A story of gang war in the underworld of Brighton. Pinkie, only seventeen, has already brutally killed a man. Now believing he has escaped retribution, he is unprepared for Ida Arnold, who is determined to avenge the death.
Utdrag ur boken:
He got out of bed in his half drowse [...] and felt his way to the washstand. He took up his tooth-mug, poured out a glass of water and heard a voice say, ‘Pinkie? What is it, Pinkie?’ He dropped the glass and as the water split across his feet he bitterly remembered.
He said cautiously into the dark, ‘It’s all right. Go to sleep.’ He no longer had a sense of triumph or superiority. He looked back on a few hours ago as if he had been drunk then or dreaming – he had been momentarily exhilarated by the strangeness of his experience. Now there would be nothing strange ever again – he was awake. You had to treat these things with commonsense – she knew. The darkness thinned before his wakeful and calculating gaze – he could see the outline of the bedknobs and a chair. He had won a move and lost a move: they couldn’t make her give evidence, but she knew ... She loved him whatever that meant, but love was not an eternal thing like hatred and disgust. They saw a better face, a smarter suit ... The truth came home to him with horror that he had got keep her love for a lifetime; he would never be able to discard her. If he climbed he had to take Nelson Place with him like a visible scar; the registry office marriage was as irrevocable as a sacrament. Only death could ever set him free.
Nedskrivet av Salamis