Brighton had done the trick and Mr Josser now looked a different man. From the way he squared his shoulders, as he marched along the front, there was really nothing to show that less than a month ago he’d been a dying man with his family gathered round him. He’d even bought himself a walking‐stick. It was a thin pliable sort of cane, in some dark mysterious wood that still had a hint of the jungle about it, and it carried a little silver shield for initials on the front. The stick had cost four and six, and been worth it.
Mrs Josser looked better too. She had allowed herself once each day to be taken by Mr Josser into the Old Ship and given a glass of port. Except on holiday it was a thing that she would never have contemplated: she despised and disapproved of women who went into public houses. But here at Brighton it wasn’t quite the same. There was a freedom in the air that excused such behaviour. Even so, she hadn’t got the same swagger in her walk that Mr Josser had acquired. But perhaps that was simply because of her shoes. A fancy pair, with a bit of white suède let into the sides, she’d had them for seven years and worn them only on holidays. Too tight when she had bought them, they had already bitten into six holidays and were now in process of biting into the seventh.
But it was only her feet that were troubling her. The spirit inside Mrs Josser was rekindled and unconsumed. With twelve good days at the seaside behind her, she had now reached the stage of buying presents. The purchase of postcards had been an earlier phase. Almost as soon as she had arrived, she had gone into a stationer’s and then into one of the glass‐sided shelters on the front and had written to everyone she could think of – to Doris, Uncle Henry, to Ted, to Baby – the last in large block capitals as though in expectation that Baby would somehow astonish them all by being able to read it – and to Mrs Vizzard. Then, recognising the way jealousy spreads like a fire inside any household, she had written to Mrs Boon and Connie as well, reassuring them about her safe arrival. On the first day of Mrs Josser’s holiday the Brighton postman had tottered back to the sorting office carrying a pile of coloured postcards, all saying the same thing to different people.
But this bout of buying was on a larger scale altogether. More time had to be spent on it. More thought. And more money. Not that Mrs Josser made a labour of it. On the contrary, she did her best to minimise the whole undertaking so that it shouldn’t seem to be interrupting the holiday.
‘I’ve just got to get a little something for Doris,’ was all she said. ‘Just a little something for Doris. And something for Baby.’
The idea of something for Cynthia hadn’t crossed her mind at the time. It cropped up only when she saw a small battlemented castle of shiny porcelain with an ink‐well in the middle of the castle courtyard. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Doris would like. It was no use to Baby who, even if she could read, certainly couldn’t write. It was no use to anyone in fact, but as small china castles go, it was irresistible.
The emotion that went with the buying of all these presents was a complicated one. In the first place there was the simple pleasure of going into shops and spending money on something that was unnecessary. It was all part of the fairy‐tale atmosphere of the seaside – as though coming from Victoria on the Southern Railway, somewhere about Hayward’s Heath the whole value of money changed abruptly and, once South of the Downs, it became simply stuff to be chucked around and played with. Then there was the knowledge that buying presents really meant that the holiday was coming to an end. And, in the result, a kind of urgency crept into the enjoyment of everything. There was at once the sense of the upturned hour‐glass and of a strange telescoping of time. It seemed that the moment of arrival had been last night, and also a long while ago; that they had been living at Brighton all their life yet had only just arrived there. Mr and Mrs Josser both had this feeling and it translated itself into a rather lofty melancholy. They walked along the front together holding hands and thinking about how long they had known each other.
Mrs Josser was the first to speak.
‘It’s the last couple of days that does you good,’ she said. ‘Father always said that he could do without the rest of the holiday if he could have the last two days.’
It was the last day. Just getting on for lunch‐time. Mr Josser tilted his hat and began swinging his new jungle walking‐stick. He felt decidedly peckish and was glad that it wasn’t much further to the boarding‐house. He was glad too that Mrs Josser’s feet seemed to be holding out.
‘Rottingdean this afternoon,’ he said gloatingly. ‘Pretty little place, Rottingdean. Mustn’t go back to London without seeing Rottingdean.’
The gloom of to‐morrow’s departure had mysteriously cleared a little, and Mr Josser was secretly looking forward to Dulcimer Street once more. He wasn’t thinking of anything very much when Mrs Josser spoke to him.
‘About that cottage of yours,’ she said suddenly.
Mr Josser gave a little smile.
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘It was only an idea I had. It wasn’t anything really. Don’t worry about it.’
But Mrs Josser ignored him and went on with what she had been going to say.
‘Why don’t we look up a few addresses while we’re down here?’ she suggested. ‘If there is anything going we might as well see it.’
‘You mean take a cottage down here by the sea?’ Mr Josser asked her.
‘Only if it’s suitable,’ she answered firmly.
‘Then you mean… ?’
‘I don’t mean something that’s going to be washed away by the next high tide,’ she told him.
‘But you do mean… ?’
‘Only if it’s suitable,’ she repeated.
Mr Josser did not say anything. He was nearer to getting what he wanted than he had been at any time during the last thirty years. Between him and Mrs Josser there existed at this moment a bond of sacred understanding.
They had reached the end of Medina Road by now and were approaching the boarding‐house.
‘Of course, there might be something at Rottingdean itself,’ Mr Josser suggested. ‘It’s worth trying.’
‘We’ll see,’ Mrs Josser replied indulgently, as she might have replied to a child. ‘I don’t want you tiring yourself or I shall be sorry I mentioned it.’
It gave a pleasant feeling going up the neat gravel path towards the white front door and knowing that there was a meal waiting for them. It was the life luxurious, and Mrs Josser felt at that moment that she could do with any amount of it.
‘There’s usually milk‐pudding on Fridays,’ Mrs Josser said aloud. ‘Or at least there was last week.’
Mr Josser pushed the door open and, as he did so, they both saw the figure of a woman seated on one of the cane chairs in the hall. It was dark and muffled inside because of the hanging bead curtain and they couldn’t see very clearly who it was. But there was something in the lines of the figure to suggest that she had been sitting there a long time. Then as Mrs Josser parted the dangling threads of beads they saw.
It was Mrs Boon.
‘Clarice,’ Mrs Josser exclaimed.
‘This is a nice surprise,’ Mr Josser began. ‘Did Percy bring…’
But he did not finish the sentence. For he saw that Mrs Boon had been weeping. Her eyes were red and swollen and her eyelids looked puffy.
‘It’s about Percy I’ve come,’ she said, in a breathless pent‐up rush, the words tumbling over each other. ‘They’ve taken him away from me. Last night. He’s been arrested.’
There was a pause. A blank incredulous pause.
‘What’s he done?’ Mr Josser asked. Then thinking that it might be more tactful, he added: ‘There must be some mistake.’
‘They’ve… they’ve charged him with stealing a car. A Bentley car…’
But Mrs Boon could get no further. She began crying again. Crying in a forlorn helpless fashion that had lost all reticence. ‘I had to tell somebody,’ she managed to jerk out. ‘That’s why I came.’
Mr Josser cleared his throat and tried to sort out the chaos of his mind.
He looked down at the sodden figure of Mrs Boon in front of them and across then at Mrs Josser.
‘Mother,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to go back. Straightaway.’