Graham Greene: Brighton Rock

"That's right." They both looked at the clock; it was almost nine, and behind the violin the rain tapped against the seaward windows. He said awkwardly: "We'd better be moving soon."

She began to pray to herself: "Holy Mary, Mother of God/ 7 but then she stopped she was in mortal sin; it was no good praying. Her prayers stayed here below with the syphons and the statuettes--they had no wings.

She waited by the fireplace in terrified patience. He said uneasily: "We ought to write something, so people will know."

"It doesn't matter, does it?" she said.

"Oh, yes," he said quickly, "it does. We got to do things right. This is a pact. You read about them in the newspapers."

"Do lots of people do it?"

"It's always happening," he said; an awful and airy confidence momentarily possessed him; the violin faded out and the time signal pinged through the rain.

A voice behind the plant gave them the weather report storms coming up from the Continent, a depression in the Atlantic, tomorrow's forecast. She began to listen and then remembered that tomorrow's weather didn't matter at all.

He said: "Like another drink or something?" He looked round for a Gents' sign "I just got to go an' wash." She noticed the weight in his pocket it was going to be that way. He said: "Just add a piece on that note while I'm gone. Here's a pencil. Say you couldn't live without me, something like that. We got to do this right, as it's always done." He went out into the passage and called to Piker and got his direction, then went up the stairs. At the statuette he turned and looked down into the panelled lounge. This was the kind of moment one kept for memory the wind at the pier end, Sherry's and the man singing, lamplight on the harvest burgundy, the crisis as Cubitt battered at the door. He found that he remembered it all without repulsion; he had a sense that somewhere, like a beggar outside a shuttered house, tenderness stirred, but he was bound in a habit of hate. He turned his back and went on up the stairs. He told himself that soon he would be free again they'd see the note: he hadn't known she was all that unhappy because he'd said they'd got to part; she must have found the gun in Dallow's room and brought it with her. They'd test it for finger prints, of course, and then he stared out through the lavatory window: invisible rollers beat under the cliff. Life would go on. No more human contacts, other people's emotions washing at the brain he would be free again: nothing to think about but himself. Myself: the word echoed hygienically on among the porcelain basins, the taps and plugs and wastes. He took the revolver out of his pocket and loaded it two chambers. In the mirror above the wash basin he could see his hand move round the metal death, adjusting the safety catch. Down below, the news was over and the music had begun again it wailed upwards like a dog over a grave, and the huge darkness pressed a wet mouth against the panes. He put the revolver back and went out into the passage.

That was the next move. Another statuette pointed an obscure moral with cemetery hands and a chaplet of marble flowers, and again he felt the prowling presence of pity.

"They've been gone a long while," Dallow said.

"What are they up to?"

"Who cares?" Jucly said. "They want to be" she fixed her plump prehensile lips against Dallow's cheek "alone" her red hair caught in his mouth a sour taste. "You know what love is," she said.

"He doesn't." He was uneasy conversations came back to him. He said: "He hates her guts." He put his arm half-heartedly round Judy it was no good spoiling a party, but he wished he knew what Pinkie had in mind. He took a long drink out of Judy's glass, and somewhere Worthing way a siren wailed. Through the window he could see a couple mooning at the pier end, and an old man got his fortune card from the witch behind glass.

"Why don't he get clear of her then?" Judy said.

Her mouth looked for his mouth down the line of his jaw. She drew herself indignantly up and said: "Who's that polony over there? What does she want lamping us all the time? This is a free country."

Dallow turned and looked. His brain worked very slowly, first the statement, "I never seen her," and then the memory. "Why," he said, "it's that damned buer who's been getting Pinkie rattled." He got cumbrously to his feet and stumbled a little between the tables. "Who are you?" he said. "Who are you?"

"Ida Arnold," she said, "for what it's worth. My friends call me Ida."

"I'm not your friend."

"You better be," she said gently. "Have a drink.

Where's Pinkie gone and Rose? You ought to 'ave brought them along. This is Phil. Introduce the lady friend." She ran softly on: "It's time we all got together. What's your name?"

"Don't you know what people get who poke their noses?"

"Oh, I know," she said. "I know all right. I was with Fred the day you finished him."

"Talk sense," Dallow said. "Who the hell are you?"

"You ought to know. You followed us all the way up the front in that old Morris of yours." She smiled quite amiably at him. He wasn't her game. "It seems an age ago now, doesn't it?"

It was true all right it seemed an age.

"Have a drink," Ida said, "you may as well. An' where's Pinkie? He didn't seem to like the look of me tonight. What were you celebrating? Not what's happened to Mr. Drewitt? You won't have heard that."

"What do you mean?" Dallow said. The wind got up against the glass and the waitresses yawned.

"You'll see it in the morning papers. I don't want to spoil your fun. And of course you'll know it sooner than that if he talks."

"He's gone abroad."

"He's at the police station now," she said with complete confidence. "They brought him right back," she went elaborately on. "You ought to choose your solicitors better, men who can afford to take a holiday.

They've got him for fraud. Arrested him on the quay."

He watched her uneasily. He didn't believe her but all the same... "You know an awful lot," he said. "Do you sleep at night?"

"Do you?"

The big broken face had a kind of innocence about it. "Me?" he said. "I don't know a thing."

"It was a waste giving him all that money. He'd have run anyway and it didn't look good. When I got hold of Johnnie at the pier "

He stared at her with hopeless amazement. "You got hold of Johnnie? How the hell...?"

She said simply: "People like me." She took a drink and said: "His mother treated him shameful when he was a kid."

"Whose mother?"

"Johnnie's."

Dallow was impatient, puzzled, scared. "What the hell," he said, "do you know about Johnnie's mother?"

"What he told me," she said. She sat there completely at her ease, her big breasts ready for any secrets. She carried her air of compassion and comprehension about her like a rank cheap perfume. She said gently: "I got nothing against you. I like to be friendly. Bring over your lady friend."

He glanced quickly over his shoulder and back again. "I better not," he said. His voice fell. He too began automatically to confide: "Truth is, she's a jealous bitch."

"You don't say? And her old man...?"

"Oh, her old man," he said, "he's all right. What Billy doesn't see, he doesn't mind." He dropped his voice still lower. "And he can't see much he's blind."

"I didn't know that," she said.

"You wouldn't," he said. "Not from his pressing and ironing. He's got a wonderful hand with an iron," then broke suddenly off. "What the hell," he said, "did you mean you didn't know that? What did you know?"

"There isn't much," she said, "I've not picked up here and there. The neighbours always talk." She was barnacled with pieces of popular wisdom.

"Who's talking?" It was Judy now. She'd come across to them. "An' what 'ave they got to talk about?

Why, if I chose to put my tongue round some of their doings... But I wouldn't like to," Judy said. "I wouldn't like to." She looked vaguely round. "What has happened to those two?"