Brighton Rock Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 café. 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 asked.
    ‘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 recognize 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.’

3
    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 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 Henekey’s, as if she had emerged from some adventure which had given her a better