Frankie, released on bail from the charge of living off immoral earnings, and waiting while his lawyers hoisted his case from the rough justice of the magistrate’s court to the dangerous impartiality of a judge and jury, had met his former girl for a chat about it all at the drinking-club now fashionable in ‘the game’: the other having suffered an eclipse as these clubs do, rising and falling with the fickle inclinations of their clientele and the slow-grinding machinery of the law. She was as desirable as ever though perhaps a shade more elderly – a bit wiser to a world about which she was already far too wise. He was relaxed, resigned, and saddened as only those born innocent can be when by folly or misjudgement they have behaved in some way that violates this quality of their natures.
‘My chances?’ said Frankie, summing up the situation. ‘Slender, but they exist. After all’ – he pressed her hand – ‘I won’t have the principal witness in the box against me.’
‘If only your lawyers would let me speak for you, Frankie. Say you were a handsome, silly boyfriend who knew nothing and I never gave you anything. You sure that’s no use to you at all?’
‘Dear – who’d believe it? And they say the sight of a – excuse me – common prostitute speaking up for me will damn me as a ponce at once with any jury.’
‘Yeah, I know. But I’m scared of that copper’s evidence, honey, when you come up at the Sessions. It’s always so thorough and so damn convincing.’
She drained her B and S – a drink which, now banished from stately clubs and homes where it so flourished in Edwardian times, survives in our day as a favourite of this very Edwardian profession. ‘Which cops will it be, I wonder? That bastard who got the box, and I suppose the Kilburn kiddy.’
‘He’s bound to speak against me, honey. After all why shouldn’t he? It’s his graft.’
Frankie rose and leant over to work the cigarette-machine behind her back. She reached for her bag, said, ‘I’ve got florins,’ but he smiled, bent down and clicked the bag shut, then undid the packet standing close beside her stool in the tenderly sexy posture of bar lovers: girl’s face level with boy’s belt. She took her fag, held it unlit, looked up at him and said, ‘You really think, dear, you couldn’t try to skip?’
‘We’ve been into that. They’ve got my passport and they’ll be watching me this time. I’ve thought of trying: stow away and get duff papers – it’s not that difficult, I know. But it seems this thing is coming to me and I might as well take it on the chin.’
‘The nick’s the nick, dear, don’t forget. And with a previous conviction for that, they can whip you in for nothing and get a judgement on you till the day you die.’
‘I’ve thought of that.’
‘And – can you travel, after? I mean, go anywhere? Once you’ve got a record, honey, you’ve got a record.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Frankie! I believe you want to go inside!’
‘No … you think I’m crazy? But I don’t mind telling you, baby, I do think it’s written in my book.’
‘Fuck that! And when you come out, dear. There’ll be some loot?’
‘Oh, sufficient. Though the lawyers are getting most of what I’ve had …’
‘There’ll be me, too, honey. I’ll be your banker, never fear …’
Frankie looked at her and smiled. ‘Never again,’ he said. ‘Baby, I’ve thought it over and it seems I’m really not the type.’
‘No? Well, darl, they all say that. They all say “never again” the first time they get nicked, and they all head straight back to the chicks when their bit of trouble’s over.’ Frankie was silent. ‘You know, dear,’ she went on, ‘there’s only one thing does really trouble me a bit. I believe if I’d had that kid of ours you really might have grown to love me.’
‘Yes, I do. I think you’re the type of man who never loves a girl but loves a mother.’
‘I don’t know about mothers, babe,’ he said, giving her a lipstick-avoiding kiss, ‘but I do know you’ve been great to me – a good chick in bed, yes, but in many ways just like my flesh and blood – my sister.’
‘Oh, thank you! Do you mind? Your sister! Well – what next?’
Frankie went over to replenish glasses, and glancing round the room he felt for the first time in what seemed so long a while quite different once again from all these people there: a non-ponce, in fact: a man whose sex life was once more his own absolute and undisputed property. Not that he judged them in the slightest, being no hypocrite, nor given by nature to imagine that to judge one’s fellows has anything much to do with having a real sense of justice. But he did feel altered: and he had, for the first time in his life, an informed opinion on the easy-money boys.
Looking up, he saw one of them who entered and seeing him, withdrew. This was the star ponce whom Frankie, quickly abandoning the glasses on an indignant table, caught up with at the stairs. ‘Hullo, man,’ he said. ‘Where you been hiding yourself? I’ve been looking for you.’
‘Hi, Francis. And you, man! Where you been, feller – have you been away?’
‘Not yet,’ said Frankie. ‘But it seems I’m going to just because someone who got scared felt they had to speak up out of turn.’
‘Oh, yeah? That so? That really so?’
‘That really so. Without that one man’s coward’s word I’d be in Africa or South America by now.’
‘You would? Well now, Francis! Please don’t stare at me like that, old-timer. Why! The way you stand there, making insinuations and just threatening a bit, anyone who didn’t know might take you for a copper!’
The star ponce (in whose life this scene had occurred more than once before) knew exactly what he had to do: and that was get his blow in first. The wronged and righteous party in a quarrel often makes the capital mistake of forgetting – if it’s going to come down to a set-to – that the villain, being such, is likely to be quicker off the mark because to counteract the power of towering indignation, he has only speed and swift decision. At least six seconds before Frankie got in his knock-out punch the star ponce had bent, pulled the blade from its plastic sheath inside his nylon sock, and stabbed Frankie neatly in the groin.