Authors: Graham Greene
‘I been to a funeral, too. Was yours a good one?’
‘There aren’t any good funerals these days. Not with plumes.’ Ida gave the little board a push. It slid sideways across the polished table more than ever like a beetle. ‘The pencil’s too long,’ Old Crowe said. He sat, hugging his hands between his knees, bent forward watching the board. Ida screwed the pencil a little higher. ‘Past or future?’ Old Crowe asked, panting a little.
‘I want to get into touch today,’ Ida said.
‘Dead or alive?’ Old Crowe said.
‘Dead. I seen him burnt this afternoon. Cremated. Come on, Old Crowe, put your fingers on.’
‘Better take off your rings,’ Old Crowe said. ‘Gold confuses it.’
Ida unclothed her fingers, laid the tips on the board which squeaked away from her across the sheet of foolscap. ‘Come on, Old Crowe,’ she said.
Old Crowe giggled. He said, ‘It’s naughty,’ and placed his bony digits on the very rim, where they throbbed a tiny nervous tattoo. ‘What you going to ask it, Ida?’
‘Are you there, Fred?’
The board squeaked away under their fingers drawing long lines across the paper this way and that ‘It’s got a will of its own,’ Ida said.
‘Hush,’ said Old Crowe.
The board bucked a little with its hind wheel and came to a stop. ‘We might look now,’ Ida said. She pushed the board to one side, and they stared together at the network of pencilling.
‘You might make out a Y there,’ Ida said.
‘Or it might be an N.’
‘Anyway something’s there. We’ll try again.’ She put her fingers firmly on the board. ‘What happened to you, Fred?’ and immediately the board was off and away. All her indomitable will worked through her fingers: she wasn’t going to have any nonsense this time, and across the board the grey face of Old Crowe frowned with concentration.
‘It’s writing—real letters,’ Ida said with triumph, and as her own fingers momentarily loosened their grip she could feel the board slide firmly away as if on another’s errand.
‘Hush,’ said Old Crowe, but it bucked and stopped. They pushed the board away, and there, unmistakably, in large thin letters was a word, but not a word they knew:
‘SUKILL’
.
‘It looks like a name,’ Old Crowe said.
‘It must mean something,’ Ida said. ‘The Board always means something. We’ll try again,’ and again the wooden beetle scampered off, drawing its tortuous trail. The globe burnt red under the scarf, and Old Crowe whistled between his teeth. ‘Now,’ Ida said and lifted the Board. A long ragged word ran diagonally across the paper:
‘FRESUICILLEYE’
.
‘Well,’ Old Crowe said, ‘that’s a mouthful. You can’t make anything of that, Ida.’
‘Can’t I though,’ Ida said. ‘Why, it’s clear as clear.
Fre
is short for Fred and
Suici
for Suicide and Eye; that’s what I always say—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
‘What about those two L’s?’
‘I don’t know yet, but I’ll bear them in mind.’ She leant back in her chair with a sense of power and triumph. ‘I’m not superstitious,’ she said, ‘but you can’t get over that. The Board knows.’
‘She knows,’ Old Crowe said, sucking his teeth.
‘One more try?’ The board slid and squeaked and abruptly stopped. Clear as clear the name stared up at her:
‘PHIL’
.
‘Well,’ Ida said, ‘well.’ She blushed a little. ‘Like a sugar biscuit?’
‘Thank you, Ida, thank you.’
Ida took a tin out of the cupboard drawer and pushed it over to Old Crowe. ‘They drove him to death,’ Ida said happily. ‘I knew there was something fishy. See that
Eye
. That as good as tells me what to do.’ Her eye lingered on
Phil
. ‘I’m going to make those people sorry they was ever born.’ She drew in her breath luxuriously and stretched her monumental legs. ‘Right and wrong,’ she said. ‘I believe in right and wrong,’ and delving a little deeper, with a sigh of happy satiety, she said, ‘It’s going to be exciting, it’s going to be fun, it’s going to be a bit of life, Old Crowe,’ giving the highest praise she could give to anything, while the old man sucked his tooth and the pink light wavered on the Warwick Deeping.
PART TWO
1
The Boy stood with his back to Spicer staring out across the dark wash of sea. They had the end of the pier to themselves; everyone else at that hour and in that weather was in the concert hall. The lightning went on and off above the horizon and the rain dripped. ‘Where’ve you been?’ the Boy asked.
‘Walking around,’ Spicer said.
‘You been There?’
‘I wanted to see it was all safe, that there wasn’t anything you’d forgotten.’
The Boy said slowly, leaning out across the rail into the doubtful rain, ‘When people do one murder, I’ve read they sometimes have to do another—to tidy up.’ The word murder conveyed no more to him than the word ‘box’, ‘collar’, ‘giraffe’. He said, ‘Spicer, you keep away from there.’
The imagination hadn’t awoken. That was his strength. He couldn’t see through other people’s eyes, or feel with their nerves. Only the music made him uneasy, the catgut vibrating in the heart; it was like nerves losing their freshness, it was like age coming on, other people’s experience battering on the brain. ‘Where are the rest of the mob?’
‘In Sam’s, drinking.’
‘Why aren’t you drinking too?’
‘I’m not thirsty, Pinkie, I wanted some fresh air. This thunder makes you feel queer.’
‘Why don’t they stop that bloody noise in there?’ the Boy said.
‘You not going to Sam’s?’
‘I’ve got a job of work to do,’ the Boy said.
‘It’s all right, Pinkie, ain’t it? After that verdict it’s all right? Nobody asked questions.’
‘I just want to be sure,’ the Boy said.
‘The mob won’t stand for any more killing.’
‘Who said there was going to be any killing?’ The lightning flared up and showed his tight shabby jacket, the bunch of soft hair at the nape. ‘I’ve got a date, that’s all. You be careful what you say, Spicer. You aren’t milky, are you?’
‘I’m not milky. You got me wrong, Pinkie. I just don’t want another killing. That verdict sort of shook us all. What did they mean by it? We
did
kill him, Pinkie?’
‘We got to go on being careful, that’s all.’
‘What did they mean by it, though? I don’t trust the doctors. A break like that’s
too
good.’
‘We got to be careful.’
‘What’s that in your pocket, Pinkie?’
‘I don’t carry a gun,’ the Boy said. ‘You’re fancying things.’ In the town a clock struck eleven: three strokes were lost in the thunder coming down across the Channel. ‘You better be off,’ the Boy said. ‘She’s late already.’
‘You’ve got a razor there, Pinkie.’
‘I don’t need a razor with a polony. If you want to know what it is, it’s a bottle.’
‘You don’t drink, Pinkie.’
‘Nobody would want to drink this.’
‘What is it, Pinkie?’
‘Vitriol,’ the Boy said, ‘It scares a polony more than a knife.’ He turned impatiently away from the sea and complained again, ‘That music.’ It moaned in his head in the hot electric night, it was the nearest he knew to sorrow, just as a faint secret sensual pleasure he felt, touching the bottle of vitriol with his fingers, as Rose came hurrying by the concert-hall, was his nearest approach to passion. ‘Get out,’ he said to Spicer. ‘She’s here.’
‘Oh,’ Rose said, ‘I’m late. I’ve run all the way,’ she said. ‘I thought you might have thought—’
‘I’d have waited,’ the Boy said.
‘It was an awful night in the café,’ the girl said. ‘Everything went wrong. I broke two plates. And the cream was sour.’ It all
came
out in a breath. ‘Who was your friend?’ she asked, peering into the darkness.
‘He don’t matter,’ the Boy said.
‘I thought somehow—I couldn’t see properly—’
‘He don’t matter,’ the Boy repeated.
‘What are we going to do?’
‘Why, I thought we’d talk a little here first,’ the Boy said, ‘and then go on somewhere—Sherry’s? I don’t care.’
‘I’d love Sherry’s,’ Rose said.
‘You got your money yet for that card?’
‘Yes. I got it this morning.’
‘Nobody came and asked you questions?’
‘Oh no. But wasn’t it dreadful, his being dead like that?’
‘You saw his photograph?’
Rose came close to the rail and peered palely up at the Boy. ‘But it wasn’t him. That’s what I don’t understand.’
‘People look different in photographs.’
‘I’ve got a memory for faces. It wasn’t him. They must have cheated. You can’t trust the newspapers.’
‘Come here,’ the Boy said. He drew her round the corner until they were a little farther from the music, more alone with the lightning on the horizon and the thunder coming closer. ‘I like you,’ the Boy said, an unconvincing smile forking his mouth, ‘and I want to warn you. This fellow Hale, I’ve heard a lot about him. He got himself mixed up with things.’
‘What sort of things?’ Rose whispered.
‘Never mind what things,’ the Boy said. ‘Only I’d warn you for your own good—you’ve got the money—if I was you I’d forget it, forget all about that fellow who left the card. He’s dead, see. You’ve got the money. That’s all that matters.’
‘Anything you say,’ Rose said.
‘You can call me Pinkie if you like. That’s what my friends call me.’
‘Pinkie,’ Rose repeated, trying it shyly out as the thunder cracked overhead.
‘You read about Peggy Baron, didn’t you?’
‘No, Pinkie.’
‘It was in all the papers.’
‘I didn’t see any papers till I got this job. We couldn’t afford papers at home.’
‘She got mixed up with a mob,’ the Boy said, ‘and people came asking her questions. It’s not safe.’
‘I wouldn’t get mixed up with a mob like that,’ Rose said.
‘You can’t always help it. It sort of comes that way.’
‘What happened to her?’ Rose said.
‘They spoilt her looks. She lost one eye. They splashed vitriol on her face.’
Rose whispered, ‘Vitriol? What’s vitriol?’ and the lightning showed a strut of tarred wood, a wave breaking and her pale, bony, terrified face.
‘You never seen vitriol?’ the Boy said, grinning through the dark. He showed her the little bottle. ‘That’s vitriol.’ He took the cork out and spilled a little on the wooden plank of the pier: it hissed like steam. ‘It burns,’ the Boy said. ‘Smell it,’ and he thrust the bottle under her nose.
She gasped at him. ‘Pinkie,
you
wouldn’t—’ and ‘I was pulling your leg,’ he smoothly lied to her. ‘That’s not vitriol, that’s just spirit. I wanted to warn you, that’s all. You and me’s going to be friends. I don’t want a friend with her skin burned off. You tell me if anyone asks questions. Anyone—mind. Get me on the blower at Frank’s straight off. Three sixes. You can remember that.’ He took her arm and propelled her away from the lonely pier-end, back by the lit concert-hall, the music drifting landwards, grief in the guts. ‘Pinkie,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t want to interfere. I don’t interfere in anyone’s business. I’ve never been nosy. Cross my heart.’
‘You’re a good kid,’ he said.
‘You know an awful lot about things, Pinkie,’ she said with horror and admiration, and suddenly at the stale romantic tune the orchestra was playing—‘lovely to look at, beautiful to hold, and heaven itself—’ a little venom of anger and hatred came out on the Boy’s lips: ‘You’ve got to know a lot,’ he said, ‘if you get around. Come on, we’ll go to Sherry’s.’
Once off the pier they had to run for it; taxis splashed them with water; the strings of coloured bulbs down the Hove parade gleamed like pools of petrol through the rain. They shook the water off on to the floor of Sherry’s and Rose saw the queue waiting
all
the way upstairs for the gallery. ‘It’s full,’ she said, with disappointment.
‘We’ll go on the floor,’ the Boy said, paying his three shillings as carelessly as if he always went there, and walked out among the little tables, the dancing partners with bright metallic hair and little black bags, while the coloured lights flashed green and pink and blue. Rose said, ‘It’s lovely here. It reminds me,’ and all the way to their table she counted over aloud all the things of which it reminded her, the lights, the tune the band was playing, the crowd on the floor trying to rumba. She had an immense store of trivial memories and when she wasn’t living in the future she was living in the past. As for the present—she got through that as quickly as she could, running away from things, running towards things, so that her voice was always a little breathless, her heart pounding at an escape or an expectation. ‘I whipped the plate under the apron and she said, “Rose, what are you hiding there?”’ and a moment later she was turning wide unfledged eyes back to the Boy with a look of the deepest admiration, the most respectful hope.
‘What’ll you drink?’ the Boy said.
She didn’t even know the name of a drink. In Nelson Place from which she had emerged like a mole into the daylight of Snow’s restaurant and the Palace Pier, she had never known a boy with enough money to offer her a drink. She would have said ‘beer’, but she had had no opportunity of discovering whether she liked beer. A twopenny ice from an Everest tricycle was the whole extent of her knowledge of luxury. She goggled hopelessly at the Boy. He asked her sharply, ‘What d’you like?
I
don’t know what you like.’
‘An ice,’ she said with disappointment, but she couldn’t keep him waiting.
‘What kind of an ice?’
‘Just an ordinary ice,’ she said. Everest hadn’t in all the slum years offered her a choice.
‘Vanilla?’ the waiter said. She nodded; she supposed that that was what she had always had, and so it proved—only a size larger; otherwise she might just as well have been sucking it between wafers by a tricycle.
‘You’re a soft sort of kid,’ the Boy said. ‘How old are you?’
‘I’m seventeen,’ she said defiantly; there was a law which said a man couldn’t go with you before you were seventeen.
‘I’m seventeen too,’ the Boy said, and the eyes which had never been young stared with grey contempt into the eyes which had only just begun to learn a thing or two. He said, ‘Do you dance?’ and she replied humbly, ‘I haven’t danced much.’