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.’
So she was coming! He could hardly control himself in front of the porter, as he went out and talked with the excellent man on the steps of the hotel, and watched the sunny people in the sunny street. She was coming! He was sober last night; he was cool, well, and happy, and she was coming! She – Netta – the holy and terrible one – had taken the trouble to wire him!
How was he to spend the delicious day? The porter left him and he looked at some notices on the board. Visitors were requested, etc. etc…. Then, ‘Ringdean Golf Course, 2S. 6d. perround’. The porter came out again and he asked him about it.
The porter told him you could get there easily by tram from Castle Square, and a heavenly ‘Why not?’ sprang up in his soul. Why not borrow some clubs from the pro and mess about? He would! He got his hat and was on the tram in five minutes.
Golf! How long was it? Not since the Bob Barton days – he had simply forgotten about it. And they used to make such a fuss of him – Bob and all of them – even the nasty ones – it was the one thing he was any good at. That was the one decent thing at school – the nine-hole golf course they were allowed on a mile or so away. ‘Well, Bone,’ old Thorne once said in his pompous way, ‘with a drive and iron play such as yours I think you may be said to have lived not wholly for nothing.’ And he could play, too, if it came to that. He was down to two when he left school, and everyone said that if he could only keep it up he could be a crack. But of course he hadn’t kept it up and he hadn’t thought about it for years.
The pro was a nice man, and let him have quite a decent bag, and explained the lie of the course, which began high up at the back of the town and led over the Downs. It was half past eleven when he started, so there was no one about.
He teed up at the first hole – a long short one – a difficult three downhill to a banked green. With delicious pomposity (how it brought it all back!) he looked at his card for the length, and decided that against the wind it was a spoon. He teed up his ball and had some swings. There was nothing to it, there never was anything to it – you had only got to relax, relax, relax, and keep your chin pointed at the back of the ball all the way. No clues or nonsense, just relax and your chin pointed. Just pretend you’ve been playing frightfully well for the last few holes, and keep your chin pointed. He went up to the ball.
He was on! He was on! He was on! All the way! He had socked it bang in the middle – the spoon was the club all right, and he was on! He was about twelve feet from the pin…
He knew his putt was going down before he hit the ball, and in it went! A two. Thank you very much – that would do all right for a beginning.
He pulled his next drive, but it lay well, and he hit a screaming number four up to the back of the green. He was playing golf! He knew he was playing golf! You either had that feeling or you didn’t! He had got it. He was going to hit the blasted ball all the way round!
He got his bogey four, and at the next hole – a five – got his four with a glorious chip (like a pocket-knife closing) and a putt. Nothing could stop him now. He was out for their blood. He had gone ‘mad’ and he was going to keep mad.
He was out in thirty-four. He chuckled aloud as he sunk his putt and he breathed deeply and braced himself for the battle home…
He walked alone along the Downs, this sad, ungainly man with beer-shot eyes who loved a girl in Earl’s Court – carrying an old bag of borrowed clubs and thinking of nothing but his game of golf. His face shone, his eyes gleamed, and he felt, deep in his being that he was not a bad man, as he had thought he was a few hours ago, but a good one. And because he wa
s a good man he was a happy man, and if he could only break seventy he would never be unhappy again.
He got a six at the fourteenth, but he didn’t let it rattle him, and he came to the last hole, a long five, with a five to get for his sixty-nine.
He wasn’t going to get rattled. Nothing could rattle him now. His drive went into the rough on the left, that didn’t rattle him. It didn’t lie too badly. He debated whether to take his three (he hadn’t got a two) and play safe, or try it with a spoon. He decided on the spoon – he wasn’t going to get rattled.
It was a rotten shot… but it was on, it was on, it was on! One of those awful low, curly S-shaped things, right over to the left and then fading away to the right, but it was on! It was about twenty feet away from the pin on a hilly green.
He didn’t want a sixty-eight – he only wanted sixty-nine. He wasn’t going to try for a sixty-eight; he was just going to hit it firmly up to the hole – so firmly that it went well beyond the hole – for two putts and his sixty-nine. He took the line carefully and he knew the moment he had hit it that his sixty-eight was in the bag. It went less than a foot past the hole on the right, and he knocked it in with one hand.
Sixty-eight! Hadn’t played for years – borrowed clubs on a strange course, and sixty-eight! He was giddy with joy. He wanted to tell somebody. He saw two men approaching the first tee and he wanted to go and tell them. He only just kept himself from doing so. The pro, fortunately, was still in his shop. ‘Well,’ he said as he handed him the clubs. ‘They’re all right. I did a sixty-eight, anyway. Not bad on a strange course. I haven’t played for years either.’ And his voice was vibrant with pride. The pro congratulated him warmly and they had a little talk about the course.
He went to the rather ramshackle club-house, which was empty, got a half of beer, ordered some sandwiches and sat down.
Hangover Square Page 14