"Go on. I'll pay."
"It's no good you 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. Drewitt 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. Drewitt 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 way else."
"Given time," Mr. Drewitt 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 said with sudden eagerness. It had never occurred to him that Drewitt...
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. Drewitt 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. Drewitt 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. Drewitt said.
"Well fix it together." Cubitt had gone. The Boy said: "You'll find a nicker on the washstand."
"I don't see one," Mr. Drewitt said anxiously, shifting a toothbrush.
"In the soap dish under the cover."
Dallow put his head into the room. "Evening," he said to Mr. Drewitt. 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 strip 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 apologising for being alive at all he 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. Drewitt: "In the soap dish. He said it was in the soap dish," and the clatter of china noisily moved about.
"Fin 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 Henneky'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 small wild animal who will not recognise 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 pubPARTFOUR lie, 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 that Ida had been drinking returned a little; she put her hand up to her mouth and said mechanically: "Pardon," belching towards the closed door.
"I can't help you. I don't know anything."
"Let me in, dear, and I'll explain. I can't shout things on the landing."
"Why should you care about me?"
"I don't want the innocent to suffer."
"As if you knew," the soft voice accused her, "who was innocent."
"Open the door, dear." She began, but only a little, to lose her patience--her patience was almost as deep as her goodwill. She felt the handle and pushed; she knew that waitresses were not allowed keys; but a chair had been wedged under the handle. She said with irritation: "You won't escape me this way." She put her weight against the door and the chair cracked and shifted, the door opened a slit.
"I'm going to make you listen," Ida said. When you were life saving you must never hesitate, so they taught you, to stun the one you rescued. She put her hand in and detached the chair, then went in through the open door. Three iron bedsteads, a chest of drawers, two chairs, and a couple of cheap mirrors: she took it all in and Rose against the wall as far as she could get, watching the door with terror through her innocent and experienced eyes, as if there was nothing which mightn't come through.