She didn't answer; she was looking at her own face in a glass marked Extra Stout: in the new setting with a foreground of beer handles, it was a strange face. It seemed to carry an enormous weight of responsibility.
"A penny for your thoughts," Dallow said to her.
The Boy put the glass of bitter to his mouth and tasted for the second time the nausea of other people's pleasures stuck in his throat. He watched her sourly as she gazed wordlessly back at his companions; and again he was sensible of how she completed him. He knew her thoughts: they beat unregarded in his own nerves. He said with triumphant venom: "I can tell you what she's thinking of. Not much of a wedding, she's thinking. She's thinking it's not what I pictured. That's right, isn't it?"
She nodded, holding the glass of port as if she hadn't learned the way to drink.
"With my body I thee worship," he began to quote at her, "with all my worldly goods... and then," he said, turning to Mr. Drewitt, "I give her a gold piece."
"Time, gentlemen," the barman said, swilling not quite empty glasses into the lead trough, mopping with a yeasty cloth.
"We're up in the sanctuary, do you see, with the priest..."
"Drink up, gentlemen."
Mr. Drewitt said uneasily: "One wedding's as good as another in the eyes of the law." He nodded encouragingly at the girl, who watched them with famished immature eyes. "You're married all right. Trust me."
"Married?" the Boy said. "Do you call that married?" He screwed up the beery spittle on his tongue.
"Easy on," Dallow said. "Give the girl a chance.
You don't need to go too far."
"Come along, gentlemen, empty your glasses."
"Married!" the Boy repeated. "Ask her." The two men drank up in a shocked furtive way and Mr.
Drewitt said: "Well, I'll be getting on." The Boy regarded them with contempt; they didn't understand a thing, and again he was touched by the faintest sense of communion between himself and Rose she too knew that this evening meant nothing at all, that there hadn't been a wedding. He said with rough kindness: "Come on. We'll be going," and raised a hand to put it on her arm then saw the double image in the mirror (Extra Stout) and let it fall; a married couple, the image winked at him.
"Where?" Rose said.
Where? He hadn't thought of that you had to take them somewhere the honeymoon, the week-end at the sea, the present from Margate on the mantelpiece his mother 'd had; from one sea to another, a change of pier.
"I'll be seeing you," Dallow said; he paused a moment at the door, met the Boy's eye, the question, the appeal, understood nothing, and sloped away, cheerily waving, after Mr. Drewitt, leaving them alone.
It was as if they'd never been alone before in spite of the barman drying the glasses: not really alone in the room at Snow's, nor above the sea at Peacehaven not alone as they were now.
"We'd better be off," Rose said.
They stood on the pavement and heard the door of the Crown closed and locked behind them a bolt grind into place; they felt as if they were shut out from an Eden of ignorance. On this side there was nothing to look forward to but experience.
"Are we going to Billy's?" the girl said. It was one of those moments of sudden silence that fall on the busiest afternoon: not a tram bell, not a cry of steam from the terminus; a flock of birds shot up together into the air above Old Steyne and hovered there as if a crime had been committed on the ground. He thought with nostalgia of the room at Billy's he knew exactly where to put his hand for money in the soap dish; everything was familiar; nothing strange there; it shared his bitter virginity.
"No," he said, and again, as noise came back, the clang and crash and cry of afternoon: "No."
"Where?"
He smiled with hopeless malice where did you bring a swell blonde to if not to the Cosmopolitan, coming down by Pullman at the week-end, driving over the down in a scarlet roadster? Expensive scent and furs, sailing like a new-painted pinnace into the restaurant, something to swank about in return for the nocturnal act. He absorbed Rose's shabbiness like a penance in a long look. "Well take a suite," he said, "at the Cosmopolitan."
"No, but where really?*
"You heard me the Cosmopolitan." He flared up.
"Don't you think I'm good enough?"
"You are," she said, "but I'm not."
"We're going there," he said. "I can afford it. It's the right place. There was a woman called Eugeen used to go there. That's why they have crowns on the chairs."
"Who was she?"
"A foreign polony."
"Have you been there then?"
"Of course I've been there."
Suddenly she put her hands together in an excited gesture. "I dreamed," she said and then looked sharply up to see if he was only mocking after all.
He said airily: "The car's being repaired. We'll walk and send them round for my bag. Where's yours?"
"My what?"
"Your bag."
"It was so broken, dirty..."
"Never mind," he said with desperate swagger, "we'll buy you another. Where's your things?"
"Things...?"
"Christ, how dumb you are!" he said. "I mean..." but the thought of the night ahead froze his tongue.
He drove on down the pavement, the afternoon waning on his face.
She said: "There was nothing... nothing I could marry you in, only this. I asked them for a little money. They wouldn't give it me. They'd a right. It was theirs."
They walked a foot apart along the pavement. Her words scratched tentatively at the barrier like a bird's claws on the window pane: he could feel her all the time trying to get at him; even her humility seemed to him a trap. The crude quick ceremony was a claim on him. She didn't know the reason--she thought God save the mark he wanted her. He said roughly: "You needn't think there's going to be a honeymoon.
That nonsense. I'm busy. I've got things to do. I've got..." He stopped and turned to her with a kind of scared appeal let this make no difference. "I got to be away a lot."
"I'll wait," she said. He could already see the patience of the poor and the long-married working up under her skin like a second personality, a modest and shameless figure behind a transparency.
They came out onto the front, and evening stood back a pace; the sea dazzled the eyes--she watched it with pleasure as if it was a different sea. He said: "What did your Dad say today?"
"He didn't say a thing. He'd got a mood."
"And the old woman?"
"She had a mood too."
"They took the money all right."
They came to a halt on the front opposite the Cosmopolitan and under its enormous bulk moved a few inches closer. He remembered the page boy calling a name and Colleoni's gold cigarette case.... He said slowly and carefully, shutting uneasiness out: "Well, we oughta be comfortable there." He put a hand up to his withered tie, straightened his jacket, and set unconvincingly his narrow shoulders. "Come on."
She followed a pace behind, across the road, up the wide steps. Twa old ladies sat on the terrace in wicker chairs in the sun, wrapped round and round with veils--they had an absolute air of security j when they spoke they didn't look at each other, just quietly dropped their remarks into the understanding air.
"Now Willie..."
"I always liked Willie." The Boy made an unnecessary noise coming up the steps.
He walked across the deep pile to the reception desk, Rose just behind him. There was nobody there.
He waited furiously it was a personal insult. A page called: "Mr. Pinecoffin, Mr. Pinecoffin," across the lounge. The Boy waited. A telephone rang. When the entrance door swung again they could hear one of the old ladies say: "It was a great blow to Basil." Then a man in a black coat appeared and said: "Can I do anything for you?"