Graham Greene: Brighton Rock

Already she had apparently forgotten his exploring hand. But would she remember, he wondered, if later people asked her questions? He despised her quiet, her pallor, her desire to please; did she also observe, remember...? "You wouldn't guess," she said, "what I found here only ten minutes ago. When I changed the cloth."

"Do you always change the cloth?" the Boy said.

"Oh, no," she said, putting out the tea things, "but a customer upset his drink and when I changed it, there was one of Kolley Kibber's cards, worth ten shillings. It was quite a shock," she said, lingering gratefully with the tray, "and the others don't like it. You see, it's only my second day here. They say I was a fool not to challenge him and get the prize."

"Why didn't you challenge him?"

"Because I never thought. He wasn't a bit like the photograph."

"Maybe the card had been there all the morning."

"Oh, no," she said, "it couldn't have been. He was the first man at this table."

"Well," the Boy said, "it don't make any odds.

You've got the card."

"Oh, yes, I've got it. Only it don't seem quite fair you see what I mean him being so different. I might have got the prize. I can tell you I ran to the door when I saw the card; I didn't wait."

"And did you see him?"

She shook her head.

"I suppose," the Boy said, "you hadn't looked at him close. Else you'd have known."

"I always look at you close," the girl said, "the customer, I mean. You see, I'm new. I get a bit scared.

I don't want to do anything to offend. Oh," she said aghast, "like standing here talking when you want a cup of tea."

"That's all right," the Boy said. He smiled at her stiffly; he couldn't use those muscles with any naturalness. "You're the kind of girl I like " The words were the wrong ones; he saw it at once and altered them. "I mean," he said, "I like a girl who's friendly.

Some of these here they freeze you."

"They freeze me."

"You're sensitive, that's what it is," the Boy said, "like me." He said abruptly: "I suppose you wouldn't recognise that newspaper man again? I mean, he may be still about."

"Oh, yes," she said, "I'd know him. I've got a memory for faces."

The Boy's cheek twitched. He said: "I see you and I've got a bit in common. We ought to get together one evening. What's your name?"

"Rose."

He put a coin on the table and got up. "But your tea?" she said.

"Here we been talking, and I had an appointment at two sharp."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Rose said. "You should've stopped me."

"That's all right," the Boy said. "I liked it. It's only ten past anyway by your clock. When do you get off of an evening?"

"We don't close till half past ten except on Sundays."

"I'll be seeing you," the Boy said. "You an' me have things in common."

Ida Arnold broke her way across the Strand} she couldn't be bothered to wait for the signals, and she didn't trust the Belisha beacons. She made her own way under the radiators of the buses; the drivers ground their brakes and glared at her, and she grinned back at them. She was always a little flushed as the clock struck eleven and she reached Henneky's, as if she had emerged from some adventure which had given her a better opinion of herself. But she wasn't the first in Henneky's. "Hullo, you old ghost," she said, and the sombre thin man in black with a bowler hat sitting beside a wine barrel said: "Oh, forget it, Ida. Forget it."

"You in mourning for yourself?" Ida said, cocking her hat at a better angle in a mirror which advertised White Horse; she didn't look a day over thirtyfive.

"My wife's dead. Have a Guinness, Ida?"

"Yes. I'll have a Guinness. I didn't even know you had a wife."

"We don't know much about each other, that's what it is, Ida," he said. "Why, I don't even know how you live or how many husbands you've had."

"Oh, there's only been one Tom," Ida said.

"There's been more than Tom in your life."

"You ought to know," Ida said.

"Give me a glass of Ruby," the sombre man said.

"I was just thinking when you came in, Ida, why shouldn't we two come together again?"

"You and Tom always want to start again," Ida said. "Why don't you keep tight hold when you've got a girl?"

"What with my little bit of money and yours "

"I like to start something fresh," Ida said. "Not off with the new and on with the old."

"But you've a kind heart, Ida."

"That's what you call it," Ida said, and in the dark depth of her Guinness kindness winked up at her, a bit sly, a bit earthy, having a good time. "Do you ever have a bit on the horses?" she said.

"I don't believe in betting. It's a mug's game."

"That's it," Ida said. "A mug's game. You never know whether you'll be up or down. I like it," she said with passion', looking across the wine barrel at the thin pale man, her face more flushed than ever, more young, more kind. "Black Boy," she said softly.

"Eh, what's that?" the ghost said sharply, snatching a glance at his face in the White Horse mirror.

"It's the name of a horse," she said, "that's all. A fellow gave it me at Brighton. I was wondering if maybe I'd see him at the races. He got lost somehow.

I liked him. You didn't know whatever he'd be saying next. I owe him money too."

"You saw about this Kolley Kibber at Brighton the other day?"

"Found him dead, didn't they? I saw a poster."

"They've had the inquest."

"Did he kill himself?"

"Oh, no. Just his heart. The heat knocked him over. But the paper's paid the prize to the man who found him. Ten guineas," the ghost said, "for finding a corpse." He laid the paper bitterly down on the wine barrel. "Give me another Ruby."

"Why!" Ida said. "Is that picture the man who found him? The little rat. That's where he went to.

No wonder he didn't need his money back."

"No, no, that's not him" the ghost said. "That's Kolley Kibber." He took a little wooden pick out of a paper packet and began to scrape his teeth.

"Oh," Ida said. It was like a blow. "Then he wasn't trying it on," she said. "He was sick." She remembered how his hand had shaken in the taxi and how he had implored her not to leave him, just as if he had known he was going to die before she came back. But he hadn't made a scene. "He was a gentleman," she said gently. He must have fallen there by the turnstile as soon as she had turned her back, and she had gone on down without knowing into the Ladies'. A sense of tears came to her now in Henneky's; she measured those polished white steps down to the wash basins as if they were the slow stages of a tragedy.

"Ah, well," the ghost said gloomily, "we've all got to die."

"Yes," Ida said, "but he wouldn't've wanted to die any more than I want to die." She began to read and exclaimed almost at once: "What made him walk all that way in that heat?" For he hadn't dropped at the turnstile: he'd gone back all the way they'd come, sat in a shelter....

"He'd got his job to do."

"He didn't say anything to me about a job. He said: Til be here. Just here. By this turnstile,' He said: *Be quick, Ida. I'll be here/ " and as she repeated what she could remember of his words she had a feeling that later, in an hour or two, when things got straightened out, she would want to cry a bit for the death of that scared passionate bag of bones who called himself "Why," she said, "whatever do they mean? Read here."

"What about it?" the man said.

"The bitches!" Ida said. "What would they go and tell a lie like that for?"

"What lie? Have another Guinness. You don't want to fuss about that."

"I don't mind if I do," Ida said, but when she had taken a long draught she returned to the paper. She had instincts; and now her instincts told her there was something odd, something which didn't smell right.