The Boy could see into the room now from the head of the stairs, though the broad back, the large loose dress, the square hips of the woman nearly blocked his view of Rose, who stood back against the wall in an attitude of sullen defiance. Small and bony in the black cotton dress and the white apron, her eyes stained but tearless, startled and determined, she carried her courage with a kind of comic inadequacy, like the little man in the bowler put up by the management to challenge the strong man at a fair. She said: "You'd better let me be."
It was Nelson Place and Manor Street which stood there in the servant's bedroom, and for a moment he felt no antagonism but a faint nostalgia. He was aware that she belonged to his life, like a room or a chair: she was something which completed him; he thought: "She's got more guts than Spicer." What was most evil in him needed her: it couldn't get along without goodness. He said softly: "What are you worrying my girl about?" and the claim he made was curiously sweet to his ears, like a refinement of cruelty. After all, though he had aimed higher than Rose, he had this comfort: she couldn't have gone lower than himself.
He stood there, with a smirk on his face, when the woman turned; "between the stirrup and the ground," he had learned the fallacy of that comfort j if he had attached to himself some bright brassy skirt, like the ones he'd seen at the Cosmopolitan, his triumph after all wouldn't have been so great. He smirked at the pair of them, nostalgia driven out by a surge of sad sensuality. She was good, he'd discovered that, and he was damned: they were made for each other.
"You leave her alone," the woman said. "I know all about you." It was as if she were in a strange country: the typical Englishwoman abroad. She hadn't even got a phrase book. She was as far from either of them as she was from Hell or Heaven. Good and evil lived in the same country, spoke the same language, came together like old friends, feeling the same completion, touching hands beside the iron bedstead. "You want to do what's Right, Rose?" she implored.
Rose whispered again: "You let us be."
"You're a Good Girl, Rose. You don't want anything to do with Him."
"You don't know a thing."
There was nothing she could do at the moment but threaten from the door: "I haven't finished with you yet. I've got friends."
The Boy watched her go with amazement. He said: "Who the hell is she?"
"I don't know," Rose said.
"I've never seen her before." The vaguest memory pricked him and passed.
"What did she want?"
"I don't know."
"You're a good girl, Rose," the Boy said, pressing his fingers round the small sharp wrist.
She shook her head. "I'm bad." She implored him: "I want to be bad if she's good and you "
"You'll never be anything but good," the Boy said.
"There's some wouldn't like you for that, but I don't care."
"I'll do anything for you. Tell me what to do. I don't want to be like her."
"It's not what you do," the Boy said, "it's what you think." He boasted. "It's in the blood. Perhaps when they christened me, the holy water didn't take. I never howled the devil out."
"Is she good?" She came weakly to him for instruction.
"She?" The Boy laughed. "She's just nothing."
"We can't stay here," Rose said. "I wish we could."
She looked round her, at a badly foxed steel engraving of Van Tromp's victory, the three black bedsteads, the two mirrors, the single chest of drawers, the pale mauve knots of flowers on the wallpaper, as if she was safer here than she could ever be in the squally summer night outside. "It's a nice room." She wanted to share it with him till it became a home for both of them.
"How'd you like to leave this place?"
"Snow's? Oh, no, it's a good place. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than Snow's."
"I mean marry me."
"We aren't old enough."
"It could be managed. There are ways." He dropped her wrist and put on a careless air. "If you wanted. I don't mind."
"Oh," she said. "I want it. But they'll never let us."
He explained airily. "It couldn't be in church, not at first. There'd be difficulties. Are you afraid?"
"I'm not afraid," she said. "But will they let us?"
"My lawyer '11 manage somehow."
"Have you got a lawyer?"
"Of course I have."
"It sounds somehow grand and old."
"A man can't get along without a lawyer."
She said: "It's not where I always thought it would be."
"Where what would be?"
"Someone asking me to marry him. I thought in the pictures or maybe at night on the front. But this is best," she said, looking from Van Tromp's victory to the two looking glasses. She came away from the wall and lifted her face to him; he knew what was expected of him; he regarded her unmade-up mouth with faint nausea. Saturday night, eleven o'clock, the primeval exercise. He pressed his hard puritanical mouth on hers; and tasted again the sweetish smell of the human skin. He would have preferred the taste of Coty powder or Kissproof lipstick, of any chemical compound. He shut his eyes and when he opened them again, it was to see her waiting, like a blind girl, for further alms. It shocked him that she had been unable to detect his repulsion. She said: "You know what that means?"
"What means?"
"It means I'll never let you down, never, never, never."
She belonged to him like a room or a chair: the Boy fetched up a smile for the blind lost face, uneasily, with obscure shame.
PART FIVE
EVERYTHING went welclass="underline" the inquest never even got onto the newspaper posters; no questions asked. The Boy walked back with Dallow, he should have felt triumphant. He said: "I wouldn't trust Cubitt if Cubitt knew."
"Cubitt won't know. Drewitt is scared to say a thing and you know I don't talk, Pinkie."
"Fve got a feeling we're being followed, Dallow."
Dallow looked behind. "No one. I know every bogy in Brighton."
"No woman?"
"No. Who are you thinking of?"
"I don't know."
The blind band came up the kerb, scraping the sides of their shoes along the edge, feeling their way in the brilliant light, sweating a little. The boy walked up the side of the road to meet them; the music they played was plaintive, pitying, something out of a hymn book about burdens; it was like a voice prophesying sorrow at the moment of victory. The boy met the leader and pushed him out of the way, swearing at him softly, and the whole band, hearing their leader move, shifted uneasily a foot into the roadway and stood there stranded till the boy was safely by, like barques becalmed on a huge and landless Atlantic.
Then they edged back, feeling for the landfall of the pavement.
"What's up with you, Pinkie?" Dallow said.
"They're blind."
"Why should I get out of my way for a beggar?"
But he hadn't realised they were blind; he was shocked by his own action. It was as if he was being driven too far down a road he wanted to travel only a certain distance. He stood and leant on the rail of the front while the midweek crowd passed and the hard sun flattened.
"What's on your mind, Pinkie?"
"To think of all this trouble over Hale. He deserved what he got, but if I'd known how it would go maybe I'd have let him live. Maybe he wasn't worth killing.
A dirty little journalist who played in with Colleoni and got Kite killed. Why should anyone bother about him?" He looked suddenly over his shoulder. "Have I seen that geezer before?"
"He's only a visitor."
"I thought I'd seen his tie."
"Hundreds in the shops. If you were a drinking man I'd say what you needed was a pick-up. Why, Pinkie, everything's going fine. No questions asked."
"There were only two people could hang us, Spicer and the girl. I've killed Spicer and I'm marrying the girl. Seems to me I'm doing everything."
"Well, we'll be safe now."