Brighton Rock (17 page)

Too young—that was the difficulty. Spicer hadn’t solved that difficulty before he died. Too young to close her mouth with marriage, too young to stop the police putting her in the witness box, if it ever came to that. To give evidence that—why, to say that Hale had never left the card, that Spicer had left it, that he himself had come and felt for it under the cloth. She remembered even that detail. Spicer’s death would add suspicion. He’d got to close her mouth one way or another: he had to have peace.

He slowly climbed the stairs to the bed-sitting-room at Frank’s. He had the sense that he was losing grip, the telephone rang and rang, and as he lost grip he began to realize all the things he hadn’t years enough to know. Cubitt came out of a downstairs room, his cheek was stuffed with apple, he had a broken penknife in his hand. ‘No,’ he said, ‘Spicer’s not here. He’s not back yet.’

The Boy called down from the first landing, ‘Who wants Spicer?’

‘She’s rung off.’

‘Who was she?’

‘I don’t know. Some skirt of his. He’s soft on a girl he sees at the Queen of Hearts. Where
is
Spicer, Pinkie?’

‘He’s dead. Colleoni’s men killed him.’

‘God,’ Cubitt said. He shut the knife and spat the apple out. ‘I said we ought to lay off Brewer. What are we going to do?’

‘Come up here,’ the Boy said. ‘Where’s Dallow?’

‘He’s out.’

The Boy led the way into the bed-sitting-room and turned on the single globe. He thought of Colleoni’s room in the Cosmopolitan. But you had to begin somewhere. He said, ‘You’ve been eating on my bed again.’

‘It wasn’t me, Pinkie. It was Dallow. Why, Pinkie, they’ve cut
you
up.’

Again the Boy lied. ‘I gave them as good.’ But lying was a weakness. He wasn’t used to lying. He said, ‘We needn’t get worked up about Spicer. He was milky. It’s a good thing he’s dead. The girl at Snow’s saw him leave the ticket. Well, when he’s buried, no one’s going to identify him. We might even have him cremated.’

‘You don’t think the bogies—’

‘I’m not afraid of the bogies. It’s others who are nosing round.’

‘They can’t get over what the doctors said.’

‘You know we killed him and the doctors knew he died natural. Work it out for yourself. I can’t.’ He sat down on the bed and swept off Dallow’s crumbs. ‘We’re safer without Spicer.’

‘Maybe you know best, Pinkie. But what made Colleoni—’

‘He was scared, I suppose, that we’d let Tate have it on the course. I want Mr Prewitt fetched. I want him to fix me something. He’s the only lawyer we can trust round here—if we can trust him.’

‘What’s the trouble, Pinkie? Anything serious?’

The Boy leant his head back against the brass bedpost. ‘Maybe I’ll have to get married after all.’

Cubitt suddenly bellowed with laughter, his large mouth wide, his teeth carious. Behind his head the blind was half-drawn down, shutting out the night sky, leaving the chimney-pots black and phallic, smoking palely up into the moonlit air. The Boy was silent, watching Cubitt, listening to his laughter as if it were the world’s contempt.

When Cubitt stopped he said, ‘Go on. Ring Mr Prewitt up. He’s got to come round here,’ staring past Cubitt at the acorn gently tapping on the pane at the end of the blind cord, at the chimneys and the early summer night.

‘He won’t come here.’

‘He’s got to come. I can’t go out like
this
.’ He touched the
marks
on his neck where the razors had cut him. ‘I’ve got to get things fixed.’

‘You dog, you,’ Cubitt said. ‘You’re a young one at the game.’ The game: and the Boy’s mind turned with curiosity and loathing to the small cheap ready-for-anyone face, the bottles catching the moonlight on the bin, and the word ‘burn’, ‘burn’ repeated. What did people mean by ‘the game’? He knew everything in theory, nothing in practice; he was only old with the knowledge of other people’s lusts, those of strangers who wrote their desires on the walls in public lavatories. He knew the moves, he’d never played the game, ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘it won’t come to that. But fetch Mr Prewitt. He knows.’

Mr Prewitt knew. You were certain of that at the first sight of him. He was a stranger to no wangle, twist, contradictory clause, ambiguous word. His yellow shaven middle-aged face was deeply lined with legal decisions. He carried a brown leather portfolio and wore striped trousers which seemed a little too new for the rest of him. He came into the room with hollow joviality, a dock-side manner: he had long pointed polished shoes which caught the light. Everything about him, from his breeziness to his morning coat, was brand new, except himself and that had aged in many law courts, with many victories more damaging than defeats. He had acquired the habit of not listening: innumerable rebukes from the bench had taught him that. He was deprecating, discreet, sympathetic and as tough as leather.

The Boy nodded to him without getting up, sitting on the bed. ‘Evening, Mr Prewitt,’ and Mr Prewitt smiled sympathetically, put his portfolio on the floor, and sat down on the hard chair by the dressing-table. ‘It’s a lovely night,’ he said. ‘O dear, O dear, you’ve been in the wars.’ The sympathy didn’t belong; it could be peeled off his eyes like an auction ticket from an ancient flint instrument.

‘It’s not
that
I want to see you about,’ the Boy said. ‘You needn’t be scared. I just want information.’

‘No trouble, I hope?’ Mr Prewitt asked.

‘I want to avoid trouble. If I wanted to get married, what’d I do?’

‘Wait a few years,’ Mr Prewitt said promptly, as if he were calling a hand in cards.

‘Next week,’ the Boy said.

‘The trouble is,’ Mr Prewitt thoughtfully remarked, ‘you’re under age.’

‘That’s why I’ve called
you
in.’

‘There are cases,’ Mr Prewitt said, ‘of people who give their ages wrong. I’m not suggesting it, mind you. What age is the girl?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘You’re sure of that? Because if she was under sixteen you could be married in Canterbury Cathedral by the Archbishop himself, and it wouldn’t be legal.’

‘That’s all right,’ the Boy said. ‘But if we give our ages wrong, are we married all right—legally?’

‘Hard and fast.’

‘The police wouldn’t be able to call the girl—’

‘In evidence against you? Not without her consent. Of course you’d have committed a misdemeanour. You could be sent to prison. And then—there are other difficulties.’ Mr Prewitt leant back against the washstand, his grey neat legal hair brushing the ewer and eyed the Boy.

‘You know I pay,’ the Boy said.

‘First,’ Mr Prewitt said, ‘you’ve got to remember it takes time.’

‘It mustn’t take long.’

‘Do you want to be married in a church?’

‘Of course I don’t,’ the Boy said. ‘This won’t be a real marriage.’

‘Real enough.’

‘Not real like when the priest says it.’

‘Your religious feelings do you credit,’ Mr Prewitt said. ‘This I take it then will be a civil marriage. You could get a licence—fifteen days’ residence—you qualify for that—and one day’s notice. As far as that’s concerned you could be married the day after tomorrow—in your own district. Then comes the next difficulty. A marriage of a minor’s not easy.’

‘Go on. I’ll pay.’

‘It’s no good just saying you’re twenty-one. No one would believe you. But if you said you were eighteen you could be married provided you had your parents’ or your guardian’s consent. Are your parents alive?’

‘No.’

‘Who’s your guardian?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Mr Prewitt said thoughtfully, ‘We might arrange a guardian. It’s risky though. It might be better if you’d lost touch. He’d gone to South Africa and left you. We might make quite a good thing out of that,’ Mr Prewitt added softly. ‘Flung on the world at an early age you’ve bravely made your own way.’ His eyes shifted from bedball to bedball. ‘We’d ask for the discretion of the registrar.’

‘I never knew it was all that difficult,’ the Boy said. ‘Maybe I can manage some other way.’

‘Given time,’ Mr Prewitt said, ‘anything can be managed.’ He showed his tartar-coated teeth in a fatherly smile. ‘Give the word, my boy, and I’ll see you married. Trust me.’ He stood up, his striped trousers were like a wedding guest’s, hired for the day at Moss’s; when he crossed the room, yellowly smiling, he might have been about to kiss the bride. ‘If you’ll let me have a guinea now for the consultation, there are one or two little purchases—for the spouse. . . ’

‘Are
you
married?’ the Boy asked with sudden eagerness. It had never occurred to him that Prewitt. . . He gazed at the smile, the yellow teeth, the lined and wasted and unreliable face as if
there
possibly he might learn. . . 

‘It’s my silver wedding next year,’ Mr Prewitt said. Twenty-five years at the game. Cubitt put his head in at the door and said, ‘I’m going out for a turn.’ He grinned. ‘How’s the marriage?’

‘Progressing,’ Mr Prewitt said, ‘progressing,’ patting the portfolio as if it had been the plump cheek of a promising infant. ‘We shall see our young friend spliced yet.’

Just till it all blows over, the Boy thought, leaning back on the grey pillow, resting one shoe on the mauve eiderdown: not a real marriage, just something to keep her mouth shut for a time. ‘So long,’ Cubitt said, giggling at the bed end. Rose, the small devoted cockney face, the sweet taste of human skin, emotion in the dark room by the bin of harvest Burgundy: lying on the bed he wanted to protest ‘not yet’ and ‘not with her’. If it had to come some time, if he had to follow everyone else into the brutish game, let it be when he was old, with nothing else to gain, and with someone
other
men could envy him. Not someone immature, simple, as ignorant as himself.

‘You’ve only to give the word,’ Mr Prewitt said. ‘We’ll fix it together.’ Cubitt had gone. The Boy said, ‘You’ll find a nicker on the washstand.’

‘I don’t see one,’ Mr Prewitt said anxiously, shifting a toothbrush.

‘In the soap-dish—under the cover.’

Dallow put his head into the room. ‘Evening,’ he said to Mr Prewitt. He said to the Boy, ‘What’s up with Spicer?’

‘It was Colleoni. They got him on the course,’ the Boy said. ‘They nearly got me too,’ and he raised his bandaged hand to his scarred neck.

‘But Spicer’s in his room now. I heard him.’

‘
Heard
?’ the Boy said. ‘You’re imagining things.’ He was afraid for the second time that day: a dim globe lit the passage and the stairs: the walls were unevenly splashed with walnut paint. He felt the skin of his face contract as if something repulsive had touched him. He wanted to ask whether you could do more than hear this Spicer, if he was sensible to the sight and the touch. He stood up: it had to be faced whatever it was: passed Dallow without another word. The door of Spicer’s room swung in a draught to and fro. He couldn’t see inside. It was a tiny room; they had all had tiny rooms but Kite, and he had inherited that. That was why his room was the common room for them all. In Spicer’s there would be space for no one but himself—and Spicer. He could hear little creaking leathery movements as the door swung. The words ‘Dona nobis pacem’ came again to mind; for the second time he felt a faint nostalgia, as if for something he had lost or forgotten or rejected.

He walked down the passage and into Spicer’s room. His first feeling when he saw Spicer bent and tightening the straps of his suitcase was relief—that it was undoubtedly the living Spicer, whom you could touch and scare and command. A long stripe of sticking-plaster lined Spicer’s cheek. The Boy watched it from the doorway with a rising cruelty: he wanted to tear it away and see the skin break. Spicer looked up, put down the suitcase, shifted uneasily towards the wall. He said, ‘I thought—I was afraid—Colleoni
had
got you.’ His fear gave away his knowledge. The Boy said nothing, watching him from the door. As if he were apologizing for being alive at all Spicer explained, ‘I got away. . . ’ His words wilted out like a line of seaweed, along the edge of the Boy’s silence, indifference and purpose.

Down the passage came the voice of Mr Prewitt, ‘In the soap-dish. He said it was in the soap-dish,’ and the clatter of china noisily moved about.

2

‘I’m going to work on that kid every hour of the day until I get something.’ She rose formidably and moved across the restaurant, like a warship going into action, a warship on the right side in a war to end wars, the signal flags proclaiming that every man would do his duty. Her big breasts, which had never suckled a child of her own, felt a merciless compassion. Rose fled at the sight of her, but Ida moved relentlessly towards the service door. Everything now was in train, she had begun to ask the questions she had wanted to ask when she had read about the inquest in Henekey’s, and she was getting the answers. And Fred too had done his part, had tipped the right horse, so that now she had funds as well as friends: an infinite capacity for corruption: two hundred pounds.

‘Good evening, Rose,’ she said, standing in the kitchen doorway, blocking it. Rose put down a tray and turned with all the fear, obstinacy, incomprehension of a wild animal who will not recognize kindness.

‘You again,’ she said. ‘I’m busy. I can’t talk to you.’

‘But the manageress, dear, has given me leave.’

‘We can’t talk here.’

‘Where can we talk?’

‘In my room if you’ll let me out.’

Rose went ahead up the stairs behind the restaurant to the little linoleumed landing. ‘They do you well here, don’t they?’ Ida said. ‘I once lived in at a public, that was before I met Tom—Tom’s my husband,’ she patiently, sweetly, implacably explained to Rose’s back. ‘They didn’t do you so well there. Flowers on the landing,’ she exclaimed with pleasure at the withered bunch on a deal table,
pulling
at the petals, when a door slammed. Rose had shut her out, and as she gently knocked she heard an obstinate whisper, ‘Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘It’s serious. Very serious.’ The stout which Ida had been drinking returned a little: she put her hand up to her mouth and said mechanically, ‘Pardon,’ belching towards the closed door.