Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton Page B

or come up and settle with her once and for all. He decided to grovel.
    ‘Oh – must you?’ he said. ‘Can’t you just come an’ have one with me?’
    She was looking at the passing people.
    ‘Well – I might stay just for one,’ she said. . . .
    ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘Let’s go that little place what we went before.’ His grammar was in pieces.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t want to go there. . . .’
    ‘Why not?’ he asked, observing her use of the word ‘want,’ and marvelling at its implications.
    ‘Had a bit of a bust up in there – the other night,’ she fortunately added.
    ‘Well what about this one, over the road – here?’
    ‘Yes – that’s all right,’ she said. . . .
    They walked on. He thought that they had, perhaps, better try and be cheerful.
    ‘I was sorry you didn’t come in, you know,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d be along.’
    ‘Well, I’m sorry, too,’ she said, confessing, in her tone, that they had just had a row, but that she was as willing as him to patch it up. ‘I’m very sorry. But you don’t know the life I lead – really you don’t. It’s all one thing after another.’
    ‘Oh, I dunno,’ he said. ‘’Spect I can imagine it.’ He was almost enjoying himself in the old manner.
    ‘Well, you may,’ she said. ‘But others don’t. . . .’
    He, then, was something without precise parallel in her life. . . . They were perfect friends again.
    The house he had indicated was at the corner. The main bar was large, with partitions along the wall containing tables and padded seats. The floor was of chequered oil-cloth. It was rather crowded. She went straight to a table: he obtained drinks at the bar, and brought them to her in silence. They were friends again, but there was a difference. She made no attempt to thank him for the drinks, but took her first sip at once, slightly constricting her face as it went down. Then, holding her glass and with her legs crossed, she looked casually around at the people without talking.
    He looked at her, and had himself nothing to say. It seemed, as he looked at her, that the tables were queerly turned. The little creature to whom he had given ten shillings a week ago was a quite different little creature from the one whom he was now privileged, after considerable obstruction, to be fortifying with drink.
    And this, he realized, was the second of his Thursday evenings off that he was spending in this strange manner. He was puzzled. His own life was becoming unfamiliar to him. . . .
    ‘So you haven’t had a very bright time of it since I saw you last?’ he tried.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not very.’
    She was listless and inattentive. She was, as a matter of fact, interested in a garrulous little man who was holding forth at the bar. . . . There was a long silence, which he eagerly sought, but did not know how, to break.
    ‘Funny you meetin’ me like that,’ she said suddenly, and smiling. ‘That man I was with thought you was trying to get off with me.’
    ‘Oh – did he?’
    ‘Yes.’ She giggled. (She was a vulgar little bitch.) There was a pause.
    ‘Who’s he, then?’ asked Bob, in as off-hand a manner as possible, and taking a gulp at his beer.
    ‘Him? Oh, I’ve known him a long time. He’s been very good to me, ’s’matter of fact.’
    ‘Oh – has he?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Silence.
    ‘Took me out in his car last Sunday. We went down to Maidenhead. Do you know Maidenhead?’
    ‘No. Never been there,’ said Bob, and took another gulp.
    His mind was in a turmoil. Car? Maidenhead? What was this? She had, then, friends – and powerful friends – on an equality. ‘ Do you know Maidenhead? ’ It was the off-hand remark of a lady to a gentleman in a drawing-room. So far from being his wistful little protégée, she was his equal and more. Did she not comprehend her own degradation – the fact that she was an outcast?
    ‘It’s very nice down there, really,’ she said.
    ‘Yes,’ said Bob. ‘I