Graham Greene: Brighton Rock

"He'd better have an appetite," the Boy said and, leaning his face on his hands, he watched Spicer's pale-faced progress up the tea room and felt anger grinding at his guts like the tide at the piles below.

"It's five to two," he said. "That's right, isn't it? It's five to two?" he called to the waitress.

"It took longer than we thought," Spicer said, dropping into the chair, dark and pallid and spotty. He looked with nausea at the brown crackling slab of fish the girl set before him. "I'm not hungry," he said. "I can't eat this. What do you think I am?" and they all three left their fish untasted as they stared at the Boy like children before his ageless eyes.

The Boy poured anchovy sauce out over his chips.

"Eat," he said. "Go on. Eat." Dallow suddenly grinned. "He ain't got no appetite," he said and stuffed his mouth with fish. They all talked low, their words lost to those around in the hubbub of plates and voices and the steady surge of the sea. Cubitt followed suit, picking at his fish; only Spicer wouldn't eat. He sat stubbornly there, grey-haired and sea-sick.

"Give me a drink, Pinkie," he said. "I can't swallow this stuff."

"You aren't going to have a drink, not today," the Boy said. "Go on. Eat."

Spicer put some fish to his mouth. "I'll be sick," he said, "if I eat."

"Spew then," the Boy said. "Spew if you like. You haven't any guts to spew." He said to Dallow: "Did it go all right?"

"It was perfect," Dallow said. "Me and Cubitt planted him. We gave the cards to Spicer."

"You put 'em out all right?" the Boy said.

"Of course I put 'em out," Spicer said.

"All along the parade?"

"Of course I put 'em out. I don't see why you get so fussed about the cards."

"You don't see much," the Boy said. "They're an alibi, aren't they?" He dropped his voice and whispered it over the fish. "They prove he kept to programme. They show he died after two." He raised his voice again. "Listen. Do you hear that?"

Faintly in the town a clock chimed and struck twice.

"Suppose they found him already?" Spicer said.

"Then that's just too bad for us," the Boy said.

"What about that polony he was with?"

"She don't matter," the Boy said. "She's just a buer he gave her a half. I saw him hand it out."

"You take account of most things," Dallow said with admiration. He poured himself a cup of black tea and helped himself to five lumps of sugar.

"I take account of what I do myself," the Boy said.

"Where did you put the cards?" he said to Spicer.

"I put one of 'em in Snow's," Spicer said.

"What do you mean? Snow's?"

"He had to eat, hadn't he?" Spicer said. "The paper said so. You said I was to follow the paper. It'd look odd, wouldn't it, if he didn't eat? And he always puts one where he eats."

"It'd look odder," the Boy said, "if the waitress spotted your face wasn't right and she found it soon as you left. Where did you put it in Snow's?"

"Under the tablecloth," Spicer said. "That's what he always does. There'll have been plenty at that table since me. She won't know it wasn't him. I don't suppose she'll find it before night, when she takes off the cloth. Maybe it'll even be another girl."

"You go back," the Boy said, "and bring that card here. I'm not taking chances."

"I'll not go back," Spicer's voice broke above a whisper, and once again they all three stared at the Boy in silence.

"You go, Cubitt," the Boy said. "Maybe it had better not be him again. "

"Not me," Cubitt said. "Suppose they'd found the card and saw me looking. Better take a chance and leave it alone," he urged in a whisper.

"Talk natural," the Boy said, "talk natural," as the waitress came back to the table.

"Do you boys want any more?" she said.

"Yes," the Boy said, "we'll have ice-cream."

"Stow it, Pinkie," Dallow protested when the girl had left them, "we don't want ice-cream. We ain't a lot of tarts, Pinkie."

"If you don't want ice-cream, Dallow," the Boy said, "you go to Snow's and get that card. You've got guts, haven't you?"

"I thought we was done with it all," Dallow said.

"I've done enough. I've got guts, you know that, but I was scared stiff.... Why, if they've found him before time, it'd be crazy to go into Snow's."

"Don't talk so loud," the Boy said. "If nobody else '11 go," he said, "I'll go. I'm not scared. Only I get tired sometimes of working with a mob like you. Sometimes I think I'd be better alone." Afternoon moved across the water. He said: "Kite was all right, but Kite's dead. Which was your table?" he asked Spicer.

"Just inside. On the right of the door. A table for one. It's got flowers on it."

"What flowers?"

"I don't know what flowers," Spicer said. "Yellow flowers."

"Don't go, Pinkie," Dallow said, "better leave it alone. You can't tell what'll happen," but the Boy was already on his feet, moving stiffly down the long narrow room above the sea. You couldn't tell if he was scared--his young ancient poker-face told nothing.

In Snow's the rush was over and the table free. The wireless droned a programme of dreary music, broadcast by a cinema organist a great vox humana trembled across the crumby stained desert of used cloths: the world's wet mouth lamenting over life. The waitress whipped the cloths off as soon as the tables were free and laid tea things. Nobody paid any attention to the Boy--they turned their backs when he looked at them. He slipped his hand under the cloth and found nothing there. Suddenly the little spurt of vicious anger rose again in the Boy's brain and he smashed a salt sprinkler down on the table so hard that the base cracked. A waitress detached herself from a gossiping group and came towards him, cold-eyed, acquisitive, ash-blonde. "Well?" she said, taking in the shabby suit, the too young face.

"I want service," the Boy said.

"You're late for the lunch."

"I don't want lunch," the Boy said. "I want a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits."

"Will you go to one of the tables laid for tea, please?"

"No," the Boy said. "This table suits me."

She sailed away again, superior and disapproving, and he called after her: "Will you take that order?"

"The waitress serving your table will be here in a minute," she said, and moved away to the gossips by the service door. The Boy shifted his chair, the nerve in his cheek twitched, again he put his hand under the cloth: it was a tiny action, but it might hang him if he was observed. Still he could feel nothing, and he thought with fury of Spicer: he'll muddle once too often, we'd be better without him.

"Was it tea you wanted, sir?" He looked sharply up with his hand under the cloth: one of those girls who creep about, he thought, as if they were afraid of their own footsteps: a pale thin girl younger than himself.

He said: "I gave the order once."

She apologised abjectly: "There's been such a rush.

And it's my first day. This was the only breathing spell. Have you lost something?"

He withdrew his hand, watching her with dangerous and unfeeling eyes; his cheek twitched again; it was the little things which tripped you up; he could think of no reason at all for having his hand under the table. She went on helpfully: "I'll have to change the cloth again for tea, so if you've lost " In no time she had cleared the table of pepper and salt and mustard, the cutlery and the O. K. sauce, the yellow flowers, had nipped together the corners of the cloth and lifted it in one movement from the table, crumbs and all.

"There's nothing there, sir," she said. He looked at the bare table top and said: "I hadn't lost anything."

She began to lay a fresh cloth for tea. She seemed to find something agreeable about him which made her talk, something in common perhaps youth and shabbiness and a kind of ignorance in the dapper caU.