A Gun for Sale Read Free Page B

him.
    Mather said heavily, ‘You don’t care for me like I care for you. It’s nearly twenty-four hours before I see you again.’
    ‘It’ll be more than that if I get a job.’
    ‘You don’t care. You simply don’t care.’
    She clutched his arm. ‘Look. Look at that poster.’ But it was gone before he could see it through the steamy pane. ‘Europe Mobilizing’ lay like a weight on her heart.
    ‘What was it?’
    ‘Oh, just the same old murder again.’
    ‘You’ve got that murder on your mind. It’s a week old now. It’s got nothing to do with us.’
    ‘No, it hasn’t, has it?’
    ‘If it had happened here, we’d have caught him by now.’
    ‘I wonder why he did it.’
    ‘Politics. Patriotism.’
    ‘Well. Here we are. It might be a good thing to get off. Don’t look so miserable. I thought you said you were happy.’
    ‘That was five minutes ago.’
    ‘Oh,’ she said out of her light and heavy heart, ‘one lives quickly these days.’ They kissed under the lamp; she had to stretch to reach him; he was comforting like a large dog, even when he was sullen and stupid, but one didn’t have to send away a dog alone in the cold dark night.
    ‘Anne,’ he said, ‘we’ll be married, won’t we, after Christmas?’
    ‘We haven’t a penny,’ she said, ‘you know. Not a penny – Jimmy.’
    ‘I’ll get a rise.’
    ‘You’ll be late for duty.’
    ‘Damn it, you don’t care.’
    She jeered at him, ‘Not a scrap – dear,’ and walked away from him up the street to No. 54, praying let me get some money quick, let
this
go on
this
time; she hadn’t any faith in herself. A man passed her going up the road; he looked cold and strung-up, as he passed in his black overcoat; he had a hare-lip. Poor devil, she thought, and forgot him, opening the door of 54, climbing the long flights to the top floor, the carpet stopped on the first. She put on the new record, hugging to her heart the silly senseless words, the slow sleepy tune:
    ‘It’s only Kew
    To you,
    But to me
    It’s Paradise.
    They are just blue
    Petunias to you,
    But to me
    They are your eyes.’
    The man with the hare-lip came back down the street; fast walking hadn’t made him warm; like Kay in
The Snow Queen
he bore the cold within him as he walked. The flakes went on falling, melting into slush on the pavement, the words of a song dropped from the lit room on the third floor, the scrape of a used needle.
    ‘They say that’s a snowflower
    A man brought from Greenland.
    I say it’s the lightness, the coolness, the whiteness
    Of your hand.’
    The man hardly paused; he went on down the street, walking fast; he felt no pain from the chip of ice in his breast.
    3
    Raven sat at an empty table in the Corner House near a marble pillar. He stared with distaste at the long list of sweet iced drinks, of
parfaits
and sundaes and
coupes
and splits. Somebody at the next table was eating brown bread and butter and drinking Horlick’s. He wilted under Raven’s gaze and put up his newspaper. One word ‘Ultimatum’ ran across the top line.
    Mr Cholmondeley picked his way between the tables.
    He was fat and wore an emerald ring. His wide square face fell in folds over his collar. He looked like a real-estate man, or perhaps a man more than usually successful in selling women’s belts. He sat down at Raven’s table and said, ‘Good evening.’
    Raven said, ‘I thought you were never coming, Mr Cholmon-deley,’ pronouncing every syllable.
    ‘Chumley, my dear man, Chumley,’ Mr Cholmondeley corrected him.
    ‘It doesn’t matter how it’s pronounced. I don’t suppose it’s your own name.’
    ‘After all I chose it,’ Mr Cholmondeley said. His ring flashed under the great inverted bowls of light as he turned the pages of the menu. ‘Have a
parfait
.’
    ‘It’s odd wanting to eat ice in this weather. You’ve only got to stay outside if you’re hot. I don’t want to waste any time, Mr Chol-mon-deley. Have you brought the money? I’m