Alan Hunter: Gently by the Shore

Stationed behind a punchball machine, Gently watched the crouched, ragged figure insert coin after coin. Each time the descending grab would seize on one of the more substantial pieces of trash in the glass case. Sometimes it failed to grasp securely and nothing would rattle down the shoot except a few gaudy-coloured sweets, but always the grab dropped plumb on a prize in the first instance.

Gently lit his pipe and continued to watch. All round him machines were ringing and clattering. Any two of that crowd could be the two in question… at any moment they might spot Nits, or Nits them. And what then? he asked himself. Suppose he was lucky and stumbled on them? What they had said to Nits might have been no more than a joke, the sort of silly thing to be said to a halfwit. Of course it was odd that they had known him, Gently, on sight… but then, the picture in the evening paper might have jogged their memories. There had been bigger and better pictures of him in the same paper the year before.

No, he told himself, it wasn’t much better than a hunch, after all …

The music changed to something plaintive and caressing, and as though it were a signal Nits crammed his collection of ballpoints and flash jewellery into his pockets and darted to the door. Gently moved forward also, but the halfwit came to a standstill short of the entrance, so he slid back again into the cover of the punch-ball machine. Was Nits expecting someone? It rather seemed like it. He stood by the door, apparently trembling, and strained his protruding eyes in the direction of the Wellesley Pier. Several people came in, but these were ignored. Nits didn’t even glance at them as they pushed past. Then he gave a little whimper and a skip, like a dog sighting its master, and a moment later the object of his vigil appeared.

She was a blonde, a tall, big-bodied blonde. She didn’t have to broadcast her vocation, either to Gently or the world. She wore a sleeveless green silk blouse, high-heels and a black hobble skirt, and walked with a flaunt that looked vaguely expensive.

‘Geddart,’ she said to Nits in the husky voice of sin, ‘keep away from me, you dirty liddle so-and-so — how many more times must I tell you?’

‘I’ve been a good boy!’ piped Nits, frisking and cringing beside her as she hipped down the arcade.

‘I don’d care — jusd keep away from me.’

‘I got something — I got something! Look for you!’ Nits pulled out his hoard of swag and tried to thrust it into the blonde’s hands, but she snatched them away and the stuff tinkled on to the floor.

‘I don’t wand it!’ she yelped, ‘keep your dirdy muck to yourself! Don’d ever come near me again!’ And she bustled away through the grinning crowd, leaving Nits to scrabble amongst the feet for his scattered treasure.

‘That’s my gal, Frenchy!’ shouted someone, ‘don’t you have him if you don’t fancy him!’

The blonde turned back and said something so filthy that even Gently was taken aback, then she swaggered through the swing-doors of the bar.

‘Whoo-whoo!’ was the cry, ‘Frenchy’s got the answer, don’t you forget it!’

On the floor Nits chattered and sobbed with rage. ‘I’ll kill you — I’ll kill you!’ he babbled, ‘I’ve been a good boy — I have — I have!’

Gently stooped and rescued a plastic ballpoint from under the heel of a bystander. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘one you missed.’

Nits seized it and stuffed it into his pocket after the others. ‘I’ll kill you!’ he whispered in an ecstasy of passion.

‘Did she know him?’ asked Gently, ‘did she know the man who wouldn’t wake up?’

Nits’s green eyes burned at him like two malignant lamps and Gently, moving swiftly, moved only just in time. As it was the leaping halfwit sent his trilby flying. Then, recovering himself, Nits dived for the door and his turn of speed was something that Gently could only have sighed for in his palmiest days…

The bar was rather a contrast to the rest of the establishment. It had got missed out when the wielder of plastic and chromium-plate had gone his merry way. It was quite a large place and its dim, parchmented lighting made it seem larger still. It was also irregular in shape. There were corners of it that tucked away, and other corners which had been given an inglenook treatment. Opposite the swing-doors ran the bar counter, its supporting shelves well fledged with opulent looking bottles, and to the left of the counter was a door marked ‘Private’. Further left again was a small exit door, leading probably into a side-street.

Gently eased himself through the swing-doors and stood still for a moment, adjusting his vision to the drop in candle-power. It seemed a fairly well-patronized place. Most of the tables and nookeries were occupied, and there were several customers perched on high stools at the counter. Also it seemed quiet in there, but that may have been due only to comparison with the racket going on outside the swing-doors.

He strolled across to the counter, where the blonde was taking charge of a noggin of straight gin.

‘Chalk id up, Artie,’ she crooned, ‘and no chiselling, mind.’

‘Who shall I chalk it up to?’ asked the ferrety bartender with a wink.

‘Don’d be cheeky, Artie — Louey don’d like it!’

She slunk away from the counter, and her eye fell on Gently for the first time. She recognized him, he knew — there was just that much of alert interrogation in her glance — and for a moment he thought she would say something. Then she shrugged a scantily-clad shoulder, gave her head a little toss, and swung away across the room to one of the nookeries.

Gently seated himself on a high stool and ordered an orange-squash.

‘Who is she, Artie?’ he asked the ferrety bartender.

Artie gave the squash-bottle a practised twist. ‘Don’t ask me — ask her,’ he retorted sullenly.

‘But I am asking you. What’s her name?’

‘It’s Frenchy — and I’m not her boyfriend.’

‘Her other name, Artie.’

‘I’m telling you I don’t know!’

‘She mentioned a Louey…’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘She spoke as though you knew him…’

‘Well, I don’t. He must be someone new.’

Gently drank a mouthful of orange-squash and appeared to be losing himself in contemplation of the fruit-scum collected at the mouth of his glass.

‘That’ll be a bob,’ said Artie, ‘if you don’t mind.’

Gently drank some more and was still interested in the fruit-scum. ‘You know, it’s amazing,’ he said casually, ‘the number of people round here who know me without me knowing them… you seem to be the fifth, Artie, by my computation.’

The ferrety one stiffened. ‘Don’t know what you mean by that…’

‘Never mind, never mind,’ said Gently soothingly, ‘we’ll go into it some other time, shall we?’ He slid off his stool and picked up the part-drunk glass of orange-squash.

‘Hey!’ clamoured Artie, ‘that’s still got to be paid for…!’

‘Chalk it up,’ returned Gently, ‘and no chiselling, mind. Louey don’d like it…’

He ambled over to a small table by the wall and pulled up a seat with better padding than the high stool. There were other eyes on him besides Artie’s; several customers at the counter had heard the conversation, and now turned to watch the bulky figure cramming itself into its chair. Not only at the counter either… out of the corner of his eye Gently could see Frenchy in her nookery, and two other figures near her. They were all giving him their attention…

‘’Ere!’ whispered a sporty-looking individual to Artie, ‘is that geezer a busy?’

‘Yard,’ clipped Artie from the corner of his mouth.