Authors: Graham Greene
Precautions. . . Rose stood at the bed-end and pressed a hand against her body, as if under that pressure she could discover. . .
That
had never entered her mind; and the thought of what she might have let herself in for came like a sense of glory. A child. . . and that child would have a child. . . it was like raising an army of friends for Pinkie. If They damned him and her, They’d have to deal with them, too. There was no end to what the two of them had done last night upon the bed: it was an eternal act.
2
The Boy stood back in the doorway of the newspaper shop and saw Ida Arnold come out. She looked a little flushed, a little haughty sailing down the street; she paused and gave a small boy a penny. He was so surprised he dropped it, staring after her heavy careful retreat.
The Boy gave a sudden laugh, rusty and half-hearted. He thought: she’s drunk. . . Dallow said, ‘That was a narrow squeak.’
‘What was?’
‘Your mother-in-law.’
‘Her. . . how did
you
know?’
‘She asked for Rose.’
The Boy put down the
News of the World
upon the counter—a headline stood up—‘Assault on Schoolgirl in Epping Forest’. He walked across to Frank’s thinking hard, and up the stairs. Half-way he stopped: she’d dropped an artificial violet from a spray. He picked it off the stair: it smelt of Californian Poppy. Then he went in, holding the flower concealed in his palm, and Rose came across to him, welcoming. He avoided her mouth. ‘Well,’ he said and tried to express in his face a kind of rough and friendly jocularity, ‘I hear your Mum’s been visiting you,’ and waited anxiously for her reply.
‘Oh, yes,’ Rose said doubtfully, ‘she did look in.’
‘Not one of her moody days?’
‘No.’
He kneaded the violet furiously in his palm. ‘Well, did she think it suited you—being married?’
‘Oh, yes, I think she did. . . She didn’t say much.’
The Boy went across to the bed and slipped on his coat. He said, ‘You been out too I hear?’
‘I thought I’d go and see friends.’
‘What friends?’
‘Oh—at Snow’s.’
‘You call
them
friends?’ he asked with contempt. ‘Well, did you see them?’
‘Not really. Only one—Maisie. For a minute.’
‘And then you got back here in time to catch your Mum. Don’t you want to know what I’ve been up to?’
She stared stupidly at him: his manner scared her. ‘If you like.’
‘What do you mean, if I like? You aren’t as dumb as that.’ The wire anatomy of the flower pricked his palm. He said, ‘I got to have a word with Dallow. Wait here,’ and left her.
He called to Dallow, across the street, and when Dallow joined them, he said, ‘Where’s Judy?’
‘Upstairs.’
‘Frank working?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come down to the kitchen then.’ He led the way down the stairs; in the basement dusk his feet crunched on dead coke. He sat down on the edge of the kitchen table and said, ‘Have a drink.’
‘Too early,’ Dallow said.
‘Listen,’ the Boy said. An expression of pain crossed his face as if he were about to wring out an appalling confession. ‘I trust you,’ he said.
‘Well,’ Dallow, said, ‘what’s getting you?’
‘Things aren’t too good,’ the Boy said. ‘People are getting wise to a lot of things. Christ,’ he said, ‘I killed Spicer and I married the girl. Have I got to have that massacre?’
‘Was Cubitt here last night?’
‘He was and I sent him away. He begged—he wanted a fiver.’
‘Did you give it him?’
‘Of course I didn’t. D’you think I’d let myself be blackmailed by a thing like him?’
‘You oughter have given him something.’
‘It’s not him I’m worried about.’
‘You ought to be.’
‘Be quiet, can’t you,’ the Boy suddenly and shrilly squealed at him. He jerked his thumb towards the ceiling. ‘It’s
her
I’m worried about.’ He opened his hand and said, ‘God damn it I dropped that flower.’
‘Flower. . . ?’
‘Be quiet, can’t you, and listen,’ he said low and furiously. ‘That wasn’t her Mum.’
‘Who was it?’ Dallow asked.
‘The buer who’s been asking questions. . . the one who was with Fred in the taxi the day. . . ’ He put his head for a moment between his hands in an attitude of grief or desperation—but it wasn’t either: it was the rush of memories. He said, ‘I got a headache. I got to think clear. Rose told me it was her Mum. What’s she after?’
‘You don’t think,’ Dallow said, ‘she’s talked?’
‘I got to find out,’ the Boy said.
‘I’d have trusted her,’ Dallow said, ‘all the way.’
‘I wouldn’t trust anyone that far. Not you, Dallow.’
‘But if she’s talking, why does she talk to
her
—why not to the police?’
‘Why don’t any of them talk to the police?’ He stared with troubled eyes at the cold stove. He was haunted by his ignorance. ‘I don’t know what they’re getting at.’ Other people’s feelings bored at his brain: he had never before felt this desire to understand. He said passionately, ‘I’d like to carve the whole bloody boiling.’
‘After all,’ Dallow said, ‘she don’t know much. She only knows it wasn’t Fred left the card. If you ask me she’s a dumb little piece. Affectionate, I daresay, but dumb.’
‘You’re the dumb one, Dallow. She knows a lot. She knows I killed Fred.’
‘You sure?’
‘She told me so.’
‘An’ she married you?’ Dallow said. ‘I’m damned if I understand what they
want
.’
‘If we don’t do something quick it looks to me as if all Brighton’ll know we killed Fred. All England. The whole Goddamned world.’
‘What can
we
do?’
The Boy went over to the basement window crunching on the
coke:
a tiny asphalt yard with an old dustbin which hadn’t been used for weeks: a blocked grating, and a sour smell. He said, ‘It’s no good stopping now. We got to go on.’ People passed overhead, invisible from the waist upwards: a shabby shoe scuffled the pavement wearing out the toecap; a bearded face stooped suddenly into sight looking for a cigarette-end. He said slowly, ‘It ought to be easy to quiet her. We quieted Fred an’ Spicer, an’ she’s only a kid. . . ’
‘Don’t be crazy,’ Dallow said. ‘You can’t go on like that.’
‘Maybe I got to. No choice. Maybe it’s always that way—you start and then you go on going on.’
‘We’re making a mistake,’ Dallow said. ‘I’d stake you a fiver she’s straight. Why—you told me yourself—she’s stuck on you.’
‘Why did she say it was her Mum then?’ He watched a woman go by: young as far as the thighs: you couldn’t see further up than that. A spasm of disgust shook him. He’d given way: he had even been proud of
that
—what he could have done with Spicer’s girl, Sylvie, in a Lancia. Oh, it was all right, he supposed, to take every drink once—if you could stop at that, say ‘never again’, not go on—going on.
‘I can tell it myself,’ Dallow said. ‘Clear as clear. She’s stuck on you all right.’
Stuck: high heels trodden over, bare legs moving out of sight. ‘If she’s stuck,’ he said, ‘it makes it easier—she’ll do what I say.’ A piece of newspaper blew along the street: the wind was from the sea.
Dallow said. ‘Pinkie, I won’t stand for any more killing.’
The Boy turned his back to the window and his mouth made a bad replica of mirth. He said, ‘But suppose she killed herself?’ An insane pride bobbed in his breast; he felt inspired: it was like a love of life returning to the blank heart: the empty tenement and then the seven devils worse than the first. . .
Dallow said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Pinkie. You’re imagining things.’
‘We’ll soon see,’ the Boy said.
He came up the stairs from the basement, looking this way and that for the scented flower of cloth and wire. He could see it nowhere. Rose’s voice said, ‘Pinkie,’ over the new banister: she was waiting there for him anxiously on the landing. She said, ‘Pinkie, I got to tell you. I wanted to keep you from worrying—but there’s got to be someone I don’t have to lie to. That wasn’t Mum, Pinkie.’
He came slowly up, watching her closely, judging. ‘Who was it?’
‘It was that woman. The one who used to come to Snow’s asking questions.’
‘What did she want?’
‘She wanted me to go away from here.’
‘Why?’
‘Pinkie, she
knows
.’
‘Why did you say it was your Mum?’
‘I told you—I didn’t want you to worry.’
He was beside her, watching her. She faced him back with a worried candour, and he found that he believed her as much as he believed anyone: his restless cocky pride subsided: he felt an odd sense of peace, as if—for a while—he hadn’t got to plan.
‘But then,’ Rose went anxiously on, ‘I thought—perhaps you ought to worry.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said and put his hand on her shoulder in an awkward embrace.
‘She said something about paying money to someone. She said she was getting warm to you.’
‘I don’t worry,’ he said and pressed her back. Then he stopped, looking over her shoulder. In the doorway of the room the flower lay. He had dropped it when he closed the door—and then—he began at once to calculate—she followed me, of course she saw the flower, she knew I
knew
. That explains everything, the confession. . . All the while he was down there below with Dallow she had been wondering what she had to do to cover her mistake. A clean breast—the phrase made him laugh—a clean tart’s breast, the kind of breast Sylvie sported—cleaned up for use. He laughed again: the horror of the world lay like infection in his throat.
‘What is it, Pinkie?’
‘That flower,’ he said.
‘What flower?’
‘The one
she
brought.’
‘What. . . where. . . ?’
Perhaps she hadn’t seen it then. . . maybe she was straight after all. . . who knows? Who, he thought, will ever know? And with a kind of sad excitement—what did it matter anyway? He had been a fool to think it made any difference; he couldn’t afford to
take
risks. If she were straight and loved him it would be just so much easier, that was all. He repeated, ‘I don’t worry. I don’t need to worry. I know what to do. Even if she got to know everything I know what to do.’ He watched her shrewdly. He brought his hand round and pressed her breast. ‘It won’t hurt,’ he said.
‘What won’t hurt, Pinkie?’
‘The way I’ll manage things—’ he started agilely away from his dark suggestion. ‘You don’t want to leave me, do you?’
‘Never,’ Rose said.
‘That’s what I meant,’ he said. ‘You wrote it, didn’t you. Trust me, I’ll manage things if the worst comes to the worst—so it won’t hurt either of us. You can trust me,’ he went smoothly and rapidly on, while she watched him with the tricked expression of someone who has promised too much, too quickly. ‘I knew,’ he said, ‘you’d feel like that. About us never parting. What you wrote.’
She whispered with dread. ‘It’s a mortal. . . ’
‘Just one more,’ he said. ‘What difference does it make? You can’t be damned twice over, and we’re damned already—so they say. And anyway it’s only if the worst. . . if she finds out about Spicer.’
‘Spicer,’ Rose moaned, ‘you don’t mean Spicer too. . . ’
‘I only mean,’ he said, ‘if she finds out that I was here—in the house—but we don’t need to worry till she does.’
‘But Spicer. . . ’ Rose said.
‘I was here,’ he said, ‘when it happened, that’s all. I didn’t even see him fall, but my solicitor. . . ’
‘He was here too?’ Rose said.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘I remember now,’ Rose said. ‘Of course I read the paper. They couldn’t believe, could they, that he’d cover up anything really wrong. A solicitor.’
‘Old Prewitt,’ the Boy said, ‘why—’ again the unused laugh came into rusty play. ‘He’s the Soul of Honour.’ He pressed her breast again and uttered his qualified encouragement. ‘Oh no, there’s no cause to worry till
she
finds out. Even then you see there’s
that
escape. But perhaps she never will. And if she doesn’t, why,’—his fingers touched her with secret revulsion—‘we’ll just go on, won’t we,’ and he tried to make the horror sound like love, ‘the way we are.’
3
But it was the Soul of Honour none the less who really worried him. If Cubitt had given that woman the idea that there was something wrong about Spicer’s death as well, who could she go to now but Mr Prewitt? She wouldn’t attempt anything with Dallow; but a man of law—when he was as clever as Prewitt was—was always frightened of the law. Prewitt was like a man who keeps a tame lion cub in his house. He could never be quite certain that the lion to whom he had taught so many tricks, to beg and eat out of his hand, might not one day unexpectedly mature and turn on him. Perhaps he might cut his cheek shaving—and the law would smell the blood.
In the early afternoon he couldn’t wait any longer; he set out for Prewitt’s house. First he told Dallow to keep an eye on the girl in case. . . More than ever yet he had the sense that he was being driven further and deeper than he’d ever meant to go. A curious and cruel pleasure touched him—he didn’t really care so very much—it was being decided for him, and all he had to do was to let himself easily go. He knew what the end might be—it didn’t horrify him: it was easier than life.
Mr Prewitt’s house was in a street parallel to the railway, beyond the terminus: it was shaken by shunting engines; the soot settled continuously on the glass and the brass plate. From the basement window a woman with tousled hair stared suspiciously up at him—she was always there watching visitors from a hard and bitter face. She was never explained: he had always thought she was the cook, but it appeared now she was the ‘spouse’—twenty-five years at the game. The door was opened by a girl with grey underground skin—an unfamiliar face. ‘Where’s Tilly?’ the Boy said.
‘She’s left.’
‘Tell Prewitt, Pinkie’s here.’
‘He’s not seeing anyone,’ the girl said. ‘This is a Sunday, ain’t it?’
‘He’ll see me.’ The Boy walked into the hall, opened a door, sat down in a room lined with filing boxes: he knew the way. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘tell him. I know he’s asleep. You wake him up.’
‘You seem to be at home here,’ the girl said.