She gazed round the big padded pleasure dome of a bedroom with bloodshot and experienced eyes: the long mirror and the wardrobe and the enormous bed.
She settled frankly down on it while the clerk waited.
"It springs," she said, "it springs," and sat there for quite a long while after he'd gone, planning the evetaing's campaign. If somebody had said to her then: "Fred Hale," she would hardly have recognised the name--there was another interest: for the next hour let the police have him.
Then she got up slowly and began to undress. She never believed in wearing much: it wasn't any time at all before she was exposed in the long mirror a body firm and bulky, a proper handful. She stood on a deep soft rug, surrounded by gilt frames and red velvet hangings, and a dozen common and popular phrases bloomed in her mind "A Night of Love,"
"You Only Live Once," and the rest. She bore the same relation to passion as a peep show. She sucked the chocolate between her teeth and smiled, her plump toes working in the rug, waiting for Mr. Corkery just a great big blossoming surprise.
Outside the window the sea ebbed, scraping the shingle, exposing a boot, a piece of rusty iron, and the old man stooped, searching between the stones. The sun dropped behind the Hove houses and dusk came, the shadow of Mr. Corkery lengthened, coming slowly up from Belvedere carrying the suitcases, saving on taxis. A gull swooped screaming down to a dead crab beaten and broken against the iron foundation of the pier. It was the time of near-darkness and of the evening mist from the Channel and of love.
The Boy closed the door behind him and turned to face the expectant and amused faces.
"Well," Cubitt said, "is it all fixed up?"
"Of course it is," the Boy said; "when I want a thing..." His voice wavered out unconvincingly.
There were half a dozen bottles on his washstand: his room smelt of stale beer.
"Want a thing," Cubitt said. "That's good." He opened another bottle, and in the warm stuffy room the froth rose quickly and splashed on the marble top.
"What do you think you're doing?" the Boy said.
"Celebrating," Cubitt said. "You're a Roman, aren't you? A betrothal, that's what Romans call it."
The Boy watched them: Cubitt a little drunk, Dallow preoccupied, one or two lean hungry faces he hardly knew hangers-on at the fringes of the great game who smiled when you smiled and frowned when you frowne<J. But now they smiled when Cubitt smiled, and suddenly he saw the long way he had slipped since that afternoon on the pier when he arranged the alibi, gave the orders, did what they hadn't got the nerve to do themselves.
Billy's wife Judy put her head in at the door. She was wearing a dressing gown. Her Titian hair was brown at the roots. "Good luck, Pinkie," she said, blinking mascara'd lashes. She had been washing her brassiere: the little piece of pink silk dripped on the linoleum. Nobody offered her a drink. "Work, work, work," she moued at them, going on down the passage to the hot-water pipes.
A long way... and yet he hadn't made a single false step: if he hadn't gone to Snow's and spoken to the girl, they'd all be in the dock by now. If he hadn't killed Spicer... Not a single false step, but every step conditioned by a pressure he couldn't even place: a woman asking questions, messages on the telephone scaring Spicer. He thought: when I've married the girl, will it stop then? Where else can it drive mej and with a twitch of the mouth, he wondered what worse,,,?
"When's the happy day?" Cubitt said, and they all smiled obediently except Dallow.
The Boy's brain began to work again. He moved slowly towards the washstand. He said: "Haven't you got a glass for me? Don't I do any celebrating?"
He saw Dallow astonished, Cubitt thrown off his mark, the hangers-on doubtful whom to follow, and he grinned at them, the one with brains.
"Why, Pinkie..." Cubitt said.
"I'm not a drinking man and I'm not a marrying man," the Boy said. "So you think. But Fm liking one, so why shouldn't I like the other? Give me a glass."
"Liking," Cubitt said and grinned uneasily, "you liking..."
"Haven't you seen her?" the Boy said.
"Why, me and Dallow just lamped her. On the stairs. But it was too dark..."
"She's a lovely," the Boy said, "she's wasted in a kip. And intelligent. Don't make any mistake. Of course I didn't see any cause to marry her, but as it is " Somebody handed him a glass; he took a long draught; the bitter and bubbly fluid revolted him so this was what they liked he tightened the muscles of his mouth to hide his revulsion. "As it is," he said, "I'm glad," and eyed with hidden disgust the pale inch of liquid in the glass before he drained it down.
Dallow watched in silence and the Boy felt more anger against his friend than against his enemy: like Spicer he knew too much; but what he knew was far more deadly than what Spicer had known. Spicer had known only the kind of thing which brought you to the dock, but Dallow knew what your mirror and your bedsheets knew: the secret fear and the humiliation.
He said with hidden fury: "What's getting you, Dallow?"
The stupid and broken face was hopelessly at a loss.
"Jealous?" the Boy began to boast. "You've cause when you've seen her. She's not one of your dyed totsies. She's got class. I'm marrying her for your sake, but I'm laying her for my own." He turned fiendishly on Dallow. "What's on your mind?"
"Well," Dallow said, "it's the one you met on the pier, isn't it? I didn't think she was all that good."
"You," the Boy said, "you don't know anything.
You're ignorant. You don't know class when you see it."
"A duchess," Cubitt said and laughed.
An extraordinary indignation jerked in the Boy's brain and fingers. It was almost as if someone he loved had been insulted. "Be careful, Cubitt," he said.
"Don't mind him," Dallow said. "We didn't know you'd fallen...."
"We got some presents for you, Pinkie," Cubitt said. "Furniture for the home," and indicated two little obscene objects beside the beer on the washstand; the Brighton stationers were full of them: a tiny doll's commode in the shape of a radio set labelled: "The smallest A. I two-valve receiving set in the world," and a mustard pot shaped like a lavatory seat with the legend, "For me and my girl." It was like a return of all the horror he had ever felt, the hideous loneliness of his innocence. He struck at Cubitt's face and Cubitt dodged, laughing. The two hangers-on slipped out of the room. They hadn't any taste for rough houses. The Boy heard them laugh on the stairs. Cubitt said: "You'll need 'em in the home. A bed's not the only furniture." He mocked and backed at the same time.
The Boy said: "By God, I'll treat you like I treated Spicer."
No meaning reached Cubitt at once. There was a long time lag. He began to laugh and then saw Dailow's startled face and heard. "What's that?" he said.
"He's crazy," Dallow intervened.
"You think yourself smart," the Boy said. "So did Spicer."
"It was the bannister," Cubitt said. "You weren't here. What are you getting at?"
"Of course he wasn't here," Dallow said.
"You think you know things." All the Boy's hatred was in the word "know" and his repulsion: he knew as Drewitt knew after twenty-five years at the game.
"You don't know everything." He tried to inject himself with pride, but all the time his eyes went back to the humiliation. "The smallest A. I..." You could know everything there was in the world and yet if you were ignorant of that one dirty scramble you knew nothing.
"What's he getting at?" Cubitt said.
"You don't need to listen to him," Dallow said.
"I mean this," the Boy said; "Spicer was milky and I'm the only one in this mob knows how to act."
"You act too much," Cubitt said. "Do you mean it wasn't the bannisters?" The question scared himself: he didn't want an answer. He made uneasily for the door, keeping his eye on the Boy, Dallow said: "Of course it was the bannisters. I was there, wasn't I?"