cut in and out uphill towards the downs. The woman was singing, her voice faint and disjointed through the horns, something traditional about brides and bouquets, something which went with stout and oysters, and the old Leicester Lounge, something out of place in the little bright racing car. Upon the top of the down the words blew back along the dusty road to meet an ancient Morris rocking and receding in their wake at forty miles an hour, with flapping top, bent fender, and discoloured windscreen.
The words came through the flap, flap, flap of the old top to the Boy's ears. He sat beside Spicer, who drove the car. Brides and bouquets: and he thought of Rose with sullen disgust. He couldn't get the suggestion of Spicer out of his mind: it was like an invisible power working against him: Spicer 's stupidity, the photograph on the pier, that woman who the hell was she? asking questions... If he married her, of course, it wouldn't be for long: only as a last resort to close her mouth and give him time. He didn't want that relationship with anyone: the double bed, the intimacy, it sickened him like the idea of age. He crouched in the corner away from where the ticking pierced the seat, vibrating up and down in bitter virginity. To marry it was like ordure on the hands.
"Where's Dallow and Cubitt?" Spicer asked.
"I didn't want them here today," the Boy said.
"We've got something to do today the mob are better out of." Like a cruel child who hides the dividers behind him, he put his hand with spurious affection on Spicer's arm. "I don't mind telling you. I'm going to make it up with Colleoni. I wouldn't trust them. They are violent. You and I, we'll handle it properly between us."
"I'm all for peace," Spicer said. "I always have been."
The Boy grinned through the cracked windscreen at the long disorder of cars. "That's what I'm going to arrange," he said.
"A peace that lasts," Spicer said.
"No one's going to break this peace," the Boy said.
The faint singing died in the dust and the bright sun: a final bride, a final bouquet, a word which sounded like "wreath."
"How do you set about getting married?" the Boy unwillingly asked. "If you've got to in a hurry?"
"Not so easy for you," Spicer said. "There's your age." He ground the old gears as they climbed a final spur towards the white enclosure on the chalky soil, the gipsy vans. "I'd have to think about it."
"Think quick," the Boy said. "You don't forget you're clearing out tonight."
"That's right," Spicer said. Departure made him a little sentimental. "The eight-ten. You ought to see that pub. You'd be welcome. Nottingham's a fine town. It'll be good to rest up there awhile. The air's fine, and you couldn't ask for a better bitter than you get at the Blue Anchor." He grinned. "I forgot you didn't drink."
"Have a good time," the Boy said.
"You'll be always welcome, Pinkie."
They rolled the old car up into the park and got out.
The Boy passed his arm through Spicer's. Life was good walking outside the white sun-drenched wall past the loudspeaker vans, the man who believed in a second coming, towards the finest of all sensations, the infliction of pain. "You're a fine fellow, Spicer," the Boy said, squeezing his arm, and Spicer began to tell him in a low friendly confiding way all about the Blue Anchor. "It's not a tied house," he said; "they've a reputation. I've always thought when I'd made enough money I'd go in with my friend. He still wants me to.
I nearly went when they killed Kite."
"You get scared easy, don't you?" the Boy said. The loudspeakers on the vans advised them whom to put their money with, and gipsy children chased a rabbit with cries across the trampled chalk. They went down into the tunnel under the course and came up into the light and the short grey grass sloping down by the bungalow houses to the sea. Old race cards rotted into the chalk: "Barker Will Bet You," a smug smiling nonconformist face printed in yellow; "Don't Worry, I Pay," and old tote tickets among the stunted plantains. They went through the wire fence into the halfcrown enclosure. "Have a glass of beer, Spicer," the Boy said, pressing him on.
"Why, that's good of you, Pinkie. I wouldn't mind a glass," and while he drank it by the wooden trestles, the Boy looked down the line of bookies. There were Barker and Macpherson and George Beale ("The Old Firm") and Bob Tavell of Clapton, all the familiar faces, full of blarney and fake good-humour. The first two races had been run; there were long queues at the tote windows. The sun lit the white Tattersall stand across the course, and a few horses galloped by to the start. "There goes General Burgoyne," a man said, "he's restless," starting off to Bob Tavell's stand to cover his bet. The bookies rubbed out and altered the odds as the horses went by, their hoofs padding like boxing gloves on the turf.
"You going to take a plunge?" Spicer asked, finishing his Bass, blowing a little gaseous malted breath towards the bookies.
"I don't bet," the Boy said.
"It's the last chance for me," Spicer said, "in good old Brighton. I wouldn't mind risking a couple of nicker. Not more. I'm saving my cash for Nottingham."
"Go on," the Boy said, "have a good time while you can."
They walked down the row of bookies towards Brewer's standj there were a lot of men about. "He's doing good business," Spicer said. "Did you see the Merry Monarch? He's going up," and while he spoke, all down the line the bookies rubbed out the old sixteento-one odds. "Ten to one," Spicer said.
"Have a good time while you're here," the Boy said.
"Might as well patronise the old firm," Spicer said, detaching his arm and walking across to Tate's stand.