No parents. No guardian. It was a touching story old Drewitt spun."
She had tricked herself up for the wedding, discarded the hat he hadn't liked, a new mackintosh, a touch of powder and cheap lipstick. She looked like one of the small gaudy statues in an ugly church: a paper crown wouldn't have looked odd on her or a painted heart; you could pray to her but you couldn't expect an answer.
"Where've you been?" the Boy said. "Don't you know you're late?"
They didn't even touch hands. An awful formality fell between them.
"I'm sorry, Pinkie. You see" she brought the fact out with shame, as if she were admitting conversation with his enemy "I went into the church."
"What for?" he said.
"I don't know, Pinkie. I got confused. I thought I'd goto confession."
He grinned at her. "Confession? That's rich."
"You see, I wanted I thought "
"For Christ's sake, what?"
"I wanted to be in a state of grace when I married you." She took no notice at all of Dallow. The theological term lay oddly and pedantically on her tongue.
They were two Romans together in the grey street.
They understood each other. She used terms common to Heaven and Hell.
"And did you?" the Boy said.
"No. I went and rang the bell and asked for Father James. But then I remembered. It wasn't any good confessing. I went away." She said with a mixture of fear and pride: "We're going to do a mortal sin."
The Boy said, with bitter and unhappy relish: "It'll be no good going to confession ever again as long as we're both alive." He had graduated in pain: first the school dividers had been left behind, next the razor.
He had a sense now that the murders of Hale and Spicer were trivial acts, a boy's game, and he had put away childish things. Murder had only led to this this corruption. He was filled with awe at his own powers.
"We'd better be moving," he said and touched her arm with next to tenderness. As once before he had a sense of needing her.
Mr. Drewitt greeted them with official mirth. All his jokes seemed to be spoken in court, with an ulterior motive, to catch a magistrate's ear. In the great institutional hall from which the corridors led off to deaths and births there was a smell of disinfectant. The walls were tiled like a public lavatory. Somebody had dropped a rose. Mr. Drewitt quoted promptly, inaccurately: "Roses, roses all the way, and never a sprig of yew." A soft hollow hand guided the Boy by the elbow. "No, no, not that way. That's taxes. That comes later." He led them up great stone stairs. A clerk passed them carrying printed forms. "And what is the little lady thinking?" Mr. Drewitt said. She didn't answer him....
The bride and groom only were allowed to mount the sanctuary steps, to kneel down within the sanctuary rails with the priest and the Host.
"Parents coming?" Mr. Drewitt said. She shook her head. "The great thing is," Mr. Drewitt said, "it's over quickly. Just sign the names along the dotted line.
Sit down here. We've got to wait our turn, you know."
They sat down. A mop leant in a corner against the tiled wall. The footsteps of a clerk squealed on the icy paving down another passage. Presently a big brown door opened; they saw a row of clerks inside who didn't look up; a man and wife came out into the corridor. A woman followed them and took the mop.
The man he was middle-aged said: "Thank you," gave her sixpence. He said: "We'll catch the threefifteen after all." On the woman's face there was a look of faint astonishment, bewilderment, nothing so definite as disappointment. She wore a brown straw and carried an attach^ case. She was middle-aged too.
She might have been thinking: "Is that all there is to it after all these years?" They went down the big stairs walking a little apart, like strangers in a store.
"Our turn," Mr. Drewitt said, rising briskly. He led the way through the room where the clerks worked.
Nobody bothered to look up. Nibs wrote shrill numerals and ran on. In a small inner room with green washed walls like a clinic's the registrar waited: a table, three or four chairs against the wall. It wasn't what she thought a marriage would be like for a moment she was daunted by the cold poverty of a state-made ceremony.
"Good morning," the registrar said. "If the witnesses will just sit down would you two?" he beckoned them to the table. He was like a provincial actor who believes too much in his part: he stared at them with gold-rimmed and glassy importance; it was as if he considered himself on the fringe of the priestly office. The Boy's heart beat; he was sickened by the reality of the moment. He wore a look of sullenness and of stupidity.
"You're both very young," the registrar said.
"It's fixed," the Boy said. "You don't have to talk about it. It's fixed."
The registrar gave him a glance of intense dislike; he said venomously: "Repeat after me," and then ran too quickly on: "I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediments," so that the Boy couldn't follow him. The registrar said sharply: "It's quite simple. You've only to repeat after me..."
"Go slower," the Boy said. He wanted to lay his hand on speed and break it down, but it ran on: it was no time at all, a matter of seconds, before he was repeating the second formula: "My lawful wedded wife." He tried to make it careless, he kept his eyes off Rose, but the words were weighted with shame.
"No ring?" the registrar asked sharply.
"We don't need any ring," the Boy said. "This isn't a church," feeling he could never now rid his memory of the cold green room and the glassy face. He heard Rose repeating by his side: "I call upon these persons here present to witness..." and then the word "husband," and he looked sharply up at her. If there had been any complacency in her face then he would have struck it. But there was only surprise as if she were reading a book and had come to the last page too soon.
The registrar said: "You sign here. The charge is seven and sixpence." He wore an air of official unconcern while Mr. Drewitt fumbled.
"These persons," the Boy said and laughed brokenly. "That's you, Drewitt and Dallow." He took the pen and the government nib scratched into the page, gathering fur; in the old days, it occurred to him, you signed covenants like this in your blood. He stood back and watched Rose awkwardly sign his temporal safety in return for two immortalities of pain. He had no doubt whatever that this was mortal sin, and he was filled with a kind of gloomy hilarity and pride. He saw himself now as a full-grown man for whom the angels wept.
"These persons," he repeated, ignoring the registrar altogether. "Come and have a drink."
"Well," Mr. Drewitt said, "that's a surprise from you."
"Oh, Dallow will tell you," the Boy said, "I'm a drinking man these days." He looked across at Rose.
"There's nothing I'm not now," he said. He took her by the elbow and led the way out to the tiled passage and the big stairs; the mop was gone and somebody had picked up the flower. A couple rose as they came out: the market was firm. He said: "That was a wedding. Can you beat it? We're " He meant to say "husband and wife" but his mind flinched from the defining phrase. "We got to celebrate," he said, and like an old relation you can always trust for the tactless word his brain beat on: "celebrate what?" and he thought of the girl sprawling in the Lancia and the long night coming down.
They went to the pub round the corner. It was nearly closing time, and he stood them pints of bitter and Rose took a port. She hadn't spoken since the registrar had given her the words to say and Mr.
Drewitt took a quick look round and parked his portfolio. With his dark striped trousers he might really have been at a wedding. "Here's to the bride," he said with a jocularity which petered unobtrusively out; it was as if he had tried to crack a joke with a magistrate and scented a rebuff; the old face recomposed itself quickly on serious lines. He said reverently: "To your happiness, my dear."