Hangover Square (18 page)

Again, to his utter astonishment, she paused, still looking at the floor and smiling faintly yet not ill-naturedly at his crack about living in sin. Then she rose, and, apparently with the object of putting out her cigarette in the ash-tray, joined him at the fireplace. She was only two feet away and he was within the awful halo. But he was so interested in what she was going to say next that he could hardly respond to the halo. At last she spoke.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘If you’ll pay some of my bills, I wouldn’t mind going away for a bit.’

From that moment, of course, he had gone mad with joy.

‘Pay your bills!’ he had said. ‘Why, of course I’ll pay your bills. Why, Netta, this is wonderful. Of course I’ll pay your bills! Why, this is grand!’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘they’re pretty stiff,’ but he just wouldn’t listen to her. He found out later that he had to give her fifteen pounds, but by that time he was so worked up he would have scarcely cared if it had been fifty.

After a little more talk she said she couldn’t actually go today, because she had certain things to do, but that she would go tomorrow; and finally it was decided that he should go down first and find a hotel, and she would join him. This pleased him beyond all measure. What a task! To go down to Brighton and find a hotel in preparation for Netta’s arrival!

And what a task even preparing to go to Brighton! He must go today – he decided that at once. They had to look out trains, of course, and for this they wanted an A.B.C. ‘Well, we can soon settle that,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and get one now!’ He was so happy he wanted to be on the move. He even wanted to get away from her; so that he could think about her, think about it all. He left her, promising to return with an A.B.C., and of course the first thing he did was to go to the nearest pub and order a pint of beer. After this he had a gin and French, and managed to borrow an A.B.C. from the pub, who said he could take it away if he brought it back.

‘I’m afraid I got so excited I went and had a drink,’ he said when he got back, and she smiled with quiet indulgence. Then they got down to talking about the trains, while she walked about from room to room finishing her dressing, and they decided on the 5.5, arriving 6.5, as the train she should catch, and he would meet her at the station. ‘All right – that’s a date,’ she said. Then he gave her the cheque for fifteen pounds which he had written out when he was in the pub.

‘Really, this is most accommodating of you, George,’ she said in that funny crisp way of hers in which she as it were parodied formal speech. ‘You’ll get it back all right, but you may have to wait a bit.’

‘Oh – don’t bother about that,’ he said, and he didn’t really know whether it was a loan or whether he was giving it to her.

At last the time came to go, because she had a lunch date with a woman. As he said good-bye at the door he felt so full of
himself, so affectionate and grateful in a frank and almost brotherly way, that he wanted to kiss her. He hesitated and then decided against it. It might look as though he was taking advantage of the favour he was doing her, as though he expected something more than usual from her in the future, as though, even, he crudely imagined there was some bargain or significance in her consenting to come away with him to a seaside town with a reputation. So instead he just shook her hand, as he always did, so sadly, oddly, shyly, clumsily, when he left her.

He went straight back to the pub, and ordered another beer. He usually tried to keep from drinking too much in the middle of the day, but today he meant to have as much as he liked. Hadn’t he got something to drink and think about?

He thought and drank, and drank and thought and smoked. What in God’s name did it all mean? Was this a change? Had her feelings somehow changed, had his persistence somehow prevailed, so that in future she was going to be kinder to him, so that in future he might, even, have a chance with her?

And if there was a change – why? Had she just changed because she had changed, or had she some motive? Was she just getting something out of him? Yes, fifteen pounds. But Netta, the shrewd, cruel Netta who scorned him, could never resort to so vulgar and obvious a ruse as that – she would be too proud Or would she not be too proud? Was she, perhaps, just a common little schemer playing him up just to get some money out of him? Like a prostitute? Perhaps she was just a common little prostitute. Ah – if only she was! If only she was something you could buy and have and be rid of!

Then her walking about the room without her skirt like that… Perhaps he had got this woman all wrong. Perhaps (you could never tell) she only went with Peter because he gave her money! Perhaps he himself ought to try and make love to her like a man (instead of like a forlorn shepherd in an Elizabethan poem) when they got to Brighton. Perhaps she expected it. It was not impossible.

Then there was the question of Johnnie. She was impressed with that connection of his – he saw that clearly enough. She
was, for whatever ultimate reason, tremendously interested in this firm, Fitzgerald, Carstairs & Scott, and Johnnie being a member of it, and he being an old friend of Johnnie, had raised his stock enormously. What if her change of manner was due to this connection of his with Johnnie – which she had only discovered last night? What if he had a trump card in Johnnie? That again was not impossible, – and he must play it for all it was worth.

But what did it matter? What did it matter whether her manner had changed for purely selfish, shrewd and material reasons, or because for some reason she suddenly liked him better? The point was, her manner had changed and she had promised to stay in Brighton with him alone.

What a one in the eye for Peter! What a one in the eye for Mickey and for them all! For a few days he had got Netta – Netta Longdon – the proud, coveted beauty – alone. Alone and away from them all. He would have her to talk to, to listen to and watch, to walk with, to be seen with, to consort with quietly or even gaily, by the gleaming sea. He might even make love to her, kiss her in the darkness to the sound of the sea – make love to her like a man – anything might happen.

He honestly believed a change had come, that the tide had somehow turned. He was so very happy. He drank and thought and thought and drank and smoked. Finally he went back to his hotel, packed a bag and took a taxi through the gorgeously sunny streets to Victoria. Then he had another beer at the buffet, and then got on to the train.

And then everything had remained all right and lovely until, suddenly, as the train flashed through Haywards Heath, it occurred to him that he had got drunk at midday and made one of his usual fools of himself.

She would never come, of course; she would find some excuse: he was in a train on his way to Brighton simply as a result of a mad midday binge; he had thrown away fifteen precious pounds from his precious store, and all was lost.

As though sensing his sudden return to misery, the train itself all at once began to hesitate, to slow down, and, finally, to stop,
not at a station, but, mysteriously, miserably, bewilderedly, in the open country…

The sun streamed in upon his head. Now that the wheels were still, a wasp or bluebottle could be heard buzzing from the other end of the car… A bored fellow-passenger rattled a newspaper in turning it… And you could hear the clinking of crockery and the conversation of the attendants in the kitchen behind…

London, Netta, everything was so remote and hot and becalmed… How could you ever imagine her packing and taking a taxi and a train and joining him in Brighton?

He wished he hadn’t made such a fool of himself. He wished he wasn’t such a fool.

Chapter Two

There was a huge outing of violent girls, down for the day from the ‘Lucky Tip’ cigarette factory in London, shouting and sprawling over the town, permeating it with colour and affecting its quality much as a drop of permanganate of potash will affect a tumblerful of water.

They went about in threes or fours, and looked boldly, nastily, and yet perhaps not uninvitingly at him as he passed on his way to the sea. They wore American sailor hats and carried strange coloured favours. He had not counted on this, and it added to the strangeness both of his existence generally, and of his sudden transportation to London-by-the-Sea.

They were thickest about the Palace Pier, and so he walked along the front towards the West – but it was crowded everywhere, with the shelters and deck-chairs full, the blinding satin-blue sea glistening and purring on the one side, the traffic hooting and swirling by on the other, and the tar and dust and people all smelling of heat.

And behind, and mingling with all the noise and colour and heat and haze and smell, there could be heard, if you cared to listen, the faint distant church of people walking, or rather
slithering about, on the difficult and crowded beach below – the characteristic noise of Brighton at the height of its season.

He had left his suitcase at the station, and told himself that he was strolling about looking for a suitable hotel for himself and Netta. But he was not really doing this, because he knew really where he was going to stay. He was going to stay at the little Castle, a small commercial just off Castle Square, because this was where he had stayed with Bob Barton in the Bob Barton days, and because he wanted to be on ground he knew, and because he knew it was reasonably cheap, and because he didn’t have the energy and initiative, anyway, to break new ground and find an unfamiliar hotel.

He hadn’t bargained for all this noise and crowd and the ‘Lucky Tip’ girls. He couldn’t conceive Netta in such a setting, even if she came. What was he to do with her, where was he to take her, in all this heat and hubbub? Well, perhaps he could take her out to the country during the day, and they could have quiet meals at inns, and, anyway, the ‘Lucky Tip’ girls would be going back tonight. And then Brighton would be quiet at night, anyway, and they could have a quiet meal somewhere and walk quietly along the front, and go back to the Little Castle which he knew was quiet.

He turned at the West Pier and walked back to Castle Square. He went into the Little Castle, and the porter remembered him, and so did the woman at the cash-desk, and they said they had a room for him tonight, and another for his ‘friend’ tomorrow.

He took a bus back to the station, got his suitcase from the cloak-room and then took a taxi back to the hotel. He unpacked, discovered, whether to his satisfaction or not he did not quite know, that the room promised for Netta was next to his own, and then went out to get a cup of tea at the Lyons in North Street.

The ‘Lucky Tip’ girls were in here too, and it was ages before he was served. When he came out it was past six o’clock – time to have a drink.

The ‘Lucky Tip’ girls were in the pubs too – making a frightful noise. They were getting tight, and you could hardly hear yourself think, they were screaming so, and you had to fight
and wait for hours to get served. He tried pub after pub, five in all, but he couldn’t shake them off. Suddenly he got sick of it and decided to go back to the Little Castle and have a meal on his ‘all in’ terms – an early night. He had got drunk at lunch and was dead tired, anyway.

He came out on to the front, which was steeped in the pink of the sunset, whose mighty, cloudy architecture shone aloofly over the mighty ocean at whose edge the puny ‘Lucky Tip’ girls, in their sailor hats, had chosen to hold their brazen festival. When he reached the Little Castle, the lights were on in the small, old-fashioned, rather stuffy dining-room, where he at once sat down for a meal. Except for a man and his wife and their child at a table by the window, all the other diners had gone.

He ordered sole and chips and read his paper. The man and his wife and child modulated their voices awkwardly, because every word could be heard across the length of the room.

Later, the porter, who remembered him from the Bob Barton days, came and talked to him, and finally went out for him with a wire to Netta:

‘
IN CASE ACCIDENTS ADDRESS LITTLE CASTLE HOTEL CASTLE SQUARE SEE YOU
6.5
TOMORROW LOVE GEORGE
.’

After his supper he sat on a long while reading his newspaper, and then went out for a little stroll. He was set on a quiet evening.

Night had fallen now, and there was a faint rain coming down in the cooler air. He felt cooler and happier. He passed through the fairy-lights of Castle Square to the sea, and walked along the glistening front. The sea was rising and pounding against the beach in the freshening breeze; a few stars twinkled in spite of the rain above the high white lamps; and there were little lights on the sea facing the majestic Metropole between the two piers outlined with blazing jewels. He wondered what it was all about – the pounding sea, the beach, the rain, the stars, the lights, the piers, Brighton, Hitler, Netta, himself, everything.
Why
?…

Impossible to say. But it was somehow all bigger and cooler and darker and nicer than himself, and he was glad of that. He
walked back to his hotel, went straight to his room, undressed, put out the light, got into bed, and in a few minutes was himself utterly at one with the big, cool, dark, nice thing – with the sky, the rain, the sea, Brighton, and the ‘Lucky Tip’ girls at that very moment singing and screaming their way back to town in lit, crowded train-loads.

Chapter Three

Cooler and happier. That was his thought as he woke, and saw from his watch that it was nearly ten o’clock in the morning and that he had almost slept the clock round. He had been cooler and happier last night, and he was cooler and happier now. In other words, he had gone to bed sober and had a grand night.

He heard the busy traffic in Castle Square outside and felt he could face it. He felt he could face life, enjoy it even. He had a quick bath, dressed quickly, and was down in time to get some breakfast.

He couldn’t remember eating such a breakfast for years. When he came out the porter said there was a wire for him. It was from Netta.

‘
BONE LITTLE CASTLE HOTEL ARRIVING
7.5
NOT
6.5
NETTA
.’