Crab took him quickly up. "I wouldn't mind one just for old times' sake." He rang for a waiter.
"Old times," Cubitt said.
"Take a seat," Crab said, waving a possessive hand at the gilt chairs. Cubitt sat gingerly down. The chairs were small and hard. He saw a waiter watching them and flushed. "What's yours?" he said.
"A sherry," Crab said. "Dry."
"Scotch and splash for me," Cubitt said. He sat waiting for his drink, his hands between his knees, silent, his head lowered. He took furtive glances. This was where Pinkie had come to see Colleoni he had nerve all right.
"They do you pretty well here," Crab said. "Of course Mr. Colleoni likes nothing but the best." He took his drink and watched Cubitt pay. "He likes things smart. Why, he's worth fifty thousand nicker if he's worth a penny. If you ask me what I think,"
Crab said, leaning back, puffing at the cigar, watching Cubitt through black, remote, and supercilious eyes, "he'll go in for politics one day. The Conservatives think a lot of him he's got contacts."
"Pinkie " Cubitt began and Crab laughed. "Take my advice," Crab said. "Get out of that mob while there's time. There's no future..." He looked obliquely over Cubitt's head and said: "See that man going to the Gents'? That's Mais. The brewer. He's worth a hundred thousand nicker."
"I was wondering," Cubitt said, "if Mr. Colleoni..."
"Not a chance," Crab said. "Why, ask yourself what good would you be to Mr. Colleoni?"
Cubitt's humility gave way to a dull anger. "I was good enough for Kite."
Crab laughed. "Excuse me," he said, "but Kite..."
He shook his ash out onto the carpet and said: "Take my advice. Get out. Mr. Colleoni's going to clean up this track. He likes things done properly. No violence.
The police have great confidence in Mr. Colleoni."
He looked at his watch. "Well, well, I must be going.
I've got a date at the Hippodrome." He put his hand with patronage on Cubitt's arm. "There," he said, "1*11 put in a word for you for old times' sake. It won't be any good, but I'll do that much. Give my regards to Pinkie and the boys." He passed a whiff of pomade and Havana, bowing slightly to a woman at the door? an old man with a monocle on a black ribbon. "Who the hell?" the old man said.
Cubitt drained his drink and followed. An enormous depression bowed his carrot head, a sense of illtreatment moved through the whisky fumes somebody sometime had got to pay for something. All that he saw fed the flaine: he came out into the entrance hall; a page boy with a salver infuriated him. Everybody was watching him, waiting for him to go, but he had as much right there as Crab. He glanced round him, and there alone at a table with a glass of port was the woman Crab knew.
She smiled at him "I think of your wondrous, winsome beauty and culture." A sense of the immeasurable sadness of injustice took the place of anger. He wanted to confide, to lay down burdens ... he belched once... "I will be your servant and slave." The great body turned like a door, the heavy feet altered direction and padded towards the table where Ida Arnold sat.
"I couldn't help hearing," she said, "when you went across just now that you knew Pinkie."
He realised with immense pleasure when she spoke that she wasn't class. It was to him like the meeting of two fellow-countrymen a long way from home. He said: "You a friend of Pinkie's?" and felt the whisky in his legs. He said: "Mind if I sit down?"
"Tired?"
"That's it," he said, "tired." He sat down with his eyes on her large friendly bosom. He remembered the lines on his character. "You have a free, easy, and genial nature." By God, he had. He only needed to be treated right.
"Have a drink?"
"No, no," he said with woolly gallantry, "it's on me," but when the drinks came he realised he was out of cash. He had meant to borrow from one of the boys but then the quarrel... He watched Ida Arnold pay with a five-pound note.
"Know Mr. Colleoni?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call it know," she said.
"Crab said you were a fine woman. He's right."
"Oh Crab," she said vaguely, as if she didn't recognise the name.
"You oughta steer clear though," Cubitt said.
"You've got no call to get mixed up in things." He stared into his glass as into a deep darkness: outside innocence, winsome beauty, and culture unworthy, a tear gathered behind the bloodshot eyeball.
"You a friend of Pinkie's?" Ida Arnold asked.
"Christ, no," Cubitt said and took some more whisky.
A vague memory of the Bible, where it lay in the cupboard next the Board, the Warwick Deeping, The Good Companions, stirred in Ida Arnold's memory.
"I've seen you with him," she lied; a courtyard, a sewing wench beside the fire, the cock crowing.
"I'm no friend of Pinkie's."
"It's not safe being friends with Pinkie," Ida Arnold said. Cubitt stared into his glass like a diviner into his soul, reading the dooms of strangers. "Fred was a friend of Pinkie's," she said.
"What you know about Fred?"
"People talk," Ida Arnold said. "People talk all the time."
"You're right," Cubitt said. The stained eyeballs lifted--they gazed at comfort, understanding; he wasn't good enough for Colleoni--he had broken with Pinkie--behind her head through the window of the lounge darkness and the retreating sea; through a ruined Tintern picture postcard arch lay desolation.
"Christ," he said, "you're right." He had an enormous urge to confession, but the facts were confused.
He knew only that these were the times when a man needed a woman's understanding. "I've never held with it," he told her. "Carving's different."
"Of course, carving's different," Ida Arnold smoothly and deftly agreed.
"And Kite that was an accident. They only meant to carve him. Colleoni's no fool. Somebody slipped.
There wasn't any cause for bad feeling."
"Have another drink?"
"It oughta be on me," Cubitt said. "But I'm cleaned out. Till I see the boys."
"It was fine of you breaking with Pinkie like that.
It needed courage after what happened to Fred."
"Oh, he can't scare me. No broken bannisters..."
"What do you mean broken bannisters?"
"I wanted to be friendly," Cubitt said. "A joke's a joke. When a man's getting married, he oughta take a joke."
"Married? Who married?"
"Pinkie, of course."
"Not to the little girl at Snow's?"
"Of course."
"The little fool," Ida Arnold said with sharp anger.
"Oh, the little fool."
"He's not a fool," Cubitt said. "He knows what's good for him. If she chose to say a thing or two "
"You mean, say it wasn't Fred left the ticket?"
"Poor old Spicer," Cubitt said, watching the bubbles rise in the whisky. A question floated up: "How did you...?" but broke in the doped brain. "I want air," he said, "stuffy in here. What say you and I...?"
"Just wait awhile," Ida Arnold said. "I'm expecting a friend. I'd like you and him to be acquainted."
"This central heating," Cubitt said. "It's not healthy. You go out and catch a chill and the next you know "
"When's the wedding?"
"Whose wedding?"
"Pinkie's."
"I'm no friend of Pinkie's."
"You didn't hold with Fred's death, did you?" Ida Arnold softly persisted.
"You understand a man."
"Carving would have been different."
Cubitt suddenly, furiously, broke out: "I can't see a piece of Brighton rock without..." He belched and said with tears in his voice: "Carving's different."
"The doctors said it was natural causes. He had a weak heart."
"Come outside," Cubitt said. "I got to get some air."
"Just wait a bit. What do you mean Brighton rock?"
He stared inertly back at her. He said: "I got to get some air. Even if it kills me. This central heating ..." he complained. "I'm liable to colds."