“Buster imagines he’s going to take me on the Big Wheel,” Bunty said, “but he’s quite, quite mistaken. I wouldn’t go on that thing for Gregory Peck, let alone Buster Walker!”
Buster laughed.
“You’ll come on with me if I have to carry you.” He opened the front door and stood aside to let the girls pass. “I have a car at the corner,” he went on, falling into step with Pete. “I got a flat and I left it at the garage to be fixed.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Pete saw the curtain move again in the groundfloor window, and again caught sight of a shadowy outline of a man, drawing back quickly.
“Old nosy-parker’s snooping again,” Bunty said scornfully. “That’s all he does, peep through the curtains.”
“Perhaps he’s lonely,” Frances said. “He never seems to go out, does he?”
“Oh, you’re hopeless, Frankie,” Bunty said impatiently. “You always find some excuse for lame dogs. The fact is he’s a nasty old drunk who spends all his time spying on people, and that’s all there is to it.”
Pete felt blood rise to his face. That was it, he thought. It’s pity. She’s one of those people who live by pity. That was why she hadn’t flinched when she had seen his face. She may have flinched inwardly, but rather than hurt his feelings, she had controlled her expression. Once again he felt the cold knot tighten inside him, and his hand went inside his coat and he touched the handle of the ice-pick.
The Packard was only twenty yards away. If he hit her now, he could reach the car before the other two could recover from the shock.
Again he knew he was deluding himself, for Frances and Bunty were now several yards ahead of him, and Buster was walking by his side.
He saw the Packard move forward and then stop, and he wondered what Moe was thinking. He felt a little chill run up his spine. Perhaps Moe would move into action. Suppose he shot her from the car? The moment the thought dropped into his mind, he quickened his step and closed the gap between himself and Frances, and walked just behind her, covering her back from Moe with his body.
Buster, determined to make conversation, began to talk about the prowess of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and kept up an enthusiastic harangue until they reached the garage where a small, battered sports car with two seats in front and a tiny bucket seat at the back stood waiting.
“There’s not much room,” Buster said, “but it goes all right. Bunty, you get in the back seat. Burt, you sit beside me and Frankie will sit on top of you. That okay?”
“Unless Burt thinks I’ll squash him,” Frances said, laughing.
Pete avoided her eyes.
“No, it’s all right,” he said, and climbed into the front seat.
Frances lowered herself on to his lap and put her arm round his shoulders. The feel of her soft young body and the smell of her faint perfume made his blood quicken. He sat motionless, his arm slackly round her, bemused. This was something that had never happened to him before; something that had happened only in his dreams.
Buster cranked the engine which started with a roar. Having made sure Bunty was settled in the back, he drove away from the garage and sent the car roaring towards the sea.
The noise of the engine prevented any conversation, and Pete was glad of the opportunity to savour this extraordinary experience of having a girl so close to him.
As the little car banged and bumped along at forty-five miles an hour, Frances had to cling to him and he to her to prevent her being thrown out. She was laughing, and once she screamed to Buster to drive more slowly, but he didn’t appear to hear her.
Pete suddenly realized that the odd feeling he was experiencing was the nearest to excited happiness he had ever known, and he found himself smiling at Frances as she clung to him, and he felt a tingle run up his spine as she laughed back at him.
The car’s off-wheel suddenly hit a pot-hole and jolted them violently together. Frances’s skirts shot up to show the tops of her stockings and the smooth white flesh of her thighs. Pete hurriedly pulled down her skirt to save her from untwining her arms from around his neck.
“Oh, thank you,” she gasped, her mouth close to his ear. This is really awful. We must stop him.”
But Buster had already slowed down and was grinning at Pete and winking.
“I knew that would happen sooner or later,” he bawled. It never fails to work. I always provide a free show for my male friends.”
“Buster! You behave yourself or we’ll go home!” Bunty screamed at him.
Frances removed one arm from around Pete’s neck and anchored her skirts.
Long before they caught a glimpse of the sea, they heard the stupendous sound from the amusement park together with the shouting, screaming and laughing of the people like themselves who were stealing a day on the beach.
“I never know where all the people come from,” Frances cried above the noise of the car engine. “It doesn’t matter when you come here, it’s always crowded.”
Pete was about to say something when he happened to glance in the little circular mirror on the off-wing of the car. In its reflection he saw the battered outlines of the Packard and caught a glimpse of Moe’s sandy-coloured hair as he sat at the driving-wheel.
Pete felt himself turn hot, then cold. He realized, with a feeling of bewilderment mixed with fear, that for the past ten minutes he had completely forgotten Moe and had forgotten the orders Seigel had given him.
Buster drove into a packed parking lot, edged in between two cars and cut the engine. Cars were arriving at the rate of ten a minute, and as the four walked from the car towards the beach, they were immediately hemmed in by the noisy, jostling, perspiring crowd.
Frances held on to Pete’s arm. He moved forward a step ahead of her, his shoulder turned slightly sideways to form a buffer against the swirling tide of people coming towards him. Buster led the way, cutting a path with his big shoulders for Bunty who walked immediately behind him, hanging on to his shirt tail.
They crawled past the low wooden buildings that housed fortune tellers, photographers with their comic animals and still more comic backgrounds, the freak shows and the hamburger stalls, being jostled, coming to a standstill, then moving on again.
From time to time Pete looked over his shoulder, but he couldn’t see any sign of Moe, and he hoped feverishly that they had lost him in this crowd.
Finally they reached the rails at the outer edge of the sea front. Not far away was the snake-like structure of a roller coaster whose cars roared and clattered up and down the steep inclines, carrying a screaming, shouting cargo of people, determined to enjoy themselves and determined to scream or shout louder than his or her neighbour.
Outlined against the sky was the colossal Giant Wheel that slowly revolved, carrying little cars slowly up into the heavens; cars that spun and swayed ominously on what appeared to be thread-like anchors.
The four of them faced the beach, looking along the three-mile strip of sand at the seething mass of humanity that lay on the sand, played ball, deck tennis, leap-frog or rushed madly into the oncoming breakers and filled the air with noise.
“Phew! Half the town seems to be here,” Buster said, surveying the scene with his wide, india-rubber grin. “Let’s get at it. We’ll have a swim first, then something to eat, then we’ll go to the amusement park. How about it?”
“Did you bring a swim-suit?",Frances asked, turning to Pete.
He shook his head.
“I’m afraid I don’t swim.”
He saw Bunty pull a little face and lift her shoulders in a why-on-earth-didyou-come-then? gesture, and he felt the blood rise to his face, and that angered him, for he knew when he flushed the naevus on his skin turned livid and made him look repulsive. He saw Bunty turn away so she need not look at him. But Frances was looking at him with no change of expression in her eyes.