When not courting with Pauline, Brian would go on the pick-up with Bill, starting off of a Sunday night in the fourpenny gods of the flea-pit Grand, watching a show of some trash film until bored even with the ironic loud laughter at the old-fashioned style of it; then they’d sneak farther up and find a couple of girls to slide their arms around. Sometimes the girls were out for a thrill as well and they’d soon be locked in mouth-to-mouth combat from which no quarter was given. It was the kind of sport Brian liked, and he often tried to go the whole way while still on the back row so that even Bill Eddison was shocked. One night Brian had a girl’s blouse undone and her breasts exposed to his roaming hands, and was bending her so far over the seat that a little girl to the left became more fascinated than at the movements on the screen and asked, in a bright enquiring voice: “Mam, what’s that man doing to that woman?” Bill prodded him, piqued at not getting half so far with his girl. “Let’s get cracking before you get thrown out.” At which the four of them clattered off for fish and chips before the usherette came back with the manager.
Mostly, though, Brian spent his evenings with Pauline. They liked going out with each other, and she had come to him the first time out of the dark back seats of the Savoy picture-house: when the cheap war film was winding to a shindig finish and all interest had gone (Why didn’t the hero, who you knew would live, get killed? And why didn’t those who had death in their sad eyes live?), he turned and saw her, isolated among seats, face set on the screen, quietly looking at it, though without the intent fastening he often felt in his own gaze. He moved over, a lone wolf tonight, sat by her side and talked. “I can’t stick pictures like these: they give me a gut-ache.” After a pause she said: “Why do you come, then?” “Cause I thought it’d be good.” “Well, now you know, don’t you?” At least she was talking: a good start. “I do an’ all. I wain’t come again, thou, unless yo’ do. There’s a better film on next week: a musical. Kay Kaiser and his band.” “I like Harry James best.” “I do sometimes. That big trumpet makes me feel as if I’ve got frogs in my tab-’ole, though.” “Wash ’em out, and then it wouldn’t, would it?” His arm was around the shoulder of her seat. “I’ll walk home with you, if you like,” he said. “I’ve got somebody,” she told him. While “God Save the King” played, they made for the exit, and a youth came down the aisle and took Pauline’s arm. “Lay off, mate,” Brian said. “I’m seeing her home.” “That’s what yo’ think,” the youth said. “That’s what I know,” Brian told him. There was some disappointment in him at the girl’s not coming over to his side, though he grinned at the fact that they didn’t even know each other’s names. So why should she? He had one arm, and the other was taken by the tall youth, who looked brawnier than the picture he carried of himself in the wallet of his heart, though that might have been because of his heavy dark overcoat and the white muffler around his neck. Brian thought he knew him from some factory or other.
The black-out blinded him. She didn’t try to shake the youth off, nor get rid of Brian, but walked calmly between them both, as if knowing that it would resolve itself somehow and that when she ended up with only one of them, she’d then decide whether or not she wanted him. I suppose I should scram, Brian thought. If they are courting, I ought to leave them alone. They might even be engaged, for all I know. His instinct was to undertake himself into the darkest part of the black-out. Maybe they’re childhood sweethearts and I’m breaking it all up. But he kept a grip on her arm (later they were able to laugh over it), his mind blank with stubbornness, walking with her and the youth across the dark main road and into a quiet street.
The youth pulled them to a violent stop, and Brian was treated to a blood-red oil-gusher spouting before his eyes, a multicolour flash that made him let go of Pauline and stagger backwards to a chapel wall, roaring at the shock. The blow carried the seed of retaliation; he swung his fist against the youth’s head, clenched fingers ringing with pain as if he had struck concrete or iron. Pauline stood in the middle of the road like a shadow, waiting for one or the other, and Brian decided it would be him, his mind changing to not-so-sure as he wheeled again into the wall from a strong thump in his chest. He gasped, realized that it was no play-acting, that this was a total fight from which there was no running away. He lost his nerve and drove wild, made to the left of the youth as if to give the impression of cunning, feeling for some weak spot in his perimeter before returning a blow. With head down he charged, under the fists and coming up too close to be struck, gripping him around the waist and pulling tight, knowing his strength would be able to bend him down double and drop him to the kerb. Both hands locked, he squeezed inwards, the youth’s arms fastened safe, Brian’s chin grinding his chest bones, working the strongest pitch of a sack-carrying strength into his adversary — until the youth gave way and dropped. Brian let go, unable to control the dead weight of him, but the youth was up before he could sink his boots for the grapefruit crush. Brian kept close, and after a quiet grunting scuffle he found a head under his arm. In a split second he saw what had come about, tightened the vice of his arm muscles, held the head and beat his other folded hand unmercifully into it, thankful for such good luck — as the pain from the youth’s first blows began burning his own face.
The youth kicked and struggled. Brian was gone, sent beyond the world and into a dream of primeval vicious light. “Stop it,” Pauline cried. “Stop it.” The words came to him, and his fist, liquid running over the stone of it, held still. “Yo’ ’ed enough?” he demanded, releasing the head. The youth groaned and fell.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s beat it.” She took his arm and they walked off. “You needn’t a done that,” she said angrily. “He’d a gone in two minutes, I’m sure.” She slung his arm from her.
“You weren’t courting?” he said.
“Course we worn’t. He’d only been sitting with me a minute before you came. He asked me if he could tek me home, and I never answered him.” Brian kept quiet, and she said no more for a while, for which he was glad because he felt tears on his cheeks. He wanted to walk away and never see her again, to bury the shame he felt. A dark wave swamped him, but he needed even more to stay near her, to feel her close because the pain in his heart would then be less. It would tear him apart if he went on his own into the darkness. He kept telling himself to go back and see if the youth was O.K., yet at every genuine agonizing demand he was getting farther away. “I suppose he’s all right?”
“I expect so,” she said, taking his arm again. Blood flowed through his pains, an evening on spec at the pictures had ended like this, and he was glad to have fought for this girl, whom he hadn’t yet seen in full daylight, and won. “What’s your name, duck?” he asked, pulling her to him in a kiss. A car droned by, lights dim towards town. “Pauline,” she said. When he got home and dipped his hands into a bowl of water, the water turned pink. Next morning his face was no sight for sore eyes.