Brighton Rock (27 page)

She looked up with childish devoted eyes and swore solemnly, ‘Not a pin.’

He felt desire move again, like nausea in the belly. ‘What a wedding night,’ he said, ‘did you think a wedding night would be like this?’. . . the piece of gold in the palm, the kneeling in the sanctuary, the blessing. . . footsteps in the passage, Cubitt pounded on the door, pounded and lurched away, the stairs creaked, a door slammed. She made her vow again, holding him in her arms, in the attitude of mortal sin, ‘Nothing to choose.’

The Boy lay on his back—in his shirt-sleeves—and dreamed. He was in an asphalt playground: one plane tree withered: a cracked bell clanged and the children came out to him. He was new: he knew no one: he was sick with fear—they came towards him with a purpose. Then he felt a cautious hand on his sleeve and in a mirror hanging on the tree he saw the reflection of himself and Kite behind—middle-aged, cheery, bleeding from the mouth. ‘Such tits,’ Kite said and put a razor in his hand. He knew then what to do: they only needed to be taught once that he would stop at nothing, that there were no rules.

He flung out his arm in a motion of attack, made some indistinguishable comment and turned upon his side. A piece of blanket fell across his mouth; he breathed with difficulty. He was upon the pier and he could see the piles breaking—a black cloud came racing up across the Channel and the sea rose: the whole pier lurched and settled lower. He tried to scream: no death was so bad as drowning. The deck of the pier lay at a steep angle like that of a liner on the point of its deadly dive; he scrambled up the polished slope away from the sea and slipped again, down and down
into
his bed in Nelson Place. He lay still thinking. ‘What a dream!’ and then heard the stealthy movement of his parents in the other bed. It was Saturday night. His father panted like a man at the end of a race and his mother made a horrifying sound of pleasurable pain. He was filled with hatred, disgust, loneliness: he was completely abandoned: he had no share in their thoughts—for the space of a few minutes he was dead, he was like a soul in purgatory watching the shameless act of a beloved person.

Then quite suddenly he opened his eyes, it was as if the nightmare couldn’t go further. It was black night, he could see nothing and for a few seconds he believed he was back in Nelson Place. Then a clock struck three, clashing close by like the lid of a dustbin in the backyard, and he remembered with immense relief that he was alone. He got out of bed in his half drowse (his mouth was clotted and evil-tasting) and felt his way to the washstand. He took up his tooth-mug, poured out a glass of water and heard a voice say, ‘Pinkie? What is it, Pinkie?’ He dropped the glass and as the water spilt across his feet he bitterly remembered.

He said cautiously into the dark, ‘It’s all right. Go to sleep.’ He no longer had a sense of triumph or superiority. He looked back on a few hours ago as if he had been drunk then or dreaming—he had been momentarily exhilarated by the strangeness of his experience. Now there would be nothing strange ever again—he was awake. You had to treat these things with common sense—she knew. The darkness thinned before his wakeful and calculating gaze—he could see the outline of the bedknobs and a chair. He had won a move and lost a move: they couldn’t
make
her give evidence, but she knew. . . She loved him whatever that meant but love was not an eternal thing like hatred and disgust. They saw a better face, a smarter suit. . . The truth came home to him with horror that he had got to keep her love for a lifetime; he would never be able to discard her. If he climbed he had to take Nelson Place with him like a visible scar; the registry office marriage was as irrevocable as a sacrament. Only death could ever set him free.

He was taken by a craving for air, walked softly to the door. In the passage he could see nothing: it was full of the low sound of breathing—from the room he had left, from Dallow’s room. He felt like a blind man watched by people he couldn’t see. He felt his
way
to the stairhead and on down to the hall, step by step, creakingly. He put out his hand and touched the telephone, then with his arm outstretched made for the door. In the street the lamps were out, but the darkness no longer enclosed between four walls seemed to thin out across the vast expanse of a city. He could see basement railings, a cat moving, and, reflected on the dark sky, the phosphorescent glow of the sea. It was a strange world: he had never been alone in it before. He had a deceptive sense of freedom as he walked softly down towards the Channel.

The lights were on in Montpellier Road. Nobody was about, and an empty milk bottle stood outside a gramophone shop; far down were the illuminated clock tower and the public lavatories. The air was fresh like country air. He could imagine he had escaped. He put his hands for warmth into his trouser-pockets and felt a scrap of paper which should not have been there. He drew it out—a scrap torn from a notebook—big, unformed, stranger’s writing. He held it up into the grey light and read—with difficulty. ‘I love you, Pinkie. I don’t care what you do. I love you for ever. You’ve been good to me. Wherever you go, I’ll go too.’ She must have written it while he talked to Cubitt and slipped it into his pocket while he slept. He crumpled it in his fist, a dustbin stood outside a fishmonger’s—then he held his hand. An obscure sense told him you never knew—it might prove useful one day.

He heard a whisper, looked sharply round, and thrust the paper back. In an alley between two shops, an old woman sat upon the ground; he could just see the rotting and discoloured face: it was like the sight of damnation. Then he heard the whisper, ‘Blessed art thou among women,’ saw the grey fingers fumbling at the beads. This was not one of the damned: he watched with horrified fascination: this was one of the saved.

PART SEVEN

1

It did not seem in the least strange to Rose that she should wake alone—she was a stranger in the country of mortal sin, and she assumed that everything was customary. He was, she supposed, about his business. No alarm-clock dinned her to get up but the morning light woke her, pouring through the uncurtained glass. Once she heard footsteps in the passage, and once a voice called ‘Judy’ imperatively. She lay there wondering what a wife had to do—or rather a mistress.

But she didn’t lie long—that was frightening, the unusual passivity. It wasn’t like life at all—to have nothing to do. Suppose they assumed she knew—about the stove to be lit, the table to be laid, the debris to be cleared away. A clock struck seven; it was an unfamiliar clock (all her life she had lived in hearing of the same one till now), and the strikes seemed to fall more slowly and more sweetly through the early summer air than any she had ever heard before. She felt happy and scared: seven o’clock was a terribly late hour. She scrambled out and was about to mutter her quick ‘Our Fathers’ and ‘Hail Marys’ while she dressed, when she remembered again. . . What was the good of praying now? She’d finished with all that: she had chosen her side: if they damned him they’d got to damn her, too.

In the ewer there was only an inch of water with a grey heavy surface, and when she lifted the lid of the soap-box she found three pound notes wrapped round two half-crowns. She put the lid back: that was just another custom you had to get used to. She took a look round the room, opened a wardrobe and found a tin of biscuits and a pair of boots; some crumbs crunched under her tread. The gramophone record caught her attention on the chair
where
she’d lain it and she stowed it in the cupboard for greater safety. Then she opened the door: not a sound or sign of life: looked over the banisters, the new wood squeaked under her pressure. Somewhere down below must be the kitchen, the living room, the places where she had to work. She went cautiously down—seven o’clock—what furious faces—in the hall a ball of paper scuffled under her feet. She smoothed it out and read a pencilled message: ‘Lock your door. Have a good time.’ She didn’t understand it: it might as well have been in code—she assumed it must have something to do with this foreign world where you sinned on a bed and people lost their lives suddenly and strange men hacked at your door and cursed you in the night.

She found the basement stairs; they were dark where they dropped under the hall, but she didn’t know where to find a switch. Once she nearly tripped and held the wall close with beating heart, remembering the evidence at the inquest, how Spicer had fallen. His death gave the house a feeling of importance: she had never been on the scene of a recent death. At the bottom of the stairs she opened the first door she came to, cautiously, expecting a curse: it was the kitchen all right, but it was empty. It wasn’t like either of the kitchens she knew: the one at Snow’s clean, polished, busy: the one at home which was just the room where you sat, where people cooked and ate and had moods and warmed themselves on bitter nights and dozed in chairs. This was like the kitchen in a house for sale: the stove was full of cold coke: on the window-sill there were two empty sardine tins: a dirty saucer lay under the table for a cat which wasn’t there: a cupboard stood open full of empties.

She went and raked at the dead coke; the stove was cold to the touch: there hadn’t been a fire alight there for hours or days. The thought struck her that she’d been deserted: perhaps this was what happened in
this
world, the sudden flight, leaving everything behind, your empty bottles and your girl and the message in code on a scrap of paper. When the door opened she expected a policeman.

It was Dallow in pyjama trousers. He looked in, said, ‘Where’s Judy?’ then seemed to notice her. He said, ‘You’re up early.’

‘Early?’ She couldn’t understand what he meant.

‘I thought it was Judy routing around. You remember me. I’m Dallow.’

She said, ‘I thought maybe I’d better light the stove.’

‘What for?’

‘Breakfast.’

He said, ‘If that polony’s gone and forgotten—’ He went to a dresser and pulled open a drawer. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘what’s got you? You don’t want a stove. There’s plenty here.’ Inside the drawer were stacks of tins: sardines, herrings. . . She said, ‘But tea.’

He looked at her oddly. ‘Anyone’d think you wanted work. No one here wants any tea. Why take the trouble? There’s beer in the cupboard, and Pinkie drinks the milk out of the bottle.’ He padded back to the door. ‘Help yourself, kid, if you’re hungry. Pinkie want anything?’

‘He’s gone out.’

‘Christ’s sake, what’s come over this house?’ He stopped in the doorway and took another look at her as she stood with helpless hands near the dead stove. He said, ‘You don’t
want
to work, do you?’

‘No,’ she said doubtfully.

He was puzzled. ‘I wouldn’t want to stop you,’ he said. ‘You’re Pinkie’s girl. You go ahead and light that stove if you want. I’ll shut up Judy if she barks, but Christ knows where you’ll find the coke. Why, that stove’s not been lit since March.’

‘I don’t want to put anyone out,’ Rose said. ‘I came down. . . I thought. . . I’d
got
to light it.’

‘You don’t need to do a stroke,’ Dallow said. ‘You take it from me, this is Liberty Hall.’ He said, ‘You’ve not seen a bitch with red hair routing around, have you?’

‘I haven’t seen a soul.’

‘Well,’ Dallow said, ‘I’ll be seeing you.’ She was alone again in the cold kitchen. Needn’t do a stroke. . . Liberty Hall. . . She leant against the whitewashed wall and saw an old flypaper dangling above the dresser; somebody a long time ago had set a mousetrap by a hole, but the bait had been stolen and the trap had snapped on nothing at all. It was a lie when people said that sleeping with a man made no difference: you emerged from pain to this—freedom, liberty, strangeness. A stifled exhilaration moved
in
her breast, a kind of pride. She opened the kitchen door boldly and there at the head of the basement stairs was Dallow and the red-haired bitch, the woman he’d called Judy. They stood with lips glued together in an attitude of angry passion: they might have been inflicting on each other the greatest injury of which they were either of them capable. The woman wore a mauve dressing-gown with a dusty bunch of paper poppies, the relic of an old November. As they fought mouth to mouth the sweet-toned clock sounded the half-hour. Rose watched them from the foot of the stairs. She had lived years in a night. She knew all about this now.

The woman saw her and took her mouth from Dallow’s. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘who’s here?’

‘It’s Pinkie’s girl,’ Dallow said.

‘You’re up early. Hungry?’

‘No. I just thought—maybe I ought to light the fire.’

‘We don’t use that fire often,’ the woman said. ‘Life’s too short.’ She had little pimples round her mouth and an air of ardent sociability. She stroked her carrot hair and coming down the stairs to Rose fastened a mouth wet and prehensile like a sea anemone upon her cheek. She smelt faintly, stalely, of Californian Poppy. ‘Well, dear,’ she said, ‘you’re one of us now,’ and she seemed to present to Rose in a generous gesture the half-naked man, the bare dark stairs, the barren kitchen. She whispered softly so that Dallow couldn’t hear, ‘You won’t tell anyone you saw us, dear, will you? Frank gets worked up, an’ it don’t mean anything, not anything at all.’

Rose dumbly shook her head: this foreign land absorbed her too quickly—no sooner were you past the customs than the naturalization papers were signed, you were conscripted. . . 

‘There’s a duck,’ the woman said. ‘Any friend of Pinkie’s is a friend of all of us. You’ll be meeting the boys before long.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Dallow from the top of the stairs.

‘You mean—’

‘We got to talk to Pinkie serious.’

‘Did you have Cubitt here last night?’ the woman asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Rose said. ‘I don’t know who anyone is. Someone rang the bell and swore a lot and kicked the door.’

‘That was Cubitt,’ the woman gently explained.

‘We got to talk to Pinkie serious. It’s not safe,’ Dallow said.

‘Well, dear, I’d better be getting back to Frank.’ She paused on a step just above Rose. ‘If you ever want a dress cleaned, dear, you couldn’t do better than give it to Frank. Though I say it who shouldn’t. There’s no one like Frank for getting out grease marks. An’ he hardly charges a thing to lodgers.’ She bent down and laid a freckled finger on Rose’s shoulder. ‘It could do with a sponge now.’