Of the three girls casually eyeing Frankie and the Asian, one was a short, thick-set, chunky woman past her first prime – and second – maybe hitting twenty-eight. Her dark hair was dyed blonde, her face the colour of electric light, and her body desirable in an overall way only (that is, though the immediate impression was attractive, no part of her, on inspection, seemed very beautiful). She spoke less than the others, was very contained and self-assured, yet when she did speak her voice was emphatic and decided. Her clothes accentuated the same features as nature did beneath them, but elsewhere were casual and slack.
After a while of merely glancing at Frank, when he made a sudden movement on his chair she began to watch him. Frankie was used to this and had no vanity about it (though about other things a lot). He knew he wasn’t ‘handsome’ whatever that may mean (for nobody seems to know or to agree), but he also knew he was well set up, and confident, and strong, and potent; and that though he repelled a great many girls for various reasons, for the kind he liked best he’d only to whistle and they’d come. He now whistled by looking steadily at the girl ten seconds in that kind of way.
She got up, came over and holding out a florin, said, ‘You got some pieces for the juke?’ In reply he took sixpences out of the front pocket of his slacks and, without getting up, stretched over and dropped them in the juke-box. ‘What you want?’ he asked, still stretching far.
‘You choose,’ she told him.
‘I can’t see the names from here,’ he said. ‘You pick them.’
‘I’ll press these for you,’ she answered, and without taking her finger off the button she moved the selector and jabbed eight times. Then she sat down at the far side of his table.
The juke-box made conversation quite impossible: but as it blared on they spoke to each other, perfectly clearly, with their eyes, their faces, and their limbs. This unspoken conversation established that they liked each other that way, and that way, at the moment, only; and reserved all their lives, and personalities, and friendship, and private particulars to themselves.
When the juke-box stopped neither of them wanted more music, and both looked up with faint resentment for anyone else who might consider feeding it again. The girl put her hands on the table round her bag: a battered, soiled affair, square-black, but efficient and businesslike as a safe is in an office that seems otherwise untidy and impractical. She said to Frankie, ‘I’d say you look a bit tired.’
‘You would?’
‘Yes. Just look it, I mean. That’s all.’
‘Well, you’d be right. I have been.’
They both ignored the Asian as if he absolutely wasn’t there, although at this stage his presence as unconscious chaperon was rather helpful.
‘Bad times?’ she said.
‘Well, girl, you know how it is. No ship – no work – no money.’
‘I thought you were one of those,’ she said, waited for him to ask her what she was, and registered with approval that he didn’t.
Now, she played a right card … but a bit too early. ‘Shall we take a walk?’ she said.
He paused a fraction more than was usual in a man of quick decisions, and said, ‘I’ll take a rest here for a while.’
She moved her hands round the bag, didn’t hide a slight vexation and said (but quite nicely), ‘It was an invitation to you … You’ve told me how you’re fixed just now …’
He answered (also without any malice), ‘Another time. I won’t forget you.’
The girl smiled, took up the bag, said nothing more, and after a few words with the other girls, went out. The Asian was in conversation with a countryman, and Frankie, catching up with this, said to him, ‘No, friend, I’ll pay …’
‘No, no!’ cried the Asian, for the first time in their acquaintance letting drop the smile.
‘Let me pay for myself, then,’ Frankie Love said, getting up.
‘No!’ said the Asian, giving money to the Pakistani fiercely.
Frankie now gave him his first smile of the day – but a very reluctant, meagre one – and saying no more, shook hands with the Asian, patted his shoulder gently, and went out.
The girl, as he expected, was at the far corner, waiting. As she’d expected, he took his time, and when he came up she made no reference whatever to his change of mind. She shifted her handbag to the other arm, took his, and clicked along the pavement on her stiletto heels.
It was about half a mile. Near the end of the journey, well after she’d passed them, she said of two men standing beside a delivery van, ‘Two coppers.’
‘Yeah? How you know?’
‘You shouldn’t look back like that. The way they stared at us.’
‘I expect quite a few men stare at you.’
‘Not that way. It’s not sex that interests them …’
‘What does, then?’
She stopped at the door, took a bunch of keys from her bag, looked around, and opened it. ‘What I do, does,’ she said. ‘You coming in?’