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me about a job. He said, “I’ll be here. I’ll stay right here by this turnstile.” He said, “Be quick, Ida. I’ll be just here,”’ and as she repeated what she could remember of his words she had a feeling that later, in an hour or two, when things got straightened out, she would want to cry a bit for the death of that scared passionate bag of bones who called himself—
    ‘Why,’ she said, ‘whatever do they mean? Read here.’
    ‘What about it?’ the man said.
    ‘The bitches,’ Ida said, ‘what would they go and tell a lie like that for?’
    ‘What lie? Have another Guinness. You don’t want to fuss about that.’
    ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ Ida said, but when she had taken a long draught she returned to the paper. She had instincts, and now her instincts told her there was something odd, something which didn’t smell right. ‘These girls,’ she said, ‘he tried to pick up, they say a man came along who called him “Fred”, and he said he wasn’t Fred and he didn’t know the man.’
    ‘What about it? Listen, Ida, let’s go to the pictures.’
    ‘But he
was
Fred. He told me he was Fred.’
    ‘He was Charles. You can read it there. Charles Hale.’
    ‘That don’t signify,’ Ida said. ‘A man always has a different name for strangers. You aren’t telling me your real name’s Clarence. And a man don’t have a different name for every girl. He’d get confused. You know you always stick to Clarence. You can’t tell me much about men I don’t know.’
    ‘It don’t mean anything. You can read how it was. They just happened to mention it. Nobody took any notice of that.’
    She said sadly, ‘Nobody’s taken any notice of anything. You can read it here. He hadn’t got any folks to make a fuss. “The Coroner asked if any relation of the deceased was present, and the police witness stated that they could trace no relations other than a second cousin in Middlesbrough.” It sounds sort of lonely,’ she said. ‘Nobody there to ask questions.’
    ‘I know what loneliness is, Ida,’ the sombre man said. ‘I’ve been alone a month now.’
    She took no notice of him: she was back at Brighton on Whit Monday, thinking how while she waited there, he must have been dying, walking along the front to Hove, dying, and the cheap drama and pathos of the thought weakened her heart towards him. She was of the people, she cried in cinemas at
David Copperfield
, when she was drunk all the old ballads her mother had known came easily to her lips, her homely heart was touched by the word ‘tragedy’. ‘The second cousin in Middlesbrough—he was represented by counsel,’ she said. ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘I suppose if this Kolly Kibber hasn’t left a will, he gets any money there is. He wouldn’t want any talk of suicide because of the life assurance.’
    ‘He didn’t ask any questions.’
    ‘There wasn’t any need. No one made out he’d killed himself.’
    ‘Perhaps he did all the same,’ Ida said. ‘There was something queer about him. I’d like to ’ave asked some questions.’
    ‘What about? It’s plain enough.’
    A man in plus-fours and a striped tie came to the bar. ‘Hullo, Ida,’ he called.
    ‘Hullo, Harry,’ she said sadly, staring at the paper.
    ‘Have a drink?’
    ‘I’ve got a drink, thank you.’
    ‘Swallow it down and have another.’
    ‘No, I don’t want any more, thank you,’ she said. ‘If I’d been there—’
    ‘What’d have been the good?’ the sombre man said.
    ‘I could’ve asked questions.’
    ‘Questions, questions,’ he said irritably. ‘You keep on saying questions. What about beats me.’
    ‘Why he said he wasn’t Fred.’
    ‘He wasn’t Fred. He was Charles.’
    ‘It’s not natural.’ The more she thought about it the more she wished she had been there: it was like a pain in the heart, the thought that no one at the inquest was interested, the second cousin stayed in Middlesbrough, his counsel asked no questions, and