‘With my body I thee worship,’ he began to quote at her, ‘with all my worldly goods. . . and then,’ he said, turning to Prewitt, ‘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 Prewitt said uneasily, ‘One wedding’s as good as another in the eyes of the law.’ He nodded encouragingly at the girl who watched them all 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 Prewitt 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 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 asked.
Where? he hadn’t thought of that—you had to take them somewhere—the honeymoon, the weekend 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 Prewitt, 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 Frank’s?’ the girl asked. It was one of those moments of sudden silence that falls 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 Frank’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 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 weekend, driving over the downs 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. ‘We’ll 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 a 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 on to 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 pageboy calling a name and Colleoni’s gold cigarette case. . . He said slowly and carefully, shutting uneasiness out, ‘Well, we oughter 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. Two 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: when they spoke they didn’t look at each other, just quietly dropped their remarks into the understanding air. ‘Now Willie. . . ’ ‘I always like 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?’
The Boy said furiously: ‘I’ve been waiting here. . . ’
‘You could have touched the bell,’ the clerk said coldly and opened a large register.
‘I want a room,’ the Boy said. ‘A double room.’
The clerk stared past him at Rose, then turned a page. ‘We haven’t a room free,’ he said.
‘I don’t mind what I pay,’ the Boy said. ‘I’ll take a suite.’
‘There’s nothing vacant,’ the clerk said without looking up.
The pageboy, returning with a salver, paused and watched. The Boy said in a low furious voice, ‘You can’t keep me out of here. My money’s as good as anybody else’s. . . ’
‘No doubt,’ the clerk said, ‘but there happens to be no room free.’ He turned his back and picked up a jar of Stickphast.
‘Come on,’ the Boy said to Rose, ‘this kip stinks.’
He strode back down the steps, past the old ladies; tears of humiliation pricked behind his eyes. He had an insane impulse to shout out to them all that they couldn’t treat him like that, that he was a killer, he could kill men and not be caught. He wanted to boast. He could afford that place as well as anyone: he had a car, a lawyer, two hundred pounds in the bank. . .
Rose said, ‘If I’d had a ring. . . ’
He said furiously, ‘A ring. . . what sort of a ring? We aren’t married. Don’t forget that. We aren’t married.’ But outside on the pavement he restrained himself with immense difficulty and remembered bitterly that he still had a part to play—they couldn’t make a wife give evidence, but nothing could prevent a wife except—love, lust he thought with sour horror, and turning back to her he unconvincingly apologized, ‘They get me angry,’ he said. ‘You see I’d promised you—’
‘I don’t care,’ she said. Suddenly with wide astonished eyes she made the foolhardy claim, ‘Nothing can spoil today.’
‘We got to find somewhere,’ he said.
‘I don’t mind where—Frank’s?’
‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘I don’t want any of the boys around tonight.’
‘We’ll think of a place,’ she said. ‘It’s not dark yet.’
These were the hours—when the races were not on, when there was no one to see on business—that he spent stretched on the bed at Frank’s. He’d eat a packet of chocolate or a sausage roll, watch the sun shift from the chimney-pots, fall asleep and wake and eat again and sleep with the dark coming in through the window. Then the boys would return with the evening papers and life would start again. Now he was at a loss; he didn’t know how to spend so much time when he wasn’t alone.
‘One day,’ she said, ‘let’s go into the country like we did that time. . . ’ Staring out to sea she planned ahead. . . he could see the years advancing before her eyes like the line of the tide.
‘Anything you say,’ he said.
‘Let’s go on the pier,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been since we went that night—you remember?’
‘Nor’ve I,’ he lied quickly and smoothly, thinking of Spicer and the dark and the lightning on the sea—the beginning of something of which he couldn’t see the end. They went through the turnstile; there were a lot of people about: a row of anglers watched their floats in the thick green swell: the water moved under their feet.
‘Do you know that girl?’ Rose asked. The Boy turned his head apathetically. ‘Where?’ he said. ‘I don’t know any girls in this place.’
‘There,’ Rose said. ‘I bet she’s talking about you.’
The fat stupid spotty face swam back into his memory, nuzzled the glass like some monstrous fish in the Aquarium—dangerous—a sting-ray from another ocean. Fred had spoken to her and he had come up to them upon the front: she’d given evidence—he couldn’t remember what she had said—nothing important. Now she watched him, nudged her pasty girl friend, spoke of him, told he didn’t know what lies. Christ! he thought, had he got to massacre a world?
‘She knows you,’ Rose said.
‘I’ve never seen her,’ he lied, walking on.
Rose said, ‘It’s wonderful being with you. Everyone knows you. I never thought I’d marry someone famous.’
Who next he thought, who next? An angler drew back across their path to make his cast, whirling his line, dropped it far out; the float was caught in the cream of a wave and drove a line’s length towards the shore. It was cold on the sunless side of the pier; on one side of the glass division it was day: on the other evening advanced. ‘Let’s cross over,’ he said. He began to think again of Spicer’s girl: why had he left her in the car? God damn it, after all, she knew the game.
Rose stopped him. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘won’t you give me one of those? As a souvenir. They don’t cost much,’ she said, ‘only sixpence.’ It was a small glass box like a telephone cabinet. ‘Make a record of your own voice,’ the legend ran.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Don’t be soft. What’s the good of that?’
For the second time he came up against her sudden irresponsible resentment. She was soft, she was dumb, she was sentimental—and then suddenly she was dangerous. About a hat, about a gramophone record. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘go away. You’ve never given me a thing. Not even today you haven’t. If you don’t want me why don’t you go away? Why don’t you leave me alone?’ People turned and looked at them—at his acid and angry face, at her hopeless resentment. ‘What do you want me for?’ she cried at him.
‘For Christ’s sake. . . ’ he said.
‘I’d rather drown,’ she began, but he interrupted her, ‘You can have your record.’ He smiled nervously. ‘I just thought you were crazy,’ he said. ‘What do you want to hear me on a record for? Aren’t you going to hear me every day?’ He squeezed her arm. ‘You’re a good kid. I don’t grudge you things. You can have anything you say.’ He thought: she’s got me where she wants. . . how long? ‘You didn’t mean those things now, did you?’ he wheedled her. His face crinkled in the effort of amiability like an old man’s.
‘Something came over me,’ she said, avoiding his eyes with an expression he couldn’t read, obscure and despairing.
He felt relieved, but reluctant. He didn’t like the idea of putting anything on a record: it reminded him of finger-prints. ‘Do you really,’ he said, ‘want me to get one of those things? We haven’t got a gramophone anyway. You won’t be able to hear it. What’s the good?’
‘I don’t want a gramophone,’ she said. ‘I just want to have it there. Perhaps one day you might be away somewhere and I could borrow a gramophone. And you’d speak,’ she said with a sudden intensity that scared him.
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Just anything,’ she said. ‘Say something to me. Say Rose and—something.’
He went into the box and closed the door. There was a slot for his sixpence: a mouthpiece: an instruction, ‘Speak clearly and close to the instrument’. The scientific paraphernalia made him nervous. He looked over his shoulder and there outside she was watching him, without a smile. He saw her as a stranger: a shabby child from Nelson Place, and he was shaken by an appalling resentment. He put in a sixpence, and, speaking in a low voice for fear it might carry beyond the box, he gave his message up to be graven on vulcanite: ‘God damn you, you little bitch, why can’t you go back home for ever and let me be?’ He heard the needle scratch and the record whirr: then a click and silence.
Carrying the black disc he came out to her. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘take it. I put something on it—loving.’
She took it from him carefully, carried it like something to be defended from the crowd. Even on the sunny side of the pier it was getting cold, and the cold fell between them like an unanswerable statement—you’d better be getting home now. He had the sense of playing truant from his proper work—he should be at school, but he hadn’t learned his lesson. They passed through the turnstile, and he watched her out of the corner of an eye to see what she expected now. If she had shown any excitement he would have slapped her face. But she hugged the record as chilled as he.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we got to go somewhere.’
She pointed down the steps to the covered walk under the pier. ‘Let’s go there,’ she said, ‘it’s sheltered there.’
The Boy looked sharply round at her; it was as if deliberately she had offered him an ordeal. For a moment he hesitated: then he grinned at her. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘we’ll go there.’ He was moved by a kind of sensuality: the coupling of good and evil.
In the trees of the Old Steyne the fairy lights were switched on—it was too early, their pale colours didn’t show in the last of the day. The long tunnel under the parade was the noisiest, lowest, cheapest section of Brighton’s amusements. Children rushed past them in paper sailor-caps marked ‘I’m no Angel’; a ghost train rattled by carrying courting couples into a squealing and shrieking darkness. All the way along the landward side of t
he tunnel were the amusements; on the other little shops: Magpie Ices, Photoweigh, Shellfish, Rocko. The shelves rose to the ceiling: little doors let you in to the obscurity behind, and on the sea side there were no doors at all, no windows, nothing but shelf after shelf from the pebbles to the roof: a breakwater of Brighton rock facing the sea. The lights were always on in the tunnel; the air was warm and thick and poisoned with human breath.
‘Well,’ the Boy said, ‘what’s it to be—winkles or Brighton rock?’ He watched her as if something important really depended on her answer.
‘I’d like a stick of Brighton rock,’ she said.
Again he grinned: only the devil, he thought, could have made her answer that. She was good, but he’d got her like you got God in the Eucharist—in the guts. God couldn’t escape the evil mouth which chose to eat its own damnation. He padded across to a doorway and looked in. ‘Miss,’ he said. ‘Miss. Two sticks of rock.’ He looked around the little pink barred cell as if he owned it; his memory owned it, it was stamped with footmarks, a particular patch of floor had eternal importance: if the cash register had been moved he’d have noticed it. ‘What’s that?’ he asked and nodded at a box, the only unfamiliar object there.
‘It’s broken rock,’ she said, ‘going cheap.’
‘From the maker’s?’
‘No. It got broken. Some clumsy fools—’ she complained. ‘I wish I knew who. . . ’
He took the sticks and turned: he knew what he would see—nothing: the promenade was shut out behind the rows of Brighton rock. He had a momentary sense of his own immense cleverness. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, stooped in the little doorway and went out. If only one could boast of one’s cleverness, relieve the enormous pressure of pride. . .
They stood side by side sucking their sticks of rock: a woman bustled them to one side. ‘Out of the way, you children.’ Their glances met: a married couple.
‘Where now?’ he asked uneasily.
‘Perhaps we ought to find—somewhere,’ she said.
‘There’s not all that hurry.’ His voice caught a little with anxiety. ‘It’s early yet. Like a movie?’ He wheedled her again. ‘I’ve never took you to a movie.’
Brighton Rock Page 20
