He’d beaten her till the blood came.
Before that he’d never beaten her.
“Well, not hard, anyhow; only affectionately-like.
She’d howl a bit, and I had to shut the window. Then, of course, it ended as per usual.
But this time I’m done with her.
Only, to my mind, I ain’t punished her enough. See what I mean?”
He explained that it was about this he wanted my advice.
The lamp was smoking, and he stopped pacing up and down the room, to lower the wick.
I just listened, without speaking.
I’d had a whole bottle of wine to myself and my head was buzzing.
As I’d used up my cigarettes I was smoking Raymond’s.
Some late streetcars passed, and the last noises of the street died off with them.
Raymond went on talking.
What bored him was that he had “a sort of lech on her” as he called it.
But he was quite determined to teach her a lesson.
His first idea, he said, had been to take her to a hotel, and then call in the special police. He’d persuade them to put her on the register as a “common prostitute,” and that would make her wild.
Then he’d looked up some friends of his in the underworld, fellows who kept tarts for what they could make out of them, but they had practically nothing to suggest. Still, as he pointed out, that sort of thing should have been right up their street; what’s the good of being in that line if you don’t know how to treat a girl who’s let you down?
When he told them that, they suggested he should “brand” her.
But that wasn’t what he wanted, either.
It would need a lot of thinking out. ...
But, first, he’d like to ask me something.
Before he asked it, though, he’d like to have my opinion of the story he’d been telling, in a general way.
I said I hadn’t any, but I’d found it interesting.
Did I think she really had done him dirt? I had to admit it looked like that.
Then he asked me if I didn’t think she should be punished and what I’d do if I were in his shoes.
I told him one could never be quite sure how to act in such cases, but I quite understood his wanting her to suffer for it.
I drank some more wine, while Raymond lit another cigarette and began explaining what he proposed to do.
He wanted to write her a letter, “a real stinker, that’ll get her on the raw,” and at the same time make her repent of what she’d done.
Then, when she came back, he’d go to bed with her and, just when she was “properly primed up,” he’d spit in her face and throw her out of the room.
I agreed it wasn’t a bad plan; it would punish her, all right.
But, Raymond told me, he didn’t feel up to writing the kind of letter that was needed, and that was where I could help.
When I didn’t say anything, he asked me if I’d mind doing it right away, and I said, “No,” I’d have a shot at it.
He drank off a glass of wine and stood up.
Then he pushed aside the plates and the bit of cold pudding that was left, to make room on the table.
After carefully wiping the oilcloth, he got a sheet of squared paper from the drawer of his bedside table; after that, an envelope, a small red wooden penholder, and a square inkpot with purple ink in it.
The moment he mentioned the girl’s name I knew she was a Moor.
I wrote the letter.
I didn’t take much trouble over it, but I wanted to satisfy Raymond, as I’d no reason not to satisfy him.
Then I read out what I’d written.
Puffing at his cigarette, he listened, nodding now and then.
“Read it again, please,” he said.
He seemed delighted.
“That’s the stuff,” he chuckled. “I could tell you was a brainy sort, old boy, and you know what’s what.” At first I hardly noticed that “old boy.”
It came back to me when he slapped me on the shoulder and said,
“So now we’re pals, ain’t we?”
I kept silence and he said it again.
I didn’t care one way or the other, but as he seemed so set on it, I nodded and said, “Yes.”
He put the letter into the envelope and we finished off the wine.
Then both of us smoked for some minutes, without speaking.
The street was quite quiet, except when now and again a car passed.